A Part of me Died

Dada, Dada will never ever play again. After the post lunch victory, reality has just started sinking in. It has been eight hours after that historic victory but I have no other thoughts other than Dada in mind right now.

I almost ran into tears as I went through this article Losing my Religion. Its one the best articles on Cricket I have ever read. As Siddhartha Vaidyanathan narrates his story me and all my friends across India felt that he is telling our story. I thank him for writing such a great article. As I looked at this phrase in the post, a part of me died, I felt the same. All these cricketers have been as indispensable to me as my body parts and as they go slowly I feel a great sense of loss and sadness. Its almost the formal end of my childhood which lasted so long due to these great players and the day Tendulkar goes life would never be the same again. Just today I said to someone that almost 4 years of my 24 year life has gone in thinking, watching, playing and talking about Cricket, and these guys made it possible.

I don't know what to write, Dada has been a Dada for me, as a Big Brother he has given me and so many other Indians great moments which we would cherish throughout our life. 1996 when he and Dravid came into the team, I missed his first test hundred. I heard that there is this new guy who is king of off side, bowls some nice swingers too and is very similar to David Gower. His elegant off side drives gives me fond memories of my childhood, after Dada every kid in my township started playing strokes on the offside (generally it was considered that leg side is more scoring with a tennis bowl). Almost invariably when he used to open with Sachin and take first strike he would hit a sweet boundary through the off side. I vaguely recall him hitting Pollock many a times through the off side, the bowl slowly travelling to the fence, and Boycott all praises for the Prince of Kolkata.

As I came from class 6th in 1996 to the 2000's 10th board, Dada had become a prolific run getter in one dayers, I had remained the same students, in the years had passed an unsuccessful world cup, The God becoming the captain unsuccessfully, azhar going in and out of the team, a World Cup where Dada scored a brilliant 183 at Taunton, a World Cup in which I didn't sleep at night and and went into tears momentarily when South Africa lost in the semis, lot of Coca Cola cups at Sharjah where Tendulkar and Dada were killing all bowling attacks, a Sahara Cup where Dada set himself as an all rounder, a period of change in Cricket when Wills ended its sponsorship with the Indian team, Jagmohan Dalmiya headed the ICC, and above all a disgraceful India South Africa series. And then it was Captain DADA.

Although I was a Dada fan but it was after he took up captaincy my respect for him increased, as he and his side with few new players started winning it was a different feeling altogether. Dada positioned the Indian Team as an aggressive unit, for the first time in history I felt that Indian Team was doing something like this, change which Dada brought about was zillion times more than Obama used the word in his campaign. Change we need was brought and it was just amazing. The Great Eden victory still comes in my dream, and the Natwest one, or India almost ruining Steven Waugh's farewell in Australia, and the 2003 World Cup and so many others.

Lot of memories, but sadness is blurring most of them today. Some not so good ones of Dada's spat with Greg Chappell and him being dropped after the Zimbabwae tour, some of prayers which we did for his return to Cricket, some extremely funny like me saying Jai Dada aloud in front of a Dada poster with 20 people standing around before my XAT exam last year in Bangalore, some drunken memories of me and my friend dimpy, patrick and sussu drinking and praying for Dada to score during our tragic loss to Bangladesh in last year's World Cup, more drunkard ones of me and the quark and the enginerd and Ati-Say supporting Dada, and Sandy and Mathuru and Mandu supporting Dravid and Barve as always confused :), some meoments where I cursed Greg Chappel like had none other in my life, two historic moments when I watched Dada Live on stadium, him hitting a Six to Vettori during a Test match in Ahmedbad, him winning in the IPL opener at Bangalore this year, never saw him in one days, some more cursing for Bucknor when half the times gave pathetic decisions to Dada and many a times helped the cause of getting Dada a ban, some moments which I was ashamed of as Dada's Pepsi ad, and another million memories.

I hope Dada finds happiness in whatever he does next, he enjoys life and cricket and some time with his family.

I am happy that I can tell my kids 20 years from now that Dada was there, because I don't think they would ever see a player like him again, they will ever feel the emotions of the game we all love in the same way as we did, but as Siddartha pointed out in his article we belong to this generation and for all of us its a very sad day. Hope is what I have and I hope there will be many more greats who will play for the Indian Cricket Team. In the current lot I don’t have that feel for anyone other than Sehwag or Dhoni. Lets Hope.

