Crikipedia

Dum Biryani

2011-02-14T10:42:00.003-05:00

I got out of the car, just about to enter my favorite Thai place, but the "Dum Biryani" sign outside the neighboring restaurant was just too inviting to be rejected. I ventured inside, saw a cash register and three people talking about the Biryani. "I know I'm not supposed to lavish praise on my own food, but the Biryani here is really the best I've had. I wouldn't make such a claim if I didn't believe it", said one man in Urdu.

The biryani indeed lived up to the talk. The raita having run out, I asked one of the people emerging from the cooks' area, and one of the three at the front if I could have another cup.

He came up to me and plainly said, "I don't work here". He then sat at the table beside mine and started eating his own biryani with his wife and child.

Letter to Rahul Dravid

2011-01-06T03:53:00.000-05:00

There was a period of around four years when I thought you were India's most dependable batsman. I felt more secure when you were at the crease, than when even SRT was occupying it. And it did not feel blasphemous or anything, because you outperformed him. Even today, with your fall and his complementary soar, you are only 2500 runs apart despite having made your debut a good six years after him. Deliveries and catches that got you out were talked about at length the following day at school or college, for they had to be special. Every victory outside India was fashioned by a marathon effort by you.

But no more. Now, it looks like a struggle. Ever since the tour of England in 2007, when you very mysteriously resigned from the captaincy to "concentrate on your batting", it has been just that. You look like you are being overburdened and weighed down when you are at the center. You've looked far more serene under far more difficult circumstances, when the batting of the team hinged entirely upon SRT's, Laxman's, Ganguly's and your shoulders. Now we have a more consistent Sehwag, a Gambhir and a more than decent wicketkeeper batsman to fall back on, should the core fail.

Since that tour of England, there have been a few starts, but you haven't converted them into more meaningful scores. You looked good against New Zealand away and Sri Lanka at home in 2009, and I thought maybe this was some kind of revival, the end of a lean patch which most players of the highest class invariably go through, for SRT's was not very long before. There were expectations in 2010, but they haven't been met. Sri Lanka was a dismal campaign, but you didn't appear out of form; you just kept finding ways to get out. I thought that might have been the end, and that Dhoni's and the selectors' patience had run out and that perhaps you wouldn't get to play Australia, but it happened. A weakness against left-armers bowling from over the wicket began to emerge and manifest itself and was duly exploited by Johnson and Bollinger. Then another good series against a very weak New Zealand side followed, which again raised my hopes of a revival, and ensured a ticket to South Africa.

I thought South Africa was going to be the decisive series. For it was here that you made your first test century, fourteen years ago against Donald at his pomp; it was here that you made vital but often completely ignored contributions during the World Cup in 2003; it was also here that you first started losing your way in 2006; it was here that made your mark in the IPL, that eventually led to a recall in the ODI team; but it was also here that you played your last ODI and dropped cruelly, never to be considered again. And I suppose you were selected to play on this tour only because of your very fine record overseas, for we have, and will always have enough batsmen to succeed in India.

Tonight is when we need you. I am writing this without much expectation, but I hope to be proven wrong. Tonight is when you need to roll back the years, score a century, and help India at least save the test match, and with it, the series. For winning is dependent entirely on the start that Sehwag can provide, unless of course SRT has other plans. Should you fail, it ought to be the end. I am saying this only because I cannot bear to take this any longer. It's kind of like wishing death upon a terminally ill, long-struggling loved one.

Thanks for the memories; I will cherish them.

2009-07-14T01:18:00.003-04:00

There have been multiple instances in the past couple of years that I have had the strong urge to write something but have been unable to, mostly because the urge didn't persist for long enough.

Screw it. This will have to wait too.

Reflections and rain.

2009-03-16T09:55:00.004-04:00

I had evidently pissed off my friend, but I couldn't care less. I ask to be dropped off near the main road. My friend doesn't quite know the route. I suspect I was in the car only to guide him to the main road anyway. I borrow some money and set off to buy some books.

