Vacation Blues

After a really long time I am staring at a vacation in which I have nothing to do. No places to visit. No friends to catch up with. No exams to prepare for. No movies to watch. My internship ends on the 10th of June and college doesn't start till the 22nd. 11 long days that I am dreading.

I've managed to lay my hands on a book called 'The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'. It has all the 5 books of the hitch hikers series rolled into one massive paperback. I am not really a fan of science fiction, but then again I have limited choices. I plan to blog a bit too. I like writing. Though it doesn't come naturally to me. And I always feel that my sentences are too short and abrupt. And that I start too many sentences with and. But writing has a cathartic feeling that I can't explain or reason. And that is why I write.

In case you are wondering about the picture, that is the view from my house. I clicked it because I liked the cloud formation. I can stare at clouds for hours. Watching them form weird shapes.

"More than just yearly rituals in which we connect with friends and family, vacations are also exercises in self-definition. In affording time away from the demands of everyday life, vacations disclose what people choose to do rather than are required to do." - Cindy Aron

Why Kohli is NOT the next Yuvi

The similarities between the two of them are striking. Both made a name for themselves in the U 19 World Cup wins for India. Both made their ODI debut at the age of 19. Very talented batsmen, they both can more than roll their arm over and are live wires in the field. Ray Jennings, the coach of Royal Challengers Bangalore, once said that Virat Kolhi thinks ‘he is God’s gift to cricket’. Yuvraj Singh has an ego the size of a football field. Virat Kolhi is good looking. Yuvraj Singh thinks he is good looking. And I could on. But that is not the point of this post.

Yuvraj Singh is my book, the most talented cricketer in the modern era, by a mile. But 11 years of international cricket and he has little to show, that would back my claim. Yes he did hit six sixes in an over, but then again, that was just an over. For a large part of his career, Yuvraj Singh has been annoyingly inconsistent. And he hasn’t managed to hold on to his place in the Indian side, just as he hasn’t managed to hold on to any girl who ever dated him. The only time he performs well is when he is really fired up (Flintoff would vouch for that) and so right one sure way to get him to perform is to drop him every alternate series.

Virat Kohli on the other hand has gone from strength to strength. Ever since making his ODI debut he hasn’t looked back. Whatever opportunity he has got, he grabbed it with both hands. When MS Dhoni benches (his favourite) Raina and plays Virat instead, you know the kid has got talent (and temperament). Another impressive thing about Virat is that he doesn’t play to the gallery. He plays responsibly and I can’t quite recall the last time he got out playing a rash shot in international cricket.

Today, in the absence of Daniel Vettori he captained his side in the IPL. A side which has a former international captain in Chris Gayle and in Zaheer Khan, one of India’s shrewdest bowlers. A side which Ray Jennings is still the coach of. He showed willingness to take the onus on himself and bowled the penultimate over to a certain Yusuf Pathan. He did go for 13 runs, but that is of little significance. What matters was that he wasn’t afraid to a make a fool of himself. As Shane Warne would tell you, that is the quality of a great leader. And ya, when Saurabh Tiwary was cramping, he put on his pads and rushed on to the field to run for the Dhoni look alike.

This morning in the paper I read a quote from Yuvraj Singh, in which he said he wanted to use the tour of West indies to cement his place in the Test team. After 11 longs years of cricket, he is still not a certainty in the test side. I don’t know where Virat Kohli will end up after 11 years on the International circuit. But one thing is for sure. He would have cemented his place in the test side. Most probably as the captain.

Post Script: Kohli also gave us the quote on the world cup when he said something like 'Sachin has carried the burden for Indian cricket for 21 years and it’s time we carried him on our shoulders'

Tweets of the Week:

Barack Obama - The first black man that has ever had to convince the world he did do the killing.

Parallel lines have got so much in common. It's a shame they'll never meet.

Microsoft has bid $5 Billion for Skype...Obviously nobody told them they can download it for free from the website.

If you have the time: Do read this. Harsha Bhogle interviewing Shane Warne, one of the greatest cricketers ever.

Why Osama's Death Disappoints

For a person who has grown up on a diet of Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardener and the like, Osama's death in his hideout in Abbottabad has been really disappointing. For the past three days I have been reading several newspapers and columns online. I have read almost every article which has anything to do with Mr. Laden. But, alas, there hasn't been anything interesting on offer.

Considering the fact that he was the most wanted man on Earth, he lived a pretty ordinary life. I mean there was nothing that I read about his life post 2001 that made me go 'wooow'. Yes, he only gave instructions verbally and had a courier to relay his messages. But that is expected. Considering the technology that the US forces have at their disposal, you wouldn't expect Osama to take the chance of calling his aides or tweeting them. Yes, he burnt all his garbage. But the most amateur of criminals do that.

