ICC's 'Hair'oics - Between a rock and a hard place

With Inboxes full of 'Hair'y puns (and SMSes galore) this is Hairdly the best time to be punny In zy humble opinion of this blogger. ( Yeah, that was a really pathetic one, wasn't it ? But, as Oscar Wilde famously said, "I can resist everything except temptation.") All right, nauseating jokes and puns aside, where do we go from here? If the ball wasn't tampered with, Hair and Doctrove made a gigantic blunder. It makes Hair's position on the Elite panel of umpires untenable. Other umpires before him have been booted off the panel for far lesser booboos. How long can the ICC continue to shield him? On the other hand, there are bound to be mutterings, especially from the Australian media and establishment, that the adjudicator and the ICC bowed to Asian money power and made Hair the scapegoat. The ICC's strange behaviour certainly lends credence to that view. It seems to want to run with the Hairs( sorry, hares) and hunt with the hounds. It wants to keep everybody happy - the Pakis and the rest of the Asians by proclaiming that there was no ball-tampering, and the white bloc by continuing to have Hair on the Elite panel. I wonder if they've heard of the phrase 'falling between two stools' ?

Cricket, Commentary, and Cliches

Perhaps, with advancing age, I'm becoming less and less tolerant. These days, everytime I watch a cricket match on the idiot box, I find myself gnashing my teeth at the 'commentary'. Commentary, my eye. It's an unending stream of cliches, delivered with monotonous, clockwork regularity by the so-called experts. A few, one can put up with. They can even serve to spice the discussion. It's when they replace the discussion that the whole mish-mash becomes intolerable. Barring a few honourable exceptions, most of these 'commentators' could be replaced with a tape-recorder.Who would know the difference ? 'The pitch looks like it may do something early on', 'Concentrate on line and length', 'He needs to play himself in for a few overs', 'Running between the wickets is the key', 'Catches win matches'...I could go on and on but I need to go and puke.
These statements may all be true but every toddler in the country knows them by heart by now.That's not what you are being paid a packet for, guys. Could we have some insight, some analysis of the state of the game, the play, the players, please ? Yes, as I mentioned earlier, there are a few exceptions, a few who stand out in this morass of mediocrity. First, Richie Benaud - he defines, for me, what television cricket commentary is, or should be, all about. Sharp, witty, analytical and to the point. Geoffrey Boycott (barring his soft corner for Saurav Ganguly) - unafraid to call a spade a spade. A typical Yorkshireman with no patience for niceties and diplomatese. Michael Holding - once one get's used to his West Indian accent, his grasp of the finer points of the game, his strength-weakness analysis of the players and his in-depth knowledge of the art and science of fast bowling is impressive. Ian Chappel - a no-holds-barred Aussie who tells it the way he sees it. A shrewd cricketing brain combined with a very Australian in-your-face attitude, no respecter of reputations. Sunil Gavaskar makes it to this list - just ! He has everything going for him - knowledge, vast experience, clarity of thought & the ability to express himself well. He suffers from two major handicaps, however. One, he never forgets that he is Sunil Gavaskar and, consciously or unconsciously, this egotism seems to permeate and colour his obiter dicta. Secondly, he has a huge blind spot where Sachin Tendulkar is concerned, a fault he shares with over 90 % of Indian cricket-lovers . While this may be acceptable in an ordinary spectator, a commentator must be able to put his personal prejudices aside. Barry Richards - I've only heard him a few times but, on those occasions, his commentary seemed as classy as his batting used to be.
Those were the Oscars. Now for the rozzies. And the winner is ( no prizes for guessing correctly, I'm afraid.) - Ravi Shastri. The unquestioned, unchallenged king of cliches. What ails the man ? He was a fairly good player ( despite the golden Audi, I refuse to rate him any higher), he understands the game well, a fact which manages to sneak through his volley of cliches sometimes, he's good-looking with a personality to match, and fluent in English with the sort of rapid-fire, error-a-minute convent-educated fluency that passes for good English in India. Yet all he can produce is cliche-laden verbal garbage masquerading as expert analysis. Could someone take him aside and tell him that verbosity is no substitute for intellectual rigour? While you're at it, please, please tell him that the correct phrase is 'Rest assured' and not 'Be rest assured' ? In fact, ask him to give that phrase a rest altogether. In each fifteen minute stint of commentary he must be using it at least ten times, if not more. Skip it, Ravi, please. Now for a few others. Arun Lal - a more colourless commentator I've yet to see. A man who has nothing new to say and says it ad nauseum.
An unctuous, oily man who has no business being where he is, who spends his time with the microphone toadying up to Pawar ("Yes Sir, Yes Sir, You're absolutely right, Sir ", So nice of you to be here, Sir",We're deeply grateful to you, Sir"...) and to his white fellow comentators. L.Sivaramakrishnan - listen to him and you get the impression that's he's speaking in BLOCK CAPITALS all the time. Lighten up ,Siva. The Lankans - to a man the Sri Lankan commentators are biased, apart from being cliched, of course. The same can be said of the Pakistanis, barring Imran Khan. Rameez Raja has his moments. The others can be safely ignored.
Finally, I would like to clarify that all the above applies and refers only to ex-cricketers who have now turned to commentating and not to professional commentators (e.g. Harsh Bhogle) who are a breed on the road to extinction anyway.

