Million Dollar Cry Babies

P.S.: Dedicated to all my friends in the Media/Media related fields. Of course...“Nothing personal".... :)

First of all, let us all clear our minds of the “web of deceit and lies" that the so called “responsible media” has been feeding us for long now.Let us look through our own eyes for a change and not through the shaded lens that media creates for us to see through.

It was not a “grudge” series as the media has labelled it and one thing is certain that whatsoever may have been outcome of the series, India certainly has not lost its “honour and pride” as we are being made to experience.

If pride and honour were so whimsical a thing to be lost when our cricket team was defeated or when “Mahatma Gandhi’s forgotten memorabilia” sent under the hammer for auction by a “foreigner”, then we would not have had any pride left in us.

But yes, the truth is plain and simple. A full strength, first choice (barring Zahir Khan), Indian Cricket attack came a cropper against a depleted yet resolute Australian cricket team.
And what do we get as excuses.Some crap about the pitch and all.Let us stop a while and take stock of things in our team.

"Blaming the moisture of the Guwahati air or the vaastu of the Rajiv Gandhi stadium at Hyderabad or for that matter accusing the Pakistan team of " match-fixing " to throw India out of the Champions Trophy, won’t help."

The kangaroos certainly showed us why they were and still are the Number 1 team in the world for so long. And we, take pride in the fact that “ we also were the number 1 “ team in the world for 1-2 days and call ourselves the "heir apparent" of the Aussie team.

We won the World Cup ...long long years ago in 1983 and still gloat about it as if it is the ultimate in sporting glory.Look at the Aussies.They have been World Champion in cricket for over 10 years now both in terms if success in the world cup and the true form of cricket " the test cricket".

To win in cricket, more than “natural talent", " flair" and " prodigious skill" , that we have so much in abundance in our players , one teeny-weeny important thing more necessary than all these combined is " commitment and mental strength", which unfortunately we ignore and that very aspect comes to us as our doom.

What gross misconceptions we have and the faster we come out our “little utopian world”, the better it is for Indian Cricket.More than that, there is something, something fundamentally wrong with the way in which we think of cricket or our triumphs.

Are we so starved of sporting glory that any small victory by the cricket team means the world to us and we measure "national pride and honour" by it.

Across the Universe

Images of broken light
Cloud before my open eyes
Like a million shining stars
Spread away across the universe

Music flowing out from saxophone
That hits softly on my ears
The rhythm sounds so sweet and pleasant
As it permeates across the universe

Raindrops from the pattering downpour
Creeping into the muddy creek
The water slides and slithers
As it passes across the universe

Smell like candy diffuses the air
Drawing all towards it
It teases, tempts and lures me
As it wafts away, across the universe

Words are drifting from my heart
Like the wind from an open box
They call me on and on, while
They snake away, across the universe

Thoughts meander through the restless mind
At the pace of light as it so seems
They tumble wildly as they rush away
Across the universe

Pools of sorrow, waves of joy overcome me
Intoxicating and caressing me
As they stray from their path
Wildly across the universe

PS: Inspired by " Across the Universe" the most poetic,lyrical and beautiful song ever ...by the Beatles...

The Forgotten Land

Long long years ago
Yet not long enough to forget,
There was once a land,
That was a stuff of legends

It was like any other place
With people like you and me
Going about their daily chores
Feasting on their modest bread

With bazaars full of peddlers
Haggling for the right price
Noisy as much they were as kind
They had come in search of a better life

Colourful souks and malls
Adorned the city walls
Every lane led to another four
A maze of alleys as it was called

Kids mingled with one other
Irrespective of god
For the great kite festival was on
And the fight for the skies had begun

People from other lands
Called it “Jewel of the world”
Sang melodies in praise of it
And craved for its possession

Unknown to everyone,
A tempest was raging underneath
A violent storm that would ravage
The people for years to come by

Though the land was fortified
For external deadly foe
Little did it help them
For the enemy lay within

And then came the time
When the wolf led its howl aloud
Gone was the guise of the sheep
The murdering traitor was let loose

They plundered and killed
Both friends and foe alike
The fight was for good they said,
Euphemism, as we know for the dark times

They used to call it once
The land of milk and honey
But now they should come and have a look
For there is nothing but sand and blood

The people of that land
Had a cruel end to their lives
I still hear them scream from their graves
Were we not neighbours

The world watched silently
As the land was raped
None came forward to help
For they were civilized people

For the people who were left to die
In this hellish land
None offered a human touch to them
Though they were still like you and me

Forgotten was the land
That was tortured and dumped
But why do we care for them
For now all of us live happily ever after.