It is quite a hot afternoon, and time is running out. There is the railway station that I haven't seen in years. It is indeed old. Then there is the bridge I have to walk under, and continue straight before I hit a most famous intersection and take a right on to a most famous street. It used to be different, I know. There is now a McDonald's not too far from the intersection, and I immediately disapprove. Who the hell cares about what I think though. The street is crowded, as it has probably always been. It hasn't changed much since I was here last, save of course, for the McDonald's. In fact, it looks like it's always been this crowded. I try to imagine the same street at the height of its grandeur. Almost instantly, trees, and reflections replace the unseemly electricity poles, streetlights and advertisement hoardings. Turn around and take a couple of pictures of the structure beyond the intersection, but the same electricity poles and power lines prevent me from getting a good shot. A bearded man in white taps me on the shoulder and asks me the time. I realize I am getting late, so I quicken my pace and take the next left. In the meantime, clouds have begun to gather overhead. Wonder if it might rain at Lord's too. Myself and a few hundred million others that follow India's test cricket fortunes would quite like that.

There are signs, although few and far between, written in a script I cannot read. The smell of a familiar food item consumes me, but I decide against eating; I had just had a heavy lunch with the friend and two others. Find my way to the place I had set off for. There is nothing new about this road. It's bustling with activity, as always. There are understandably more people of my age, presumably here for the same reason. It has begun to drizzle a little. I go inside different stores and give shopkeepers the list. At bigger stores the list is given a quick glance, and then passed onto a younger assistant with specific instructions. But nothing. The shopkeepers know they need to pull their stalls inside and shut shop for the time being. There is a popular shop where I am sure I will find them. It was my last resort, and only upon ascending the poorly lit and extremely narrow flight of steps to the second floor do I realize that I had been here before, again, some two years ago.

My friend calls me and asks me if I wanted a ride back. Politely decline his offer. The street is almost empty now, for it is raining perceptibly more heavily now. But there's still a while to go before it might pour. The air now intoxicatingly smells of wet earth, and an overpowering desire to reunite with old memories makes me set off for the bus stop on foot.

By the time I get on a road that leads to a characteristically shaped bridge by the same name, it has suddenly become very heavy. I run to the bridge and stop for shelter, while trains slowly go about their business as is usual.

Emerge from the shelter after the rain relents somewhat, and enter a world entirely different from the one I spent the last hour in. Learn from locals that it has rained at Lord's too. The test match has been saved.

2008-05-27T19:34:00.004-04:00

Fifteen minutes on the Blue Line

2007-07-28T09:09:00.000-04:00

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

2007-07-09T22:25:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-15T22:02:00.000-04:00

Untimely snow

2007-04-12T23:42:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-09T12:39:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-02-02T12:35:00.001-05:00

... 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

2007-01-05T09:45:00.000-05:00

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.

The travails of being a dog (or a bitch)

2006-08-25T21:15:00.000-04:00

The dog is supposed to be man's best friend, on account of its being wafaadaar (loyal). Your dog will never bite you, unless you do or abet in something really horrid to it, like make it listen to Himesh Reshammiya sing. It guards your house - yes, even the chihuahua has shown remarkable pugnacity when cornered. Certain species can sniff for bombs when trained to do so. They roll over, play dead, and even help the elderly and the disabled cross the road.

Most dog owners feed their canines the best dogfood money can buy. We feed them Pedigree and other leading brands. In India, in addition to a bowl of milk, we feed them roti, and boneless chicken to go with it. We give them those chew-sticks to savor while we concern ourselves with more important things.

Dogs, like human beings, have also featured in many popular works of fiction and of course, the real world. Pointofvyuh, a puppy, currently holds the record for the most googled dog name in a calendar month. Tin Tin had Snowy to accompany him on his sojourns across the seas. Toto from The Wizard Of Oz, Laika of the Sputnik 1 fame, Milo from The Mask, and of course Tiger, which is what every dog in Bollywood has to put up with, are others that immediately spring to mind.

Certain people in the English rap industry have been so influenced by this remarkable species, that they imbibe it in their name, albeit with slight variations. Just ask Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg.

