Lessons of Life

Here is something I found on 'about me' of a person's orkut profile. All of it is so true.

As I grow old I learn lessons.

• I have learned that when you love someone, love unconditionally.
• I have learned that you may consider someone special but other person need not.
• I have learned that if you do not get goodness in return of yours it is your problem.
• I have learned that when people say they do not have time, they mean they do not have time for you.
• I have learned that not always people speak what they think of you.
• I have learned that people often do not think correct about you.
• I have learned that it is comfortable though not intelligent to neglect what people think of you.
• I have learned that image is not an insignificant thing to be neglected.
• I have learned that if you think you know a person who understands you, then either you are foolish or very lucky.
• I have learned that danger of being nice is that you will be taken for granted.
• I have learned that when you want to cry pillow is the best mate.
• I have learned that time once past has past, being sad, happy, proud, arrogant about it does not help.
• I have learned that circumstances, or luck, or whatever you want to call it, has more role to play in life than you would wish it to play.
• I have learned that small things can throw you off the track, what you call small is your intellect.
• I have learned that food and sleep are more basic necessities than what I considered them to be.
• I have learned that life teaches many more lessons than what can be penned down.
• I have learned that even if I know all this for quite some time I find it hard to implement them.
• I have learned that I find it hard to implement them because I am a human being.

It happened yet again

Right now I am sitting in Varun's room, using his laptop for this post when I should be studying for my IIT Delhi interview scheduled to take place on 28th of this month. 

I had written in my earlier post about winning the quiz at LNM IIT. Well, they had promised Rs 2k as prize money. A couple of hours ago, Anurag called up and told me that they had in fact given only 1k and some cheap Rayban bag(that too, only 1, for 3 of us) as the prize. Bloody Kanjoos. One can always expect such things to happen in MNIT, but the representatives of Mr Laxmi Nivas Mittal should not have done so. A few days ago, we(MNITians) had done something similar to the guys of Arya College who were runner ups in our quiz. We gave only Rs750 instead of promised Rs1000.  (In MNIT,we were given cold shoulder by the person who had the authority to distribute prizes when we asked why this was done). "This was the prize money we had sanctioned. You should have confirmed it before announcing in the quiz." ,we were told by the guy handling finances of Blitzschlag 09. 

We have been through this earlier also. Last year, I and Anurag had won the Chemical Engineering society quiz in MNIT. We had won Rs 1000 as prize money. After repeatedly and shamelessly asking them for the prize money for six long months, finally we were refused and were handed a certificate as a consolation.

But hum to besharm hai. MNIT me koi nayi baat to hai nahi.Har saal hi kisi naa kisi ka kat jaata hai. Aur LNM waale.Izzat bech di unhone 1 hazaar me Laxmi Mittal ki. I would like to remind the readers that Laxmi Mittal had spent 60 million dollars on his daughter's wedding and had bought a house worth 125 million dollars.Such cheap behaviour(not giving the promised prize money) is not expected from a college owned by a man of such stature. I really hope Mr Laxmi Mittal will read this blog, make a personal enquiry about the incident and fire the guilty persons involved. :) :)

Had promised treat to a few friends after winning the quiz. The loss is theirs, not mine...:)

Param Vir Chakra

I recently read a book Param Vir by Major General Ian Cardozo. The book was about the Param Vir Chakra awardees of India. It was an excellent book and gave a hell lot of knowledge about the real heroes of our country. 

The PVC was designed by Savitri Khanolkar. 

So far 21 people have been awarded PVC and out of 21, 14 have been posthumous. The first person to receive it was Major Somnath Sharma in the 1947 war against Pakistani kabaylis. The last person in the list of the men of extraordinary courage and valour is Captain Vikram Batra who was awarded PVC in the Kargil War posthumously. 

Here's the link on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Param_Vir_Chakra

The book is excellent as it as been written by someone belonging to army himself. The writer explains the techinicalities of war and ammunition used in the war. He talks straight like a soldier would and refrains from exaggeration that certainly would have been the case had it been written by some other author having the sole motive of increasing the number of copies sold.  

