Cricket and Me

I have some fond memories of a cricketing era gone by. And era when all cricketers were gentlemen and all uniforms were white (Sorry Manu Joseph). My earliest memory of the game is the shopkeeper ettas shushing me as they held their breath and  listened to the Hindi radio commentator’s excited voice describing the ball going all the way char run ke liye. Then came the era of grainy television sets and someone turning the antennas outside until a voice from the living room told them to stop because they could finally distinguish between the cricket ball and the fuzzy grains on the Dayanora TV.

It was the Reliance Cup semifinals that finally sealed my love for the game. I got to watch the match on a colour TV at a relative’s house. While the women gossiped in the kitchen, I sat with the men in that typical 80s afternoon and watched the game with absolutely no clue about what was happening. But the next day, I very knowledgeably analysed the match in school by repeating what I heard the uncles say ‘Kapil Dev should have batted first. He won the toss and took the wrong decision. The team ate a heavy lunch and slept through the afternoon instead of playing’. (The next time I repeated after an adult was when MGR died. ‘ That fellow went and died and now they won’t show the cricket match on TV’, I parroted after my Anglo Indian neighbour. I got a slap from my mother. A DMK supporter’s scooter was burning in the street below as I was mouthing those blasphemous words) The only redeeming factor of that World Cup was that Pakistan also lost the semis.I remember feeling sad for England, the seed of hatred for the Australian team was somewhow subconsciously planted early in my mind. Alamboder was the man of the season, but my heart was with Mike Gatting. I was officially cricket obsessed.

It was that time of the century when the internet was unheard of and having only a grainy TV, Malayalam newspaper at home and a father least interested in cricket frustrated the cricket thirsty me. I snuck into my cousin’s forbidden pile of Sportstars and read all the captions on the photos, too bored to read the actual articles. I had a crossword book, an imported one that had simple crosswords on various subjects. I did the cricket crossword in reverse from the answers and sat with a dictionary checking the meaning of each cricketing term. And I made notes in my book. Googly, yorker, off-side, slip, mid-on. In a week I had the halo of cricket around me. In theory, I was a cricket expert. I collected BigFun bubblegum cards that said Dilip Vengsarkar: Get 4 runs and Maninder Singh : Get 1 wicket and exchanged them for a fielding position poster.

The next phase was the tomboy phase where I went around ‘bowling’ balls of crushed paper into wastepaper baskets and tying up wooden rulers and inviting classmates to a game of cricket during lunch break. Thankfully, I did have a few equally cricket crazy friends. A classmate messaged me on Facebook some time ago asking me if I was still cricket crazy. I cringed at the memory of those days and said a loud NO. I hounded friends’ brothers for whatever cricket trivia I could get from them. It was Manoj who told me about a tenth standard boy named Sachin. Soon enough a picture of the Boy Named Sachin was inside the plastic cover of my school calendar only to be pulled out and torn up by Miss Cecily.

Years rolled by and I unpatrioticaly cheered when Imran Khan lifted that cup, admiring him for his cancer hospital plans. I rooted for the South Africans named after kitchen stuff, Wessles, Rice and Cooker. I cried with the long earringed Kambli and grudged Jayasurya’s Audi.

And then the worms crawled out. Manoj Prabhakar happened. Azharuddin ( what a letdown :/) happened. Hansie Cronje happened. And I started distancing myself from the game. The last nail in the coffin, Lalit Modi’s baby then happened and I am now officially a cricket hater, detester, abhorer and everything else. If there is one thing I could ban, it would be cricket.

But let’s see if this new UC Browser will change things for me. They claim that it will revolutionize the cricketing experience.

You can check it out here

http://www.ucweb.com/

The UC cricket part of it can be found here for download

http://www.ucweb.com/English/UCbrowser/cricket.html

Toxic People

Sometimes you have to be brutal and take some time to revise the ratings on all your relationships. When BFFs get downgraded to Friends and Friends get downgraded to Acquaintances. And Acquaintances leave the system and become just People.This is something that is absolutely necessary, something that you should do from time to time for the sake of your own mental health. Your ‘enemies’ aren’t the ones who are dragging you down. Your toxic friends are.