Autumn lurks

For some reason I've been depressed today. Outwardly normal yet not at peace with myself. I doubt if anyone noticed anything amiss in my behaviour for I've gone about the business of daily life much as usual. Yet I continuously felt as if I were a ghost, outside my body, standing beside it and watching, bemused, as it went through the rigmarole of existence - a surreal, out-of-body experience. I'd mentioned Landor in my last post.Today, another of his poems kept coming to mind again and again. Was it a reminder of mortality - if any was needed ?

The leaves are falling; so am I;
The few late flowers have moisture in the eye;
So have I too.
Scarcely on any bough is heard
Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird
The whole wood through.

Winter may come : he brings but nigher
His circle ( yearly narrowing ) to the fire
Where old friends meet.
Let him; now Heaven is overcast
And spring and summer both are past,
And all things sweet.

-Walter Savage Landor

It stinks !

I watched the India-West Indies ODI yesterday and I'm still rubbing my eyes in disbelief. An incredible performance - by the West Indians! Normally I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories but this result was too much to swallow even for a die-hard India supporter. That the 'famed' Indian batting folded for 162 wasn't a surprise. Take away the media hype and there's nothing unusual about the Indian batsmen taking the day off every other match. But the West Indian capitulation stretches credibility beyond breaking point. Not to put too fine a point on it, a highly suspicious result. Two distinct possibilities spring to mind - one, that the match was fixed to ensure that India still has a chance to reach the finals ( I don't think anyone in his right mind expects them to beat Australia with a bonus point. It's going to be hard enough to defeat them anyway.) Two, that the West Indians deliberately tanked the match because they would rather face India in the finals than the Aussies. Brian Lara coming in at number nine, for God's sake! That puts even Wavell Hinds' tortoise act to shame. Sorry, Rahul and co., but this 'victory' sticks in my craw! Walter Savage Landor had said,

" I warmed both hands before the fire of life
It sinks and I am ready to depart"

My reaction to this match is to change one word from the second line :

'It stinks and I am ready to depart'

Hauled over the coals

Having been hauled over the coals by R in my last post, I've now approached my blog with more than a little trepidation. It has been driven home to me that I've become mentally lazy as far as writing is concerned. In a sense that's understandable because prior to this blog there has been no critical scrutiny of my barbaric assaults on the Queen's language since I was in twelfth grade - which was so long ago that it's lost in the mists of time. But now, through those mists I can faintly discern my teachers reading my essays with furrowed brows and hear them clicking their collective tongues in disapproval. I must thank R for bringing back these long-forgotten memories. I must also make a mental note to be more rigorous in checking whatever I've written and not slothfully submit the first draft. Laugh, and the world laughs with you ( Did someone else really say that first? Great minds think alike.) Cock up and it kicks you on the a*** with malignant glee, and then proceeds to rub your face in mud.

My 'Form'al illiteracy

At all other times I've absolutely no doubts about my literacy. A person who can speak, read and write ( all within reasonable limits, let me hasten to add) three languages can, I hope, lay claim to being literate, at the very least. In fact, at times, I can detect within myself a certain element of pride - you know, that thing which reputedly goes before a fall - in my 'proficiency' . This delusion lasts right upto the time I have to fill a form for anything - an account-opening form, a government form, a form to reserve tickets, online form, paper form, you name it. I just have to come face to face with a form to be reduced to a trembling, nervous wreckage of a human being. All these forms make me wonder if there exist two versions of each language - one meant for people to communicate with each other, to understand each other, and the other specifically designed to confuse them, to obfuscate issues , and to cloak facts under the garbage of legalese, bureaucratese and/or officialese - all 'languages' created by the Devil himself!

