I Vish...

Thurday, 10th June, 2010. 8.15 P.M.

My thoughts wandered as I drove my bike towards the airport. “When was it that I had last been outside to see the sunset on a weekday?” I thought. By the time I reached, I realised I could not recollect that fateful day and blamed it on being a software professional.

I was here, yet again, to send off a friend. I called him to know where he was and found out that it was going to be a long wait. I looked around and my eyes fell on a board that read “Work in progress, inconvenience regretted”. I wondered when the supposed renovation was scheduled to get over and slowly started to take in my surroundings. Within seconds, I was confused. I was not sure if I was at the international departure terminal of the Chennai airport, its railway station, or worse still, its market. The buzz of human activity silenced the drone of the construction work. People were everywhere. Men going around in lungis, women squatting and serving food to their families as they were waiting, and people lying down on the roads made it almost certain that I had to be at the central station. Alas, it was not to be. A wry smile and then I merged to be a part of them.

Left with no choice, I stood cross-legged in a corner and immersed myself into a book. The next time I raised my head, I was pleasantly surprised. I could make out the silhouette of a prominent figure. I watched from the side as a tall, broad, bespectacled person pulled his trolley along. No securities, no clicking cameras, not even a sign of recognition among the majority of the crowd, and a somewhat protruding belly left me in doubt (it was always the face that I got to see in the televisions and newspapers). I followed my intuition and tailed them (he was with his wife who is his emotional bedrock), ever so tentatively. They came to a halt in the middle of the road, and she made a call (probably to their driver). I knew it was to be now, or never. I walked past his wife and approached him gingerly. The moment I was face-to-face with him, I threw away my caution.

“May I have your autograph?” I asked, and I made sure that there was no trace of hesitation.
“Sure!” he said with a reassuring smile. Maybe I was not that good at hiding my hesitancy.
I rummaged into my bag and got out a notebook. In those fleeting few seconds I also had to decide in which colour I wanted him to sign. I had a choice of black, blue, red and green. I went ahead with green. With my notebook in his left hand and the green pen in his right, he was about to sign when I noticed that the cap had not yet been removed. While he still held the pen in his hand, I offered to remove the cap for him. Once we were done with that, he signed with a flourish and returned my things.
“Thanks!” I murmured, as he collected his baggage, walked towards his car and gave me one more of his reassuring smiles.

I scanned the pages to the one in which he had signed. I could make out a ‘V’ and an ‘A’ which was dragged to the end to form a ‘d’. Vishwanath Anand. The number one in world chess. I was still in awe as I watched the man load his luggage, get inside the car and whoosh past me.

I came back to my senses, sent off my friend and drove back home. All along, there was again one question that was nagging me: “Why is it that he does not receive the same amount of attention as an ordinary cricketer or movie star gets?”

A Dream come true??

It was one of those days when you are online, and you have absolutely no idea as to what to do! You've checked your mails, you've sent away a couple to keep the threads up and alive, you've done your bit of chatting(more than what you are capable of actually!) and you've even gone about managing the fantasy league football team!!!

As a person who does not take to social networking(it somehow seems inherent now, I cant take to it,try as I might! :D), and who does not know what videos to search for in youtube, I was basically in a position to just close down all the browser windows and switch off the system.

And then, a change of heart. I wanted to visit espnstar's website and have a look at all the fantasy games available, now that I have revived my interest at it, thanks to EPL which i hardly follow....

So, I did just that. I went to their website, and checked out what all they'd come up with by now. Super Selector was still on(I guess it'll never fade away.... As long as cricket goes on, so will Super Selector!!!). There were a number of events regarding football, F1,... Anything that anyone could possibly think of!

And then, there it was, popping up in front of me, asking me why it is taking me so long to notice the inevitable....

Now, how many times have I told that I'll give anything to Harsha Bhogle to swap places with him(though I wonder what there is that he'll want of me!). Harsha Bhogle!! Hmmm... The first thing that the name brings to mind these days is the way we exploited it at college(For those who know what i mean, well and good. For the others, don't ask me how... it is quite inexplicable!) Getting back to the point, Harsha Bhogle has always been someone whom I've admired. Be it his simple style at commentating, his quick witted one liners("In the past, cricket in India was organized, but now it is promoted" he said at the recent TED India Conference at Mysore and "I like his optimism. Every time he swings the bat, he looks at the boundary lines. But the ball is in the keeper's hands!" on Ravindra Jadeja are some of his recent ones which have left me gaping with awe), just about everything that he does. If I had been impressed with his cricket commentary, I began to look upon him after he played host during the FIFA World Cup of 2006 for ESPN STAR sports. A commendable job for someone who hardly followed football till then! ( I still can't forget it. Towards the later stages of that World Cup, when he made his first mistake in the show, the expert panel who were sitting along with him at the studio actually appreciated him for the phenomenal, near flawless performance he'd been doing for a first timer!)

