The prize winning "surprise look"?

Not the practised eyes wide open , carefully manicured hands on the cheeks , real action in slow motion "oh my God" look popularised by ever so many Miss Universes.

Not the shell shocked , "Damn,this is my 30 seconds of glory;lemme say it all;but I cant seem to remember a single sensible word" look at the oscars.

It is a puppy letting out a cute, tiny bark for the first time, looking all around to see where that sound came from and freaking out all day everytime that sound comes from his throat!!!

Now that is definitely a winner!

A mother's joy is great when she bears a child ; but greater is the joy when she hears others praise her child.
("Eenra pozhudir peruduvarkum thanmaganai
saanron enakketta thaai")
That is a Kural by the tamil poet thiruvalluvar(first century B.C.)who in two lines packed all the wisdom, philosophy and human psychology one possibly needs in life.He said little and kept it very brief but said them all!
I knew the full import of this couplet today when I read Harsha Bhogle's column in the Indian Express today:
"For years there were hypotheses; based on stray observations and a deep concern for cricket in India. There were theories, opinions, a lot of us were like the philosophers, or like scientists of old to whom ideas in the mind were the drivers of thought because numbers on paper hadn’t appeared yet.

"Now we can rejoice because of a pathbreaking piece of research by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, another of our highly promising young breed of cricket writers. He has looked at data from domestic cricket over the last five years and his findings are like music to the ears. I have read his article twice and each time I have felt like old scientists must have as elements were discovered where they ought to have been in the periodic table......
And the whole column is about siddhu's article in Feb Issue of Wisden Asia Cricket.

To hear anyone say this would have been music to my ears ...and coming from Harsha, this is a very proud moment for me.
Felicitations Siddhu! Thank you Harsha!!

Blind , deaf and Mute.People and objects in their lives are just smells, a sensation, a warm hug, a rough touch, a soft kiss, a cold splash , a painful sharpness, a soothing coolness!Their ideas have no colour, shape or name and no expression.There are no words as theirs is a soundless and lightless world – it is all a silent darkness. I do not know if it is black or gray or a muddy brown – anyway how does it matter what colour infinite sadness is? To be sitting in front of the sea and feel it only as a cool touch, not to be able to be awed by the majesty of a mountain except feel it as a hard surface under your body;not to be moved to tears by music and yet to be alive? Did God forget to say “let there be light” when he created them?
I hung my head in shame for all those times I had complained about my lot – every day of my healthy life has been a blessing and I am not sure I will have enough days left to say thanks for all the simple blessings that I have so far taken as given.
Now I know what Purandaradasa meant when he sang:
Narajanma bandaga Naalige iruvage
“Krishna” ena barade?*
(When you have been blessed with human existence and have the power to speak can you not say Krishna's name?)

Saw the movie "Million dollar baby"- great performance by Morgan Freeman, Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood. But I just simply could not watch the boxing scenes - could not understand the heroine's passion for this sport or anyone's. Is it a sport at all when it seems to be founded on the principle of hurting another person fatally? It is not something which tests your defensive skills but positively all energy is directed at offending - the intimidating looks , the posture, the jabbing, slapping, and flurry of blows - how can civilised people enjoy something so bloody? Or is it an outlet for the animal that lurks inside that civilised exterior?
One of the arguments offered against ban on boxing is "when a person chooses boxing he is aware if the danger to his life and he makes a free choice. So why ban it?"
What kind of an argument is that? When you are not allowed to choose death when you are terminally ill, how can you allow a healthy person a choice of death in this manner?

Outside a "fun" school for kids I saw a board saying they took kids in for
Play school,pre school, nursery,L.Kg and senior Kg. Now is this how many levels that kids go through before entering std.1? so when exactly do they start - right on the day they are discharged from the maternity ward?There was also something on the same board about "young achievers" in the age group of 5 to 10. So the pressure to "achieve" starts from that level!!
That same evening,while waiting for asha and company before the Indian ocean & strings show at IIM, amboj and I did receive a lot of curious glances from the 20 something crowd waiting impatiently to get in.
But the best part came at security check point. Amboj opened her bag to reveal the contents when she saw asha's being checked but the supervisor quickly walked over,stopped her and asked her and me to pass. We heard her scold the younger security, "don't stop the senior citizens!!" yeah, that is us!!
So you start your race of life , the "achievement" path sometime around 2 plus when you have bladder control and can speak . And at 45, when you stop running because you suddenly realise ther IS no race, you are a senior citizen.
When does one actually have fun??