So finally this is it, as the Quark would have told me in his favourite singer Jim Morrison's words, this is the end, beautiful friend, or debu would murmured his Darkness filling up the room dialouge, one thing I know, I have lost something which is irreplaceable.

God give me the strength, I would badly need it on the Day when Tendulkar retires.

Technorati Tags: Sourav Ganguly, Dada, Cricket, India

Sunny Paaji da Tashan :)

It all started with Quark again showing his appreciation for Cinema which only few like us appreciate :). Here he learns from the greatest fighters in Tamil and Telugu industry.

Watch it and enjoy Big Brother, because every family has a saviour :)



Paaji ka ek aur chamatkar, Jeet ka Mahaan Dance, remixed!!!

Technorati Tags: Sunny Deol

Bye-Bye Jumbo

18 years, for 18 years they waited that he will turn the bowl, and he didn't.

Anil Kumble was never the conventional spinner, one who turns the bowl much, infact at one time we as kids used to discuss how Venkatesh Prasad's cutters turn more than Kumble's leg breaks. But what he had was consistency, over after over he used to place batsman on a grill. If Warnie and Murali had all the fast food instant items, Kumble was of the Tandoori variety, slow and effective.


As a kid my friend Anirvaan or Rikki a big fan of Kumble use to imitate him and his action exactly. So much so that after every bowl he used to adjust his specs (something which the Kumble of those days with a specs and moustache used to do). Tall and broad he resembled Kumble and used to bowl day in and day out like him. His imitation was on similar lines as that of Shameek's Prasad action or my Arshad Khan action :).

Kumble's earliest memories take me back to Hero Cup, where he took 6/12 (if I am not mistaken) against a pretty strong West Indies side. India won that series and that was the first time Day and Night Cricket happened in India. Most from my generation remember that as the first time we saw cricket. (Although I remember the 1992 world cup too, good memory you see :)).

Kumble cleaning up the stumps of Richie Richardson is something I vaguely remember.

From those days Kumble had a great ability to bowl straight, consistently probing the batsmen. Flipper and Googly, both his main weapons surprised the batsmen. He used to slowly setup the batsmen and then use them as weapons which more often than not resulted in success.

Azhar had a major contribution in shaping up the career of Anil Kumble along with India's manager in those days, Ajit Wadekar. Throughout the days of Azhar India remained unbeaten at home and Anil Kumble was one of the major reasons for that. During that period Kumble cemented his position as the undisputed domestic champion.

With Dada came a change, India started winning abroad and Anil Kumble contributed to its success in australia, W Indies, England and South Africa. He had a mkor role to play in all its victories abroad.

There are three moments which stand out for any Kumble fan- the ten wicket haul against Pakistan at Kotla, I still remember praying to god for the final wicket of Akram which he took; his jaw breaking effort at Antigua test where he claimed the wicket of Lara and bowled even with a broken Jaw; the Sydney test (Steve Waugh's farewell series) which he bowled superbly and we came very close to a series victory (thanks to Parthiv Patel and Mr. Bucknor we didnt win it). Although I would like to add another, the Perth test in which he led us to victory last season after the Sydney MonkeyGate scandal. That was another moment which stands out for me.

When he left the stadium at Kotla that day, I suddenly had a feeling of immense respect for this cricketer whose importance many of us realise now. His match winning contribution to Indian Crikcet is unparalleled and a spinner like Kumble will rarely appear on World Stage again.

Hail Kumble and may he have great success in whatever he does next.

Extra Bites:

Harsha Bhogle has paid a great tribute to this great cricketer, read it.

My post on gilly's retirement earlier in the year

Coming up is the super sad moment of Dada retiring :((

Technorati Tags: Anil Kumble, Indian Cricket

City 3-tier

After two and a half months at SP, it seems I have slowly started realising the fact that most my bakbak, most of my stupid and sometimes interesting jokes (although I try to relate them with loads of real life examples), most of ideas relate to 3-tier cities. Thanks to one of my friends here who made me realise the importance of Small City Dreams again.

You talk of a Loreal and I move to Chik Shampoos, talk of Britannia and I talk about the reach of Parle-G, someone mentions a detergent and there I start with Karsanbhai and Nirma. It seems brans with huge mass appeal and great reach attarct me more than glossy and high end brands. Nothing against any of them, just that I somehow realte easily to the mass-brands.

