Thoughts on the Republic...

Years ago a lot of young men and women had a dream. And they also had the will and the courage to follow their dream. It took them through a treacherous path... a path full of seemingly insurmountable challenges. And yet the dream lived on and finally culminated in a dawn when a country was born. A country of their dreams... imperfect and yet beautiful in its various flaws. India was born.

Years later a lot of water has passed beneath the bridge and today’s youth cherishes a dream to conquer the moon. India has moved on.

Have the gaps widened between the haves and the have-nots or have we bridged the divide substantially...

Have we achieved the manifestation of the idea that our founding fathers nurtured in their defiant dreams...

It’s easy to jump to conclusions and lose oneself either in jingoistic affirmation or negate everything and wallow in self-pity. But the answer, if any, to the above questions is as mysterious as the idea of India itself.

Only time will tell.

Reverie...

After a weary day as I walk back in the fading sunlight I close my eyes and hold my breath ...and I can feel it.

Far away in the realm of the unknown I can feel the warmth of the lamp that’s just been lit and placed on the window sill. I open my eyes and I can see the flickering light of the lamp at a distance. My feet sense a strange energy as I start approaching the light. My heart warms up with the joy of homecoming.

Now I’m closer and I can feel the touch of the early evening dew on the grass. Like a thirsty traveller my heat parched feet drink it all up and rejoice in contentment. I look up and in a sky sparsed with white tufts of woolly clouds I see the moon... clear and bright. Far off the hills cover themselves with a blanket of darkness and go to sleep... dark giants... gentle and lazy.

The air is bathed in the sweet aroma of the evening flowers freshly bloomed and full of youthful vigour. The cricket rattles off a busy song as if it woke up suddenly to find that it was already too late for riyaaz. As the gentle breeze brings on its wings the evening mist I close my eyes...

I open my eyes and I see concrete mammoths all around me. I shudder and look up...the moon’s gone and the sky is a mix of a sickly neon and halogen. A screaming mass of metal rushes past me honking madly. The air is still and heavy with the stench of the rotting mass that lay by the roadside. I am scared and I want to run away... but all around me I see an ocean of artificial lights. And amidst this I see people... but they are not alive. They walk in a deathly stupor and with a predestined motion. And I realise that I too am a part of this. A cog in this gigantic wheel of illusion.

And yet the heart is unconquered. It still beats in a silent protest and I realise that all is not lost... all is never lost. My far away land in the realm of the unknown is ...just a blink away...

The Truth...

I now firmly believe that this is an axiomatic truth:

The amount and intensity of rain is directly proportionate to the number of clothes you have washed.

(The correlation works even better if you have woollens to be dried.)

[ Nevertheless it’s fun to have the rains here... jamke barso :) ]

Wish...fulfilled...

Finally and after a fairly long and painful wait lady-luck yielded and blessed my abode with wondrous drops from the sky. It’s hard to express the joy and that strange euphoric feeling when the sky was suddenly taken over by visitors from the land of rain. And unlike some of the previous occasions when to my utter dismay the visits were woefully short and ended without a chance of even the initial pleasantries, this time we had a long and wonderful conversation.

There is a strange beauty in rains after a long and seemingly endless summer. The dark skies, the fierce wind, the roar of the furious clouds, the lightning flashes across the length and breadth of a cowering sky...and finally with a sublime suddenness the sweet downpour. The trees getting drenched and swaying in the wind ...maybe there’s a song on their lips... tiny puddles on the ground growing bolder with each little drop...little streams flowing along happily with often a dry leaf hitching a merry ride on it...

And nothing can match the joy of sipping a hot cup of tea (with a hint of ginger of course...) and nice little onion pakodas while chatting to a group of friends or reading your favourite novel sitting in the verandah listening to the sweet song of the drizzle outside. Again nothing can be as soothing as the sound of raindrops on your terrace and on the window-panes when you are going to sleep...cosily wrapped up in your favourite quilt.

Ummm... I think I can smell the tea and the pakodas... bon appétit...