After all that, why do we desecrate the dog? Saying "kutte!" ((you) dog!), or simply "kutte! kaminey! mai tera khoon pee jaaonga! " ((you) dog! (you) wretch! I will drink your blood!) can be particularly rude to or frightening for the person it is directed towards. "You sly dog, you!" is however, an anomaly, as dogs aren't really sly.

In the English language, the female dog, the bitch, is generally agreed upon in intellectual circles as a contemptuous curse. Bitch is quite a versatile word, in that it is also a verb; to bitch means to talk ill of someone, generally behind his/her back.

Since its inception, it has taken many new forms, and continues to evolve still. The (exceedingly) informal greeting "Yo bitch, what up?" does not in any way mean to belittle the person to whom it is said. Another noteworthy facet of this word is that it has transcended limits imposed by gender, as in, the person to whom it was said may or may not be a woman, as might be inferred by mistake, although, "Yo dawg, what up?" almost always is directed to a guy. In "He's my bitch!", the 'he' is supposed by the speaker to be a servile minion.

Certain enthusiastic linguists have extended the way it is spelt to "beech" and more popularly, "biatch". For example, the seemingly abstruse "It's raining like a biatch! Let's go inside!" acts as a superlative and merely serves to inform the listener that it is raining quite heavily, and that they should go inside.

Lost in all of this lies the unanswered question - What makes the dog species so vulnerable to outbursts of both love and contempt?

Aaja Nachle

2006-07-31T11:18:00.000-04:00

I saw this video on YouTube quite recently. I had heard the song everywhere, from marriages (most of which were in India), to almost every second room in the hostels at DCE. I even had this on my computer for a bit. I had never seen the video. Not until recently.

I neither speak Punjabi nor understand it, except for a very select category of words, which I usually hear when the speaker is particularly angry at someone. All I understand in this song is the title, which means, "Come, dance".

As you all must have seen, the video starts with an ostensibly upset Neha, who looks disapprovingly at a note she just wrote for her father. She is leaving home, plausibly because of irreconciliable differences. She boards a bus, to somewhere, which also has the hero and Bally Sagoo. This is the first of many times we see him here. He sees them.. and smiles a wise smile. Or, is he merely ogling at Neha?

Then Neha gets off, at.. err.. quite simply, the middle of nowhere. The hero gets off too, because he's the hero, and so does BS, because we're going to see him many times. The middle of nowhere is apparently a lush green field, so lush that it could give the Sydney Cricket Ground a run for its money.

Then we see colorful Bhangra dancers. And of course, BS. He instructs one of the more enthusiastic dancers to accost and pull the hero away and then dance with him. Does BS want the girl for himself? Or, did you guys just see a parody?

They dance, as was instructed by BS. BS's innocence is proven when all the dancers advance towards Neha, and then make a neat circle around the two central characters, while BS is shown enjoying the happenings.

Then, something very unexpected happens. She rejects his advances and she walks away in disgust, much like how one walks away from auto drivers when they ask a very high fare. In retrospect, it was kind of expected, as there were still over two minutes left in the video. BS is evidently unhappy with some of his dancers, so he demands that they make amends. The hero is accosted by the same dude who pulled him away. He doles out inspirational advice, and urges him to go and get her. Then they promptly revert to their dance. It now becomes clear that the hero and Neha didn't know each other from before.

She goes to a bar with some of her guy friends. BS reaches there before the hero does, which once again makes me a bit suspicious. The hero watches intently as one of her more persuasive friends offers her a drink and then makes her have it. They dance. The genre's no longer Bhangra, but more of disco. This is where our men make their moves. The hero has had enough, and wants to set some things straight and BS takes up a vantage position by a wall to catch all the action.

The action consists of him walking up, and then removing a cigarette from some girl's mouth and then disparagingly dropping it, his head disapprovingly shaking at the young woman's intentions. If that was fun, what he does next is outrageous. He spills the drink on the floor, and sets a good precedent for kids and other aspiring Nehas.

