Chak de India!

Baari barsi khatan gaya si!
khatke le aandi aari!

pehle angrez!
fir afriki!
fir kangaroo!
te ab pak de vi faari!!!!

burrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

chak de fatte!!!

Cricket- the biggest file!

Oh yeah! We have it! A cricket world cup after 24 years! India has etched its name into cricketing history, having won the maiden Twenty20 world cup! And the frontrunners of this victory are nothing short of demi-gods for the populace of this country now for cricket is not a sport. In this subcontinent it is a phenomenon. And it metamorphoses into a fever, when two countries, co existent with a nearly six decade long relationship of hostility and cautious contrivance, compete against each other in this sport.

What is the sport indicative of to be recipient to such a status, distinct from the other sports? Cricket enjoys popularity pervading all sections of the society. To consider cricket as an unproductive activity may deem you to be a non-patriot. It binds the country together in a way the national holidays have ceased to. After all, independence has been achieved. But a new cricket match between the parent nation and the child nation means a fresh challenge, a challenge to insist that the parent will always be superior to the child, and the challenge for the child to exhort the development of his identity. And this insistence on a nationalistic identity finds acquaintance in all ages because cricket is youthful. The young thus connect with it, the younger see their future in it, the old see their youth in it. Because cricket is one game that every boy in the country plays, it is the national sport above the indigenous products like hockey, polo, chess or badminton.

It may have been a while since some violent upheavals occurred at the grounds and the crowds may appear well behaved, but no Indian still supports the Pakistani team. If he does, he is deemed to be an outcast, and this is when contingent betting is considered as a thing of the past, or so it seems. The 20000 plus people seated at the rims of the grassy grounds and above that, and some millions who sat glued to the television from the stroke of the clock at 5:30 to the fading of the lights at 9 are more than just spectators. They are participants of the game, to whom the victory of their team matters more than it may to the players themselves. The atmosphere in the stands is exuberant, actual festivals may not seem worthy of the festive spirit of the occasion, classroom and office gossip may cease to relate to anything other than Dhoni’s locks and yuvraj’s swearing and the like for the next week and a half, the soaps ratings’ may be recording a low, the essence of the phenomenon is that the victory is addressed in the first person plural rather than being credited to just the Indian cricket team. The victory in the game is seen more than a victory of its national heroes, it is seen as the victory of the nation.

Victory in cricket is seen as the victory of the nation and a defeat as the nation’s defeat, even when the sole sport may not even be a coherent indicator of the failure of efficacy of the nation’s sports administration, leave aside it being representative of the entire country’s machinery. But then such symbolism is only momentary. What drives this passion amongst the populace of the two countries is that unlike the existent history of the two countries charachterised by hostility and coldness, the cricket ground is one where there are results. A victorious result is reason for celebration and a defeat is enough quid pro quo for frustration manifesting itself into violence and other condemnable forms of heat, light, sound and muscular energy.

The cricket ground is a miniature representation of the aspirations of the two countries’ populace. Each wants victory. None can tolerate defeat. The leaders have just to realize such, and deliver a result where both are victorious.
Till then who is to deny that an Indo-pak match with drinks, snacks and friends is fun to watch? And it’s a double treat, when its with a win! Way to go India!

16k it is!

Its sweet sixteen baby! The sensex today crossed the 16000 mark and went stronger into the day to close at an all time high of over 16200 after an intra- day trading of almost 600 points. The question now remains, however, just how long is the saccharine gonna retain its sweetness.
The market has seen volatile trading for a long time now and the rally over the last 7 and a half weeks which led to the 1000 pt increase was charachterised by as much. A 20 % change in the index from the opening mark, which leads to a close to the day’s trading means as much as 3000+ pts change at the 15000+ level. Below the 20% level, there is no mechanism to check volatility and given the latest predominant bullish trend in the market and its increasing tendency to react sharply to even minor developments in the national and global markets, this development was long overdue. In fact, the 53 days that the last 1000 points leading to the 16 K mark took seem like an inordinately prolonged period for such a run.
However, it shall not come as a surprise to many if the sensex touches the 17000 mark within the week. Given the recent speculation about the central bank announcing a cut in the bank rate, for market experts across the country and around the globe are of the opinion that there is an increasing credit crunch in the country and that the rates have been high for a very long time, and especially in the light of the fed bank rate cut of 50 basis pts announced yesterday, even decent trading of about 200 to 300 pts up at the end of the day should do the trick. Also, expected to contribute to this bullish run are the dark horse stocks, those that did not participate in the run up to the 16k mark and are trading lower than their usual trading levels, but are fundamentally good stocks, even expected to grow better.
Despite the volatility, the asian economies are growing fundamentally stronger by the day, even as the fed bank in its statement expressed concerns about the direction in which the American economy is heading. Experts throughout the world vouch for the fact that its in asia today where all the big money is. However, what degree of correlation can be attributed to the incredible rise in the sensex and nifty vis a vis the growth factor will become clear in the following weeks.
Meanwhile the age old investment advice holds even more promise today- invest in fundamentally sound companies and do not get carried away by volatile and sharp market sentiments. For in the long run, one may expect the front runner stocks of this rally to get cheaper because a correction in the market is long overdue and such high volatility in the markets at such high rates will be hard to sustain. Quick money, however, is on the cards for the smart and agile players.
Till then, its sexy sixteen!