What is the matter with these people? Is it so difficult to prepare forms which ordinary people can understand without needing the services of a lawyer? Why do I have to struggle through a maze of verbiage to understand that all they are asking for is my name, age and address? I would like to be a fly on the wall when these organisations recruit the people who create these forms. It would be an educative experience. I'm sure that the men who design these forms are blood- brothers to those who devise those hellishly cryptic crosswords and spiritual descendants of Torquemada and Marquis de Sade. There must be a very strong streak of sadism and cruelty in their make-up.

You must be wondering why I've launched this diatribe today. Well, today morning an 'Office Assistant' ( we're not supposed to call them peons any longer, I'm told. Just as there are no salesmen in this world anymore, they've all been transmogrified into 'Sales Executives'. ) from a bank brought me an Account Opening form. Before I could say a word, he took out his ball-point pen, marked out the places where my signature was needed, and said simply, "Sign". Insulted, I said I would have to read it first. He permitted himself a ghost of a smile and said , " Sir, You won't understand it. " I leafed frostily through the form. He was right. But I had my amour propre to think of. ( "How many times do I have to tell you never to end a sentence with a preposition, Milind?", my venerable English teacher used to say.) To accept my 'form'al illiteracy in front of a peon would be a matter of shame. With what little dignity I had left, I told him to leave the form with me, saying that I would go through it in detail later, and that he could return in the evening to pick it up. Somehow, I don't think he was taken in by my bravado.

Thirteen long years

Finally, after thirteen long years, a verdict. But let's not start celebrating just yet. At his present rate of eight a day, it'll take the judge a few weeks just to deliver his verdicts. That's the easy part. Then comes the sentencing. The lawyers of those convicted will speak at great length (yawn) extolling their clients' many virtues, portraying them as being more sinned against than sinners. In turn, the prosecutors will demand the maximum penalty leviable. Finally the judge will decide and hand down the sentences. The bad guys will be hauled off to jail to pay for their crimes. End of ( a rather long-winded ) story.

Wrong!! Only a foreigner or a retard would believe in that rather naive ending. Haven't you heard of the 'Great Indian Appeal Circus'? All those convicted will appeal to the higher courts protesting their innocence, and the prosecution will appeal against all acquitals. That process should, at a conservative estimate, take the best part of five years. All through this enthralling spectacle there will be entertaining side -shows about bail, permission to leave the country for work, etc. [After all, poor Sanju baba has all those films to shoot! Did I hear mutterings about thousands of undertrials rotting in jail waiting for their day in court, even their appeals for bail awaiting a first hearing? Hey, this is India. We don't believe in all that Western tommy-rot about the law being the same for all. A film star with a film star-politician father and a politician sister and with connections to the Dynasty! How can you equate him with those people? ]

"Satyamev jayate" - Truth alone triumphs - is the motto of the Indian judicial system. Like most mottos these days, it sounds more like a forlorn expression of hope than anything else.Two famous quotations spring to mind

1. "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.'
2. " Justice delayed is justice denied."

It doesn't need an Einstein to figure out which is applicable, does it? So, don't open that champagne just yet.

P.S.
For those of you who can read Marathi, here's my Marathi take on the issue : अधीर

A conversation between me and my inner self

A conversation between me ( the party of the first part hereinafter to be referred to as 'I') and my inner self (the party of the second part hereinafter to be referred to as 'Smartypants') :

I: Nine days, seven posts and only one response.
Smartypants : I'm surprised too.
I : That's the first time in years you've agreed with me. Thanks.
Smartypants : I'm surprised you managed even one, nutcase!
I : (sotto voce) Should have known better than to ask you.
Smartypants : What's the good of whispering, fool? I'm your inner self, remember? I can read your mind.
I : Go, take a running jump at yourself.
I : People just don't appreciate good writing these days.
Smartypants : Sure they do. That's exactly why they avoid your blog like the plague. Just who do you think you are - Hemingway? Shakespeare?
I : What about the good lady who has posted an appreciative comment?Tell me that.
Smartypants : You've answered your own question, dunderhead. She's a good, kind lady who happened to stumble upon your blog by sheer accident. She just took pity on you. Don't let it go to your head.
I : And what about R's mail saying she liked my blogs?
Smartypants : She's your sis-in-law. Hardly qualifies as an unbiased opinion. Besides, what option did she have after you e-mailed her asking her to read it? She had to at least pretend ( all right, all right, I know I've split an infinitive here. Stop nit-picking, will you.) that she'd read your nonsense. Take my advice - stop this blogging. You aren't cut out for it. Better yet, delete this blog.
I : (sullenly) I won't.
Smartypants : Why not? No one reads it anyway. As Vijay Merchant had said, "It's better to go when people ask why rather than when they ask why not."
I : I'm not a cricketer.
Smartypants : No, and you're not a writer either.( snigger, snigger)
I : You're just jealous.
Smartypants : Ha ha ha. Very funny. I haven't had a good laugh like that since the 'India Shining' campaign. Now, if only you could distill some of that humour into your 'literary' efforts, you might yet have a future.

