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Left Arm Fast (Medium)

I enjoyed the late nineties. It was a simpler time. Cricket was life and life was cricket. No one obsessively took pictures of their food, and players took the umpire’s word for it when a dodgy LBW decision went against them. There was no DRS, no HawkEye, no Snickometer and no Hotspot technology. Virat Kohli was all of 11 years old. India and Pakistan could tour each other’s countries. Sri Lanka and India played way too frequently and Sachin Tendulkar was revered as God’s gift to mankind. Because some things don’t change. In February 1999, a lanky left-arm seamer made his debut for India. He looked awkward in his run-up and awkward at the crease. It looked like he was struggling to keep his limbs from flailing in a hundred different directions at once, and I suppose he hoped that just for a moment, they'd cooperate with him to deliver that piece of leather and cork to its destination somewhere on the pitch. It was almost painful to watch and yet, deliver it he did. He was...
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That Funny Feeling

Is it just me or has anyone else ever woken up the morning after a night of binge drinking and thought cautiously, 'hey this is awesome... no hangover!' only to realize that the sole reason for that is because you're still drunk. Party's still on! You celebrate. Only until the hangover does set in a little later, of course. Now a hangover in my opinion is in the same league as the common cold. Everyone gets it at some point in their lives, and science has yet to discover a cure. The last bit I find particularly disconcerting considering the supposedly immense progress made by medical science in recent times. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that some prudish person in a position of authority decided one day that all hangover cures are to be kept secret. "Let the people regret their sins", he must have said, followed by an evil laugh and a bout of coughing. Now in a twisted kind of way, it's good we have hangovers. No matter how blurry the previ...
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Idiot Box

It's the 10th time in 3 days. I kid you not. I have grave worries that watching any part of 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People' one more time will cause irreparable damage to my brain. I don't care any more about Simon Pegg's impeccable comic timing, or how incredibly hot Megan Fox is, acting skills notwithstanding. Well, maybe just for Megan Fox. However I must say, this current 'How to..' spree is a far cry better than the apparent Zoolander marathon they had going not so long ago. That could have been fatal had it gone on any longer. In the 5 weeks i've been here, primetime has been primarily inundated with episodes of 'The Family Guy' and 'The Office'. Honestly, I'm quite fond of both shows but the sheer frequency of it can really get to you after a while. I sometimes wonder what age or IQ bracket the commercials are targeted at. They're all pretty much the same, with some guy with shiny teeth preaching about how great t...
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Misgovernment

Is it just me or does the functioning of the Indian government seem totally ridiculous? I've never understood the concept of a company where it's practically impossible for anyone to get fired, regardless of how good or bad they are at work. Nor can i understand the mentality of a person who applies for a government job for the sole purpose of this so-called "job security" where he, once into the job, has absolutely no accountability and almost zero probability of getting fired or laid off. Not only that, if he sticks around long enough, they're going to continue paying him for as long as he lives, even after he's stopped working. I think this is exactly what breeds the frustratingly sloppy attitude of employees at any government or municipal run office. One visit to the local RTO and you'll know exactly what i mean. I don't really blame the employees that much. It's simply human nature, at least for the larger section of society, to be content wit...
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Ode to Cricket

I wandered back to my bedroom that evening, still recovering from Harbhajan Singh's blitzkrieg innings against the hapless Deccan Chargers, and reached for my guitar. It leaned against the wall in a familiar corner of the room, and behind it stood two cricket bats. I paused, and looked at the bats like i'd never seen them there before. Admittedly, I hadn't given them their fair share of attention in quite a while. I reached past the guitar and carefully picked out one of the bats, that had a big sticker on it saying "MRF". It was now dusty from years of neglect, but otherwise good as new. I gripped the handle, and instinctively swung it, executing a cover drive that would have made the Little Master proud. Well, Harbhajan Singh at least. And in that moment, it all came back to me in a flood of fond memories. I suddenly remembered all those years when my life completely revolved around cricket, when not a day went by that we didnt play in the evening. Whether in th...
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Two Sides of a Coin

