Sometimes, we forget that life is about the bigger picture. Trust the Gods to have to remind us of this. As with most questions in our school exam papers, the answer is obvious as soon as it has been revealed to us. How could we not have known? How could we have imagined another possibility?
When a man, nay, semi-God with 99 centuries to his name goes 19 innings without one, a feat which seemed impossible even if he tried, we must sit down and think. How easy it is to forget that the Gods make up their own rules, and he is simply playing by his. It is, aye, the bigger picture that we are missing here. He is simply paying back his dues to his first love cricket.
The IPLization of the game has eroded its vast (well, vast by cricket-world standards) test fanbase and (armchair) commentators have already begun sounding eulogies for the longer version of the game. Most fans are content to talk about the “glories of test cricket” than to sit themselves down and watch all 5 days of it. All this has not escaped the eyes of cricket’s most faithful devotee.
Sachin knew what he must do. With the future of test cricket in peril, he decided to do something about it. And what better way to do it than to make people wait...and watch.
When you realise that approximately 20% of the audience of Indian test series are those waiting for his 100th 100, you realise what a shrewd tactician he is. He had to make people wait, he had to make sure people patronize test matches often enough till they are hooked to them again, and for this, he had to commit a very selfless act indeed- he has kept himself away from the 100th hundred till the apostates return to the temples. To what depths go his devotion to the game!
It is the only logical explanation. None other is possible.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
8.
What I like best about the place I work, is that it doesn't have a Faculty of Arts. Science through and through. Now, judge me not, I would appreciate very much intense discussions on the post-colonial influences on attitudes to the global recession in third-world nations. I definitely miss the great language lessons and studying political theory. What I don't miss are the side effects that come with these. Namely, Fashion.
Now, I have nothing against fashion as long it’s something being discussed on highheelconfidential or splashed across the Bombay Times. I don’t even mind it being discussed by friends while I snatch some well-deserved (ahem) moments of blissful zoning out. I do, however, have a tiny problem if It is your visa into a place, and yes, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS, I’m talking about you!
If someone blindfolded you and placed you anywhere in NUS, you could make out where you were by the average Fashion Sense of people around you. Engineering got a 1, Science a 2, Arts an 8 (those Economics majors bring down the average after all) and Business a 10. So you walked to your Chinese class in jeans, ratty t-shirts, floaters and lugging your school bag with you while designer bags and shoes and dresses float around you. Matching nail polish was a given. In other words, the Faculty screamed, “Welcome Stranger” to you. Well, if cigarette smoke is any welcome (I never figured why the Arts guys smoked more).
No such problems at TIFR! Everyone’s in shades of ratty, with Biology at the “Best Dressed” end of the spectrum (I finally know what those Arts students felt like!), and pretty much everyone else clumped together at the other extreme.
After a couple of months, though, the thing I rejoiced over is now with its own side-effects. Bathing at TIFR is apparently strictly optional. Here’s to my latest fashion accessory. Perfume. Lots of it.
Now, I have nothing against fashion as long it’s something being discussed on highheelconfidential or splashed across the Bombay Times. I don’t even mind it being discussed by friends while I snatch some well-deserved (ahem) moments of blissful zoning out. I do, however, have a tiny problem if It is your visa into a place, and yes, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS, I’m talking about you!
If someone blindfolded you and placed you anywhere in NUS, you could make out where you were by the average Fashion Sense of people around you. Engineering got a 1, Science a 2, Arts an 8 (those Economics majors bring down the average after all) and Business a 10. So you walked to your Chinese class in jeans, ratty t-shirts, floaters and lugging your school bag with you while designer bags and shoes and dresses float around you. Matching nail polish was a given. In other words, the Faculty screamed, “Welcome Stranger” to you. Well, if cigarette smoke is any welcome (I never figured why the Arts guys smoked more).
No such problems at TIFR! Everyone’s in shades of ratty, with Biology at the “Best Dressed” end of the spectrum (I finally know what those Arts students felt like!), and pretty much everyone else clumped together at the other extreme.
