Rant 90: Turn the page

I was struggling to find a way to incorporate all the stories I've had so far since I came to the UK last year in September... I suppose you will have to make do with this for now
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To Live is to Die

i am inured to death...

Everyday I wake up thinking "there is at least one person on this Earth who has already died today or will die today...at least one..." it is a thought that's not very comforting, how we take death so matter of factly when it appears in newsprint or on TV, how we are so inured to it that we just expect that the next time we wake up, a thousand people, who are loved by a thousand others, will be gone forever...

But then again, what is death? Do we really know? Nobody has ever come back and said "oh yeah, it's a sad place!" OR "oh yeah, it's the best existence ever". 

So basically, it is the ultimate unknown..forget the depths of the ocean or the vastness of space..death is the one question nobody can answer...i think that if somebody can answer the question of death, then he/she can answer the question to life as well

...no one knows if you feel happiness or sadness at the end of it. No one knows if you feel pain or are painless. No one knows if there is an "other side". I use the word "knows" in the pure scientific sense where "knowing something" involves absolute proof...

i am inured to death...

and it started one fine morning in the city of Jamshedpur, Jharkhand (formerly Bihar), India, where my father was taking me and my brother to the local recreation club (United Club) for a swimming session. We were on a yellowish-greenish Lambretta scooter, license plate starting DBI....the three of us, and were just about to enter the main road in Kadma outside our house when a crowd of people on the road caught our attention.

what's going on? why are there so many people? why is there a truck standing in the middle of the road with a crowd of people around it? why is there a delay to me leaving the house at the age of who-knows-what, to me enjoying an enjoyable swim?

the answers came as we moved closer...i managed to poke my head through the crowd and caught a glimpse. a man lying on the road with his right cheek almost drowned in a pool of blood and his head was literally opened up. a large section of his brain was on the road. a motorbike lay right next to him...

i wish i could draw, i wish i had spent more time in the art school that was situated about 200 metres from this death scene. i wish i could draw this death scene for you, but i can't. i have it in my memory...the way the pink brain matter was flowing out from his head, the way everybody in the crowd was just standing shocked...the way his eyes and mouth were open, while the brain matter and blood inched its way towards full view from behind his head on the road.

Apparently a baby gains 80% of his knowledge from his/her mother...maybe the remaining 20% is what his/her eyes can show in the first few years of life

...i was told later that the man lying dead was a policeman who had been chasing somebody on his enfield motorcycle and had collided with a truck...whether this is true or not i don't know but it has stayed with me since...

maybe this is why I'm inured to death.

i spent all of the next day poring through newspapers, looking for something, anything on this incident.. even a small column...we had a cousin living with us at the time, Lipsa, and i distinctly remember her saying something along the lines of "oh it probably wasn't that big an incident, otherwise it would have made the news".  the newspaper was sort of a 50% orange colour..like an economic times kind of colour

I did not find him. i looked really hard, promise. i really wanted to...this man who was probably doing his duty, who lived by it and literally died by it, who had the potential to change human nature itself with the simple action of catching a law-breaker...he deserved a mention...people needed to know...but nothing  that i found suggested he was given a mention...

does it mean no one cared? no it doesn't. a mother, a father..perhaps brothers and sisters, perhaps friends...the shock when somebody you know and love dies. is that unbearable? 

BUT does my policeman friend care? you don't know do you? you don't know if he's feeling really pissed off about his death. should he feel pissed off? maybe it's all over, or maybe he's sitting in a cloud playing a harp...if somebody ends their life, people might say "oh that's a bad thing because he's left all of us so sad, and he's so selfish yada yada yada"

nobody ever stops to think that maybe the guy who's dead can no longer care...

five people crying...five thousand crying? doesn't make any difference to that person...he's gone...

today i read that a plane crash in Nepal had killed some people, while a woman in Ireland had allowed her son to be taken away by people to be shot in the legs for being a drug user. at the other end, it was breaking news that some person was seen in public wearing a bikini a few months after her fake implanted boobs had exploded...

sometimes i feel like the world wasn't good enough for my policeman friend...