Vande mataram

In the end the Vande mataram centenary turned out to be like the Y2K issue - much ado about nothing. Our politicians behaved in their usual divisive, fractious manner, turning every question into a Hindu-Muslim issue, spouting asinine garbage and playing to their respective galleries as the ordinary Bharatiya on the street watched helplessly! Last week a news channel had waylaid many of our 'rulers' - MPs and ministers outside Parliament and had asked them simple questions like who wrote 'Jana gana mana', what was Gandhi's full name, etc. Over 90% of them hadn't a clue! Yet these self-same ignoramuses waxed eloquent on both sides of the Vande mataram controversy. Hardly any of them can even quote two lines of either 'Jana gana mana' or 'Vande mataram'. As to understanding what the poems mean, perish the thought.

When will public debate in Bharat ever rise above gutter level? When will informed and reasoned arguments take the place of illogical insults, name-calling, distortion of historical facts? Watch the so-called debates on television - they are nothing but slanging matches with each political lout trying to outshout the others. Parrot the party line and impress the 'High Command', do not preserve even the basic decencies of debate, do not allow anyone else to have his say, and duck all uncomfortable questions by burying them under a barrelful of verbal diarrhoea! Is anyone really interested in finding solutions, in reaching the truth? You must be joking, mate!

And what about the media? Is it any better? That rant can wait for another post.

Life, what is it but a dream?

I would like to share with you one of my favourite poems by a poet who, I've always felt, did not get the accolades he deserved simply because of his phenomenal success as a writer of children's books - Lewis Carroll. The success of Alice in Wonderland overshadowed his poetry - despite the fact that many of his poems actually feature in his prose writings as an integral part of the story. As a writer of humorous verse and nonsense verse he has few peers. Unfortunately, as in prose so in poetry, humorous writers tend not to be taken seriously when the talk veers round to literary greatness.This is a poem in a different, dreamier, mood. Whenever I find myself exasperated by people talking about the feverish pace of modern life this poem springs to mind , especially the last five lines.

A Boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July -

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear-

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autmun frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise.
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream -
Lingering in a golden gleam -
Life, what is it but a dream?

[The initial letters of this poem when read downward give the full name of the original Alice (in Wonderland) - Alice
Pleasance Liddell]

Apropos of what I've written above , I remain deeply sceptical about whether life has really become fast-paced. I'm often tempted to tell these 'fast-paced' people the story of the donkey chasing a carrot dangling in front of him, tantalisingly out of reach, unable to understand that it's dangling from a stick tied to his own body and that he's never going to be able reach it. The Promised Land is always going to be 'just around the next corner'. No, we've simply lost the ability to slow down, relax, introspect, to think of something other than the 'rat race'. Are we increasinly losing touch with our inner selves, with nature, with the finer things in life, things which cannot be measured in money? W.H.Davies had it right :

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

I've often been accused of being impractical and out of touch with the times. There was a time when I would be ready to argue the point spiritedly but these days, I just smile and let it go. Why give myself hypertension and ulcers? As for me, I'd rather be

Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream -
Lingering in a golden gleam

After all

Life, what is it but a dream?

Good-bye, friend.

His annual holiday having drawn to a close, my friend returns to his parents' abode today. His father and mother are quite strict in this respect. Not a day's extension is permitted, no excuses acceptable. Much as we would like him to stay longer, we know in our hearts that he cannot. His father, though kind and generous to a fault, has a well-deserved reputation for being hot-tempered .His mother - well, like most mothers she probably can't bear to be separated from her 'baby' for long, and often comes here to fetch him herself. A wonderful,beauteous lady, devoted mother and loving wife. My friend, her younger son, is the apple of her eye (his elder brother is often subject to pangs of jealousy and sibling rivalry on that account!).