A Rain-wish...

Day after day, as a scorching summer sky bereft of even the tiniest speck of cloud imaginable greeted me in all its horrifying glory, my heart yearned for a dark rainy afternoon with dark grey rainclouds jostling for space in the sky... trees bathed in the sweet drizzle swaying gently in the intoxicating monsoon breeze.

I yearned for the wet cold feeling that you have when the sky that’s opened up generously drops big drops of rain on your outstretched open palms. I yearned for the sound of the drizzle as it hit the window panes dancing wildly in the wind outside. My eyes were parched and in some corner there was still a hope that in some distant realm there was an army of clouds which was getting ready to sweep in and quench my eternal thirst.

As the evenings stumbled in bringing in its wake a numbing darkness I fervently wished that in the utter blackness of the night the sky would conjure up silvery tufts which would soon grow up into dark rainclouds...

Rain...I’m waiting...

Fear of the Dark...

And it would soon be dark...

The alleys would put on long dark shadows and the trees which till a little while ago were glistening in the evening sun’s farewell embrace would suddenly become black hazy creatures ominously swaying in the cold breeze. The hills faraway which were so comforting in their bluish green attire suddenly transformed into pitch black monsters looming large on the horizon. The nice cosy corner beneath the tall trees that one had made clearing the bushes which till an hour ago was a safe abode and a den ...all mine...suddenly felt alien and scary. An apprehension...an unknown fear... and then we would rush out in panic towards where father would be taking a stroll.

And a place which was so comforting...so familiar...so endearing... would become an unknown realm inhabited by unknown entities from an unknown world. A fertile imagination would create shadows which would lurk behind the bushes just where the ball had gone and was still lying. Was it also scared? At night lying besides an elder brother or sister who specialised in weaving the spookiest of stories located in the immediate surroundings the mind would recreate horrors beyond imagination plunging into the scariest of adventures.

And yet as the sun would reappear and bathe everything in a joyous light the mind would lock up all the ghosts and the creatures from the unknown lands in some corner of our little brain and we would comfortably return to the cosy corner and feel at home.

Yes, all of us have, at one time or the other in our childhood days, been through such experiences.

And later as we grew up we rationalised the fear of the dark as the fear of the unknown. We argued that it was common for any living creature. For we appreciated unpredictability as long as it did not wrench control out of our hands.

And as we grew up those sweet litte ‘fears’ gave way to bigger ‘worries’. For we hardly had time. With tensions as big as career, job and postings, projects, deadlines and presentations one hardly had time for the little monsters that were patiently waiting...locked up in some little forgotten corner of our, now big and often bloated brains. The days and the nights, the sun and the hills, the trees and the shadows...all waited patiently as we lost ourselves in this blinding maze called ‘life’.

So when on answering the bell, I found aash (a close friend of mine) standing outside and asking me if she could be with me because her room was scary and haunted and because after dark it felt really ominous...that the stairs besides her room was locked, dark and unused... the ‘grown-up me’ just brushed aside her apprehensions and made a joke out of it and coaxed her to be accompanied by me to her room. And to make her more comfortable as I neared the room I declared that I would go beyond the huge cooler at the end and descend the ‘locked, dark and unused’ stairs.

As we neared her room which was the corner-most the ‘grown-up me’ took confident steps and I crossed the cooler and was hidden from view. Before me lay a row of steps, dark and hazy, with a thousand different shadows, as if winding down to an unknown world. Suddenly I felt a strange sensation and goose-bumps erupted.

I came back and triumphantly declared that there was absolutely nothing to be scared of and also put in a few intelligent sentences about how humans feared the unknown and how we were control freaks. Maybe aash was convinced or maybe not...

Walking back to my room I reflected on the experience. A smile came to my lips. After all these years I had again liberated those little monsters that had till now been locked up in some distant corner of my mind. And once again I was ready to plunge into another adventure...

Yeh Hai IPL Meri Jaan !