After a couple of months, though, the thing I rejoiced over is now with its own side-effects. Bathing at TIFR is apparently strictly optional. Here’s to my latest fashion accessory. Perfume. Lots of it.
Monday, December 12, 2011
I saw a member of a nearly-extinct species today. It was shiny, bright green, and found in the most unlikely of places, a dusty Mumbai pavement. It was a typewriter, its owner an inconspicuous man unaware of the power his device exerted over a 20-something girl fed on a diet of computers, laptops and tablets. He uncovered it from a blue cloth bag, placed it onto a makeshift wooden table, and seated behind his instant desk on a ledge in the pavement, got busy with his morning newspaper. Bombay has one of the highest real-estate prices in the world. Try telling that to the countless roadside businessmen who create their offices in the heart of the city, all for free.
The only tales of typewriters I hear are of grandfatherly figures attached to their machines, and writers who prefer the zing of their ancient relics to mechanical clicks. Curious about these people who don’t pay a visit to the ubiquitous internet cafes that have sprouted all over the city,
I walked over and asked the owner what he did with his shiny oiled typewriter. He gave me the once-over, and recognizing I was no potential customer became brusque in his manner. “I type documents out for people,” he said. “Who are these people?” I pressed. A glare later, he replied, “Advocates from the court”. The High Court was across the road and it turned out lawyers would
walk over to this old man with sheets of paper to get documents typed. I wondered how I had never previously noticed that every single page of the 36-page deed of my mother’s new house had the stressed imprint of a typewriter and not the smooth emboss of a printer.
It’s impressive how these CEOs of sorts have carved out a niche for themselves when their trade is so much threatened by the onslaught of technology. Many typing centres are buying computers, but the future of these one-man centres is one they don’t know yet. The world’s last typewriter factory existed in Mumbai before it was shut down this year. Perhaps it is convenience they offer, perhaps it’s efficiency, perhaps a familiarity with official formats that a computer doesn’t provide yet. Or perhaps it’s a more mundane matter of a routine that lawyers are loathe to change.
But these are tenacious Mumbaikars, and if there’s one thing you can be certain of, it’s that that little area of real estate will be put to good use by them, with or without their shiny green devices. I’d watch out for roadside printers, if I were you. Remember, you read it here first.
The only tales of typewriters I hear are of grandfatherly figures attached to their machines, and writers who prefer the zing of their ancient relics to mechanical clicks. Curious about these people who don’t pay a visit to the ubiquitous internet cafes that have sprouted all over the city,
I walked over and asked the owner what he did with his shiny oiled typewriter. He gave me the once-over, and recognizing I was no potential customer became brusque in his manner. “I type documents out for people,” he said. “Who are these people?” I pressed. A glare later, he replied, “Advocates from the court”. The High Court was across the road and it turned out lawyers would
walk over to this old man with sheets of paper to get documents typed. I wondered how I had never previously noticed that every single page of the 36-page deed of my mother’s new house had the stressed imprint of a typewriter and not the smooth emboss of a printer.
It’s impressive how these CEOs of sorts have carved out a niche for themselves when their trade is so much threatened by the onslaught of technology. Many typing centres are buying computers, but the future of these one-man centres is one they don’t know yet. The world’s last typewriter factory existed in Mumbai before it was shut down this year. Perhaps it is convenience they offer, perhaps it’s efficiency, perhaps a familiarity with official formats that a computer doesn’t provide yet. Or perhaps it’s a more mundane matter of a routine that lawyers are loathe to change.
But these are tenacious Mumbaikars, and if there’s one thing you can be certain of, it’s that that little area of real estate will be put to good use by them, with or without their shiny green devices. I’d watch out for roadside printers, if I were you. Remember, you read it here first.
Friday, December 9, 2011
City of Djinns- A Review
He calls his book a memoir of a year in Delhi, but this is a book which transcends eras. Dalrymple sweeps past Delhi's physical landscapes and wanders into its nooks and crannies, exploring their raisons d'etre in the capital.
