It's been a year since I graduated, and one of the worst and least productive ones that I have had. Moments of happiness have been few and far between. Mostly disappointments, total lack of activity,  and a complete lack of ambition have filled this year. There is a huge void that has been created after leaving Lucknow, a void that cannot be filled. I wish I could go back in time.
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There is too much hate and negativity surrounding AAP and Arvind Kejriwal. I was in Delhi for a day where I interacted with few people asking them about Kejriwal and they were all praises for him. Now he didn't do anything extraordinary in his 49 days but government offices actually started functioning, the police officers stopped taking bribes and there was an atmosphere of hope. My father's (who is a government official Rajasthan)  department was instructed by the MLAs to pull up its socks because the government wanted to look good in the eyes of public and avoid the fate of Sheila Dikshit. Is this not a welcome change?  Too many people have been complaining about the unconstitutional means adopted by AAP. I wonder how many of them ever went to the polling booths in their life time.
There are some pressing questions that need to be confronted. Suddenly BJP is the new saviour of India. How easily the people forget the corrupt practices of these leaders. It would do a great deal of good if people started using their brains and questioning everything, every fact that is thrown at them.
Same people who used to lament the degrading quality of Times Of India and India TV are now posting links and Youtube videos that condemn AAP. I am tired of this hypocrisy.

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Quora has been a discovery. It's a great site to learn a lot of good stuff. I realized that I feel extremely happy when some people 'upvote' my answer on Quora. More so, when a lot of time was spent researching for the answer and the 'upvote' comes from a person you respect on Quora because of his/her great answers.

Lost Love, Maybe

I watch a lot of old cricket videos these days, lots of them. Modern Cricket fails to impress me. But now, the desire to understand the game and its nuances has taken the precedence over watching the usual hit and run show the game has become of late. There are no great players around, except maybe Dale Steyn who evoke admiration and awe at the same time. There are close finishes no doubt, but the joy of watching the game is amiss. (Hashim Amla is an exception though).
So I try to turn back the clock. Read about some game of cricket, some player, some innings, some piece of bowling on Cricinfo and then watch its video. And try to understand what made Shane Warne the master of Leg Spin, why Sachin is such a great player that he is, what made Lara such a delight to watch, where do the technical faults of Graeme Smith lie and so on.
Until recently I used to pride myself in saying that I understand the game. Hardly. I still don't understand why Shane Warne is rated higher than Muralitharan when statistically the records of Murali far outweigh those of others. Why Glenn McGrath evoked fear in batsmen with his consistent bowling in the "corridor of uncertainty". Yes, I can repeat what commentators and news articles say but that is not the understanding of the game. That is just plain repetition. However, there is a desire to develop that insight in the sport now, much beyond the statistics. It's like a poem recitation of William Wordsworth in class 3. The poetry doesn't change, but over the years the feeling and understanding does.  I crave for the "Ahh! That's why David Gower was such a treat to watch."
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Bill Lawry is a commentator for Channel 9 in Australia. He is not as popular as Geoffrey Boycott, or Tony Greig, or even Harsha Bhogle. But it is such a delight to listen to him purely because of the passion of the game that he has. Earlier I used to hate Hindi commentators. These days I have started hating listening to most of the English commentary as well. There is so much mediocrity around. Even after almost 20 years Ravi Shastri hasn't grown up as a commentator or added new words to his woefully limited vocabulary. His platitudes are as predictable as the continual losses of West Indies team in test cricket.
On pure aesthetics, I would rate the team of Bill Lawry, Richie Benaud and Tony Greig much higher than any other commentary team. These people made Cricket much more interesting than it actually is. And on the other end of spectrum you have jerks like Ramiz Raja, Laxman Sivaramakrisnan, Arun Lal, Danny Morrison and so on. The list is endless.
IPL and T20 is killing not only the beauty of the game, it is also killing the art of commentary.

Jealous

Oh yes! I do feel jealous..
Of people who can love...anything..anybody...