Both Death and News have come a long way

Rant 89: The most important sportsman

The lights shone bright on the green surface some hundred yards away from where I sat. On the surface, individuals from a certain sports team I favoured were battling it out for top honours against their rivals. The tension was immense and threatened to overshadow the excitement of watching the title clash unfolding in front of me. The crowd – which had packed the stands to breaking point - had been waiting for what seemed like ages. Some, like me, stood transfixed by the action, unable to move; others had closed their eyes in silent prayer; still others were singing their hearts out for that extra piece of inspiration to surge the team onward.

At last, just as all hope was lost, the winning moment arrived as my team’s captain pulled off a spectacular strike to send the packed house into delirium.

Replace team with either the Indian cricket team or Manchester United. The strange bit is perhaps the fact that there is not much by way of differences to compare. Perhaps this is because both sports occupy the primary position of following in their respective countries.

Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary (right)

Fans of either team, or even just of the sport itself, are a curious brand of patrons. It doesn’t matter whether you’re spending more than eight hours in 40-degree heat to watch India pull off a world cup win, or spending two hours in minus-four-degree cold to see United see off noisy neighbours Manchester City. The sheer amount of passion and dedication employed by both sets of fans is the same.

Chacha Cricket

For thousands, a match is more than just a result. Days, sometimes entire lives, are based around following their team. Take the case of Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary,  who was awared an honourary ticket for all of India’s home matches, or Pakistan fan Chaudhry Abdul Jalil lovingly known as chacha (uncle) insert picture or the Portsmouth fan, who legally had his name changed to John Anthony Portsmouth Football Club Westwood to show his dedication for the south coast side.

John Westwood

The fan following has a curious effect on the rest of the populace, at least in the case of India and Pakistan. The two nations may be at odds over several political issues, and border tensions may be high, but Chaudhary and Chacha are guaranteed recipients of match tickets and travel visas when the two sides meet in their respective backyards. As a result, entire nations can shake off political differences.

It just goes to show how sport can transcend borders, and as Wanderley Luxemburgo, Brazil football team’s coach in 1999 said: "A player who conjugates a verb in the first person singular cannot be part of the squad, he has to conjugate the verb in the first person plural. We. We want to conquer. We are going to conquer. Using the word I when you're in a group makes things complicated."

The true sports fan is the 12th man for any team, and will perhaps be the first to speak the aforementioned words.

Rant 88: I miss you

I am about to embark upon a new chapter in my life. It will take place in a foreign land. I will be taking on an educational challenge that will define my career, meeting new people, building on some acquaintances, and continuing a very special relationship. I cannot begin to describe how excited I am about this new chapter. (For brevity's sake, let's assume: I am excited).
However, I will leave behind some incredible memories and:-

1) The culmination of perhaps India's most revolutionary time since the Emergency. I do not have an opinion on the cause that "team Anna" and the government are at loggerheads over. However, the buzz about anti-corruption seems to have reached a frenzy and god help me, I might just miss that.

2) The first ever Formula One Indian Grand Prix. Like it for its thrill-a-minute excitement or hate it for the extreme waste of natural resources, the sport will gain a huge amount of attention once the five red lights go out at the Buddh International Circuit in Delhi. I will miss being a part of the action.

3) Metallica's first Indian concert. I fell to the peer pressure tactic of listening to heavy metal back in my high school days. And while I've discarded most of the bands that I thought I liked back then, Metallica remains a band that I still enjoy very much. I probably cannot tell my E flat note from my B-Major-extended-then-drop-it-down-two-notches-before-using-your-thumb-on-the-E-string chord, but the acquired listening taste towards ear-splitting music is well worth the intense neck pain from a night of drunken headbanging whilst rapidly air-guitaring. I will miss doing that on the national stage.

4) Sporting revenge. After all the back-slapping/public flogging about how England thoroughly beat the flying shit out of India was over, we realised that England probably had the upper hand thanks to home advantage. Well, among several other reasons I'm sure, but let's keep the home advantage tag for argument's sake. Well Sir! you'll find that India are top dogs in our own backyard as well! Come October and England visit India, so bloody hell, I'm going to thoroughly miss the sight of our Men in Blue exacting revenge.

Rant 87: Do you vomit Blue???

