There is God, and then...

There was a time when in order to just aspire to be in the Indian national cricket team, you either had to be from Bombay or you had to be Kapil Dev. It was during such a time that a young cub walked into the side from Bengal. Bengal? Why, Bengalis are supposed to dabble in arts, they are artistic people; Gurudev, Ashok Da, Kishore Da, all these are cases in point. But a cricketer from football-savvy Bengal? This was what people thought when one Sourav Ganguly walked into The Gabba the donning the Indian colours. Of course, he was promptly shown the way out once the series was over. Surely, a flash in the pan...

But then, the cub returned a 'white' tiger, and the roar was loud and clear. If debuting in Lords' is in itself, an achievement, then smashing a century in that very game is the stuff of dreams. Sourav was here to stay. Now, I haven't seen Graeme Pollock play (they say he was gifted with grace) and I have seen precious little footage of David Gower, but surely, there is no better sight in this beautiful game than a Sourav scorcher through extra cover! It's no wonder that even Walls spoke about how there was God on the offside, and then there was Sourav Ganguly!

They said he didn't know what 'leg-side' was, and though he had the gift of threading needles on the off side, he showed that he could deal adequately well with the on side as well. They said he looked ungainly in dealing with the short ball; and I am yet to see a person who claims not to be. Probably the great Viv Richards was a tad better at playing it. They said he was proud and arrogant; I would take a specific example of Andrew Flintoff, though there have been many others. Surely, this is most hypocritical from somebody who didn't have the comportment and 'Englishmmanly' conduct to dance half naked, twirling his shirt, after drawing (not even winning) a one day series in, if my memory doesn't deceive me, Chennai. That he got a fitting response from Sourav in the Home of Cricket, in his own backyard, is another thing. "You get back what you give" was what Sourav had opined of that incident. Well, he had more to get; from the point of being acclaimed as a national hero, he reached his nadir as Captain of England, with whitew'ashes'!

Which brings me to my next point of discussion about Sourav, captaincy. From the outset, there was one thing that I was sure about Dada's captaincy; he wasn't bringing any of his grace in batting into his captaincy. For Dada, captaincy meant playing hard and aggressive. Circumstances did little to frighten him. He looked the great Steve 'Iceman' Waugh in the eye and got the better of him and his team not once, but as if to reaffirm, twice. Pity that no other contemporary captain couldn't take the cue from him. Of course, many unbelievable performances helped him; Kolkata, Trent Bridge, Lords, Brisbane,Adelaide; but hey, is it a coincidence that many of such special performances have been concentrated during the period of Dada's captaincy? Small wonder that half the players in India's current squad owe their existence and subsistence to Dada! Not for nothing is he the most successful captain in Indian Cricketing history! So, every time somebody points a finger at him, I simply say "Beat that, dude"!

Still, he was always under scrutiny. Everybody (you know who) were waiting like vultures for a chance. And sure enough, they got their chance when he was unceremoniously dispatched from the squad. End of story? No, not yet, not if you claim to know Dada. Here was a chance to flaunt his never-say-die attitude and he wasn't letting go of it in a hurry. He was prepared to bend his back and work his way back.

"Mera naam Sourav Ganguly hai...bhule to nahi?"

And then came the Phoenix-ness. One more characteristic that 'they' said he didn't have,ending up in him coming out trumps. An interesting tidbit...from the time he has made his comeback into the Indian test team, he has been India's best and most consistent batsman with an average of over 50! I hope the point is taken now without argument. So, after fielding a volley of questions on VRS (it appears that the Laws of Conservation do not apply to the Indian media; they make up absolutely useless stuff out of thin air), when the great man, and I am sure any prudent person reading this would agree when I use this adjective for Dada, said "One more thing lads,...", people half knew what he was going to say. Again, perfect timing and a masterstroke! Midway in to his farewell series, it is no surprise that he is the prime contender for Player of the Series! That would certainly be the icing on a fantabulous cake, the greatest India has ever known, in many aspects.

So, on the offside, there is God, but then...

This Cookie won't Crumble so easily...

Loads of 'y's !

It is with all the randomness that I can muster beneath my scalp that I sit down (in my chair, rather) to write this...this...this thing (cannot think of anything better), thoughts swirling inside my head like the winds of the two great howling cyclones (or hurricanes for the benefit of my readers of the West (if I have one)), that I have physically been through. I just hope that these famished beasts of thoughts do not gobble up my already 'gazelle-ish' neurons. The simple fact that I am frequently putting sentences in parentheses and parentheses in parentheses should give you some idea of what I'm talking about.