All of us have a dash of these toxins in us, that is natural, normal and that is what makes us human. But there are some people in my life whose toxicity is beyond the permissible limits. And it is time to do a Maggi on them.

The Thundercloud:

Actually, she is the one who finds the tarnish in the silver linings of each thundercloud. The one who blames the cruel hand of destiny when her maid doesn’t turn up. Or blames her wretched, meaningless existence for the TataSky outage. She will rue the day she was born when she can’t get her winged eyeliner straight. She will text you from the immigration queue at the airport when she’s just back from her third foreign holiday this year to complain about the monotony of her life. She can send you on a guilt trip if you  by telling you about the time her second standard teacher didn’t respond to a question she asked, and how that is the way things have always been with her in her invisible, insignificant life if you don’t reply to her text messages within ten seconds. Victim Olympics? Always wins gold. She is the one who makes you ask yourself the existential question: ‘Do I hate myself enough?’

The Self Centered Diva 

She’s the one who is oblivious to the fact that you haven’t ‘had a birthday’ for the past six years that you’ve been friends. To quote Gabby Solis, she is so self-centered that she doesn’t realize how self-centered you are. She’ll stop you in the middle of a sentence with a wave of her French manicured hand when you’re telling her about how worried you are about the IT industry these days with an ‘Ok. Whatever. Now listen’ and then go on to tell you about the awesome pongal she had for breakfast two days ago. She is the one who gets passive aggressive and deletes a comment she made on your picture when you don’t Like her latest picture on Facebook. That high maintenance diva with whom you can never catch up. Ever. But if you stick on a bit longer, you’ll find yourself getting depressed because you are not her.

God’s salespeople: 

These are the ones who have a god or a godman for every situation in life. Job hunt not working out? They will tell you about a temple that will get you a job in Google. In America. Hung up on your ex? There’s this swami who can get him back for you with a gold amulet on your bicep. Piles? Forty days of lighting candles in this church can make your bowel movements feel like trips to a spa. Trust me, these people aren’t evil Vatican agents or Mullahs or RSSwallahs trying to ‘convert’ you. They are actually harmless wellwishers who actually believe in these things. But give them a bit of space in your life and before you know it you’ll be sitting in a day-long clapfest listening to people talk in tongues,putting locks on trees to shut your enemies up or hanging a five rupee coin wrapped in a green cloth on your doorway. Religion should be like your sexual preferences. Whatever works for you, fine. I’m happy for you,but I don’t want to know.

The Saviour:

Oh, these are the ones who cannot bear to see you happy. They are the opposite of fair-weather friends. They thrive on your misery . They have some kind of radar that picks up even the smallest drop in your happiness chart and will be at your side to console you even before you realise that you’re supposed to be unhappy. And if you’re not unhappy, they will make sure you get there by digging up a dark moment from a decade ago and reminding you about it. They know what your buttons are, where they are and how exactly to push them. And then, they think they know how to make you better. You’ll want to reach out to them every time something good happens in your life, to let them know that you’re happy and to try to erase that opinion they have of you: A sad miserable wretch. But don’t. Because to them, you’ll always be that sad miserable wretch. Even if you go to them riding on your pet unicorn through a rainbow cloud.

Unfiltered Sunshine:

She is the one who is always obscenely happy. She puts glitter in the imaginary word bubbles when she speaks to you. She looks at a wooden bench with faded paint in a busstop and can Instagram the ‘rustic beauty’ of it. With thirty five hashtags. She gets multiple orgasms over a piece of cheesecake. Nothing is not Awesome to her. Actually, she could add more synonyms for Awesome in her vocabulary. Sunshine is good, but there’s a reason why we don’t get it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Let the culling begin!