Once again, I seem to be deviating quite easily! Where was I? Yeah.... Here it was, popping up on me... An ad for the event "Skype Star Commentator". An event that allows you to post auditions online, and the winner, amongst other things getting to host a show with SportsCenter on ESPN. After being a little skeptic about the whole idea, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. It took me a week to put the thought into action, and yet another week to post about it and make it public :D

Yes! I did three auditions, two on cricket and one on football, namely,

Cricket - The Legend of the Little Master

Cricket - Looking back at India's eastern son

Football - A devilish bite

Hmmm... I guess it might all boil down to what we call welllllll (well tried that is). But in any case, it was a dream come true, irrespective of what the result is gonna be. After all, its not every day when you do something you've always been craving to do :P

Block & Tackle!

About three months, almost 80 days, since my last blog, and still the wish to get back to it has almost always been intact! Somehow, the months of August and September seem to be jinxed... Yet another year when I've not been able to make a single entry; at least I've got back earlier this time round! :)

To call it a "Writer's block", would be a bit far fetched. It is too early to call myself a writer, and nor did I have any blocks as such( if you count out keying in "www.blogger.com" in the address bar :D )

It has been a mix of it all, these last eighty days.

One month full of joblessness, peppered with those send offs at the airport and the railway station, when our group formally got dismantled(physically, that is), with guys heading to different parts of the world...

Followed by my entry into the corporate world; those induction programs; the "college to corporate" thingy; 13 days of training(more than just training!); the workstation; those train, bike and bus journeys; the list just goes on....

And the distinguished day-to-day life that I've started to lead; losing old habits; yearning to create new ones but never actually doing it; spamming Sathyam every weekend; listening to old stories, dead and buried; posting new ones in a thread that keeps wanting more; a birthday that is gonna be etched in my memory; meeting new friends and hearing a lot about "twins"; a first that had many firsts; again, I can keep on adding more.....

Anyways, I've finally come to the point of tackling one of my lost habits, blogging! No new inspiration, just that I've always wanted to keep it going; like I always wish to walk, to talk....

I've been reminded by myself, that come November, and it will be the third time I'll be trying my hand at novel writing(not a single word written in the past two attempts though). November, having been established as the novel writing month (though not many seem to be aware of it) invites all those who've ever felt the urge to put pen on paper (rather, hands on keyboard these days!) and jot down 50,000 words to create their own novel. Though NaNoWriMo(National Novel Writing Month) lays more value on the quantity rather than the quality of the literature, it certainly is a starting point...

CONCLUSION??

Well, if you really want to write, just get down to doing it and you'll end up with something. Even if it is completely unrelated to what you have in mind... "Block & Tackle!" ?!?

Those 3 hours...

The last 3 days, 13th, 14th and 15th of June were amongst the best days in life. A trip to Coorg with 13 mates from school, whose company you can't fail to enjoy, there was not much one could ask for.

Except for those hours when even the best of times turn out to be sour, for everyone in the group is enveloped by a sombre mood. There were 3 such dreadful hours during this trip of ours, which left everyone awake lamenting into the night.

No, it has nothing to do with anything that happened to any one of us (not even the dog licked face!) in particular, for though there might be one suffering in every incident, it always is hilarious to the rest of the group. What I'm refering to is something that left everyone of us, without any exceptions, in a gloomy state.

It is the India vs England Super 8 T20 World Cup game that I have been building up to. A must win game, we all believed India would go all out to clinch the match and hence stay alive in terms of the tournament. It was not to be!

