Month: December 2005

  • Turning 35…

    No, you evil people, not me. It’s still a decade away, okay, 8 years away. I was referring to sachin’s record breaking 35th century. During the initial years of his career, i had always been a skeptical ‘okay, how long before he burns out’ observer. A bit later, when his schoolmate joined him in the team, i was supporting him – vinod ganpat kambli. (i have this default thingie of supporting the underdog). Ironically, it was kambli who burned out, and never played to his potential. Well, almost never ever. And then the match fixing controversies made me less of a keen observer of the game…

    But while all that was happening, my admiration for the ‘little master’ was growing, grudging at first, but growing nevertheless. I even remember a friend during my post grad days, who was a die hard fan, whom i used to chide whenever sachin failed to score. Times had begun to change from when i used to counter his high scoring with the point that he never clicked when we needed him most to applauding his efforts. I still remember the two matches against Australia in Sharjah ,centuries in consecutive matches – match winners. But wait, before i digress and throw off the non cricket aficionados, this isn’t about the game, its about the man…

    I think what makes him great (yes, IMHO) is that he remains untouched by his greatness. On the contrary, it has made him better. It takes great character to resist the temptation of letting yourself talk instead of your bat, especially when there are jibes and barbs hurled at you by people far inferior to yourself. And so, when the man finally silenced yet another group of question marks after a year (between #34 and #35) it’s definitely an occasion for a post.

    I couldnt help but notice the contrast between the two men occupying the crease – Sachin Tendulkar – an all time great who had just scaled another height, and yet the epitome of humility… and Sourav Ganguly – who has fallen from heights, and who is perhaps just realising that in the path to greatness, humility is indeed a great asset…

    until next time, bowled over…..

  • Sikandar

    Its one of the names i have a fascination for… from the Indian version of Alexander’s name to Anil Kapoor in Trimurti, it conveys (to me) someone who can conquer all, someone who is on a plane above normal humans… the reason why the name is the topic of discussion is because i happened to dine in a restaurant by that name sometime back..

    while i dont consider myself competent enough to put together a food review, i can safely say that it lived up to its name..of course, i could have been extremely biased because it offered me the opportunity to indulge in another of my fascinations.. sitting at a height and watching humanity move along on the roads below… walking, driving, just moving on, into the night…

    i bet thats one of God’s favourite views..wonder what freud would have made out of this… a desire to be above current levels in life? a need to be objective all the time? at a subconscious level, perhaps these could be factors, but at the conscious level, to me, it is a humbling experience, like looking at a starlit sky and us humans below, because it is moments like these that seem to tell me that i am a small part of a huge canvas, an experience that i have no idea about…


    until next time, ‘We are all made of stars’……

  • Seasons…

    Its chilly in Bangalore… not the bone numbing chilly, but the kind of chilly that gets taken care of by a jacket, the kind thats pleasant, the kind that i associate with a hot tea, a good book, snuggling under the blanket.. and reflecting about the seasons…yes, we are talking about the weather :).. because the pleasantness of it makes it interesting… well, okay, maybe i didnt have anything else to write about… 🙂
    but theres definitely something about it that inspires a post.. its one of the times when time makes us objective, step outside ourselves, and reflect on the things that have been happening,things that we have been doing unconsciously in the daily rigmarole of living, and get reminded of when we actually start thinking about it…
    the last three months of the year…. in some places – winter.. in chennai – the time when it takes exactly 3 more seconds for an ice cream to melt (pleo, was it, who wrote that), in kerala – the time when the one and a half hour non stop bus journey to the engineering college early in the morning became all the more unbearabale, and your beacon is the hostel loo, at the end of the journey, a time long long ago… the time spent in writing mock tests to land up in a good management institute, the rush to beat the three hour clock, a time long long ago….in goa – amidst all the sun and sand and scary tests and assignments, counting days to the christmas vacation when you could go home, a time long ago…. back to kerala – balancing sales targets, and a desire to be in bangalore with the wife to be, sometime ago :)…
    and finally bangalore – listening to ‘Walk of Life’ and smiling away at the post that just got written…yes, seasons, i guess it is just nature’s clock ticking away, reminding us of the good and not so good times that have been happening to us, and around us…. long long ago, long ago and now..

    until next time, nice clock, no cause for alarm….:)