How does 9/11 affect me?

It doesn't. Because if it does, then it means that I let those cowards who killed all those innocents win. And I'll be damned if I let a terrorist get one up on me.

Still the Number 1!

It was a hiding so terrible, that I was prepared to go into hibernation until we played Bangladesh again. But our savior, the BCCI has decided that enough is enough. Taking inspiration from Anna Hazare's fight for independence, the BCCI has decided that we will never be owned by the English as were this time. The No.1 ranking is ours for life. Cue some financial muscle flexing. Followed by an official statement from the ICC.


The ICC has decided to herewith chalk off the results of the recent England - India test series. A 4-0 thrashing will never exist in our record books. India has also been summarily re-instated to the top of the rankings in test cricket. Reasons are:

1) Unsuitable playing conditions
This has nothing to do with the pitch. In fact it deals with the conditions behind the bowler's arm. In keeping with our aim of promoting test cricket, a screaming, chaotic crowd of 5000 people behind the bowler is acceptable. A bunch of geriatrics sitting in crisp tie, blazer and hat does not showcase test cricket as an exciting sport. It also confused the Indian batsmen into thinking that they were attending a lazy Sunday morning brunch, rather than a battle for the No.1 spot. This is also attributed as the sole reason for Suresh Raina languidly played 42 deliveries without scoring and getting out twice. Or the hungrier Virender Sehwag getting out twice in 2 balls, so that he could hit the buffet table out of the park. They simple did not realize that this wasn't a gentle knockabout until food was served.

2) The Englishmen are NOT English
Take away Andrew Strauss, Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott, Matt Prior, Alastair Cook, Eoin Morgan and Ravi Bopara. A bunch of South Africans, a couple of Irishmen and an Indian. That's more than half the team down. A cricket team representing England must have wholly English players naturally.

3) Distraction to the point of skullduggery
The England team sheet gave no indication to the sort of players it was sending out. The official complaint from MS Dhoni has been upheld entirely and is reproduced here verbatim.
"We expected a portly 42 year old 'cook' to open the batting. When we saw who came out, we even offered to loan them Yuvraj Singh, who fits the description much better. But they refused. At the fall of the first wicket, there was supposed to be a 'bell', so that we could take a break and shoot some advertisements about making things large. Even then somebody came in to bat. It didn't stop there. When we somehow managed to get over our shock after a couple of hours and get someone else out, we were expecting a frail 90 year old 'trotting' in to bat. What we got instead, was a man who could bat for 90 hours non-stop. It wasn't just restricted to the batting as well. A buxom blonde 'broad' was supposed to open the bowling. And quite frankly, there should have been a graceful 'swann' in the line-up. Not a twitter obsessed nutter, who can turn the ball a mile. And their coach! When I promised Sakshi, I would get her a 'flower' in the evening, I most certainly did not mean to get her a scary looking Zimbabwean!"

Keeping all these reasons in mind, we have decided to re-instate India back to the number 1 spot.


Ravi Shastri has even modified his favorite dialogue on this momentous occasion. "It isn't over even when it's over", he bellowed.

We, The Politicians

It doesn’t take long for the blame game to start. It doesn’t even require a push these days. Just a gentle nudge from some TRP hungry television cameras can have us foaming at the mouth while criticizing the government. The government, as its wont in the current blasts case, will happily pass the buck onto security. The security conveniently blames the intelligence received. The intelligence then privately blames the government interference. So overall, where does the buck stop?
Maybe it is time it stopped with us? After all, we are the ones who elected the government to represent us. Yet we have a team Anna Hazare which claims to represent ‘civil society’. Who then do our elected MPs and MLAs represent? It has barely been 2 years since we elected our MPs to the Lok Sabha. Yet we now need someone else representing our true interests. Everything which our government does is looked at with a cynical if not downright mistrustful eye. With good reason perhaps. But how does that make for a healthy society?
Try raising taxes to negotiate a growing economy in an uncertain economic climate. Blasphemy. Citizens go on fast and demand black money to be brought back. Try raising petrol prices to reflect the growing oil prices. Unthinkable. The opposition will stage a walk out in protest. Try hanging someone who was responsible for attacking the very symbol of the world’s largest democracy. And we’ll have human rights activists shouting themselves hoarse. Sadder perhaps is the fact, that in all the furore over Kasab, we have completely forgotten that Afzal Guru has still not been dealt with. In fact if I am totally honest, in a few years’ time it will take me take a few seconds to even remember who Afzal Guru is.
We take pride in the fact that we are a resilient nation. 7/11, 26/11, 12/13 and now 7/13. These are just the major ones. As always, we will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and move on. In the future, these will just be numbers to us. They say the public has a short memory. And why not? We have a living to make. So after all the public posturing after every attack, we will go back to cutting corners on security, turn a blind eye to someone happily accepting a bribe and maybe even pay one ourselves to curry favour or to get out of potentially sticky situations. We can call it resilience. Or we can be really honest with ourselves and call it apathy. We don’t care as long as our lives and our comfort are not disrupted.
How different then, are we from the politicians we so love to despise? We may not be happy with our candidate. But will that make us vote for a highly respected but an independent political greenhorn like Meera Sanyal when she stands in the elections? Not a chance. We will stick to our party favorite seasoned old politician. Or if I continue with the Meera Sanyal example, the seasoned old politician’s son, so that family tradition is upheld. Meera Sanyal got barely 1% of the votes in that election. We give our politicians the mandate to do as they please. So then why complain when they do exactly that? We will complain about the MNS or other rabidly regional parties as being nothing more than a bunch of goons. Yet we will go ahead and vote for them and make the MNS the second largest party in Mumbai. Why? Why do we say one thing and do the exactly the opposite?
Maybe because we, the people, have a little bit of that politician we hate in every one of us. And probably that is what has brought our country to the state in which it is today. Maybe it is time to stop blaming the government for everything that is going wrong and just take a good, long, hard look at ourselves.