The chase was abominable! Having restricted England to 153, even if it was never to be a cake walk, we could have easily got there. But there was no sense of emergency to speak of. Be it the detestable misfield by our vice captain Yuvi making what would have been a wide+single a wide+four (making all the difference - 3 runs!); the unfathomable decision to send in an inexperienced Jadeja at number 4 ahead of the in form Yuvi at a crucial juncture; our beloved Dhoni ("Captain Cool") tapping and picking the singles, never even lofting over the infield (except the last ball!); running only a single of the penultimate ball, when a double would have atleast left us with a chance to tie the game off a last ball six; it was all as if we'd resigned to the fact of being defeated throughout, with no intention to win, ever!

Defeat is acceptable, but not in this fashion.

And now, to add insult to injury, the best batting line up and the best batsmen of spin have been brushed away by a modest total of 130 by the South Africans; now on par with Ireland as the only team to have lost all 3 Super 8 games; leaving us to nurse lost pride.

We know it is impossible to win always; that our cricketing team is most strained, physically and mentally; but what we except is a certain degree of respectability, even at the face of defeat.

A void!

The evening is drawing to a close. You switch on the television. Your fingers automatically key in the necessary on the remote control, and you are tuned in to Sony Set Max. Only to find that you are facing on the screen one of those Hindi movies you'll keenly wish to avoid, or worse still, dubbed movies which you'll rather not take to in their original format!

Yes! It is that time again. Almost a week has passed since the second season of IPL got over and the void which it has left seems in no way diminished! Be it the cricket or the controversies, the stars or the show hosts, there was always something in it for everyone of us to wait for the next day.

And now, it is all over.

Only to keep us waiting for the next.

Perhaps the wait isn't going to be too long. What with a World Cup to defend in a weeks time, it is better we too start preparing ourselves.

As the new ad for the T20 World Cup goes "Aanay Dhay!!"

Gifts for thought!

It's been almost a year since my last entry. But still, it seems as if it was all bound to be this way. For what I write now, seems to sprout from where I'd left it last.....

Having just passed out of college, it seems as if I wake up each day after an extended farewell! Yes, it is one of those things that happened during those last days at college that I wish to write upon.

About a month ago, as early as five in the morning, a number of my precious juniors had been to our hostels to leave us our farewell gifts (Their intention being to leave the gifts while everyone was still fast asleep. Unluckily for them, I'd not gone to bed yet!). Pitying their plight, I gave them time enough to sneak into my room and leave what they'd brought. And so they did...

And now comes the reason why I believe this to continue from where I left...

They'd gifted me a Rubik's cube! Not just another cube, but one in which six of their faces were etched as caricatures. Having identified the moment I saw it what it was that they'd intended, I quickly tried to solve it and see the finished product. Overwhelmed by emotion, it took me longer than usual, and by the time I was done with it, I myself couldn't wait any longer!

And then I had it, the completed cube. Only to find that though the cube was solved, the problem wasn't, for the six caricatures were not rightly alligned.

And then, it set in! While in a normal cube, the orientation of the centre pieces in each face is irrelevant, the cube that I'd been gifted with had an added constraint. Not only had I had to solve the cube, but I also had to keep in mind the position of the centre pieces!

Unaware of it themselves, my juniors had bumped me into a problem, the solution for which had become one in a septillion rather than one in a quintillion!

It took me a couple of days to get working on it and solve it such that I could picture the six caricatures properly. But when I did it, it did give me a sense of satisfaction, more than ever I've felt at completing a cube!

So, next time, when someone gifts you something, don't be too happy! You might after all be pushed into a chain of thought you've never had before!

And now its an obsession!

It was the last day of our sixth semester. With the exams already out of the way, the only real work that we had to do was to get packing to our homes. Amidst all this confusion, there was one of our seniors who had come to our hostel, Pearl, to see us off. And it was then that it all started...

There he was, sitting and talking to us while we were rummaging everything and stuffing them into our bags. It was now that he spotted a Rubik's cube, lying alone in the corner of one of our rooms, in memory of the Nittfest(our intra-collegiate cultural festival) that had gone by.

At first, no one took notice. But as he started solving the cube with ease, soon a group started forming around him! Believe me, almost every single person were in awe, and every one wanted to know the 'trick' immediately. It ain't that easy though...

I had made a mental note that when I return to college for the seventh semester, I should be able to solve the cube with ease.

It was as I guessed, difficult. Time passed before I actually got my hands on a Rubik's cube. And once this was done, I searched the net(the faithful servant who promises to be of help whenever needed) and after some work ended up with the right site for me, a beginner's guide!

