Managed to get onto Cricinfo!

Between taking breaks to study for a final exam, I managed to get a comment onto Cricinfo's public commentary section. Might be too small a thing to brag about, but its a success for a person who is hooked onto the site about 75% of the time he is even accessing the net.

http://www.cricinfo.com/world-twenty20-2010/engine/current/match/412692.html?innings=1;view=commentary



Look for the Sri Lankan innings commentary - roundabout the 18th over :) Atleast something to feel nice about during death week.

Quest(ion)?

As the Chevy Malibu whizzed past blurry scenes of pastures, meadows and water-bodies, time appeared to stop a bit- and rewind upon itself. The sky went a dull blue from the melange of colors that it was., the pines turned into teak and eucalyptus, the road from flawless tar to a random mass of fine gravel. The Chevy turned into a bus and my uncle and aunt into its driver and conductor. The only constant appeared to me, although hardly half the size of what I was barely a few seconds back.

Passing scents of ripe jackfruit and mountain flowers overcame the diesel smoke. The air was getting thinner and we were climbing uphill, which meant every corner in the road only made life tougher for, what now- were perennially blocked ears. Nevertheless the joy of visiting a hill station knows no bounds for an Indian kid from a hot city.

Hillstations represent most of what all Indian kids would want to embellish their summer vacations with- except for say theme parks. For the average urbaner who's just seen billowing smoke from vehicles and a stack of matchboxes for houses, the higher altitudes bring in the much needed romantic respite. The laidback lifestyle and wonderful climate soothes the mind and sets it thinking differently about the things in life you thought were pretty straightforward.

It was no different for me, on this trip. Nurseries, milk farms, cashewnut and coffee plantations, a blanket of mist, the roadside tea shop, the "monkey"cap-clad people, houses with dangerously sloping roofs, a fresh vegetable market.. absolutely everything about the things surrounding me felt beautiful. The bus was now a warm cozy bed compared to the dingy storeroom it looked like before. All around me appeared very simple, down to earth, lovable, one-dimensioned. People grew trees, crops, hens,etc. sold them to get food, or had a small shop of their own products, or were just random nomads quizzically staring at sophisticated people touring their place.

I was sucked back into the warp., and my eyes read a beautiful Californian countryside from the confines of the Malibu. The car sped by a farmer weeding a vegetable field. Chickens ran around the field and the mistress sat outside the farmhouse sewing a sweater.. Not very different from what my eyes saw ten years ago.

Somewhere in the quest for a better life,I guess man won...but mankind lost.

Just one more!

Most of the blog entries in this page seem to be alluding to the past, or keeping it as a reference to current and future happenings. I am not sure if that is the way I think, write or wish the blog to be. ( However one-dimensional my thinking may seem, it's my blog, so there's no other go but for you to read it. Follow that up with a "smiling" smiley! ) It sure does make a lot of sense to me, to learn from mistakes and keep on improving. Yet again, this little scribbling would also allude to a minute reference from the past, to put my idea across.

I am sure every one of us would have had to listen to our headmasters and teachers lecturing on discipline, way back in school. It would be easy to guess how many of those lectures during the daily morning prayer/general school assemblies we would have paid attention to, and how many of those we would remember till date. Sometimes I feel sad when I realise how much efforts they take to direct us onto the right path, and how passive we are in our response. It could be the age where we couldn't concentrate on lectures, it also could be that we feigned hearing to them. But over the past few days I got to know the extent to which it could help a person , if he had paid attention to as small as one statement in a teacher's peptalk.

"Whatever you do, keep telling that you can push yourself more- and go the extra mile. Be it an exam where you don't know all the answers. Be it in sport where you are leading the pack. Be it at the track where you run for 20 minutes- run the extra minute. Be it in doing good for people- you can always do more. Be it when faced with repeated failures- do not give up, you never know if your next try could lead you to success! Be it in life, where you need to keep bettering yourself. Be it when you face death- by choosing to push yourself to live that extra second."

I remember the headmistress speaking these words at one of those peptalks that my school organised before our 12th Standard examinations. Frankly speaking, I was never a fan of hers- but chose to keep these words in mind, and live by them. There's been many a time when I've thought I should stop writing- for want of time and concentration, but every time that happens I've promised myself to write just one more.

By the looks of it, this shall keep happening all my lifetime.

Getting Habitual...

It's been one year now, almost, since I came to the United States. I know that many of the people who are reading this blog would also fall in the same category of "studying-away-from-home". True that we all miss our homeland, sometimes to the extent of thinking why we came here to pursue our dreams. But then, after a while, we all tend to get used to it.

I remember the days I used to go to high school, which was about three kilometres away, every morning- on my cycle. There used to be a set route which I used to take, and I knew every little pothole on the road to avoid, leave alone the signals to dodge so that I could get to school on time. I felt as though all the scenes in the vicinity were programmed into me, so I could easily find out which shop had been shifted recently, and which was closed on what day of the week. Beautiful days, those. I remember having races against myself so that I could keep bettering the time I took to reach school from home.

The fact is that I had gotten used to the people, the places, the sights and sounds of the environment around me. To the extent that I could tell the schedule of the city buses which ran in the mornings and evenings, when I used to commute. That's one beauty of city life that I miss, being in a suburban Texan town.

