31.

I wonder what Sachin Tendulkar does with his runs. Does he carry them around, pennies in a gigantic rucksack, lending weight to his every move? Do they wait to be sold or bartered for charity, food or fancy cars? That ache in his back, are the pesky runs the ones causing it, or the bag which grows along with the little mites? What will he do with them when he dies?

And that, is the question we ask of life via Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar's runs.

30.

Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground.

Whatever opinion I have about the rest of Stephen King's book 'On Writing', this statement gets the most vigorous nods I have in my arsenal. Writing has never been an act of deliberation but one of release. You let ideas come to you and engage yourself with the mundane goings-on of life while they ferment in your head, mutating and evolving organically. All you do is look within yourself, find them and hold on to them, then grab a pen as they trickle down from neuronal space to ink. Drug-addled smoke-spewing alcoholics or not, writers (and poets, and perhaps anyone involved in creative pursuits) are saints of the highest order for being able to find that space inside them unerringly and constantly, and for keeping this space sacrosanct and inviolable.

Inviolable, for you cannot afford an invasion by fear, that most cancerous of emotions, or by the clutter of your everyday life, which dulls your creative juices. Freedom is the writer's fuel, just as freedom is the monk's goal. All you wannabe writers, become saints first. And all you saints, it's time to realise sainthood can be achieved without abstinence. Just ask those drug-addled, smoke spewing alcoholic writers.

29.

In news from the Middle East, Iran has raised concerns about the United States’ rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal and questioned the security of small nations which aren’t under the aegis of the “United States Client States” commonwealth. President Ahmadinejad has ordered satellite missions to detect activity levels at various secret reactor locations in the USA. At the United Nations, the Iranian representative has called for sanctions on the United States, not on food or economic aid but Chinese-made goods which would cripple the average American. He has thus far been backed by Russia alone. Pakistan, a member of the extended 15-member Security Council has hinted it would back sanctions unless President Obama pumps in economic aid to its ally in the war against terror. The Indian ambassador was seen looking skywards and refused to comment on the issue. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were seen exchanging smirks but declined to offer comment.