Why, I never thought that I could be this fatalistic! For a bloke who says "making whatever I do as interesting as possible", such a defeatist attitude is a strict no-no. But lo! Behold the irony of the Maker! Here I am, hale and hearty, hard-boiled and sardonic at times, god-forsaken and pessimistic for a wee little bit of time. It is some wonder that all these antipodean qualities can co-exist 'harmonically' inside the body (head, in fact) of a homo sapien (no gender difference...see!). I still wonder how I can have so many 'enemies' coexisting within a sphere the size of a football and still it does not blast into smithereens because of the sheer pressure of what is inside! At which point it begins to dawn upon me that the brain that made the atomic bomb can withstand a blast a zillion times more powerful than the hydrogen bomb! And it also dawns upon me that there are a frillion (this is a new word, frillion > zillion) such blasts happening each and every time I do (or do not do) something. They are happening when the angel and the demon within me pop up on either side of me and tell us their contradictory opinions about what I should do. And each time the opinions collide, its a blast. But the best part is that it works! This brain thingy of mine (and yours too, thankfully) still works!

Then why? Why do we have such fantastic egotism? What makes us think that we are superior? Why can we not co-exist peacefully? Why do all the situations we get ourselves into are necessarily catch 22? Why does each and every one of us, in spite of having the same 3 pound appendage at the top, seem to behave in a helluva lot of different ways to each other? I agree that I am no good at answering these questions and I also concede that all the 'acts' that I have posed so 'question'ably, I have done them myself. I confess that I am no Mother Teresa to do whatever and more than whatever I preach, you will think I am an attention seeker who asks 'erudite' questions to show off, and I am not trying to change the world single handedly. Why, I am a person who hasn't asked even a single question when in class or when needed to, and here I am, in a sudden 'question'able burst, asking some crackpot old questions for which there may be no answers at all! I don't know. I do not wish to know. Those were meant to be rhetoric. To whom? To me, to you, and to each and every person on God's Green Earth. What if we all started asking these questions to ourselves? How would the world be then?

Would the Cookie Crumble any differently?

What is the world coming to ?

Hello World againnn!

Did any of you realize how fast the clocks are ticking? Remember that fateful day when the most powerful nation in the world was very rudely awoken from its deep slumber by a bunch of lunato sapiens who desperately wanted to break their earthly bondage for no reason other than probably extra cramming for the Day of Judgment? And in doing so, they forced 3000 other humans to do the same. More than 7 years have passed since the day that scarred the face of modern history but why does it still seem like yesterday? Why do those live pictures of CNN never seem to die in my mind?

This just goes to show that the world we live in is so inscrutably full of madness that it is impossible to identify what is rot from what is not. Recently I was watching a very interesting documentary about a little known effect called global dimming (follow the link to know more...but only after reading this post :P), which is actually cooling the earth. How is it caused? Primarily due to particulate emissions which are part and parcel of all greenhouse emissions. Right at this moment you will say "Hey wait a minute...Are you saying that pollution is actually good for the earth?!?!!". Well there are always two sides to a coin. We can either try and completely eliminate all GHG and particulate emissions and let this blue planet remain blue. Or we can go on 'proportionally' polluting the earth by emitting GHG and particulates in equivalent amounts so that global warming is 'offset' by global dimming (if we are confident enough that we can mutate into a new species that can live off a GHG-particulate mixture instead of Oxygen). The human mind thinks of infinite possibilities. Newsflash! We have just set off a time bomb and we happen to live on it! Small wonder then, that the world is really going zany!

And to think that all this research took a substantial shape on and because of that fateful day that I was alluding to earlier is part of the inextricable web of occurrences that certainly eludes the imagination of any living being. Whew, this is a world of double entendrés, contradictions and where the best player in the world somehow never gets the better of the second best! Really now, what is the world coming to?

I guess that is the way the Cookie Crumbles !

Too good to be true !!!

I have been quite used to treating the phrase 'Dream come true' with quite a lot of skepticism. Nah...this stuff is always for fairy tales...I used to say. But two thousand and eight years, eight months and sixteen days after Christ was supposedly born, my cynicism about the aforementioned phrase has been put to rest.

It was the annual convocation at our college. The usual affair, you say. But when I counter you by saying that present in the function was none other than the Missile Man of India, arguably the worthiest President of India, the great Visionary, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, you have no choice but to stand and stare, which was exactly what I did as a matter of fact. Here was a man who had given Wings of Fire and Ignited the Minds of millions of Indians, no more than a cricket pitch's length away from me. Truly too good to be true!