So what is it?

War. Some said. Biggest match ever, someone else said. Just a stupid colonial hangover cricket game, said others. And 2 days later, after innumerable cups of coffee to bring an extremely hoarse throat back to normal, I myself am not quite sure.
For most of us Indians, Pakistanis remain a group of faceless, nameless individuals. We don’t know them. We have never seen them. We don’t know much about them, except the fact they happen to be very similar to us in many aspects. But we sure as hell hate them. It is easier to hate them as long as they remain that bunch of people, who we have never met. We scream and jeer at the sight of every Pakistani on a TV screen. A different religion has got nothing to do with it. We just hate them because they are ‘them’. Yes maybe every single one of us hates someone we know, but our hate for Pakistan is special. Go to youtube and check out the comments section of any Indian cricket video. Every generation of every family of both nations has been cursed into oblivion. Maybe to continue the great rivalry there as well.
At least for me, this blindness is what this cricket match changed. I watched the match here with a bunch of around 40 Pakistanis. And suddenly ‘those Pakistanis’ were not faceless and nameless anymore. I saw them; I talked to them and even shook hands with them. The Indians outnumbered the Pakistanis by almost 5:1. Yet the rendition of the Pakistani national anthem captured me. It was the first time I had ever heard it sung with such gusto and in such close proximity. I was moved to the extent of checking it out on youtube and to my pleasant surprise, I was not the only one who had been moved. For once, the comments section featured comments from Indians saying they checked out the video as they really liked the anthem after hearing it during the match. The loudest collective cheer in the room went up when a banner showed up on the big screen, linking the flags of India and Pakistan together with the word friends. And when the match ended, instead of jeering, the entire Indian contingent went up to the Pakistanis and congratulated them on a great match. No blind hatred. No abusing. Just a healthy (and newly found) camaraderie. So definitely more than a cricket match.
But then again, does it change the fact we still fight over the Kashmir issue? Does it change the fact that both sides have innocent people of the other nation locked up in jails on the pretext of being spies? Does it change the fact that 26/11 happened and Pakistan admitted responsibility for it? The so-called peace talks continue to flounder with the regularity of an Obama vacation. Both set of politicians will resort to petty point scoring to curry favor with the UN and the US. So what tangible change did the cricket match bring about? Nothing other than a big photo-op. And mind you, I have not even considered the result of the match. So just a cricket match it was then.
Or was it? I leave you to wonder with this. Kyun itni nafrat (why so much hate) as Afridi says? I don’t know. I don’t even know what the fuss was all about. What was it?
P.S. The final is still to come for India. It is only to deal with the high anticipation and some extremely nervous energy levels which made me look back at the last match. Bleed Blue!

Chaos Theory

Chaos. It is everywhere. And don't we absolutely love it. We after all elected a group of 15 parties to form a government. It was hardly going to be smooth sailing now was it? Every morning with a maniacal gleam, we scan the newspapers for new scams. In fact I am pretty sure the next Wikileaks expose will reveal that an early morning coffee with a new scam is fast becoming the laxative of choice in India.
And what scams we have. We invented the zero. And now our politicians take great pride in upholding this rich heritage. So while Laloo Yadav goes for a 10000 crore scam, Madhu Koda goes for 100000 crores. Suresh Kalmadi adds another 0. While A. Raja puts another 0 in his pocket. And mind you, our politicians are a generous lot. Kapil Sibal throws a few 0s in Arun Shourie's direction. Sushma Swaraj happily chucks a few 0s back. So much so that our entire Parliament is filled with a bunch of zeroes. Pun absolutely unintended.
So apparently a few MPs were bribed to keep the Manmohan Singh government in power in 2008. All the hullabaloo and righteous anger and shock aside, the news was probably as surprising as finding out that Charlie Sheen had a few screws loose in that head of his. Sadly, the warlock Sheen has been sacked from Two and a Half Men. All because of the biggest clash of egos in this world since Lalit Modi once looked at himself in the mirror.
However, another expose from our beloved whistle blower, Wikileaks (I have a strong feeling those guys have some blood relation with our traffic policemen), claim that all of Sheen's antics with 'tiger blood' and 'winning' were in fact tactics to land himself a new job. As chief motivator for the Bangladesh Cricket Team. With the goddesses acting as cheerleaders. Perfect strategy that! Please take note Mr. Modi.
Unfortunately with Bangladesh out of the World Cup, poor Charlie is out of a job again. The mind numbingly long group stages of the World Cup are also over. In fact the mind numbing has gone to such an extent, that Aussie coach Tim Nielsen is now challenging Ravi Shastri for spouting the most inanities. So competing with 'cricket is cricket' and 'a six is a six is a six', comes 'Our match against India is a mini final'. Oh right Mr. Nielsen. We never knew what a 'quarter final' meant in the first place! Actually it is no surprise that the World Cup has been so dull until now. Pakistan have been exceptionally well behaved (more like calm before the storm is my guess) with the exception of the one man chaos army of Kamran Akmal. And when the most exciting games involve England (of all countries), you know just how soporific things can get. Granted that the England players are and play like a bunch of choking South Africans, but in the end they are all those stiff upright guys anyway. We need some chaos here!
One trusted source of mine within the ICC reports that they are actually considering the idea of making the remaining teams watch videos of Arsenal defending to give them an idea of the sort of chaos desired. One ball to defend and the team forgets how to defend, what defending is and probably even what sport involves defending. Cue utter chaos. More of that in the World Cup should make it fun to watch.
But there is one person who is happy in all this chaos. Heath Ledger's Joker is probably looking down from somewhere and cackling away at the sight of it all! Theory in practice.