One year into my life here, it somehow feels good to tell that I have got used to this place. There lies a pleasure in seeing things and people, daily - that you know you will not continue to see all your life., a pleasure that we sometimes miss to spot in our busy lives. This one year, I have surely missed India, but one year later when I am out of this town, I am sure I will miss the beautiful memories that it gave me, too.

Keep the faith.

Lost for words to open this blog entry with, I could not find any other way but to foist in a brainless philosophical reference- " Revelations can occur to one anytime, from anywhere and anyone. "

Assuming that all the readers of this piece of writing would be atleast into their teens, and through with atleast one and a half phases of their lives by now- I go ahead with writing this.

In this journey called life, there are quite a few stages, like Shakespeare alludes to, in "All the world's a stage". It is interesting also, to note the metamorphosis of the environment around a person as he grows from being a toddler, to a boy, to a young man, and all the way till the end of his lifetime.

At every such stage of our life, occur various events that lead us to confide in a few people. Sometimes these people may remain the same for years altogether, some other times they may leave midway to return back- the worst case being they do not return back forever. Social circles tend to change, with the wrinkles on your face.

I am sure we would all agree to the fact that there do exist certain people- whom we used to give a lot of importance to, but now we would not. The vice versa would also be true. You may have been close friends with someone a year back, but not now. You may not have known your soulmate a month back, but would be willing to do anything for him/her now. Weird is the way of life.

What this teaches us, is that the key to being a balanced individual, would be to keep up the faith with the same person(s) you confide in, all through your life. Trust them, keep in touch, and express to them that you care, no matter what. Unfortunately the writer of this blog had not realised about his lack of expression until he was brought crashing onto this fact by a dear friend of his.

This Day, That Age..

With the sun beating down like there's no tomorrow, and the weight and heat of a black-colored backpack threatening to vaporize me to nothing- I finally managed to beat the irritation to get a DVD box-set of a reasonably old Bollywood movie from the university library. I should admit, the predominantly American support staff of the library mediastore were finding it very tough to understand a huge phrase with big "oh-so-obvious" Indian words. A deadly combination, that. I had to suppress a laugh when I ventured out to find the English translation of the name for them. It said "Brave hearted will take the bride". I just could not stop bursting into a laughter characteristic of "Hey Dude, we call it DDLJ, got it? Now go get the DVD up for me!"

I remember the late 90's when DDLJ came about. It was the age of the perfect Bollywood song-dance-melodrama blockbuster. Three hours of singing, running around trees, symbolic love scenes, sister-brother sentiment, villain bashing and a happy ending. Add a local theatre and the entire family for company, and you had the perfect moneymaking machine for the film distributor. Bets were placed on who would watch DDLJ or HAHK the most number of times. ( local cable TV viewing of the movie would count as a negative ). Funny times, those. Even film extras oozed with makeup and glycerin tears.

The last time I had watched this movie, was back in 1997/98. After an eleven year break, here I was- watching it again, in a different age, in a different milieu- where we used to go to theatres to watch movies with family, I had a laptop and nothing but my room for company. The movie by itself, surprisingly, failed to impress me. I could not believe I had watched a movie and liked it for the first seven times, and hated it the next time. Surely something should have gone wrong somewhere- I cross checked to verify if I was indeed seeing the movie or its blooper DVD.

The DVD of the movie it was, alright. But maybe, all these years of my life coupled with movie watching had tinkered with the way I look at things. Where I used to see joy and color, I now saw garishness and a surfeit of non-detail. Where I once saw love, I now saw just two people acting what someone else told them to. Where I saw jokes, I now saw boredom. Some things in life never seem to change. Age doesn't seem to be one, unfortunately.

One Last Time..

Most of the regular writers suffer from a range of dilemmas, before they set to write on a topic, or on perhaps no topic at all. A strange one I was suffering from since the past one month- was a lack of resources, and proper personal time to transfer my thoughts onto a blog entry. I should also take up some blame for being lazy to write, and thus depriving you of some much needed boredom.

In the meanwhile, life has chugged on - offering new insights, and experiences. But there's been one thought which has plagued me over a long time. The recession, as we all know has affected all and sundry. It also means a lot of opportunities for budding graduates from universities have been nipped in the bud. Sounds scary for the current crop of students- we live in a hope that good lies in store for one and all.

In a flip-side to the recession story, I probably have met many people for the last time in my life- or theirs. (Whichever ends earlier) A lot of the people I met after coming to the US, have had to go back to India due to the lack of opportunities. Extremely unfortunate for them, and I am aware of the practical thought that I might be on the receiving end before I say snap. This post is dedicated to all of them, who came here, worked hard, gave it their best shot- but could not make it due to a reason beyond their control. A natural flow of thought would establish the fact that we may or may not get to see them again in our lives, even if we go back to India, someday. Weird thought, but most of us would know it is true.

This post is also dedicated to one of my kin, a wonderful person who loved me a lot and showed me what rural India was all about- who passed away earlier this month. Unfortunate that the last I saw of him was when I left the shores of India a year back. Wherever you are now, this is for you- from someone who is indebted always.

The irony of life - they say. How more different can the same circumstance of "seeing a person for the last time", be?



As this post ends, I remember myself looking down at the distant winding canyons dotting the earth , from the confines of an otherwise uninspiring airplane. I do not remember caring about comfort, as I never know if I may see them again.