Hit me baby one more time

This song seems to be on a loop in the playlist of quite a few people in the recent while. Admittedly, there are different interpretations that each one makes out of it, but royalty paid to Britney Spears has certainly gone through the roof.

1. Donald Trump

He has been reportedly listening to it with a manic gleam in his eyes. The more controversies he is hit with, the better. He revels in taking stick as the leader of Obama's birther conspiracies. So much so that he recently had to release his own birth certificate to prove that he wasn't fathered by an orangutan (Serious!). What a triumph that was!

2. Barack Obama

The poor guy has been listening to it with a rather resigned look on his face. He can't seem to do anything these days without escaping criticism. Budget. BAM! Foreign affairs. BAM! Holidays with family. BAM BAM!! "What has Biden been up to again? Oh come on now!!"

3. Lance Armstrong

A modified version of this is apparently a long time favorite of Lance and he sang it everyday until 2005. Or so he claims. It goes, "Hit me up baby one more time. With needles, syringes and epinephrine". He has been heard listening to it again recently though. Dosing up before delivering one of the most sham apologies the world has seen?

4. Maria Sharapova

The women's dressing room is apparently cowering in terror as Maria starts shrieking this out at full pelt before every match imagining herself to be the tennis ball. It has affected her opponents so badly that she became the first woman to win two matches 6-0 6-0 consecutively. Even Venus Williams was battered into submission. Maria strives to continue with it at all future matches beyond the Australian Open.

5. Ravindra Jadeja

Ravindra Jadeja apparently had this as a theme song whenever he went in to bowl. Until he watched Pulp Fiction. And in his best Samuel L Jackson imitation went, "Hit me baby, one more time" and proceeded to unload on the hapless Jade Dernbach. The hairstyle is definitely getting there Jadeja. Now to work on those sideburns and beard.

Breaking Out

So I have a bone to pick. And it is with the fourth estate. There used to be a time when I would sit with an open newspaper in front of me, the first thing in the morning. Spend about half an hour to 45 minutes reading about what was going on in the world and then happily go about my business. Key point. Happily.

Not anymore though. The headline in the picture above is a rare attempt at bringing humor to a serious subject. When was the last time anyone read a news article and finished it with a smile on their faces? Quite frankly the only purpose news serves these days is to remind me to be thankful that I am not suffering the same as the people mentioned in there. Every time I open a website, my biggest fear is seeing a banner headline on the top with the letters in twice the font as the rest of the page. That just spells disaster. Even when there is none of that, the rest of the stuff is just downright despairing.

Just a short sample of the news I have been reading through the last few days: School shootings, rapes, fiscal cliff, debt ceiling, some more shootings, bombings, missile attacks, soldiers getting killed, corruption scandals, hate speeches. Give it a rest! Am I to believe that there is no positive news in the world and in the last couple of weeks there have been no positive deeds? In despair, I turn to the sports section. Where being a fan of Arsenal and the Indian cricket team does you absolutely no favors. Even the usually reliably positive Sachin Tendulkar articles started catching on tinges of sourness, until he decided to announce his retirement. Cue the emotional tear-jerking overdrive. But hey, I am not complaining. At least there is still some positivity to it!

Faith in the government is probably lower than at any other point in history. You would be hard pressed to find someone in India who would think that the current Prime Minister is doing a good job. And half the population in the US believes the wrong man was elected as the President. Even the remaining half is not fully convinced that the right man was elected. It was just that the alternative was worse. And opinions seem to sink lower everyday. And why won’t it? Where is there any positive news about the government on our news channels? They surely cannot be doing everything wrong! If they did, we wouldn’t have a world to live in. So they must be doing something right. But what is that something? Your guess is as good as mine.

Now I am not claiming that negative news items should be brushed under the carpet. Of course we deserve to know what is going wrong in the world. But even these news items can be reported in a positive light. Shootings are disturbing. But more focus on the victims and the families affected would probably be more positive than focusing almost exclusively on the shooter’s movements to almost last minute precision. I do not need to know how many computer games Adam Lanza played a day before the shootings or how many times he reloaded and discarded his cartridges. Though I would definitely like to know more about the children whose lives he cut short. It is a choice between feeling grief when reading about the victims or feeling anger when reading about the shooter. Neither of them is particularly positive but then anger never really helped anybody.

In the brutal rape in India, I find it surprising that no Indian news agency seems to have reported the victim’s name. The foreign media, on the other hand is freely reporting her name after the family gave interviews and permission to do so. It simply baffles me. More so because the names of her assailants are quite freely released. We do not live in China or North Korea where every bit of information is spoon-fed to us. Then why this selective journalism? And what kind of message are we sending out by glorifying the evil and neglecting the victims. We just encourage more copycat incidents. You want to get your name in the papers? Sure! Go ahead and do something notorious. More negative news to report. More newspapers sold.

Sigh! We need Raju Srivastava for Prime Minister, I tell you. Only hope for such headlines.

New beginnings

I was having a look at my earlier posts here today. The last time I wrote here, Pratibha Patil was still the Indian President. Ajmal Kasab was still alive. Shah Rukh Khan’s KKR were still the crappiest team in the IPL. Rahul Dravid was still playing regularly. I was still studying. Dinosaurs still roamed this planet. Oh wait, hang on. Got carried away there for a moment. Though it has been, to put it in a word, AGES!

Every year, I make resolutions for the new year. I solemnly swear to follow each and every one of them until my last breath. And then they are broken faster than you can say January! One I made this year is to get this blog running again. Clear out the cobwebs, dust it down and hope that it doesn’t lie discarded like some grand old haveli.

But blogs don’t write themselves. After all, I am not in the possession of Barack Obama’s autopen. Over the past year, I have used several excuses for not maintaining the blog. Being a lazy ass is what people called it. Having been sensitized to the American culture over the past couple of years, of having a politically correct name for everything, I called it writer’s block. And anyway the Mayans had done us a massive favor. I mean what was the point in doing anything if the world was about to end on December 21 right? In terms of a letdown, it was probably right up there with Bejan Daruwalla’s “India will win the World Cup in 2007 with Munaf Patel being Player of the Tournament”. Heck this time even Sachin Tendulkar was disappointed to the point of retirement.

And so 2013 rolled in. On a somber note for India. For once, protests moved out of Facebook and spilled out onto the streets, as we finally woke up to the fact that even though we might have been among the first countries in the world to have a woman head of state, we are still pretty much near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to dishing out respect to women in our capital. As disgusted as I am by the incident, I am proud of the response it has generated in the nation. It doesn't happen in every country. A similar incident would have almost gone unreported in the US, but for the efforts of the hacker group Anonymous. Sometimes we have to bring the problems of our society out in the public domain, for them to be recognized and rectified. And for that reason, I am proud. We probably need a change in mentality more than stricter laws, but at least we recognize the need for it.

2013 also came in on a somber note in the US. As the hours clicked by to December 31, US lawmakers quibbled among themselves as they pushed the country closer to the so called fiscal cliff and the world closer to another economic depression. Almost like giving a child a crystal ball to play with and asking him not to drop it. But then, probably we engineers aren't the only procrastinators in the world. With a year to work something out, a deal was finally reached at 2 am, a couple of hours past the deadline. That is probably when the magnitude of the influx of Indian engineers here really starts to hit you. We really are taking over the world aren't we?

Well this is only the beginning of the year and so many more positive things to look forward to in the coming months as I look to keep this going. It promises to be an exciting 2013! Now if only I can get my hands on that darned autopen..

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!