Orkut treats

Some personalised friend requests can be really amusing. Here's a sample:

Hai Nalini, So You Looks very Interesting Personality by your Profile , Your way of writing words & attitute & Specialy by your Community....When I saw The Community that is "Military Technology"...You're the first on my eyes Nalini , that a Girl like this Community & She's from India thats really very impressive...Thats why I need to know you & Want you to be my Orkut Friend..
But if you truely like me as your Orkut Friend too....So First you've to take clear & deep look into my Profile , Pics , Specialy My Commnunity...Its must be given you a cleart views about me , who I am , what I need & Want from a Person whos in the Orkut & why Im inside the Orkut , My taste...everthing that essentials for knowing the person truely by words....

Now its upto you Nalini...what you gonna do

Mr. X (name omitted)

ROTF! I am a person who generally admires hard work.. inspite of that Mr. X , if you ever read this post, i am really sorry i couldnt bring myself to accept your friend request

just passing by

Courtesy can assume ridiculous forms. Take this example of passing communication for instance.

I was descending the staircase after class. I saw a girl climbing the stairs my way. There was no one else in the vicinity. She looked at me. I looked back at her. She didn’t look away. I smiled at her. She smiled back. I smiled back again. She greeted me, “Hey! How have you been?” I replied “Good! What’s been up with you?” She replied, “Usual, catch you around later anyway… Gotta rush for a class”. I bade her farewell, “Sure, see you around later”. We crossed each other. She left for the class and I left for the grounds.

And I am almost certain that neither of us knew the other.

What you saying, woman????

“I think the purdah system should be abolished”!!!. Oh dear! There goes the dodo.

I wasn’t really too excited by the prospect of Pratibha Patil being made first citizen of my country because of some instincts which were inexplicable to me then. She just had to open her mouth and make some noise for me to dawn upon the realization that my instincts had already unobtrusively comprehended the irrepressible truth- that there were no brains behind all the big talk.

Her first public utterance after being chosen by the U-Pratibha-Alliance as the nominee for the post of the president was audaciously characteristic of self flattery- one that seemed to hail the decision of the ruling party coalition of having chosen her. What cheek! And then you go as far as asking age old traditional customs to be abolished in a night’s hours.

I confess that I have a proclivity of siding with the conservatives generally. Disregarding that too, in the pure spirit of enquiry, I wish to ask what essentially is wrong with the purdah system? In countries like England and America, it has, of course, come to be identified with a suspiciously-eyed, even hated, community- the Islamists. So much is the attention even the Sikhs attract, as much as does every brown man or a black man. I, for one, trust human ingenuity enough to believe that it can identify a south asian or an east asian, for example, rather comfortably, even without a burkha or a pagdi or a kimono. We are different races of people all over the globe and all races have physical charachteristics typical of them. Thereby, even as the question of the burkha or the pagdi being prospectively banned in England sounds perverse to me; the suggestion of my probable president, Pratibha ji is something I simply I cannot digest.

The purdah is a tradition that has not harmed any woman till date. I fail to see what this lady is trying to arrive at.

She calls her nomination a big step for the women in the country. I am not too sure too many women think so. I, for one, don’t.

Let's play

The guardian quick crossword, appearing 6 days a week in the Hindu, has been one of my favourite spaces in the newspaper. Unlike the Sunday crossword, I do not end up developing a ‘I – know- nothing’ complex after solving the crossword. Quite often I end up filling in all the white boxes (albeit many a time wrongly) and what follows is a sense of complete elation at having beat the crossword at its own game.

The crossword is after all one impish gamer.It dodges you and you chase it. And when you think the chase is almost over and there's just one clue left to decode, it throws at you a googly. Try which way, you can solve that clue only by stepping into the shoes of the troublemaker. Take for example, the clue that reads: ‘old sphinx (6)’. You have just one letter of the word from a cross word (s_ _ _ _ _). You break you head, search up all your neurons, still finding nothing you decide to make use of technology (yes! After long moments of debating whether or not to give the final credit of solving the crossword puzzle to the artificial world, you decide in its favour) and wiki arrives! But alas, wiki doesn’t give you any synonym for the sphinx.

You google and you arrive at no results either. What in the world was the sphinx called earlier and why in the world does wiki not know that, and If wiki doesn’t know it, and nor does google, then how in the world do they expect someone to decrypt the clue? A mania of sorts grips you and an obsession to outbeat the crossword. And that’s just where it ends. The crossword has won.

The next day you inquisitively pick up the paper and turn first to the second page of metroplus ( and without first having a look at calvin and hobbes), frantically look for the answer that dodged you all of the previous day. ‘sphinx’. You read and you re-read aghast. You are angry. And then suddenly you are amused. Of course! The old sphinx was never called anything else. It was always the sphinx. Wiki knew the answer after all. And so did you all this while. But the crossword won because it played while you competed. There’s a fine line between the two but what makes all the difference is which side you choose.