The bowler, a young strappy young lad, into his twenties and already with a reputation of being a pacer with a bright future, running in...a perfect run-up leading on to a smooth delivery action which generates quite some pace given his 6 ft+ well built frame...

A batsman waiting patiently on the other side, a battle hardened warrior, who’s had his sun-shine and has gracefully walked into the sun-set leaving a glorious legacy behind...but the hunger in the eyes still intact...

And then the bowler lets go a delivery which on any other day would have been a fairly decent one...but not this time... the batsman shifts his weight flawlessly and in one swift and elegant motion picks the ball over the onside field...the ball goes high and keeps climbing...until its flight is stopped by the top row of the huge stands of the stadium...the bowler stands in awe as his bewildered eyes trace the flight of the ball...soaring as if it had a life of its own...

This for me among many more unforgettable moments sums up the IPL 20-20 tournament held in South Africa this year. The bowler in question...poor chap... was young Pradip Sangwan. He definitely has a very good future ahead despite the narration above. The batter (who literally and single-handedly battered a tough opposition that evening) was Adam Gilchrist, who ultimately went on to lift the winner’s trophy of the 2nd edition of the 20-20 extravaganza.

The tournament which was in the middle of a storm even before it had started due to the controversy regarding the venue (what the...in today’s sat-TV driven world it would have been a great hit even if played in Bwindi National Park in Uganda...corporate objections aside...) started off in style and despite some predictions that this time it would end with a whimper maintained a steady acceleration. But no one could have probably predicted the twist and turns towards the ending stages that lent the tournament its flair. As Kolkata Knight Riders (who forgot to dismount and start playing until it was too late) suddenly jumped to life and sunk two heavy-weights IPL was truly alive and rife with possibilities. Then came the string of upsets as Goliaths like Chennai Super Kings and Delhi Daredevils were brushed aside by the last edition ‘s bottom two teams to set up an exciting final.

And what a final it was. As Kumble uprooted Gilchrist’s stump with a third-ball-of-the-match beauty the battle was well and truly on. From then on it was a nerve-wracking see-saw duel between two evenly matched teams until the Baba Gutkha Most Valuable Player of the Tournament Robin –‘I am dumber than the dumbest’- Utthappa came to the pitch and spoilt it all. No offence to Deccan but that worthless display of utter lack of cricketing brains did ultimately take some shine off a brilliant come-from-behind victory. Those last three horrible overs where our ‘Most Valuable Player’ lost the plot and how were probably the only blot in an otherwise spectacular tournament.(Though the closing ceremony was worse and I leave it for another day...)

Nevertheless this edition of the IPL would be remembered for the glorious display of cricketing skills by the veterans...the likes of Kumble, Tendulkar, Kallis , Jayasuriya, Dravid, Gilchrist...the list goes on...who on any given day can still give any team a run for their money. As usual this edition also threw up some exciting new stars on the horizon...Manish Tiwari, Kamran Khan, Karan Goel among others. But the stars of the tournament were players like Rohit Sharma, Yusuf Pathan and Ross Taylor who single-handedly tore into attacks and staged miraculous rescues. This IPL was truly a spectacular extravaganza of skills and leadership and at the end of the day the trophy deservingly went to the best team.

Meanwhile rumours are ripe that our very own Robin Utthapa will be the main attraction of the anxiously awited and soon to be held IPL 20-20...err... International Potato-smashers League. The spectacular tournament will host three super tems- the Ultadanga Ultras, the Bhekulimara Bombers and the Kaanchrapara Komets- captained by ...err...Robin himself. The fourth team which will be an international one is yet to be decided. But based on performance, both Zimbabwe and Bangladesh seem to be strong contenders. The teams will be coached by John Buchanan and Guru Greg will be the chief consultant. Dada is reported to be very disappointed as he again missed the top-job. Meanwhile Robin has already started intense net practice sessions with the fresh-of-the season Chandramukhi Potatoes. The venue is a major controversy but there’s a huge possibility that Bwindi National Park in Uganda will finally have its first cricket tournament.

Dhat silly rumours...