And so at last the bubble has burst. After months and months of self-aggrandisement, it has finally been proven that simply waving a flag, "having the best batting order", and the most "cunning captain in the world", cannot save a cricket team from being absolute s**t when the situation calls for it.
To all the media hacks and Ravi Shastri who claim that our batting, bowling, selection policy and Kris Srikkanth's slurred ramblings are the best, you are wrong!! Because as we all know, the hard-working Indian cricket fan is the world's greatest batsman (arrey front foot pey khelo saale bhadwe!!!), the world's greatest bowler (round the wicket pphekega toh swing karega dekhna!), and of course selector (abey woh west zone key against biased hai isliye nai choose kiya mujhe).
And so I decided to explore what the paying public had to say about the damning humiliation that has befallen our cricketers in Jolly Ol' England. The article itself does not matter too much. It could range from "Dhoni should employ more spinners" to "My grandmother with Alzheimer could have played that shot better".... I picked out the aptly titled: "Why Team India is in a state of free fall" .
The points made were astute I guess: reasons for the defeat, our under-preparedness, our selection policy, our batting, our bowling, our dinner break, and topped off with the poignant conclusion that "hah! Ganguly could have done a much better job. I told u so, but forget it, I'm off to have some misti doi"
And as predicted, a plethora of comments ensued. SK clearly had the measure of things in terms of coaches as he sounded a warning to the BCCI by claiming: "I hope this is the clear sign of lossing a GARY KRISTAN." Clearly, the players are not focused enough because we seem to have lost any memory of a coach called Gary "Kristan". Presumably Mr Kristan was the interim coach after Gary Kirsten resigned from his post.
VCjob took on the task of speaking for all the grumpy-old-men of India's middle-class, who never return the cricket ball when it lands in their front yard. We lost the match "because cricket is a freaking game of chance and Indians are wasting youngster's talent and time on this worthless game." Well said Sir! Mr Malhotra from house no. 42 will visit you soon and gift you some barfi as soon as his afternoon siesta is done and he has taken his meds for the day.
Charudatta Lamaye, in his infinite wisdom, outlined a 12-point programme for the resurrection of our fortunes, where the phrase knee-jerk reaction at last had a champion, and pearls such as "cannot judge Munaf as he did not play" wreaked havoc among the BCCI elite! This author would like to add that we also cannot judge Parthiv Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Sunil Gavaskar, my neighbour, my neighbour's daughter and the alleyway rascal who keeps sending her rude letters, as all these characters did not play the match either.
A teary-eyed Anand Bhagwat recalled the old days, and keeping small matters like grammar and coherence completely out of the equation, bellowed: "India should play aggresively...If Ganguly is caption the were different, Indian team doesn't have face their...Its look like India is not playing there...we are Missing Sourav's agression." Quite why Ganguly would want to be the "caption" for the sorry picture of Indian cricket is unclear.
Jay, having flipped through the entire rulebook of cricket, promptly threw it out the window and concluded that cricket, after all, is a one-man game. And not just any man, but somebody who's literally broken his back for the love of the game. Yet, the immediate reaction demanded by Jay was: "Tendulkar should quit playing Test cricket as an apology to the nation." According to rumours, a visibly shocked Tendulkar later issued a press release where it was his precise intention to speak during Parliament's winter session, donate a million gallons of milk to his local temple, and whip himself dry while wearing a pink tutu and asking himself: "have I made it large??"
Ashish, fresh out of Harvard Business School and having watched his girlfriend deliver a sexy report on NDTV Profit, attempted to explain things a little more scientifically. And of course, being the financially astute gentleman he is, his analogy referred to the US and its ongoing problems. "its just one of the bad patches," he remarked. "just like the downward spiral of the Dow Index as SnP downgraded US from AAA to AA....its something similar. Kind of a jolt, nothing to be worried about. Team India still has the substance, just as US gives good returns despite being AA."
So there you go! Bums on Seats are what make our country the fine democrazy it is, and our cricket team the best damn actors to grace the Kingfisher 2011 Calendar.
There are several of us however, who worry about the real problems facing this country, and Tapan Kumar's comment at the very bottom of the page highlights concerns that I'm sure each and every one of us faces at some point in our lives.
"If appears that bengalis might have f..ked you under someones consent that's you are nervous about permanant erection."

Rant 86: Chaos is always politically correct

I've always wondered what the world looked like when the lights change...
shame a butterfly is used mostly as an unlikely example of the impending madness...


The madness spares no one, regardless of gender, race, creed, colour, or any other form of man-made distinction...when it's time to go, it's one big fucking blur...

Ah there it is!

Rant 85: Let's not forget....

...the elephant in the room called emotion...

nobody likes to be given a full dose of it