Uh oh. I’ve become Buzzfeed. I’ve actually included gifs in this post 

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy. A name that evokes extreme emotions. You either hate her or love her, there’s nothing in between. And you either hate the people who love her or love the people who hate her. Again, nothing in between. But my love for Arundhati Roy began long before she won the Booker (and the wrath of some people for ‘vulgarity’ in That Book), long before she called Maoists Gandhians with Guns, long before she said that Kashmir wasn’t an integral part of India, long before she wrote those pages and pages of essays about everything from dams to ‘alleged’ terrorists. My love for her began in a gentler time, simpler time. In one of those long lazy summer afternoons when I used sprawl out in the sunshine on the verandah and read Target, that magazine that shaped the childhoods of the 80s kids. (The silly puns we make on Twitter were made decades ago in the Ha Ha pages of Target.)

So one month, in an article which would now probably appear in some listicle as ’10 Multitasking Superheros who hold 5 jobs’  or something as lame, there was this feature about Arundhati Roy. She was an ‘Aerobics instructor who is also an actress, scriptwriter and something else that I don’t rememember clearly’.But she was four things in that feature. And in that black an white photograph that accompanied the writeup, she was the Rahel I would see many many years later. In that interview she spoke about how her mother Mary Roy fought for property rights of married Syrian Christian women. About how her mother started the Corpus Christi school and how since she was the first student of the school that followed no traditional syllabus, she had read Macbeth before she was 10 years old. Macbeth, which again, Rahel and Estha would quote in That Book. She spoke about her dog, Kuttapan Patti Swami Om Prakash. Google doesn’t throw up any results for that name, but I know that it isn’t a figment of my childhood imagination because I remember almost chanting the name because it had that zingy ring to it (Yawn, yes. Like Rahel and Estha chanted Nictating ictating tating ating ting, but inside my head.) That dog would become Khubchand. She was the dropout architect whom I would picture  Rahel as many years later. No, there was no Velutha or Baby Kochamma in that interview. And no, because That Book isn’t exactly autobiographical. She spoke about the script she wrote for In which Annie Gives It Those Ones and how Annie was actually a grubby guy named Anand. ( Since it is out here, I must watch this atleast now). And about her aerobics. And whatever other things that could be fit into that one page feature about her.

And that was when I fell in love with Arundhati Roy.

Arundhati Roy:  Aerobics Instructor, actress, scriptwriter, could-have-been-architect and Something-else-I-Can’t-Remember. Arundhati Roy: Soon to be Booker prize winning, Maoist sympathising, Gandhi-hating, dam-damning,terrorist-supporting, seditious anti-national.

Yes. I can say for sure that I had a girlcrush on her decades before girlcrush became an actual word. She is one of those people I never question. Maybe she has impractical dreams in this practical world. Maybe she only sees problems and doesn’t offer solutions. Maybe she dares to voice her support for people who shouldn’t be supported. Maybe. Maybe not. But I am an unashamed fan, follower, groupie, call-it-what-you want of hers. And yes, you can hate me for that.

Ok. Now why this post? I’ve been suffering from reader’s block for the past couple of months and even though I’ve started five books, I still haven’t been able to finish even one. Last week, a friend (finally) read The God of Small Things and wrote this two point review of the book that said it all. And so I picked up the book. Again. And I am rediscovering the book. Again. Woman, release your next work of fiction soon. We’re waiting.

That Tag

There’s this tag doing the rounds on Facebook. Top ten books that changed your life. I’m too cool to participate in Facebook tags. Also, most of my real life Facebook friends are more Like-and-Facebook-will-donate-one-dollar or Share-in-2-seconds-to -avoid-bad-luck or the Profound Quotes by Rumi and Gandhi sharing types. And on the other extreme I’m intimidated by some of the lists that I see. What if my top ten books are too plebeian for the book bourgeois and they judge me. Someone listed Dante’s Inferno on her list. I tried ten pages of that book after I read the more common-man Dan Brown’s Inferno and gave up in frustration. There’s a lot of Shakspeare also being listed. I wonder if they are being pretentious or they’ve read more Shakespeare than what was prescribed in school. Or maybe abridged versions are allowed on the List. Yes, they should be.  I don’t know the rules. Anyway. I wanted to list mine. This is in no particular order.