Jagjit was melting hearts on a moonlit night in the open garden of IIM.Wonder if God cast that voice in gold and wrapped it in velvet before putting it in ( well, souvik, THAT voice needs a God!) A voice meant for singing about love, life and God - the theme of all ghazals and the result was magic. People of all ages were remembering the time they first fell in love or if they did not have the experience , they were falling in love with love itself.(It was agelessbonding!!-like what he sang in one of the songs: "na umr ka seemayein; na janm ka) The setting was perfect, the weather was just right and there was love everywhere. But then there was a separation between the singer and the listener - a clear gap.It was a brilliant performance but a "performance" nonetheless.
And then it all changed when he switched to punjabi folk music.The audience became part of the performers, adding the ahas and ohos at the appropriate moments and danced. That was lovely. The abandon, the participation, the obliteration of distinctions - you did not need to be a professional,it was souls dancing to their inner music, a complete identification. Joy filled the air.
It is extremely cathartic to let go and sing and loosen up completely and dance to the music making your own steps. Most villages and tribal cultures have this tradition- time we revived it to relieve all the stress that city life imposes.
Anyone willing??Aha! oho!!

Accompanied Vaish on an important mission before the class last saturday - changing the water and food for Kitkit, Anita's cat as she was away doing Tsunami relief work at chennai. Both of us were nervous to say the least as we hadn't the tiniest clue about cat behaviour. On top of it Anita had warned that kitkit waits behind the door when she hears it being opened and charges out as soon as it is. The last thing we wanted was to lose her cat as we were pretty sure we would never know how to coax her back if she decided to charge out. So we opened the door ever so gently like two thieves and entered the apartment with our hearts going thud thud thud. No sign of a cat....I lay flat on the floor in each room and turned my head around looking for something like a stuffed toy....Nothing.....Sniffed around...couldn't smell a thing...Finally I sat in one corner and started chanting what I thought was cat language "....psss...pssss...kitkit...kitkit...where are you..pss.pss.." And it worked....There was a plaintive "meeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaoooowwww" and it was not particularly friendly...perhaps my pronounciation was so awful that she decided to protest ( happens all the time in French class!!!)
Then a tiny white thing peeped from behind the fridge assessing my philistine self. I was shaking as I obvioulsy smelt of Amigo who was all over me just 15 minutes earlier and Saba. Fortunately Kitkit just concluded that I was too weak to confront and slowly marched past me while fixing her gaze on me as i withdrew more and more into the wall...and I called out to Vaish that she had emerged.Vaish was so excited that she did the most sacrilegeous thing: she said, " nice puppy.. where are you?" yes,she actually said "puppy" and that was it!! Kitkit decided to hide herself from us for ever and never said another word or came out until we finally left after changing her food and water. I bet she later complained to Anita about her taste in friends!!!
God, we were miserable and shaky for people who communicate with dogs so effortlessly. Thanks to the hype that cat lovers do about the superiority of cats, we felt like slum dwellers looking at people from page 3. And the worst part it, cats seem to believe it too.....god, wonder which paper they read....

"Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this."
whatever.......

They sit in the park benches placed around the walking path - these very old people,in sweaters and mufflers,alone.Sometimes two of them share a bench without uttering a word to each other. Would you forget words if nobody spoke to you for days on end?I look for the feeling behind those faces - are they sad, are they worried, are they contented? Or do they just wait helplessly and alone with only Death to claim them as his own?
What happened to all the people who they thought "belonged" to them, the ones with whom they laughed and cried and LIVED? These faces betray no emotion - they look like faces in a long shot,indistinct;lost to the present and future, they seem frozen in some remote past.
Perhaps they do not have use for their "feeling" faces in a world where no one seeks them out.Do they keep them "in a jar by the door"* to be worn when someone from their past drops by to see them and talk to them?

Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles?)

"Ah, look at all the lonely people!
Ah, look at all the lonely people!
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?"