One look at him and you could sense his aura; even though he is 76 "orbits" old, he has a concoction of enthusiasm and energy that suffuses through the air like the deadliest of viruses. And then comes his speech like one of his 'Agni's, with a perfect trajectory. He unfolds his Vision for a 'Developed India', as he puts it, which is pretty lofty for the average human being, which you and I are. Simply speaking, it is simply incredible to have a vision like that. And just when I start having another bout of skepticism, this time, about the practicality of his Vision, the great man brings forth his implementation policy, the Road Map, as some would call it. He identifies five core areas for development viz., Agro Business, Infrastructure, IT and Health Services, Railways and Ship Building. As though by magic (or logic for him), he links the economic development of India to the Creative Leadership that we all need to be displaying once we pass out of our institute. It would be absolutely scandalous to let him down. And the Prestige of the magical oration is an oath that he makes us take, saying that we would always think of how much we can contribute to whatever task we do, never compromising with our ethics.

Later, when the great man was asked whether India's political leaders have the mettle to carry out his Vision, he simply laughed. Very suggestive, isn't it?

And that's the way the Cookie Crumbles !

Of Heavens, Headbutts and Heavenly Paradoxes!!!

The Heavens have opened. It's raining the proverbial 'cats and dogs'. It's as though Poseidon had evaporated along with the sea and, in his famed fury, punched holes in the firmament above with his legendary trident, his minions hosing down thin streams of the purest form of Di-hydrogen Oxide through tufts of blackened cotton in the cerulean sky.

Impressive, one might say. Well, everything ought to fall in the right place at the right time; be it a festival, or a piece of jigsaw, or, you guessed it...the rain. Now, the world is a Divine Paradox. So there are ought to be places where instead of raining cats and dogs, thin wispy clouds do not think of sending down even the usual, normal drops of rain. It all boils down to 'survival of the fittest' in either of such extreme conditions. Enter Mr Darwin. "All species are in a state of continuous conflict with each other" he says. Hullo! That is really interesting! Does that mean that all our wonderful relationships are actually 'conflict'? Food for thought.

If you are really following the bread crumbs, you would realize that the world around you is a part of a great practical joke created by Him. One example. Imagine...the greatest tyrant of all time, the sternest autocrat ever, Adolf Hitler, was a vegan and was endowed with probably a greater oratory ability than any man in mankind's one million years on this blue planet! And now compare him to a scion of peace, truth and nonviolence, the Mahatma, who secretly ate meat in his childhood and felt as if his legs were made of marshmallow (courtesy JKR) every other time he was on stage! Paradoxical? You bet! Yes, probably it is also not advisable to try and bring out the wrong side of a person who is essentially a genius, a 'good' genius. The results would be catastrophic, like the atomic bomb and the Zidane headbutt.

Marco Materazzi would know!

And that's the way the Cookie Crumbles !

A Random Rambling !

Headache, headache, you're a funny strain,
You are physical, because you give me pain,
And you are mental, 'cause you're in my brain.

And that's the way the Cookie Crumbles ! (again)

The Joker Steals the Show !!!

The Dark Knight...
...a quintessential title suggesting that only one man could steal the thunder over here...The Batman!!!

But Goodness Gracious, it wasn't to be ! Now, we have seen Bat Movies earlier and we all know that most of them have fizzled out. Probably one reason for that was there wasn't a Bad Guy competent enough to match all those gizmos and gimmicks of Batty with some of his own...but still, nothing was performance oriented.

And if there's something refreshingly different in this movie than all other comics based movies and most of its contemporary competitors, it is PERFORMANCE.

Now we all know that the Bad Guy loses, but hold on to your horses! Is it always true? In this case, although the Baddie did, technically speaking, lose in the end, it was The Joker who actually stole the show! Kudos to Heath Ledger for putting up such a mesmerizing performance. Ever imagined a man trying to be funny, terrifying, diabolical and nutty... all at the same time?? Well in that case The Dark Knight is the perfect prescription for you. How the bloke did that is a secret that remains, most unfortunately, buried forever along with him.

Although how he makes a pencil disappear is an issue of viewer discretion, yet, with due respect to Jack Nicholson and all the cartoon versions of the Joker, I would say that if The Joker ever existed, then it has got to be like this. And if a person ever deserved an Oscar, it has got to be one Mr Heath Ledger !!!

And that's the way the Cookie Crumbles !

Hello World!

A typi'C'al introdu'C'tory post indeed !

I'm probably the 2,344,876,987th entity to get into this fifth sphere of Nature, but I am sure the inhabitants of this sphere would mince no words, or should I say posts, in making me one of their own !

And that's the way the Cookie Crumbles !