A Question of Respect

I'm in that phase of my life when everybody around is getting married, or is about to. A friend of mine recently asked me to inquire about a guy, somebody whom I knew through another contact of mine. I asked her about the things that she really cared about. She told me that it was extremely important that the guy in question should be
a. Earning more than her
b. Should have a degree from an institute which is at least equal in stature to her's.
If the guy fulfills the above two conditions, she would say yes without much apprehension. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to 'respect' the guy.
And it made me wonder. Is this the criteria girls judge their husbands on???? To a great extent, yes, but are these the 'only' things that matter? Does it really bother someone that the guy is earning a salary which is 2-3 lacs less than her 18 lac annual package, or hasn't done an MBA but is 'just an engineer'?
I was shocked to say the least. Having studied in a b-school, I have known people who care about nothing but money. Many of those students simply disgusted me. They could stoop to any level to gain an advantage in a job interview or for currying favours (read networking) with people who could help them in getting a better paying job. Many times I wondered if these guys were able to sleep peacefully at night. Did they have any real friends out there? Will they ever be successful in any relationship based on trust?
I expected my friend to have shown a little more maturity after having studied with such people for a good two years. Sadly, that was not the case.
At Samsung, I knew a lot of people who were way better than I was, not only in terms of knowledge or work ethics, but also in terms of kind of people they were. I know that even though I am more qualified and earning more than what they are even after 6-7 years of work experience, it would take a lot of time and effort to be the kind of people they are. They are good people, my mentors whom I look up to. I enjoy their company and there is always something to learn from them.
How long will a girl care about the qualification of her spouse if he treats her like dirt? How long will the bank balance matter?
I am not saying that the salary/qualification should be ignored altogether. Yes, they matter a lot. But some things matter a lot more. 

Yayati: A book Review

Since finishing college I have been on a reading spree and have so far read 13 books, and about to finish 14th. One of them is Yayati. It is an award winning  novel, written by V S Khandekar way back in 1918. I picked up this book because I wanted to read something good in Hindi, something I had not done since reading Mrityunjay. 

And  I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong, but I am not a fan of love stories, which is what it mostly is. I picked up this book wanting to read mythology in the form of a novel. Yayati was the ancestor of Pandavas and Kauravas, and Krishna too. So I was hoping that I would get to learn something about the lineage of Kuru Vansh but it was not to be.

The book revolves around Yayati, the king who is torn between the love of Devyani, the daughter of Shukracharya and Sharmishtha, a princess who suffers at the hand of fate. It describes his lecherous nature and the way he spends his life being a coward through and through with some misplaced sense of ideals. Devyani is the jealous wife who is more interested in satisfying her whims and fancies rather than taking care of her husband. Everything that she does is out of vengeance, right from marrying Yayati to making Sharmishtha her servant by using the influence of Shukracharya, her father. 

Sharmishtha is the woman who suffers because of Devyani, and secretly loves Yayati. They spend nights together when Devyani is not at home, which leads to the birth of Puru, who eventually ascends the throne because he accepts the curse and gives his youth to Yayati.

Yadu, the son from Devyani is the ancestor of Krishna (Yadu Vansh) and is cursed by Yayati that neither he nor his descendants will ever get to sit on throne. (which explains why Krishna never became a ruler, but was only a king-maker)

The book mostly describes the feelings of each of these characters and the dilemmas these main characters face. A problem with the book is that it is not in what one calls Shudh Hindi, which I wanted to read. At some places, it uses quite difficult words which we don't get to read/hear any more, at others it uses Urdu where easy hindi words could have been used. The use of Urdu words which are commonly used in colloquial language turned me off the most.

The book is good for those who like romantics and novels which lay emphasis on feelings. The emotions have been captured quite well and the story can actually mirror a common household with a troubled married life. Personally, I didn't like it much. 

It's all in name..