Still, I was not through. The first time I did solve, with the algorithm in front of me in the computer screen, it took me almost four hours! Worth it, for I just didn't solve, but tried and understood the intricacies of the cube.

What started as a mere whim, was slowing becoming an obsession!

I was spending a lot of hours everyday on the cube, and slowly but steadily brought down the time that I needed to solve it. I was able to better the algorithms that I knew, to suit to my methods of solving. And with this done, next in line is speed solving, and solving it blindfolded!

What more, it gives you a satisfaction when you think of it in the following manner :
The solved Rubik's cube is one out of 43 quintillion (43,252,003,274,489,856,000) permutations that are possible on the cube!
Well, its not just another toy any more!

Strutting the roads!

It was Friday, the 13th of June. One of those days when things you least expect come out to be the truth. It was the day which marked the release of the much hyped movie, Dasavathaaram. It also marked the clash between France and the Netherlands at the Euro. But I end up remembering the day for something else...

Along with two of my friends, I was to watch Dasavathaaram(first day, night show!). As is my habit, I took to walking the distance to Inox, Citi Centre( being eco-friendly, I take it upon myself to walk and use public transport as much as is feasible!). I reached well in advance of our slated 10 p.m. show( 5 mins to state the truth!). With so many shows of the same film on a single day, ours was inevitably delayed, and we finally took to our seats at half past ten.

Torn between two of my friends, one who had already seen it, and the other who was hankering to see the football match rather than the movie, I managed to enjoy Kamal's presence on screen( since there isn't almost a single scene without him, I could have said I enjoyed the movie... this way better though!).

At 1.30, my friend offered to drop me home. En route, he informed me that he was running out of fuel. So I suggested he should rather go to his place directly, than come out of his way and drop me at my house. As agreed, he left me at the Nilgiris supermarket. This was about ten minutes from my house, and though I had no reason to be afraid, I was still dreading the lonely walk at this time of the night. It turned out to be quite the contrary...

I took to my mp3 player as I always do when I walk , and I started. It was one of those walks which will stay forever. At this point of time, there was not a single vehicle in the vicinity. I gradually took the liberty to walk in the middle of the roads! It was like a dream come true. The entire stretch of roads were at my disposal. I danced to the tunes of the song I was listening to, and was held up just once while crossing the roads. Two in a bike, probably returning from another night show, glanced at me in a queer fashion, thinking I must be out of my mind.

Who cares!! I continued on in much the same way and reached home in time to celebrate a Dutch victory. And what should I say...
It was neither the Dutch victory, nor Dasavathaaram which urged me to put that day into words, but the feeling of being the King of the roads that did!

The Storyteller

24th of May, 2008.
6.30 p.m
The match between Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals was on. A win would have ensured a semi-final spot for us, Super Kings. I was at home, watching the match with my family and three friends of mine. We were to be at the Landmark, Nungambakkam bookstore by 7 p.m. My dream was to come true. I was going to get a chance to meet Jeffrey Archer, in person! After much urging, I was able to force my friends out of my house and we were off to Landmark(CSK needing 68 off 6 overs, lost the match. We went on to lose again to the Royals in the final, thats history now!). It is my belief that a guest can be late, not the hosts. And as part of Chennai, I was the host. Against all odds, we did make it to the place before 7, ensuring a place for us to stand among the stifling crowd of 1500 and also to be on time to welcome him....

He arrived a few minutes after 7, and the hour and a half for which he spoke and answered questions seemed to fly past us as if it were a few seconds! While most of what he spoke seems to have been covered in one form of the media or the other, there were a few good things, which I felt had been left out.

On being late, he had said " I usually arrive on time for all my meetings, but the way in which your people drive, even the Italians seem gentle to me now!" , to loud cheers and applause.

How he went on to be a best seller, his experiences with the American radio while marketing "Kane & Abel" to make it the number one best seller, and every other incident he quoted, kept the audience wanting and waiting for more!

And the way in which he signed off, it is going to be etched in my memory....
"I'll be coming to India again at the year end when the English cricket team would come for its tour. I know whats going to happen then. India would be put to bat first. Sehwag goes for 3, Dravid for 1, Sachin for 2, Ganguly for 1, Laxman for knot, and at lunch India go in at 33 for 7."
A hushed silence, followed by loud " boo's ", and then silence again....
He goes on to say, "After all, I am a storyteller!", to thunderous applause.

No wonder, he is one of the best storytellers of our age...