The heart goes out for the soldiers who did not care for their lives in the face of danger. The pride of their nation and their regiment was at stake and they did not let them down. These were the men of honour. I loved reading about Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal(1971 war against Pakistan) and Major Shaitan Singh(1962 war against China). 

Many years ago a serial was shown on tv titled, Param Vir Chakra. The serial was directed by Chetan Anand. I don't remember all the episodes but I do recall a few. Some eminent actors of the time payed their tributes to the soldiers by playing the characters. Below are the few names of the PVC awardees and actors I remember who appeared in the serial.

Major Somnath Sharma- Faroukh Sheikh

Naik Jadunath Singh- Puneet Issar

Lance Naik Karam Singh- Vijayendra Ghatge

Company Quartermaster Havildar Abdul Hameed- Naseeruddin Shah

Major Shaitan Singh- Pankaj Dheer

Lance Naik Albert Ekka- Anu Kapoor

Flying Officer Nirmaljit Singh Sekhon- Kawaljeet Singh

We forget our heroes very soon. I wonder if people even remember the names of Captain Vikram Batra, Sanjay Kumar, Manoj Pandey and Yogendra Singh Yadav, the men who won PVC in the Kargil war. A pension of only Rs 1500 per month is given by the central government to the widows of PVC awardees(as of March 1999). Is this the way we pay our homage and respect to the men who save our country??? Their contribution to the country cannot be measured in terms of the amount of money or the petrol pumps donated. But a lot more can and should be done for the men who display an act of courage and self service beyond the act of duty.

Probably there are a lot many who could have been awarded PVC or other medals  for bravery and courage in face of danger but probably nobody survived to narrate us the stories of these heroes. My salute to the unsung and true heroes of INDIA. 

Something to Cheer about....finally...

In the academic year when everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, I had something to cheer about. Yesterday on 20th Feb we(Anurag, Abhishek & myself) won a quiz at LNM IIT's fest Vivacity. 

We cleared the elimination round with flying colours. (Out of 80 teams we were first in the elimination round. scored 21 out of 25.) The credit goes definitely to Anurag and Abhishek. They answered the tough ones which probably mattered most. After the round when I was going through the question paper, I realised I alone would have got only 13. The number looks good but they were mostly the simple questions all the teams would have got right. So basically, there's nothing to boast about. 

Next we had the main round of quizzing. Four teams made it to final round. The second team was Arya College and two teams were from LNM IIT. After a good elimination round, the main round was a huge let down. It seemed as if all the energy and time had been devoted to elimination round only. The main round had only 32 questions in all. It would not have taken more that 15 minutes for the quiz to get over (The elimination round was of half an hour). 

Hardly any preparation  had been done for the main quiz. The questions were like those asked in school quizzes and mostly very very simple. The quiz master seemed to be fascinated with Slumdog Millionaire. A total of 3 questions were asked from the movie in some form or the other.

In the end we won with a score of 55 with second team on 45.

The first runner up, Arya College were a very good team. They scored 19 in elimination. We were actually scared of them (for they sat in such a manner that they would have got all the passed questions). They were the runners up in Blitzschlag 09 as well. That means a lot because for the past three years hardly any team from other colleges have cleared the elimination rounds in the quizzes of our college. This team would have given any team of Jaipur a run for their money and in short quizzes like the one  in LNM IIT one can never be sure. It was just a matter of luck that we won and they didnt. One question could have decided the fate of quiz and they could have taken away the first prize. My congratulations to the Arya team.

In the end I was very relieved. I was a part of teams that could not clear the elimination rounds in Maharani college(with Anurag & Abhinav) and Tata Crucibles(with Abhishek) while both were pretty easy ones. Besides, Anurag & Abhinav had been the runner ups in Tata Crucibles and Abhishek& Abhinav had won the Blitzschlag 09 quiz organized by me and Anurag.  I was the only one in the team who had not cleared any elimination round so far in this semester. I really thank Almighty for helping us win. In the end, something to be happy about. :)

SENSELESS MEMORIES

I'm not good at words. Was thinking about the oldest memory of any Cricket match I have. As it turns out it was some ODI in which Kapil Dev was adjudged LBW. I don't remember anything apart from this fact.