Of Human Courage

If any of you were to be asked, about which was the greatest triumph in the field of sports in the year 2007, I would get a variety of replies ranging from the magnificent and deserved victory of Australia in the cricket world cup or the nerve wracking finish of Kimi Raikkonen who stole the formula 1 title from under the nose of Lewis Hamilton. One group of supporters would hoot for Roger Federer for achieving greatness at the hallowed lawns of Wimbledon, joining an elite group of tennis players to conquer the Wimbledon 5 times.

Back home in India, if you ask the people this question, the people here would probably say that that India’s win in the 20-20 World Cup would rank right at the top.

But, in my view, the most gut wrenching and courageous victory has been achieved by the Iraqi football team, who fought against all the odds and showed the world true character and resilience by winning the Asia Cup.

The newspaper headline read “Skipper Younis Mahmoud's thumping headed goal crowned Iraq as the Asian Cup champions for the first time with a stirring 1-0 win over Saudi Arabia in the final here in Jakarta.”

Unless you are a person who has been living on an isolated island for the past 3 years and has been cut off from the rest of the world, you would be all aware of the current state of Iraq and the hardships it is undergoing. The victory of the Lions of the Two Rivers, as the Iraqi team is called sent a wave of joy through the war-torn country.

The victorious run sent men of all ages cheering and dancing in Baghdad. Celebratory gunfire resounded across the city and revelers poured into the streets in defiance of orders from authorities while mosques broadcast calls for the shooting to stop. Security forces enforced a vehicle ban in an effort to prevent a repeat of car bombings that killed dozens celebrating Iraq’s progress to the final. Some of the players who were part of the Iraqi team lost there family members to the violence, while the tournament was going on.

Fighting against unimaginable odds and crusading over an unhelpful and unworthy administration, the teams triumph set a fantastic example of what deeds a motivated and driven human spirit could achieve. But even during these joyous moments for the football team, the situation back home in Iraq only got worse. More than 50 Iraqi people were killed while they were celebrating the semifinal victory," Younis Mahmoud, the captain who scored the winning header in the final, said. "One of the victims was a 12-year-old child. His mother, when his body was laid in front of her, she didn't weep, but she said: 'I present my son as a sacrifice for the Iraqi national team.' We have to win."

Even the team support staff wasn’t spared from the violence. The coach, Jorvan Vieira - a Brazilian who in one month transformed a disparate and divided team forced to train in Jordan, paid tribute to the team's physiotherapist, who was killed by a bomb blast in Baghdad while picking up his plane ticket. Despite this victory the captain courageous Younis Mahmoud is unable to celebrate his historic achievement .When asked about what were his plans when he returned home and about whether he would like a victory parade in Iraq, he replied,
"Who secures my life?
In Iraq you do not know who will kill you."

He said he did not fear being among the Iraqi people "but the American and the Government troops? One of my closest friends, the official forces arrested him for more than one year, and until now neither his family nor I know where he is.”
"I don't like the American people to be angry with me but I am very sorry the Americans invade Iraq, and I hope it will be very soon to get rid of the Americans.”
That clearly depicts what people want. People want peace, peace and just peace. Even news reports show that.

In spite of all the talks of the increasing and worsening divide between the religious sects in Iraq, the situation in Iraq is just the opposite. One such person is Ali Adnan, an Iraqi now living in Amman, Jordan, who told Reuters:"I congratulate the wounded Iraqi population, and I hope we get more and more victories. I ask God to unify the Sunnis and the Shi'a. There is no difference between us. We are all brothers under this flag and under this team.

In Baghdad, similar sentiments came from Muhammad Muhisin, a Shi'a from the predominantly Shiite Karrada neighborhood of the capital."The joy yesterday was not just because we have won, but because it has united Iraqis and brushed aside sectarianism," he said. "People started to feel that they are Iraqis and that they are happy about this achievement, which is an achievement for only Iraq."3
In spite of having the odds heavily stacked against them still ,they hung on to the hope, that one hope that could bring joy and happiness to thousands of suppressed Iraqis; that hope that would bring a smile to the Iraqi people. One smile was all they needed to break the monotony of war and violence and that smile, which had become a rare commodity in Iraq, was provided by the most unlikely of sources. It is a victory of human courage and human spirit which comes straight from the fables.

This victory just confirms what wonders a human can do if he has the courage to defy the situation that is stacked against him.
As Albus Dumbledore says in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince that Voldemort was in so much hurry to split his soul that he never really understood the power of a full pure soul. Sure the Iraqi people have understood and realized the power of the pure human soul and human courage.

