Fifteen minutes on the Blue Line

My phone beeps to an SMS saying "Hello, where you are?", to which I hastily type "At Indraprastha. Gimme 15 mins.", after being slightly amused at its deliberately flawed structure. I purchase a token for Connaught Place. I somehow don't like the name Rajiv Chowk. Very few people use it anyway.

"Bag kholo", I hear a rather portly gentleman in uniform gesture at me. I open the bag and show him its contents, among which is a camera. "Tasveer mat kheechna", he sternly warns me.

By now I can hear the train coming from Pragati Maidan. "Haan mujhe pata hai, yaar", I retort and hastily zip my bag, about to leave the concourse for the platform.

"Zaraa apni language sudhaaro." Before I could ask, he says, "Mai aapka koi dost nahin hoon. Ghar pe aap apne bhai ko 'yaar' bulaate ho kya?" I think about nodding before starting to run to catch this one.

(A minute elapses)

I can see the Jama Masjid, the Gopaldas Building and Statesman House, among other landmarks as the train leaves for Pragati Maidan. There are many people waiting at the station. A visibly confused bespectacled man sits to my right. A woman says "The next station is (pause) Mandi House" in a pre-recorded announcement in an annoying British accent. "Agla station (pause) Mandi House (slightly longer pause) hai", a man with a deep voice follows after.

We pass Tilak Bridge in a hurry. Our elevation decreases palpably as we continue on Sikandra Road. The Mandi House station is underground, much to the amazement and delight of a kid sitting a little to my left. Again, quite a few people enter, and by now, all the seats have been occupied. The man at my right now seems a little worried; he asks me how to get to Pitampura.

Barakhamba Road station comes. I prepare myself for the deluge of people I expect to see at Connaught Place. I relinquish my seat, and two people rush to occupy it. Instinct, agility and audacity count, when an empty seat is in contention.

There isn't much distance between this station and my destination. A lot of people get up, as expected, and start building up near the door on the right, as both announcers inform us in their different ways. A robust young woman tells her attractive friend to get out as fast as she can because there will be pushing from the other side too.

There are indeed a lot of people at the platform at Connaught Place. After the pushing and shoving, I get out, rather satisfied at my tenacity. I direct my bespectacled friend to the platform for the Yellow Line, and pause to look around.

Now I wish I could go back on my (exceedingly informal, now that I reflect) acknowledgment of DMRC's rules, for the station looks beautiful.

January 3rd

He had missed the previous year's test match due to personal reasons. This was always going to be a big occasion for him, playing in front of his home crowd. There is something about the Sydney Cricket Ground that makes you want to step up your game a notch or two.

I had just dismissed Ponting that arrogant shit, with a nice straight ball he had no clue about. Now for Steve Waugh, the one Aussie I've always secretly admired for a variety of reasons. He would definitely be a little rusty seeing as he had missed a whole season, but I'm sure he was fired up too.

I attempted to catch him plumb first up, the same way I had dismissed Ponting. He shuffled across, thus heightening my hopes, but flicked it past mid-wicket for a boundary. That was such a put-off. That must have given him so much confidence. One would have expected him to play it safe; but he surprised me with his audacity.

I then tried the short ball, and it came off well; trying to pull it, he copped it on the arm. I glared at him, but he was looking away, not in the least to evade my glare. Both of us knew he was in pain, but he didn't want to show it. Come on, it's Steve Waugh. Who doesn't know he has problems with short stuff. I had read newspaper reports which said he asked McGrath to bowl short at him during practice for a while now, so he would have been a little surprised with the outcome. The next one was fuller; he nicked it just short of first slip where it was misfielded. He set off for a single, and I deliberately ventured in his way to brush against him. Still no reaction.

I could see him rubbing his arm every few overs. I bowled him some more bouncers to soften him up, but he just wouldn't pull or hook. He'd sway away, wanting to have nothing to do with them. I must have beaten him at least ten times in that one spell. He would look ungainly at times, but he'd make the best use of whatever talent he had. He looked very determined to stay there. I would often be compelled by this urge to sledge him, but by now I respected him too much for that. It probably wouldn't have worked either. Perhaps I would have been a lot more comfortable sledging him ten years ago. Waqar tried some in-swingers but to no avail - either flicked or dug out. Saqlain's doosras he picked with utmost ease.