A blurred memory I have of the end result of a match was the one in which India lost to Pakistan. Another thing I remember about this particular match was that Manoj Prabhakar was the person who remained not out in that match while India was chasing. These two hints helped me find a particular match satisfying both conditions.Here's the link to this match

http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/engine/match/65929.html

This match was played in 1989 at Eden Gardens Kolkata. I would love to believe that this is the match I was looking for. I may be wrong and the match I think i remember could have been much later.But I hope this is not the case and my love for Cricket goes back to 1989.

This post has been another instance of my joblessness when I sat in front of computer for a long time to search for a particular match. I really doubt if anybody would be interested in this particular instance. But ....who cares...

MY IDOL

Sachin Tendulkar......The man who has entertained us all for so long. For me Cricket is synonymous with Sachin Tendulkar. Some call him God. Undoubtedly he is the most worshipped cricketer of his generation or probably of the entire cricket history. No player has come even closer in matching the respect and awe he generates. 

There have been lot of comparisons between him and the greatest batsman ever i.e. Don Bradman. I don't think they can be justified though. Don Bradman played in an era when the pitches were uncovered. In an era when batsmen faced bowlers ,without helmets, in an era when the number of bouncers in an over were not limited. He faced Harold Larwood in the infamous Bodyline Series. And then he managed mind boggling stats. 6996 runs in 52 tests at an average of 99.94 and 29 centuris. It is highly improbable that any cricketer would even come closer to matching these standards. Sachin is no exception.

Why do I and 100 crore people of India love him so much?? It's because he has entertained us for almost 20 years without stopping. More than half of his life has been dedicated to cricket. And he has done it with perfection. Starting as a kid of 16 years and 205 days he faced some of the most feared bowlers of his generation, Waqar Younis, Imran Khan and of course the legendary Wasim Akram. He faced them with the bravery, audacity and valour quite uncommon to the then Indian Cricket Team. He refused to leave the field when a ball from Waqar Younis hit his nose and his shirt got covered with blood all over. He then came up with a century at Old Trafford against England and saved the test match for India at an age of 17 years and 112 days. His heroics at Perth and Sydney on the tour of Australia proved that we had a Superhero in the making. He became the first foreign player in the 100 years history of Yorkshire Cricket Club. Well, this was just the beginning. He has never looked back since. He was the lone torch bearer of Indian cricket for almost a decade and the whole Indian team revolved around him. This pressure got somewhat lessened when he was joined by Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman and we had probably the best middle order in the world. 

I won't delve into statiscs and the incidents related to Sachin Tendulkar. We all have read them and lived them all our lives. He has enthralled my generation that followed cricket. For the past 20 years he has been compared with the greatest batsmen of his times. Lara, Ponting, Kallis, Inzamam have all been there at different points of time. Only one name remains constant in this list. SACHIN TENDULKAR. 

He has been accused of the fact that he is not the player he once was in the mid 90's. True. But then he has aged over the years and his responsibilities have changed in the team. He has taken blows and injuries all over his body. But he comes out all guns blazing after he recovers.And then we can still compare his record with other batsmen in the past 8-9 years or so. He beats them all. Somebody rightly said that Great People are remembered more for their Failures rather than their Success. Same holds true for Sachin Tendulkar. 

He has been accused of the fact that he has not won enough Test matches for India. True. He accepts it. Have we ever seen him deny this fact? But we can still compare his record with others in the test matches India has won to his record in the tests India has lost. We'll get our answers. Lara and Inzamam have done it better in pressure situations. No doubt about that. But did they do this consistently? Lara was the most graceful batsman of his times. The dancer in the crease, the Prince of Trinidad could not handle the pressure of success after he scored his innings of 375 and 501* forcing him to take a sabbatical. And he had his disputes with all his team members, the team management and the opposition. He was followed by controversies all through his career.