Lament For a Generation

In the quest for more and more material profits and advantages, we are forgetting the simple things in life.Like Vidya balan says on the radio in Lage raho munnabhai,
"Reth pe nage pair kab chale the, yaad nahi"

If any one has seen the movie Bawarchi ,starring Rajesh Khanna ,he says,

It is so simple to be happy
but so difficult to be simple.

So this piece is an ode to the lack of simple pleasures in today's world

Gone are those wonderful days,
When we looked forward,
To jumping up and down in the rain.
Oh!! Those beautiful moments

I ask myself; what has happened,
Where has the carefree child gone?
For the only thing that awaits him,
Is the drudgery of the grindstone

The pleasures of childhood,
Which were a license to play, play and play,
The things that made growing up enjoyable,
How have they gone astray.

It is indeed a pity and source of sorrow,
a situation of hoping against hope,
For I am sure, those old days,
Would never be here again.

My heart wants to scream,
In silence and in pain,
The question will haunt you, I am sure
Where have the good old days gone.

PS :The title of the so called lament is taken from the chapter title in the book O JERUSALEM by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins

Outside -In the real world

While we are in college, we long for the world outside that beautiful world free from boring lectures backbreaking assignments and memory cramming syllabus. Once out of college we come to know the harsh reality in the market.
As Bill Gates once said
“If you think your teachers were cruel, wait till you have a boss”.
Moreover, how right he is. We never try to value our college days thinking instead of the future rather than living in the present. However, once we are out, we realize that the scenario is not a bed of roses, but a sea of thorns and it is essential to walk or rather run bare foot on it to achieve success. Some learn this truth the easy way, but most of us learn it the hard way. As Aamir Khan says in the movie Rang De Basanti,

""Campus ke andar hum zindagi ko nachate hai

Campus ke bahar zindagi hame nachati hai””

The same situation was seen by me .Maybe that I underestimated my post Btech experience or that I underrated the market waiting out for me, the reality of the world,
blew me away. As the people knowing me may be aware that I took CAT coaching after my engineering, in the hope of getting a seat in one of the top 20 colleges for management across India. When it became clear that that dream would be a dream at least for at least one more year, I started job hunt in late mid March.

Irrespective of the job profile and other such important stuff, I applied to whatever job that sounded good to me. God knows how many zillions of resume edits I did to change my career goal from
“Securing a challenging position in software field “in one company’s application to “Contributing my technical skills to personal development “in another to “Get a chance to showcase my management skills for the development of individual and the organization” in the third application. By the luck of the draw , I finally got an interview call which I easily converted and joined, as a management trainee on April 1st, yes my friends on APRIL FOOLS DAY. My main aim was just to get some job experience and meet different people, understand their mentality and develop my social skills. And what an experience it has been. I met people from different walks of life .Both affluent and not so affluent, MBA’s to undergrads, engineers to pure science students and married to unmarried too.

All of them have only one thing in common .They are working towards a very lucrative, but challenging vision of running their own company. Boys and girls between the age group of 17-25 , trying to live their dream and making a name for themselves was an entirely novel and exciting experience for me and at the same time it is hard for me to keep up with my so called colleagues there.

I saw people who had run away their houses and fought against the society to make it big. Meeting them gave me a strange feeling, which was a mixture of awe and stoic regard for their efforts. There were people who would literally walk from their houses to the office to save those few rupees, while some people like me would sometimes blow away 25-30 rupees for an auto when the bus could have sufficed. It made me realize how fortunate I was to have such a good family who went to the worlds ends to make my wants meet. Coins were not as fortunate to them as they are for us, but they did not stop working lamenting their background instead they look forward to the rosy future which we all dream to have.

I would and still sometimes curse myself of my fortune, that such people, who are so committed and so sincere on his job had to endure so much hardship. Not that am not committed and sincere, but even then, I hope the readers get the difference. Sometimes we feel ashamed that in spite of having all the facilities and all the comforts, we fail to use them to do some constructive work.

Then there are some, working tirelessly, not for them but for their team leader so that their leader achieves success in their life. Not that they are not ambitious, but they literally adore their leader, that they will do anything for them. As they say, “A great leader can galvanize even a group of sloths (no comparison meant)” These people work as true team members, as they say in cycling they work in a PELOTON to achieve their common goal. And when the team achieve their goals, they would calmly go up to the team leader and say” Congratulations boss. However, maybe this job is not my cup of tea. I just stayed around so that we, as a team could achieve our goals and now that it is done, I should take leave. All the best.” They are the truly selfless kind, whom anyone would wish to have in their team.