Have you been on Bannerghatta road recently - specially the part that leads from JP Nagar to IIM? Yeah, the potholes have been covered,a layer of tar has been poured and the road is divided and looks broader. People driving the economy (as well as qualis vehicles and fancy cars) to and from call centres and Mantri Paradises look happier - at last "Bangalore is catching up", they say!
Only the birds sit pensively on the corner temple looking lost.They are confused by the sudden disappearnace of those large trees that used to line the side of the road which used to be their home or rendezvous point - now gone with only the stumps left to mark their graveyard!Those trees under which you knew you could find the tender coconut and mango venders on summer afternoons, under which the cobbler sat with his dog; those trees that were covered in red and yellow and lavender every now and then adding colour to your day; where you stopped your scooter and waited for the rain to stop while taking in the smell of water mixed with the leafy barky smell of the tree.
Of course all this was when Bangalore was a small town - now it has grown big and perhaps needs to "catch up". In any case people do not have the time to listen to the birds or watch the colours on the trees - their cars need broader roads.
Perhaps this is a small price to pay for all the dollar income from the call centres and technology companies!

I was at my wit’s end after 36 hours of “quality” time with an adolescent niece, desperately needing something to calm my nerves. People close to me pointed out that I was over –reacting as this was only “normal” behaviour among difficult children these days. So I thought I will document a few findings for others who may be walking unprepared into such an experience:
• “Sorry” is the most offensive word in the English language and must never be used with an adult under any circumstances.
• Adolescent speak is a totally alien language which adults will never master. It comprises of a set of words mostly monosyllabic . Words such as "please" are unnecessary and preferably avoided. Responses are usually simple and to the point never mind that they sound completely rude to untrained adult ears.
• Time is very precious – theirs. So you better make your sentences short. If you still decide to speak for more than one minute, they exercise the option to switch off their attention.
• Never,yes this is serious: NEVER get into the advise mode. But if you must , then be prepared to receive a pseudo-sympathetic look that says" Oh yes, I understand;it is that damned PMS again!"
• Adolescent-think is a process for which no manual has ever been written. It is a coin with just one side – their side. It is supposed to be completely logical, rational and totally correct at all times – perfectly clear from their side and completely invisible from your side.
• Exposure to them for extended periods can be traumatic in the least and dangerous if your nerves are fragile! ( pretty obvious, isn’t it?)

There is something poetic about small things that happen spontaneusly and many times for no reason at all.
Yesterday amboj and I were having a small chat at the junction where we had to turn into our roads after our evening walk. Two kids of the construction workers, aged 2 and 4 were on their way somewhere. The little one had just a shirt on, he was almost covered in construction dirt , no slippers and in his hand he had a long piece of woven green cocnut leaves that looked like a narrow mat – one of those little things for the amusement of kids that these earthy people are so resourceful to make.
Amboj and I stood about two feet apart from each other – a space that adults learn to respect as belonging temporarily to the individuals that created it.But for these kids from their height of one and half and two and half feet, it was just space enough for them to pass through. Those pair of legs and the space in between were all discrete without any connection.We were amused to see them between us and suddenly the little one stepped on amboj’s foot. He was either attracted by the yellow lines on her new black sandals or he thought it was an insect to be crushed or he was attracted to the lovely whiteness of her feet or there was no reason at all. And then he walked on as if nothing had happened – no consciousness at all of having done anything strange.A spontaneous translation of his feeling into immediate action untarnished by social , historic or economic thought conditioning.
It took a full 15 seconds for us to grasp what happened and then we both burst into laughter.
That second had the spontaneity of a little child that suddenly plants a kiss on a mother’s cheek or an unexpected wave that washes your feet and quickly runs away.

Piece by siddhartha in www.Cricinfo.com today:
(why is it in my blog? because I adore cricket? Not really! Because I am fond of Kumble? Not at all!! It is here because siddhartha is my son!!!)
The clinical colossus

It is no surprise that Anil Kumble excelled in Machine Drawing. Every mechanical engineer will tell you that it is a subject that requires immaculate attention to detail – accurate measurements are crucial – and enormous amounts of patience, as most exercises require you to repeat similar procedures several times. It has varying effects on students – some develop an interest by virtue of their diligence while others create a mental block that seriously hampers their thought process. The ones who excel are those who view it as a simple method of illustrating a three-dimensional machine in different perspectives.