We bowled them out for 250. I took five for sixty odd, so I should be happy. But I'm not. I couldn't get him out. He remained nabaad on 115.

He wanted to make this his day. He was that sort of a person.

One of the few changes

Untimely snow

I could have written a treatise on why India failed in the World Cup. Perhaps Javed bhai was right. You need a tight strategy. Let's leave it at that. I don't want to delve into it any deeper. It would be a waste of time, both yours and mine. Let's just say we didn't deserve to go through.

It is the 12th of April. Or, should I say April 12th, as they say here in this country. It is snowing outside. It is something about the East Coast that I cannot comprehend, try as I might.

It would be very unreasonable on my part to expect Delhi-esque weather, but this is taking things a bit too far. Nouruz has come and gone, but things have hardly changed in terms of the weather. The weather was brilliant two weeks ago, the temperature rising to as high as 16 degrees Celsius, permitting three hours of cricket on that Saturday, but that was it. Nothing since. Just snow and sub-zero temperatures. I don't understand it.

Lol

There is a reason why I absolutely can’t stand that word. Whenever I see those three letters, especially the little dance they do on MSN Messenger windows, it makes me fume.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not averse to using abbreviations myself. In fact, I use two of them quite a lot: “gtg” for “(I have) got to go”, and “brb” for “(I will) be right back”. I am also not against the use of smileys, but I most positively detest their overuse. How many times have I seen half the sentences in a piece ending with a “:)”? You’re killing it!

But I digress, as has become quite a common tendency of late, and so I shall proceed right away.

First of all, "lol" has no universally agreed-upon meaning; some people define it to be “Lots of Laughs” while some others prefer “Laughing Out Loud”. Make up your mind!

And secondly, it doesn’t make any distinction whatsoever between a chuckle and a hard laugh. At least it doesn’t appear that way when we chat. Anything remotely funny and wham! “lol” or "lolzz". Either you guys laugh out loud or laugh a lot (see my point?) all the time, which is not bad; it is good to find humor in almost everything, but after a point I suspect your computer ejects laughing gas at almost every message you receive.

I won’t go as far as saying that there isn’t an entry for "lol" in your generic dictionary (I am not referring to urbandictionary.com though; for that website takes English to the next level and beyond that too.), or that Microsoft Word refuses to recognize it, for you could say the same for “brb” and “gtg”.

Then you have its derivatives “rofl”, and “roflol”, meaning “rolling on the floor laughing”, and “rolling on the floor laughing out loud”. How superfluous once more. Why not make up “roflolasmha” (“rolling on the floor laughing out loud and scratching my hairy ass”)? Another such abbreviation is “lmao”, which supposedly means “laughing my ass off”.

Now you may wonder how my favorites “brb” and “gtg” are different from “lol”. Good question. Well, my abbreviations bear more than a passing resemblance to how you and I would say them when talking to someone face to face. This is where “lol” falls short.

Note here that I am not a strict grammarian, nor do I consider myself the supposed savior of the English language (or Hindi for that matter). I may have made some grammatical mistakes in this very post itself. But all I'm saying is that don't make up three-letter abbreviations just for the heck of it, or because they lie in close proximity to one another on your keyboard.

If you’re accusing me of discouraging you to express your laughter at something apparently funny, you’re wrong. I am not doing that. I am merely asking you to consider other alternatives. You may then ask me what else we could use to acknowledge a witty joke or a humorous incident.

Why can’t we say “ha”, “haha”, “hahahahahahaha dude that’s so frickin’ hilarious man!”, or “heh”, “hehe”, “hehehe how cheesy!” and other variants depending on our style or take on how frickin’ hilarious/cheesy we thought the joke to be?

For the World Cup, you need a tight...

... game plan?

I think India's biggest problems are in trying to strike a balance between batting and bowling, if the last two one-day tournaments are anything to go by. In South Africa, the bowling was unexpectedly a saving grace of sorts, while the batting was pretty meek. In this last series, the batting was good, except for a blip in Cuttack and a late implosion at Chennai.

The batting order looks okay for the time being. Uthappa has done well in the two opportunities he has been given. Ganguly has made an unbelievable comeback, and it is certain that his prophetic declaration of playing the World Cup after being dumped last year will be realized. Dravid, with three fifties in the last series, seems to have regained the touch he lost in South Africa.