Neha's persuasive friend has the hero cornered by his gang, and makes off with Neha. Once again, BS observes. Then the persuasive friend tries to misbehave with Neha on a nice black leather sofa. Then, just when we all thought the hero had been thrown around the bar, had his head smashed by tables and liquor bottles, he makes a comeback. He catches the persuasive friend by the scruff of his neck, takes off his jacket (why?), and easily dispenses with him by powerfully pushing him onto the aforementioned sofa. He then wraps his jacket around her, and leaves the place with her. We see the omnipresent BS, smiling a vindicated smile. This is where I absolve BS. He wasn't trying to get Neha for himself.

Then we come back to the Sydney Cricket Ground, where we once again see BS's bhangra troupe. She walks along the Darling river, telling our hero about her acrimonious yesterday with her father, because he rebuked her for how she dresses. He is all ears. He puts his jacket over her head, and she smiles and says no. He remembers the enthusiastic bhangra dancer's advice and tries again and convinces her to make up with her dad. I think he realises how rich her dad is. He is successful, they get married and live happily ever after.

I am in love with the video. I love Bally Sagoo's omnipresence. The dude manages to make it everywhere, and smile vindicating smiles, even though he never helps the hero get the girl.

Does it really matter, which side?

2006-07-05T21:39:00.000-04:00

"Where you going?", he turned around and asked me. He was fair, clean shaven, with black hair, and was wearing dark shades. He was particularly interested in the update on the Italy - Ukraine match on the radio. From his accent and look, it was easy to guess that he was either Italian or Punjabi, and that he hadn't stayed that long here. Ten minutes into the ride, his phone started ringing, and he answered, "Abhi customer ke saath hoon, aadhe ghante ke baad milana."

Now, there are very few people of Italian descent who might have said that in a Punjabi accent (Sonia Gandhi's accent is not Punjabi). So, after concluding he was from the Punjab region, the only question was which side of the border was he from. I asked him where he was from.

"Lahore, Pakistan", came the reply. "Aap kahaan ke hai, sir?"
"Dilli."
"Lahore - Dilli to sirf teen ghante ki drive hai."

Well, not exactly three hours, except if both were in America, where 'a mile, a minute' is the norm. But I chose not to tell him, lest he thought I intended to ridicule his seemingly inept knowledge of Indo-Pak geography.

"Raat mein Amritsar ki lightein dikhti hai." He seemed to want to correct his faux pas. His phone rang again. This one was just about a minute long, but long enough for him to change the topic.

"Derh saal se yahaan reh raha hoon. Par dil nahin lagta yahaan. Do dafaa vaapas bhi jaa chuka hoon."

"Cricket ko follow karte ho?" He asked me. Ensue twenty minutes of discussion on next year's World Cup, and India's and Pakistan's chances in it. England sucks, we both concluded, and that they'll be whipped in the Ashes later this year. He was quite a well-informed guy, I must concede.

The conversation set me thinking when I got back home. I could tell he was a Pakistani only when he told me he was from there. He could well have been from Delhi, or any place in North India.

I'm sure Indians and Pakistanis don't hate each other. It's just these politicians that aggravate things, and incite feelings of hatred to stay in power. And both sides have made mistakes in the past, so don't go by your NCERT history textbooks. Even Bollywood movies which involve Pakistan show war. Can't filmmakers also show movies that make us realise how alike we are? We're essentially the same people. At the end of it all, does it really matter which Punjab he was from?

Now, I'm not saying India and Pakistan should unite and become one right away. Maybe the damage has been done and it's too late. But East and West Germany reunited, and so did North and South Vietnam. But those reunions were different. Their people were separated only because they happened to live in a particular part of their country. This is a little more complicated. Maybe there is still a way. So many problems (like Kashmir, and PoWs) might be solved or be made progress on. But some new problems could also arise.

I'm not requesting you to start making up lyrics for some "Badalaav ki hawa" song. (India's and Pakistan's answer to East and West Germany's Wind of Change) But what you can do, however, is insert the following line suitably in John Lennon's Imagine.

Imagine the cricket team that we'll make.

A different kind of love

2006-04-12T13:33:00.000-04:00

I first met her when I was around thirteen. She wasn't particularly good looking and she had an average body. She was not like the others, and was rather old fashioned. I used to catch a glimpse of her every morning while walking to the bus stop. I wasn't attracted to her so much back then. I highly doubt she was attracted to me either. I didn't know her that well. But all that was to change.