It's not the records that stamp Sachin's greatness. It's his calm demeneaour, his ability to handle the pressures of success, keeping his head on his shoulders when a population of 100 crores would do anything and everything for their hero, and his consistency on the field that proves his mettle. He accepts the controversial decisions of the umpires with the grace unseen and unheard of. He respects every bowler he faces. Have we ever seen him involved in Sledging?????? His politeness, his respect for India, his team, the opposition and the former players is something difficult to find in our times. He has always faced the criticism, challenges and verbal abuses with a smile and has always let his bat do the talking. He was the only player spared by Manoj Prabhakar in the infamous sting operation of the match fixing. Shane Warne has put him at the top in the list of players he has played against. And this is not because of his heroics on the field but because of the pressure he has constantly faced over the past 20 years. No player can be compared to the great Sachin Tendulkar. 

Indian team has had new successes since Dhoni has took over captaincy. He occupies the top rankings in the ODI ratings of best batsmen. Sehwag is said to be the biggest destructor of opposition. Yuvraj is said to be amongst the most talented in the world. But none of these players comes close to Sachin in the grace and beauty he brings to his game. Every shot played by Sachin is a delight for the purists and the youngsters alike.Barring VVS Laxman and Damien Martyn, nobody apart from Sachin has made batting look so easy in an age when we have grown up witnessing the rise in stature of Cricket from just a game in India to a religion.

I personally feel that sometimes he is lauded too much for his centuries and criticised too much for his failures.We have at least one hour review on every news channel of both the century or the duck he scores . Probably Rahul Dravid, Laxman, Ganguly got overshadowed by the glory of Sachin Tendulkar and did not receive the credit they rightly deserved. But that's part and parcel of life. 

He has had his share of controversies. The ball tampering incident in South Africa, the waivering of duty on Ferrari, his disputes with Greg Chappell, declaration of Rahul Dravid when Sachin was on 194, and the latest Monkey Gate incident with Andrew Symonds . But they still seem less in a career spanning two decades. I personally feel he should not have asked for waivering of duty on Ferrari. Apart from that it would be unfair to criticise him of his involvement in these incidents.Much hue and cry was raised when he said he was disappointed when the declaration came when he was only 6 runs short of a double century. But then who would not be???He only spoke against Greg Chappell when his integrity was questioned. And of course, we can't expect the Aussies to be truthful and honest. We all have seen what happened in the last India vs Australia Sydney Test. He has not lost his respect from anybody at any point of time. After the Monkey gate, in the India England test match, when he overtook Brian Lara for maximum runs in Test Cricket, Andrew Symonds sent his congratulations saying, "To Sachin Tendulkar!! The man we all want to be." Do we need any other proof of his greatness?? I guess not. 

Sachin Tendulkar is no God. He is only human, but an ideal one. A perfect role model for everyone. My blog has been just been one of the many articles written about him over the years. I wanted to begin my blog dedicated to man I have respected, admired and loved over the years . I still switch off the tv when he gets out. I still relive his great innings. I still get overjoyed and excited like a kid at each and every milestone he crosses.  He is my inspiration. He is my idol. 

HE IS SACHIN TENDULKAR. THE MAN WE ALL WANT TO BE.

THE BEGINNING

Hi Guys....

Here I am starting my own blog. Today is Valentine's Day (though that has got nothing to do with my starting this blog). Wanted to do this long time ago...but the procrastinator in me avoided it for too long. I don't know why am I starting it even now. Probably inspiration from the blogs of a few friends (Gaurav Bhaiya, Chetna, ECE blog balanisisred etc. etc.) , nostalgic feeling about leaving the college and a few other quizzing blogs has helped me to start it. Or the other reason could be the joblessness surrounding me right now. Have to kill time and of course something in me wants to write, so here I am...

This blog will be about whatever crap comes to my mind. I sincerely request the reader to please bear with me. As of now I want to write my feelings about the people I admire (and those I don't). I will at least start with it. Then probably I want to write about my experiences, my friends, the books I've read, the movies I have seen, the situations I have come across and of course, Quizzing.

I am a huge fan of Sachin Tendulkar. I will start the blog with him. Readers are requested to leave a comment if they find  appropriate to do so. I will try to reply. I am beginning my journey and I am afraid that the procrastinator in me won't let it continue for long. Please pray that it doesn't happen.