Also, there were people who were doing this job just as a stopgap arrangement .Like why to sit idle at home, when we can do some good to the society, get some job experience and at the same time earn some money. Or maybe they were doing the job just because they wanted to do some job and not the crap what we said in the job interview that “This is exactly the kind of job am looking for”.” This is my dream job”.” I would do this job even if I had to do it for free”. All this is nothing but wild boasts, through which we try to impress the interviewer but most of which is caught clean by him, the only reason being that he has seen so many honchos like you.

Most importantly, this new job has given me an opportunity to start a new life afresh, a life free from the life I had in my engineering days. Not that I hated my engineering days, on the contrary I miss those days of playing football , commenting in our teachers class and lazing around in the college campus. I really miss them very much and those who know how much emotional I am or lack of it would agree that this is indeed a great show of emotion from me. In the four years of engineering, my mates knew all about me or rather all that I wanted to reveal to them and it was kind of bittersweet experience to begin a new chapter in my life.

The Fourth(falling) Estate

When I switched on the TV and was flipping through the umpteen television channels on the platter, I was necked out on seeing the amount of media hype on the wedding of a former miss world and the current miss plastic face with the son of, undoubtedly the Superstar of Bollywood. What I did not understand is that why so much importance is being to this particular wedding .Thousands of weddings take place everyday, but rarely do we see ones that are shown as live telecast. Though the media has other trivial issues to cover such as the continuing farmer suicides, the UP polls, the OBC quota and the increasingly muddled nuclear deal, it is this particular wedding which is going to change the lives of crores of Indians and that must be shown to the entire country. Other petty issues can wait.

Come on!!!!Who will be interested in what happens to the poor farmers and their families. Farmer suicides are happening and will continue to happen. The US is trying to suck our country into a nuclear wormhole and make us dependent on it for future fuel supply, but who the heck is interested in the future. We live in the present, party hard, go to pubs and take one day as it goes. We just want to know where ash-abhishiek are going to honeymoon, who else is going with them and will they call Salman Khan for wedding reception. Agreed that providing latest news to the public is the primary responsibility of the media , but am sure no one would be interested in things like whether the bride is a manglik, at what time did abhishek apply sindoor on ash or for that matter what was the menu at the wedding.

Also, the media tries to make us believe that we love cricket, even if we do not. It is because we are so good at it, though our recent form shows otherwise. The channels over hype the fact that our cricketers pour their hearts into every game. Other sports are not worthy of our attention. Other sportsmen do not pour their hearts out into their games. Other sportsmen are not worthy of endorsing our brands of footwear, aerated drinks or car batteries. Our cricketers alone deserve our adoration and we brand them heroes and set these people as an example to the generations to come, though they are no more than a mediocre group as a whole. Other sports do not matter to us. Our movie stars are intelligent. They study all scripts carefully and are always unwilling to propagate stereotypes. They live clean, wholesome lives and are therefore perfectly suited to deliver clean, wholesome messages to the masses that adore them. Therefore, we should watch their personal lives with all the care and attention we give to our lives.

According to me, this dangerous obsession with the celebrity culture and cricket is going to take us nowhere but downwards. This filthy and gaudy show of power and wealth does not go down well in a country where still 25% of our population is under poverty line and does not get even a single square meal a day. According to an expert group of Planning Commission, poverty line in rural areas is drawn with an intake of 2400 calories in rural areas and 2100 calories in urban areas. If the person is unable to get that minimum, level of calories is considered as being below poverty line. You may argue about who would want to see a boring story about the poor and the underprivileged ones when one can participate in the glamorous and glitzy wedding of the rich and famous through the television.

In his speech on the budget, Chidambaram quoted Nehru: “Everything else can wait, but not agriculture.” Agriculture represents much more to India than a mere slice of economic pie – it is the very lifeblood of the country, the source of livelihood for 115 million farming families and 70 percent of the country’s population, the base upon which the entire edifice of the nation rises. But then, these farmers toil hard in the field, braving the cruel sun, the merciless rain to grow food on which we feed ourselves whereas the page 3 celebrities are of no practical use to anyone but themselves. Therefore, whose condition needs to be portrayed on TV is anybody’s guess. It is equally true that we need a break from the serious stuff happening round us and this break is being provided by the entertainment and sports industry. However, sometimes, when the water crosses a certain level that things start becoming bad and even the things we loved earlier look very unreal and artificial to us. It is a sad fact that in a country where female foeticide reigns supreme and the dropout rate of children in a primary school is 25 percent, we feast our eyes and our soul on the glitzy lives of the bold and the beautiful. The media make us feel as if there are only two things in life CRICKET and BOLLYWOOD .Would someone please inform them there is another world beyond the film city and a new populace to meet beyond the cricket stadium.