Though the weather here is not what he is accustomed to, I've never heard him complain about the heat,humidity or rains. (That's more than you can say of most local residents!). Considering the fact that he is a (grand)child of the mountains he must find our climate unsalubrious, to say the least. Yet he unfailingly visits us year after year.

Good-bye - no, never!! Au revoir, Ganapati. We shall meet again next year.

Waking up to the rain

It's a wonderful morning here today - a true rainy day. The monsoon, having paused for a breather for the past few days, is back with a vengeance! It's raining cats and dogs, pelting down in torrents to the accompaniment of thunderous rumblings and flashing lightning. I'm sitting at my window typing this as I savour a spectacle I've loved as long as I can remember. Grey skies have always fascinated me, rather than the so-called 'sunny days' which are all very well for temperate or Arctic climes but not so clement in the swathe which stretches from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn. In this debate I've often found myself in a hopeless minority but personal likes and dislikes are not decided by a show of hands, are they? One man's meat....So, let the moaners whine and crib. Let me enjoy every magical moment while I can. For, soon the monsoon will take its leave. Can I be sure that I'll be here next year to welcome it back? Can anyone?

Good-night, Blog!

I fully intended to write a meaningful, insightful, contemplative post here today choc-a-bloc with self-analysis and navel-gazing; one which would have provided many profound, philosophical answers. Unfortunately, by the time I got around to it, I'd forgotten all the questions. Sorry, World, you'll have to get along without my solutions for the foreseeable future. (Anyone found sighing with relief will be beheaded! 'Off with his head' as the Queen of Hearts said in Alice In Wonderland. As for the rest of you snickering into your handkerchiefs, may your noses be eternally filled with snot like Salim Sinai.)
With these benedictions I wish all of you a very good night. Do not despair. I shall return afore long. "Farewell, farewell, parting is such sweet sorrow..."

"Saurav breaks his silence"

How the mighty have fallen. The latest in a series of efforts to regain what he feels is his rightful place in the sun. The spat with Chappell, the seemingly unending run of failures with the bat, the leaked e-mail, Dalmiya at that time to busy fighting for his own survival to stick his neck out for his blue-eyed boy, the loss of captaincy and of his place in the side, ...most of us watched drama degenerate into farce. Most also felt the selectors had done the right thing, though perhaps a tad later than they should have. I guess they were probably waiting for the protective shield to go down before pouncing for the kill. Most shocking of all was Ganguly's switching of loyalty from Dalmiya to his opponents in an obvious attempt to weasel his way into the good books of the new 'Pawar'ful bosses of Indian cricket, and stabbing his long-time guardian in the back. Saurav lost then what little respect the cricketing public had left for him.
Then followed his disastrous stint in county cricket. Before leaving for England he'd declared that he wanted his bat to do the talking. Unfortunately his bat turned out to be singularly tongue-tied.This when Zaheer and Dinesh Mongia were producing creditable performances over there. The English weather proving inclement, the 'Bengal tiger' mewed disconsolately and returned to his watering-hole in Calcutta.
Unfortunately Team India had moved on and the great Indian paying public have a notoriously short memory. So, now the interview route to get back into reckoning, to remind everyone of his existence and his availability! Dylan Thomas,watching his father die of cancer, had written:
" Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light"
I've no idea if Saurav has read Thomas' poems but he certainly seems to show a marked disinclination to go gently into the night!

This blog is under construction

Translated, that means

1. I haven't thought of anything worthwhile to write about.
2. I've been snowed under with work. Yeah, right!
3. Is anyone going to read my 'literary output' anyway? Can't say I've noticed anyone waiting with bated breath for this future Nobel laureate's pearls of wisdom. Everyone's too busy writing his ( N.B. This blogger is not exactly known far and wide for his political correctness. So there will be no his/her business here, no atrocities like hu'person', etc. You can howl all you like but, at the end of the day it's my blog!) own blog to bother to read someone else's - unless that someone else puts a link to his blog in his own blog, thus generating some traffic! Rather a convoluted sentence, that last one with perhaps one 'his' too many. Oh well, so long as you understand what I mean, it doesn't matter. Or does it? Sinking further into this dialectical quagmire, does anyone really understand what someone else means? Or do we stumble through life from one misunderstanding to another? Or have I just had one over the eight?
   
4. I'm too damned lazy to get off my butt and start writing this stupid blog. Though how I'm going to write it if I get off my butt is awfully hard to fathom. I'm not much of a whiz at writing standing up. Too much like work for my taste.