Lost somewhere at the top and early middle is Sachin. If he's comfortable batting at the number 4 position, then I guess it's fine, else he should assert himself, seeing as he's the seniormost member of the team, and its vice captain. It will most certainly be his last Cup too.

Yuvraj and Dhoni will look to provide the acceleration at the end, and as far as I'm concerned, they'll play at numbers 6 and 7, unless the situation demands otherwise. For example, if we're 250/1 after 40 overs, it'll make more sense to send Dhoni to the middle than Dravid. Yuvraj bowls, and is arguably one of the best fielders going around at the moment.

This also leaves a question about Sehwag, who has now got to battle for a place in the team two months after being its vice captain. This is where it gets complicated, for there are two issues - should we play him? and if so, where should we play him? Aside from a good performance in the Caribbean last summer, Sehwag's advantage lies in the fact that he bowls spin too, which will prove handy on slow tracks. But he just cannot field, and in today's day and age, it all comes down to those extra runs saved. It remains to be seen whether his attitude towards batting will change after being stripped of the vice captaincy and subsequently being dropped.

Kaif is Sehwag's complement - though he doesn't bowl, he brings a lot of energy on the field. He may be out of touch, but he's still good enough to play. I don't think he'll play all the games though.

Dinesh Kartik played well in the Cape Town test, and it was his knock that won us the game in Cuttack, but I don't see the wisdom behind his inclusion. Reserve keeper?, one might argue, but we have Dravid too. In a similar vein, Gambhir may miss out. He's not out of form or anything; I think it's a matter of waiting for a opening in the team. Subtle pun there.

Now for the bowlers. Three spinners - Kumble, Harbhajan and Powar four pacemen - Pathan, Agarkar and Sreesanth and Zaheer should suffice. Powar may find a place in the playing XI difficult, and Kumble may suffer because of his fielding. To the fast men - Pathan needs to prove a point here. His bowling is suffering at the hands of his batting, and he'd do well to remember that his primary role will be to pick up wickets, not score runs. Agarkar, in his third World Cup, may finally play more than he did the last two times (thrice and not even once). Sreesanth will like returning to the Caribbean after the successful outing last summer, and Zaheer seems to be improving too, although he should work on his fielding.

You may be wondering where Munaf Patel stands in all this. Not on the field, for with his fielding, he may as well not be there.

So there's my 15 member squad (in no particular order): Uthappa, Ganguly, Dravid, Tendulkar, Yuvraj, Kaif, Sehwag, Dhoni, Kumble, Harbhajan, Pathan, Powar, Sreesanth, Agarkar and Zaheer Khan.

It's the right mix of experience and youth too, with as many as ten players who played the last World Cup, and five the one before that. If you'd like me to go further back, only Kumble and Tendulkar played the '96 edition (highest wicket taker and run scorer respectively) and Tendulkar played his first in '92.

Failure in the World Cup will signal the axe for a lot of players. And with the number waiting to get in, the axed may find themselves vying for a place in much the same manner Miandad was looking for his pepsi.

After the Ashes

So, that's what you get for regaining the Ashes. You get ruthlessly whitewashed the next time.

However, I see problems now that Warne and McGrath have decided to hang up their boots. Rewind to three years ago, when India toured and you'll know what I'm stressing. The duo's absence inspired our batting, and their replacements in the form of Gillespie and MacGill were simply not good enough. Brett Lee is 30-plus, and express pacemen don't really go around for too long, although I might be proven wrong in his case. Stuart Clarke is doing a decent job too. The only viable replacement seems to be Mitchell Johnson.

I don't think Langer's retirement changes anything immediately; they have Ponting in the best form of his life, and they still have Hayden, Hussey, Gilchrist, Symonds and Clarke for now. But in the long run, say five years hence, only Clarke (and perhaps Hussey) will remain.

A mass exodus of players is never good. Australia will be the first to concede that; they fell apart after Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee, and Rod Marsh retired at the same time in 1984, and took a long time to recover as a test side.

Asad Rauf and Daryl Harper need to learn the finer nuances of counting numbers. An over generally consists of six balls, more so when it might make a difference to the outcome of an entire test series. But then again, you need to be very stupid to lose from 395/5. Or, you just have to be India.