Countless are the times we have read about the impact of the Mughal and the British empires on India. Here, we get a look at what they changed on smaller scales and how they moulded the character of a city in a manner that makes it a schizophrenic mix of grand colonnades and derelict ruins, Delhiites with stiff upper lips and Punjabi cabbies who leer at women.
Vehicled in a taxi from the International Backside Taxi Stand, Dalrymple makes various trips to the past that he sees responsible for the Delhi around him. He takes us with him through his discovery of the Mughal empire, with its richness of art, poetry and court intrigues, which are recalled with a nostalgia, a lament for all that has been lost and for the prosaic nature of what has been left behind. The British are spoken about in view of their individual eccentricities and their unique relationships with Delhi. Throughout these periods, Indian civilians are seen as passive subjects who are subject to the winds of change swirling around them. How do the Anglo-Indians of Delhi live, abandoned without a country they are allowed to call their own?
It is to the partition of 1947 that Dalrymple traces the fissures and the structures of Delhi society, that has resulted in two Delhis, the old in perpetual disdain of the nouveau Delhi of immigrants who run beauty schools, to whom Urdu is but the title of the latest Bollywood film. It's here that the book pulls you in, with the human geography of Delhi a fascinating read.
There is an underlying wit in every age of the book at the Indianisms of everyday life (he narrates with great amusement a tale of the Indian customs officer who refused to let him leave the country for two weeks without confiscating every electronic equipment he had got from Britain to prevent them being sold in India, only to offer a price for them much later in whispered pleas). The prose is fluid, though there are instances when you grapple with how an incident connects with the bigger picture of the chapter. At no point, however, do you stop in boredom.
Cities are born, and they evolve, their state of being shaped by a host of events. We have only to scratch their surface to unearth a wealth of heritage that make them living breathing entities. As a travelogue, Dalrymple makes you want to step out into a Delhi (a city that I have never given much thought to) and discover the city as he has. The book should have perhaps be called "The Story of Delhi" and it is one he narrates very well indeed.
Countless are the times we have read about the impact of the Mughal and the British empires on India. Here, we get a look at what they changed on smaller scales and how they moulded the character of a city in a manner that makes it a schizophrenic mix of grand colonnades and derelict ruins, Delhiites with stiff upper lips and Punjabi cabbies who leer at women.
Vehicled in a taxi from the International Backside Taxi Stand, Dalrymple makes various trips to the past that he sees responsible for the Delhi around him. He takes us with him through his discovery of the Mughal empire, with its richness of art, poetry and court intrigues, which are recalled with a nostalgia, a lament for all that has been lost and for the prosaic nature of what has been left behind. The British are spoken about in view of their individual eccentricities and their unique relationships with Delhi. Throughout these periods, Indian civilians are seen as passive subjects who are subject to the winds of change swirling around them. How do the Anglo-Indians of Delhi live, abandoned without a country they are allowed to call their own?
It is to the partition of 1947 that Dalrymple traces the fissures and the structures of Delhi society, that has resulted in two Delhis, the old in perpetual disdain of the nouveau Delhi of immigrants who run beauty schools, to whom Urdu is but the title of the latest Bollywood film. It's here that the book pulls you in, with the human geography of Delhi a fascinating read.
There is an underlying wit in every age of the book at the Indianisms of everyday life (he narrates with great amusement a tale of the Indian customs officer who refused to let him leave the country for two weeks without confiscating every electronic equipment he had got from Britain to prevent them being sold in India, only to offer a price for them much later in whispered pleas). The prose is fluid, though there are instances when you grapple with how an incident connects with the bigger picture of the chapter. At no point, however, do you stop in boredom.
Cities are born, and they evolve, their state of being shaped by a host of events. We have only to scratch their surface to unearth a wealth of heritage that make them living breathing entities. As a travelogue, Dalrymple makes you want to step out into a Delhi (a city that I have never given much thought to) and discover the city as he has. The book should have perhaps be called "The Story of Delhi" and it is one he narrates very well indeed.
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