It comes from my upbringing at Korba, that small town which nobody has heard of (people find it difficult even to locate Chattisgarh at times) and the diversity I witnessed there. Just came back from 1st Ganapati visarjan here at Versova Beach which reminded me of my days there, still crave for the Ganesh Chaturthi get-togethers and the Durga Pooja Pendal excitement.

In between loads of padhai-likhai for which I have been completely uninterested for the past few days, I think this is something which will keep me a bit motivated for 2 years.

All that old song singing, recalling DD serials during free time, talking about politics (which many consider small-townish), talking about regular dal-aata issues rather than using MacroEconomics to dissect issues and complicate them, or even hating to pay so much for movies it comes naturally to me.

Lets take the Tata Nano issue for instance, everyone ta my college (that issue super hot, in classes, outside it too) have been cribbing about Tata not being able to succed and W.Bengal not taking advantage of a great oppurtunity. Having had the oppurtunity to live in Bengal for few days I have a slight idea what people there think, how people there work and I can judge the situation with some better clarity. I won't put my judgement here though, thats another issue.

Whatever it is, slowly its getting difficult to assimilate so much happening in class, I think its better I slowly start building upon my interests and giving it some direction.

Destination 3-Tier surely looks promising again.

Theory of Sleep Management

The best thing you learn at a B-School is "Time Management"

Ok, there were so many MBA's out there who said that to me. But that was before I joined a B-School, now that I have joined one of the best ones around, I have realised that its not at all about time. It's about something which we all enjoy doing, SLEEPING.

This is what David Allen says on Time Management (first thing on Wiki page of this topic),

You can't manage time, it just is. So "time management" is a mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective approach. What you really manage is your activity during time, and defining outcomes and physical actions required is the core process required to manage what you do.

We will try to rephrase it in context of Sleep through the length of this post. Anyway coming back to a B-School, in between all the subjects, quizzes, assignments, those group works, lectures, hostel, everything involves a bit of sleep. There is no more physical exercise (except the stupid dancing sessions we have at Boy's Hostel sometime), it all about giving rest to your mind. Although sleep does provide for Physical Exercise, you can sleep on sides, straight, upside down (as I do nowadays), also while sleeping in classroom, you can bend your neck which is highly effective against neck pain, then you can stretch your elbows and press your cheeks against those cold tables....Ahaa

People sleep in Class, thats a universal fact, the first time I slept in class was post school though, that was at a FIITJEE center New Delhi where I went for a IIT crash course. By the way I also slept while working on a B-Plan(plan related to IIT's) recently.

Also you find variety of people obsessed with sleeping in different ways, my friend hasodi here asked me yesterday to ping her every half hour to keep her awake, but she slept before the first ping happened, then you see a nice chirpy fellow on the 3rd floor of my hostel who I have seldom seen fully awake, and then there is this lady here, who asks questions while she is sleeping, and a Happy Sardar who just ensures that his eyes turn tomatoes but he doesn’t sleep.

I have my own unique style, its like a camera shutter, those eyes behind those specs of mine ( I have broken two since coming to Mumbai) shut on and off. Its basically my mind which tries to sleep, but somewhere there is that conscious which tells me, come on Desi, you should listen to the lecture, you should study. What finally gets through the mind is my favourite dish, khichdi.

Any activity at a B-School and you need to cut down on your sleep, not on your time, although it might be related but I believe sleep and food are related to productivity than no other thing. A chain ki neend ensures proper completion of activities and better concentration. Now this is what the experts say, the more I sleep at night, the more I sleep in classes is the relationship I have observed.

To summarise, your stay at B-School is a function of Sleep Management and not time.

Success = K X SleepFactor

Where K is a correction factor, for me its food, for some others it maybe finding a girlfriend at B-School etc etc. Sleepfactor is a number calculated on the basis of hours you sleep. Its basically an average number of hours slept for a particular time period. Although I am not sure whether this may follow inferential statistics and this maybe extended to the overall Success over two years...