So I visited Mumbai a few days back and all over the place I could see only two names, Veer Mata Jeejabai and Chhatrapati Shivaji.

We Indians have hardly created anything new that is beneficial to the public. For everything good that the Britishers gave us, we try to make it our own by naming it after a local politician or after Gandhi. So Connought  Place gets renamed as Rajiv Chowk, Victoria Terminus changes to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus , King George Medical College changes to Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical College and so on. Doesn't it show our impotence that we don't have the capability of doing something new? What purpose are we achieving after renaming these public places. Not only that, for everything new that is done, our governments seem to be at a serious disadvantage with respect to names. I want to know what is the contribution of Rajiv Gandhi and how is he greater when compared to the likes of  Lal Bahadur Shastri or Sardar Patel. Aren't we insulting the heroes of our history by not giving them their dues? Why is every new scheme named after Gandhi and not after a Bhagat Singh or a Sarojini Naidu ? 

Mumbai goes a step ahead. For them Maratha pride begins and ends with the family of Chhatrapati Shivaji. Mumbai owes a lot to the Parsi community who have made a significant contribution in making it the financial capital of the country. Or say, the Muslims who have made so much contribution to the art and culture esp. the Bollywood. But since it is ruled practically by maratha goons, every important place will be named after the only significant maratha leader the state of Maharashtra has produced. 

Aren't we depriving the new generation of Indian history by ignoring so many important people. In Lucknow a medical institute is named after Sanjay Gandhi... SANJAY GANDHI!!!! I wonder who is more shameless, the politicians who dare to name it, or we who accept it without any protest. 

The Britishers came to this country and have given us a legacy of their own. It makes sense when we are doing something to reverse the harmful effects of British Rule in our country, but why tamper with something good that they have given us.
We have countless Bharat Ratna awardess, soldiers who won Param Vir Chakra, actors who gave everything for their art, writers who brought about revolution through pen and thanks to License Raj, a few but highly effective industrialists who made significant contributions to the Indian society. But we'll name an obscure lane/crossing after them and forget their contribution. We'll erase the good work done by foreigners and do whatever it takes to achieve petty political gains.
Can we show a little more respect to our own history?

Fixing in IPL

I read a lot of stuff about the whole fixing thing in IPL, that the recent Chennai vs Bangalore match was fixed and it was a deliberate no-ball by Vinay Kumar R.P. Singh to Sir Ravindra Jadeja etc. etc. I don't buy that argument. Because it does not seem likely that match fixing can take place at such a huge scale. 90 foreign players from 7 different countries are participating in this tournament. Add to it an infinite number of sponsors, idiotic actors and corporate houses (who don't know an iota about cricket) and the support staff of cricket teams who assemble together just for a couple of months to run an entertainment show. It will take just one person to come out in the open and make a confession about what is going on in a team or in a match. We all saw what furore Hansie Cronje created by his admission. The stakes are way too high for a team to fix a match and get caught. The whole tournament will lose its credibility, not to mention the players, the captain and the coaches. It might be possible to do spot fixing involving a couple of players or so but to do it on the scale of a match is quite difficult, if not impossible. And the losses would be immense. Also, I like to believe that players like Sachin, Ponting, Muralitharan would not stoop to such low levels. I know that heroes like Hansie Cronje  and Azhar have betrayed this confidence once and no player is holier than thou. But there are people I look up to, and my heart does not like to accept these things unless proven otherwise. 

As it is it appears more like a daily soap these days. There is too much repetition, too much unnecessary drama, excessive dancing and of course there are ubiquitous sponsors and actors. I have never been a fan of IPL but once in a while you get to see the brilliance of Sachin Tendulkar, an old sparkling shot from Adam Gilchrist, that magnificent pull shot from Ricky Ponting, an occasional deceiving ball from Muralitharan that reminds of old times. I close the television or change the channel when these players are no longer in action. IPL for me is just about seeing my old heroes in action. Rest all is cheap ostentation.