Five years later, I was formally introduced to her. I began seeing her more often, and took a liking for her. We started going out. Initially, I was a little selfish, and treated her as a prop to catch bigger fish. I'm sure she realized it, for she had her own strange way of telling me. But she never walked out on me. She showed her disapproval at my intentions, but she never deserted me.

It happened on one of those short drives. It was overcast, and that intoxicating smell of wet earth was in the air. I don't know how it happened - I fell in love with her. Maybe it was the weather. It could have been the music. I started taking her out for long drives. It was just so perfect. I would wait like crazy for Friday to come so that I could go home and spend time with her over the weekend.

It was a different kind of love. I took great care of her, for I loved her very dearly. We spent a lot of time going on those long drives. I discovered many things about her - her likes, dislikes and what not. I figured she didn't like the winters too much, and it would take me several minutes to lighten her mood. She would invariably start her day coughing ceaselessly, before I would attend to her.

There came a time, probably a year ago I think, that I believed I knew her inside out. I knew exactly how she would react to different behaviors of mine, and why she would react that way. She was mine. And I was hers. Being with her made me feel like a man.

Then it happened. It was decided that we were moving out of town. Believe me, a long distance relationship was out of the question. It was understood that there was really no future. So it was decided that we meet one last time.

It was a typically humid July morning. I awoke to discover that she was gone. They told me she had left town overnight. I was disappointed, for I never had a chance to say a proper goodbye. I would never see or hear of her again.

I'll always miss my first car.

-Rishi-

The key to averting electric shocks.

2006-03-23T23:55:00.000-05:00

This has been a very hectic week and I'm pretty glad it's over. Friday is a fairly light day for me, as I only have classes till noon. It is good to get back to college after spring break. Nice to return to the quiet of Troy. Nice to look up at a clear sky again without additionally noticing upto ten airplanes piercing it in all directions.

They say spring has arrived, but it is still very cold here, and the temperature only goes as high as 6°C during the day. It doesn't snow anymore, save for very mild flakes sometimes. I still require my warm coat, which I wear over my T shirt. This combination suffices fairly well, as buildings here are internally heated. But that isn't really what I planned to write about.

The inside of my coat, with all the fleece it has, leaves my skin with quite a high amount of positive charge, which entails quite a high electrostatic potential. Now, when two bodies are at different electrostatic potentials, medium permitting, charge flows between the two bodies till their potentials become the same. And flow of charges is what constitutes electric current. And when this current flows through the human body, the body is commonly said to have been 'shocked'.

Now, when I was young, and oblivious to the dangers of electric current passing through my body, I would marvel at how a dry comb could attract hair and bits of paper. During the first two days of this week, I got a shock at least seven times, in completely isolated incidents after taking my coat off. Sometimes it was the metallic frame of my bed, at others, it was the doorknob, and the rest, it was the darned bed again. It felt rather silly. I could tell that I had a lot of static on me, but wasn't able to combat the impending shock.

That is when I decided to do something about this offending static charge. I found the key to my predicament - my room key. I realised, that if I held onto it while I took off my coat, and after that, lightly have it touch against my bed/doorknob/bed, I could discharge myself quite efficiently without getting a shock. It went very well yesterday and today, as in, I would rather conveniently hold my key while taking off my coat at the beginning of class and then have it touch the chair, coercing somewhat mild sparks, and then casually slip in a macho one-liner followed by a quick wink, if my neighbor were a she.

It looks pretty cool too when it comes off, that is. Try it.

-Rishi-

#36 - Shahbad Dairy

2006-02-05T00:59:00.000-05:00

The other side of DCE can at best be described as rural. The first time I went there was to get a demand draft made to pay the university fees. The road narrows for some distance, and is flanked by markets on both sides, most of the shops in which are chemist shops. Then come the houses, most of which domesticate cows and buffaloes, typical of small towns. Then come the farms and the countryside in vast expanses. Then comes Shahbad Dairy. Shahbad Dairy is not a dairy; it is a bus terminal housing buses that connect Bawana with civilization. Five such buses do this.