( Warning: Too many old blogposts linked here. Kindly adjust)

1. The God of Small Things- Arundhati Roy

People seem to either hate the book or love it.  But I’m tampering with the laws that lay down which book should be loved, and how. And how much. This gets its own blogpost soon. And so does She.

2. Gone with the Wind– Margaret Mitchell

The book has grown up with me. I read it from the perspective of someone new every time I read it. And it is like reading a whole new book each time

3. Animal Farm- George Orwell

This  should be the prescribed textbook in Commie School and should be read even before The Communist Manifesto. Absolute brilliance. And there’s no better way than this to have called Stalin a pig.

4. Nancy Drew- Carolyn Keene

A part of my childhood died when I learnt that Carolyn Keene was a pseudonym for a group of authors. But then there were some books that kept me up all night with a torch under the pillow and some books that were returned to VK Library, unread. Explains. But Nancy Drew made me write Detective against Ambition when everyone else was writing Doctor or Teacher, and prepare fingerprint kits with cellotape and talcum powder. Again, this gets a separate blogpost soon.

5. Dark Places- Gillian Flynn

It was a tie between this and Gone Girl, but Dark Places was deliciously dark cranberry flavoured bitter chocolate and it pipped the mind games of Gone Girl by one point. Protagonists who are nothing are really something.

6. The Mahabarata- By Anyone

From the ACK comic books to Prem Panicker’s tweets as @epicretold. Jaya, Palace of Illusions, Ajaya, Karna’s Wife. I’ve read almost every non-serious version of this book and still can’t get enough of it. And Karna. Sigh. Oh Karna.  Why isn’t someone writing Karna’s version of it? The closest we’ve got from Karna’s point of view is Dhalapathi. I want a book.

7. Little Women- Louisa May Alcott

The chapter with Jo getting her story published was in my fifth standard English textbook. And I’ve been hooked since then. I’ve read the book right from the baby version when I was ten to the actual unabridged version very recently. Beth doesn’t die in the baby version. And when she did, I felt exactly like Joey .  This too deserves a separate blogpost.

8. A Fine Balance– Rohinton Mistry

Read it very recently. I can’t imagine that I lost out on all that darkness and depression for so many years of my life.

9. The Illicit Happiness of Other People– Manu Joseph

This is popping up on a lot of lists. I’m still recovering from this book . I continue to pick up random passages every now and then and just relish them again

10. The Cuckold- Kiran Nagarkar

Strange how Krishna who spoke so much about Duty in the Gita encourages Meera to not do her duty as a wife. Ok, that’s my interpretation. But this book tells the tale from the Prince of Mewar’s point of view. The husband who lost his wife to a god.

 

Honourable Mentions. I thought I’ll have a difficult time listing my Books, but there are some more.

1. The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseni. He killed it with that Bollywood ending though.

2. The Diary of Anne Frank- Anne Frank. Because it is actually a happy book. Just set during a horrible time.

3. City of Joy- Dominique Lapierre. Priests, poverty, foreign doctors. Lepers, more lepers and even a leper wedding. Reality. What’s there not to like in this book.

4. Half of a Yellow Sun– Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche.  I have no clue if the Nigerians still want it, but I wish for a Biafra someday. That’s the secessionist in me talking. Yeah. I’m like that.

5. The Ring and Message from Nam- Danielle Steel- Ouch. Danielle Steel. But yes, I romanticize wars. Or maybe I should read these two books again to see if I still feel the same way about them

6. As The Crow Flies- Jeffrey Archer. Such a pity that the guy who wrote this story of Charlie Trumper is now torturing us with The Clifton Chronicles

10. The Seige and The Betrayal– Helen Dunmore. Because Soviet Russia. Because World War II. Because dark, cold and depressing.

