Shaken and Stirred

I read this blog post on the turmoil of the twenties. In an eloquent piece, the blogger captures the pangs that one goes through on the threshold of 'true adulthood'. The following is my (unsolicited) response: As a guy on the verge of turning 29, I have gone through the phase you are speaking of. There is no guarantee that I won't go through it again, but it is worthwhile to pen down your thoughts when they seem crystal clear after having gone through a time of muddy swirling nothingness. 1. Disable your facebook account. Humans have survived for hundreds of thousands of years without it. I am sure you can survive the next 20. Alternative is to unsubscribe the 'friends' you speak of. You barely keep in touch with them anyway, just spend precious moments you should be spending thinking of you in thinking and probably cursing them. 2. Decide if you are all about money. You know that already I presume, else there would be no blog entry. 3. Do something. G...

Till about a month back, the question on everyone's minds was "How do we make the Tests less boring?". Of course, that was until it was revealed that the most fervent followers of the game - the bookies - like Test Cricket the best as they make the most money from it! Well, at least someone does... Test cricket is always termed by most players - former, current and currently suspended - as the pinnacle of cricket, the ultimate test of your abilities on the field. With the exception of Chris Gayle, who was then blasted for such blasphemy. Drawing on my years of playing test cricket, (our own street test cricket version where hitting a six was considered out, to ensure more measured play) I can empathise with that opinion. But, my views as a discerning observer of the more commonly known form of test cricket will be suitable for the purposes of this post. Professional sport, after all, is a microcosm of life itself. Grown men and women try their best to out-do one an...

The Supreme Court of India recently threw out petitions seeking legal prohibitions on the "immorality" involved in pre-marital sex and live-in relationships. While the honorable Court refused to delve into the moral aspects and summarily discarded with the petitions on legal grounds, an article in The Hindu - the mouthpiece of the Indian intelligentsia argued how such a legal judgment could serve to encourage the misguided youth from trying more such "experiments". I took it upon myself to argue (as is my wont) back. Here is a copy of the article I sent as an entry to the newspaper: Aligning the alien I count myself as one of the youth of today. And though I am not an aggressive proponent for pre-marital sex or live-in relationships, I was shaken enough to write this response. The author has clearly misunderstood the raison d’etre of live-in relationships. They are not quite the seed of convenience as much as cynicism. In fact, it may well be countered th...

Since I posted my last one on movies a while back (seems like a lifetime back), I thought I should put up another post on a movie. At least, it will give an illusion of continuity. Just like the earlier one , I do not pretend that its a critical analysis of the movie. Its more of an outpouring of my feelings after watching it - more emotional than rational, which is ironic since the protagonist is one of the most rational men ever lived (in fiction, of course). Sherlock Holmes Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law Director: Guy Ritchie My mind rebels at stagnation. The familiar feeling of fascination swept over me as I watched the adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, played more than ably by the dry wit of Robert Downey Jr . In all his roles, Downey Jr takes a rather deep interest of the character. Some say a little too deep. In fact, his role as the award winning, always-in-character actor in the laugh riot Tropic Thunder was suggested to the director, Ben Stiller by Downey Jr’s own personality...

I was reading Jack Welch's book Winning , Welch is ex-CEO with General Electric and has 40 plus years of experience in managing people. I have always thought management principles could be applied to real life as well. So from his chapter on 'Hiring the right people' , I conceived and adapted my own guidelines to 'Finding the right girl': Test for Integrity People with integrity tell the truth. They keep their word. They take responsibility for past actions, admit mistakes and give their best to fix them. Now there is no fool-proof way of testing integrity and hence your gut instinct is very important. More on instinct later. Look for  Intelligence Intelligence need not mean her educational qualifications. She should be able to hold your attention with her words, with an uncanny ability to surprise you and force you to alter your previous judgments about her. Education is just part of the pie, not the whole. Does she show  Maturity? As Welch says, "Mature peop...

Now that the ICC has acquisced to the Indian team's demand of replacing Bucknor and the procedure for the appeal against Harbhajan is underway, it is time for Cricket to come to the forefront again. The emotional outbursts against the Australian team's behavior while understandable should be transient. Lets recapitulate what all they have done to so upset us and unite the whole nation behind the team: Ricky Ponting, the Aussie captain, after entering into a gentleman's agreement with Anil Kumble chose to use it as and when it suited his advantage Ponting, Symonds, Clarke, Hussey were guilty of not walking when clearly out Gilchrist appealed for a catch that he must have known to be non-existent Excessive appealing and harassing the umpires Celebrating like a group of 15 year olds and not giving credit to the deserving opposition Accusing Harbhajan Singh of racial abuse after deliberately taunting and provoking him It is quite clear that to make an issue out of 2, 3, 5 and w...

The Indian cricket team suffered at the hands of an establishment which has repeatedly shown itself to have a separate set of standards for non-white teams. Here are some of them that immediately spring to mind: The preposterous decision to just fine Mark Waugh and Shane Warne after their self-confessed encounters with bookmakers while banning Ajay Jadeja for a similar crime The Mike Denness shocker , who incidentally shares his first name with Mike Proctor (the match referee for the Sydney test), where Indians players including Sachin and Sourav were fined and banned for 'ball tampering' and 'excessive appealing' without any complaints from the umpires themselves Darryl Hair 's accusing Pakistan of ball tampering and consequently calling off the test match when the offended Pak team walked off the ground Muralitharan's elbow flex was deemed to be way over the prescribed 5 degrees and censure was imminent before the ICC found that many bowlers including Brett L...

Gandhigiri is a sobriquet popularized by the movie Lage Raho Munna Bhai for the application of some of Gandhi’s principles. Although Gandhism is a much broader ideology, Gandhigiri touches the core of Gandhism: adherence to the path of Truth and non-violence with unwavering faith and utmost devotion while fighting for a cause. But, real life as we often realize, is not as rosy as Bollywood would like us to believe. So the question boils down to if Gandhigiri is relevant to people like you and I. Can we follow it? Relevance means ‘related to the matter at hand’. So, is Gandhigiri related to GenNext (the matter at hand), by what it means now , and not by what it should mean? And what does it mean? This term, coined by a cola advertisement and picked up by the mass media thereafter, is not another word for the youth. No. That would be a crass generalization. It is actually an epithet for those among the youth who have an urban lifestyle, like you and I, the ‘cool and modern’ us ...

I like to call myself an intellectual. Modesty forces me to explain the context I use the word in. It sometimes happens that I go into deep reverie when thinking about something very simple and I will end up with a very strange idea. It’s a regular pastime for me. One such sequence of thoughts went like the following: Everything in the natural world wants to survive. There are plenty of examples- leaves of the huge Amazon forests fight with each other for sunlight; the cacti in the Sahara protect themselves from thirsty animals through thorns; the bacteria deep in the ocean beds have mechanisms to withstand the high pressures and low temperatures; etc. All species seem to have an unwritten law that tells them survival is all-important. All of them have a 'survival instinct'. Now I asked myself, for what? There must be a purpose. Or is the very necessity of existence of purpose a purely human notion? Anyway, assuming there was such a purpose, I set about looking for one. The...