Why are we trying so desperately to make peace with Pakistan? I mean really, do they respect us for that? Not one bit. Do they reciprocate? Yes they do. By launching a friendly barrage of rockets at our soldiers. Nothing like some fireworks to light up the whole 'Aman ki Asha' project and bring to light how futile and superficial it all is. I wonder if the media really believe that their utopian ideas of exchanging a few movies and lighting a couple of candles will change anything at all. Things haven't changed in 60 years, so why should now be any different. Cricket, one of the strongest potential bonds between the people of the two nations has failed miserably in bringing us together, so why should Bollywood be any different. I wonder what the brave jawan at the border outpost must be thinking when he reads the morning's paper that features large advertisements promoting Indo-Pak peace, as he braces himself for the mext missile strike that may just claim his life that...
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Traffic Blues

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"You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive." - Anonymous Well they don't know who said this, but I think there's a pretty good chance he'd driven around suburban Mumbai at one point or another. In the last 5 years, since i was unleashed upon Mumbai's traffic, I’d say we've grown to understand each other. I’ve had my share of infuriating experiences with unpredictable lunatics and also my share of tearing through rush-hour traffic at break-neck speed, cursing everyone along the way. Funny how anyone going slower than you is a moron and anyone overtaking you is a maniac. Hmm. But the real challenge in driving through Bombay is dealing with the sheer variety of vehicles and their rather, should I say, individualistic, drivers. Now what we’ve got here could be called a guide to some of the hazards and sights that one may encounter. Behind door number one, we have one of the most intriguing species one would come across, the Auto Rick...
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The Chronicles of North Carolina - The Wardrobe

So we reached the office on this rainy Monday morning (ironically, that was the only half hour that it rained in the whole week), all decked out in formal wear as we do back home, wary of the fact that we shouldn't appear too casual to our clients. This despite being forewarned that it's not compulsory here to wear formal clothing. So as it turned out, once we were in, we realized that t-shirts, jeans, track pants and shorts seemed to be more the order of the day. And the point i make here to all those brainiac human resource managers out there who make the rules, is that surprise surprise, work DOES get done regardless of your outfit! Now i'd like to believe that everything has a story behind it, including this mind-numbing question of why so-called responsible, working adults need to be given a set of rules about what they can and cannot wear to the office. So here's my take on it. Something, somewhere went terribly wrong. Maybe it all started as a big joke, or when s...
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The Chronicles of North Carolina - The Journey

Well it took us the better part of 40 hours to get here, having endured all of 4 airports, 3 aircraft of tremendously varying sizes and 2 burger king outlets. Not that i was complaining, of course. Efficiently sustaining myself on burgers, onion rings, and gallons of coke, i could probably have gone another 40 hours quite comfortably. (Do note the traditional all-American diet that i was clinging to so stringently).  The thing about being within the confines of an airport is that feeling you get of being in some kind of time warp. It's always night and it's always day. Which in turn helps in getting rid of any remnants of jetlag you're expected to have by the time you reach the other side of the world. Flying westward on a 16 hour flight originating in Bombay that starts at about midnight local time, gives you this tremendously weird stretch of time where it's dark for as long you're flying, (except for an odd couple of hours of mild brightness while the aircraft fl...
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Load Shedding

I live in Mumbai. Which implicitly suggests that i am accustomed to the luxury of an uninterrupted supply of electricity, even in summer. Which is quite something, considering the plight of our less fortunate neighbours on the other side of the expressway, who i'm sure will testify that they get the raw end of the stick where power is concerned. It's 3:30a.m. on the 27th of April. It's bloody hot, and the residents of Mumbai have responded in full force by turning on their air conditioners to beat the heat. And that is a LOT of air conditioners we're talking about. But suddenly, at this ungodly hour, they all go off! So does the one just above my head. Now under normal circumstances, it would take more than a single alarm clock, and maybe some amount of coaxing as well, to rouse me out of my deep, deep slumber. But the sudden and unnatural absense of that din of electric devices woke me up like nothing else. I opened my eyes, but it was quite useless. The ample amount o...
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