Enough of all this bakwaas, let us try to reframe the theory I quoted at the beginning,

You can't manage SLEEP, it just comes to you naturally. So "sleep management" is a mislabeled problem, which has little chance of being an effective approach. What you really manage is your activity during SLEEP(read dreaming, asking questions etc.), and defining the number of hours of sleep, and your outcomes and external factors required(read mattress, tables, chairs, music while sleeping etc.) required is the core process required to manage how you sleep.

I just feel while publishing this that this is my worst post ever, totally irrelevant and useless, Dahi Vada and Aalasya, aahaa, those were the days.

First month at...

I am a month old in this MBA thing today, just woke up to the sound of the Jhaaduwaala on a lazy Thursday morning. The only day that I remember nowadays, about the rest I am pretty oblivious. Have lost the sense of days, always feel sleepy, get bored in the classes quite often, sleep in classes, have to attend them all, dont get much time to roam around in Mumbai and I am still to meet few of my dearest friends here due to lack of time.

But still I am loving it, although MBA is much much different from the pre-conceived notions of yours truly, it needed a slight adjustment in my strategy to approach it, hopefully I am tweaking it right.

Don't think I am all that bored and down and out, this is the way we live, infact this is a new way of enjoying things, and last month has been great with lots and lots of interesting stuff happening. Few of the highlights being,

• The amazing reception I got here, thanks to my friend Dhari, I will never forget that.
• Getting back along with Pillu Bhai and Patrick Baba for a Alcoholic BakBak session, old days ishtyle.
• The first classes here, my fear for Mathematics coming back, my liking for Fin increasing, etc etc
• The only movie I saw here, the one in which Pappu cant dance saala, waste for 200 bucks.
• Toto's and getting the 10 Rs tip :))
• Still avoiding a ZERO in any QM quiz here :D
  
• Freshers, all that stupid effort we put in for preparing some of the most pathetic ads which make Leo Burnett alive just to kick us.
• KHAULTI KHABREIN
  
• Quite a cheerful group of friends assembled here, one a Bangalore continuation, one reminds me so much of Sandy that I don't feel he can be anything else, one a DAIICT ka bak baadshah and another namesake of my super nachaiya friend from DAIICT and many more including a 2/3rd CA.
• Room-mates one of whom reminds me of an unpolished Rajeev of the First sem at DAIICT, the other is interestingly named as a English word for Pyaar and initial trends suggest that he is an excellent student.
  
• A very very enthu batch especially when it comes to asking questions in class, anyway I just love everyone :)
• A very cute bunch of girls ;)
• Birthday celebrations here.
  
• Screwing up Foundation exams :((

Those were a few, anyway the thing different between Mumbai and Bangalore is that at Bangalore I had loads of time, empty time, which is less here, one needs to just give up a bit on his/her sleep to be part of lots of great activities, lets see whether I would be able to do that.

Right now a trip to Khandala today is all that I am looking for... :)

Bye Bye Bangalore

It's Game Over Bangalore.
14th June' 2006- 16th May'2008

So bye bye to my first job, to all those Hot Idlis, Dosas and Coffees, Mysore Pak :), Super Expensive movies(which I never saw, I saw only at super cheap places), those farewell parties and non-farewell parties, bits and bytes of alcohol, the niceness of Jayanagar, the famous 201 bus, lots of blogging, all that stupid CAT preparation, good weather, lots of cute looking girls whom I only watched at times, all that Dada vs Dravid discussion, Kannada Songs, late nights at office and returning back home in cab on a strange empty road, Vasanthi on Radio City, my bus journey to office, BMTC buses, Majestic, heavily crowded city market, even more heavily crowded Forum, the UnBanglorish BTM, Highly Bangalorish Basvangudi, the farway lands of Yelhenka and Hebbal, Volvo Buses, MTR, Food Street, juice shop near Kamkhya, the cooking we did, EB(Emotional Black-male, our so called pet dog), all those stupid styreet dogs, those stinking chicken shops, a housemaid who talks to only one person, has an animagus Crow and does black magic at night, to all my office mates and great friends I made at work, my reunion with many of my old school friends, and my continued union with all my DAIICT friends. I will miss everything.

Above all I will miss my roomies at Seshgiri and the Three Towers of Kathriguppe( a clan famously known as Kathriguppe ke Kutte)- including seshigiri and two other houses inhabitated by fellow daiictians who became great friends at Bangalore.

It Mumbai... this Summer

Technorati Tags: Bangalore