8. Crosswinds- Keepsake. My first series of books with the boy-girl covers. Clean American High School fun. Good old days when sex, booze and cigarettes were not a thing in young adult fiction.

9. Master of the Game- Sidney Sheldon. He’s not called a master storyteller for nothing. Maybe I was too young for it when I read it first. But it only kept getting better and better the second and the third time I read it. A book that keeps you reading through the night whenever you read it even though you know what is going to happen next.

10. Anthem- Ayn Rand.  Dystopian as dystopian can get.

Waah. I want to list some more now. But maybe I’ll do a list of popular books that I just don’t get.

What’s on your list?

 

2014: Dystopia

My previous post and the comment there just got me thinking. What sort of dystopia will scare the bejeesus out of me?

Full Disclosure: I may or may not be one of these.

2014

The year is 2014. The social media wave that had swept over the lovely little Subcontinent has now turned into a social media tsunami. The first generation of innocent Orkutiyas have now evolved into Facebookers and Twitteratti, a more dangerously stupid breed.

Armed with a bunch of photos They sit behind computer monitors, unleashing the virus. The contagion spreads quickly and Gullibility and Stupidity  slowly starts eating into the brains of Facebookers and Twitteratti. It is now ingrained in their DNA. Inbreeding of Orkutiyas, Facebookers and Twitteratti has created a new species: Social Media Morons. They have the characteristics of all three. Concentrated. They can see, they can read. But they can’t think. They can’t analyse. They have lost the ability to Unbelieve. When they see a photo that has been unleashed upon them by Them, they lose the ability to right click on it and select Search Google for this Image. They have forgotten how to use the easiest tool known to mankind: Google. The moment these Social Media Morons see such pictures, they can only click  on three buttons : Share. Retweet. Forward. In rare cases, they are able to exercise self control and click on safer options like Like or Favourite.

But thankfully, a few citizens of the Subcontinent have been immune to the virus. They have been able to resist Gullibility and Stupidity and their brains have developed a protective shield. These people are the Super Cynics. They know how to Google. They haven’t lost the ability to use their brains. They know how to Unbelieve.

Just last night, a Super Cynic saw this. This Super Cynic isn’t too techsavvy, so forgive photo quality.

Exhibit A:

A normal brain, an average pre Social Media brain, would have looked at atleast the second picture and wondered if this is actually somewhere on the way to Vaishnodevi or even just a railway track. Even a pre Social Media brain sitting in the deep south of the subcontinent where there are no mountains, only sea, would wonder. And then the brain would realise that the first picture is somewhere near Goa, the Konkan Railway line. The second and third picture is from some foreign locale that may soon be seen in a Bollywood movie. And the fourth picture may be of that of the actual Vaishnodevi Railway station, the one where a certain Person recently flagged off the train. Or something. And another Person nitpicked.

But sadly, now the Social Media Morons can do just one thing: Believe. Blindly, Truly, Madly, Deeply Believe.

Exhibit B:

The key words here that would have triggered off the alarm bells in a pre Social Media brain are ‘Gujarat’  and the M word. A simple right click on the picture and selecting Search Google for this Image would have thrown up atleast 10 results that indicate that the picture was from 2005 and the Mumbai floods. Not from Gujarat or last week’s rains. But no. The keywords, the G word and the M word, have formed a numbing layer on the brain here and the person is unable to look beyond them.

And worse. The Social Media Morons who responded to this image exhibit different forms of moronism. ‘This is not a photo from Gujrat, but from Uttrakhand. Don’t make a fool of public!’.  Don’t make a fool… metametameta.

And the Super Cynics just continue to shake their heads in sad defeat and only hope that someone will find a cure and control this epidemic of Social Media Moronism.

Recommended reading: Plenty. But what’s the point?

Edit: Couldn’t help but share this. For the wellbeing of future generations.