1. The 879, which goes to Janakpuri and of which I’ve seen exactly one DTC kind.
2. The 165, which goes to Anand Vihar, mostly privates.
3. The 106, which goes to the Old Delhi railway station, all in DTCs
4. The 140, which goes to Mori Gate and consequently carries 25.18% of Delhi's population.
5. The 123, which goes nowhere in particular, because it doesn’t really exist.

Shahbad Dairy is also where most RTVs emanate from and retire to. They come in two varieties, namely:

Those with 12-year-old conductors that go to Wazirpur and persuade even those going in the opposite direction to go to Wazirpur. All are dhoom enabled. For further information on them, refer to ‘How to get to civilization – The RTVs’
Those with 12-year-old conductors that go to Azadpur and persuade even those going in the opposite direction to go to Azadpur, telling them stories of its advantages. Most are dhoom enabled. Those that are not are chhaiya-chhaiya enabled.

-Rishi-

www.fbixxx.com

2006-01-28T19:44:00.000-05:00

Perverts.

# 20 - How to get to civilization

2006-01-22T12:41:00.000-05:00

The five most popular ways to get to civilization from Bawana Road are:

1. Drive out. If you’ve got a car with a ton of petrol, there’s nothing like it.
Average times: 5 mins 34 secs to Rithala and 13 mins 49 secs to Wazirpur.

2. Catch a friend driving out. If a friend has a car with a ton of petrol, there’s nothing like it.
Average times: 6 mins 34 secs to Rithala and 14 mins 49 secs to Wazirpur.
The extra minute is usually required for verification of route and destination and arguing that there’s space for exactly one more person when 5 others are already in the car, by suggesting alternate seating arrangements.

3. Hop on aboard the 879. Route 879 runs from Shahbad Dairy to Janakpuri via Madhuban Chowk. It goes through the heart of Rohini and makes it a point to visit its every road and marketplace. This greatly increases travel time. Another very disturbing truth about the 879 is that 99.71 times out of 100 you happen to be unfortunate enough to board it, it’ll be a private bus. The misfortune of boarding a private bus will be explained sometime later in the book. I have seen exactly one DTC 879 till now and the likelihood of that changing is the same as those of our bathroom flush working again.
Average times: 17 mins to Rohini West. Fare Rs. 5/-

4. The RTVs. When you board an RTV, the driver and his partner in crime, the 12-year-old conductor promise you they’ll be fast.

RTV Laws:

A- Stoppage time at any stop is approximately 10 minutes, often converting to a bidi break for the driver…

B- The stoppage time is invariant with the number of people already in the RTV, if there aren’t too many. It increases logarithmically as the number of passengers increases.

C- There is also an unwritten rule stating the conductor must personally persuade all people within a 25.78m radius to board his RTV, even if the angle between their velocity vector and that of the RTV happens to be 180 degrees. Where there is one RTV, there is another on the prowl, waiting to ‘steal’ passengers from the first RTV.

D- If an RTV is threatened by another one encroaching upon its area, they’ll tear through empty roads in a terrific display of sheer racing madness under the false pretext of keeping their promise of being fast. The winner of this short but eventful battle usually boasts of his speed and control to the terrified passengers and then ridicules the loser for having the balls to challenge him.

E- Most RTVs plying in the area are ‘dhoom-enabled’, i.e., when they brake or their indicator flashes, the ‘dhoom’ song starts playing.

Average times: 29 mins to Rithala and 58 mins to Wazirpur. Fare: Rs. 5/- for both.

5. The autos. The best place to take an auto till is Rithala. Bargaining is easy, especially when more than 20 Rs. are asked. It is better to have 3 others along, so that each one can pay a measly sum of Rs 5/. The last one in isn't exactly a rotten egg, but he gets to sit with the driver. Average time: 8 mins to Rithala.

6. The Delhi Metro. This is the best means of transport. What sucks is that only an auto or an RTV can take you to Rithala.

-Rishi-