The point I am trying to make, is that his house didn't even have a secret room. Or a secret tunnel for that matter. Leading all the way back to the hills of Afghanistan where he could once again live safely. For a man who has plotted and schemed all his life, with the precision of a surgeon, Osama 's death was a huge anti climax. And a great disappointment. If it did happen in the first place, that is. If there is anything I don't take seriously, apart from my sister's advice, it is an American President speaking just before his re election.

Post Script : Of all the jokes doing the rounds of the Internet after his death, I like this tweet the best.

"Now that Osama is dead, can I carry my 125ml shampoo with me?"

The Royal Kiss and Deja Vu

So 'The wedding' is finally over. And they kissed! And it gave me a sense of deja vu. It so resembled this! The balcony, the needless hype that followed it and the fact that RCB uniform so resembles what the Prince is wearing.

Was surfing channels yesterday and caught about 4 minutes of 'V Beauty and the Geek'. That's all I could take. Left me wondering though. I couldn't figure who the beauties were. Everyone on the show, host included, looked absolutely hideous!

Air India pilots have decided to strike yet again. I don't know what more they want this time round and I don't really care. But I've always found the profession to be highly over rated. When an auto pilot button does 95% of your job, you don't warrant a 39 lakh an annum package!

I'll end with a tweet from Sanjay Manjrekar which perfectly sums my views on all the hype surrounding the wedding.

"u can ignore everything about the royal wedding, if u want to, but as indians lets learn one thing from the event...discipline !"

Lokpal and Lalit's pals

~ I have been getting a lot of mails from people with attachments containing an entire bio data of Anna Hazare. The only Annas these people knew either dated Enrique or served the best Madrasi filter coffee, but thanks, I knew about Mr. Hazare a long before the Lokpal farce; oops fast.

~ I don't think half of my Facebook 'friends' attending the 'online fast' have even gone through the draft of the bill. I mean why would you want Nobel prize winners and Magsaysay award winners to head a committee which has absolute powers and zero accountability. I mean these daft scientists and writers are the barmiest kinds of people you would ever come across. I agree you need clean people, but a little pragmatism would not do any harm.

~ I happened to catch the IPL opening ceremony on television. I agree it wasn't spectacular but to have every newspaper attribute the unattractiveness of the opening ceremony to the lack of Mr. Modi's presence in the IPL is giving the genius of a man a little undue credit. One newspaper even attributed the lack of DLF maximums to the fact that Modi isn't part of IPL anymore.

~ The Kochi team has given us a great lesson in general knowledge. For all of us who thought that Kochi was a part of Kenya, we are reminded by Mr Dhaval Shah that it is Kochi Tuskers Kerala.

~ Talking about the tuskers, they have the awesomest team ever. In Sreesanth and Sir Ravindra Jadeja they have two proven match winners. Mahela and VVS are the quickest run getters in this format of the game. And in Gomez they have unearthed the all rounder India was looking for, for such a ling time.

Fracture

Fracture is easily one of the best movies I have ever seen! I haven't seen those many movies, but of all I have, this one surely tops the list.

Here are my favourite dialogue from the movie:

Judge Gardner: "You know what nobody understands about certain kinds of low pay public service work, every now and then you get put a fucking stake in a bad guys heart. I'm not supposed to talk about that when I visit third grade classes for career day and it doesn't get you very far in the country club locker room, but its hard to beat when you actually get to do it."

Ted Crawford: "I used to candle eggs at his farm. Do you know what that is? You hold an egg up to the light of a candle and you look for imperfections. The first time I did it he told me to put all the eggs that were cracked or flawed into a bucket for the bakery. And he came back an hour later, and there were 300 eggs in the bakery bucket. He asked me what the hell I was doing. I found a flaw in every single one of them - you know, thin places in the shell; fine, hairline cracks. You look closely enough, you'll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later."

Willy Beachum: It happens right? People wake up, it's not impossible.
Nurse: What're you gonna do, keep asking the same question different ways so you get the answer you want?
Willy Beachum: I guess. That's what I do.
Nurse: Hmm, I knew I should've gone to law school.

The Gathering - Anne Enright

I haven't read the entire book, but I did manage to read a few excerpts from various blogs and this particular paragraph from the book, is one of the best I've ever read.

“There are so few people given to us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, you can count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given to us to love and they all stick.”

Yes...They all stick...

Here is another one -

“There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest.”