Kumble mastered it. More importantly, he swapped the drafter, an instrument critical in Machine Drawing, for the cricket ball and performed a similar function, all the way till wicket No. 434. He operated in millimeters and experimented in very narrow tolerance limits. Ironically, the reason he was different was because he didn't try different things.

For the generation who took to cricket in the early 1990s, Kumble was the most likely bowling hero. Kapil Dev was gone and Javagal Srinath hadn't arrived. We hardly saw an Indian fast bowler running in at full tilt and intimidating batsmen. But Kumble came close. He destroyed rather then beguiled. He cussed when he was taken for runs, and glared at batsmen who went after him. He pushed them back with a series of balls that were short of a good length before unleashing the yorker that uprooted their stumps. In many ways he was our Curtly Ambrose.

Thanks to Kumble, we hardly ever saw India lose a Test at home, let alone a series. If the strong Indian batting line-up was one axis of the Ajit Wadekar-Mohammad Azharuddin days, Kumble was the other. England were devoured, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe dismissed. Australia and South Africa, who battled for supremacy through the '90s, were made to flounder. And when Pakistan had a chance of a series win, Kumble gobbled them all up in one spell. India's invincibility at home wasn't because of the pitches they played on. It was because of a man who knew precisely how to bowl on them.

In many ways, he has been India's most valuable player for the last 15 years, yet never filled stadiums like Virender Sehwag, nor fired the teenage imagination like Irfan Pathan. With an extreme sense of professionalism he carried out a job of winning matches for India – the count of which we have long forgotten.

But if one moment stands out, it's that afternoon in Antigua two years back. With a broken jaw and his face all plastered he got Brian Lara out and gave India a sniff of victory. It wasn't a statement he was making. It was a job and he was doing it despite the acute pain. Wally Grout, the great Australian wicketkeeper, once remarked, "Whenever I saw Ken Barrington coming to the wicket I thought a Union Jack was trailing behind him." Both on the field and off it, Kumble evokes similar emotions.

Amid all this he remained unassuming and, just like he had done with his clutch-pencil at RV College of Engineering, let his work speak for itself. You may miss his name if you take a peek into the college yearbooks of the late '80s. If you take a closer look at the section celebrating sporting achievements, you will come across the name K Anil almost everywhere. It is symbolic of his career - inconspicuous, almost hidden off the field, while being a colossal presence on it.

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan is on the staff of Cricinfo.( siddharthav@wisdengroup.com)
http://www.cricinfo.com

-opening your eyes in the middle of the night and be startled to find moonlight flooding your room
- finding the first bud on your flowering bush
- first drops of rain on your face
-holding a puppy in your hand while it licks all over your face.
-sitting at home on a wintry afternoon listening to old film melodies, with a dog contentedly curled at your foot
- mails from friends
- gurgling laughter of infants
- silence
-sitting on a rock with a book wetting your feet in the flowing river.
- pulling down the contents of your shelf and sitting among the memories.
- smell of antique furniture
-sleeping on crisp sheets and pillow cases smelling of surf excel and sun
- watching a little girl say: "Mimi, aapka chehla mele liye lucky hai"

- Seasonal / corporate gifts such as table-clocks cum calculator cum what not, table lamps, torch lights, pens, sandal wood show pieces, brass artefacts
- sandalwood garlands
- comments about whether you have lost or gained weight
- indifference of friends
- harsh and angry words and unsmiling faces

Things people give you anyway and you have no idea what to do with afterwards!

You realise you are ancient
- when you refer to "Gandhi" in a conversation and someone asks you "which one?"
- when you wear a saree and some one asks, " what is the occasion?"
- when you have friends who do not have e-mail addresses.

All three happened to me last week!

There is sudden spurt in construction activity around my house.
In the plot opposite my house, I watch 4 men weild their iron crowbars all day digging the depths required for the foundation. When the power goes off some afternoons and I feel irritated and stand near the window hoping for some air, I watch them still digging in the hot sun, their bodies melting in sweat and their limbs struggling with the heaviness of the iron implement against the hardened earth.They take turns to rest every once in a while. Their women collect the dug up earth and heap it in one corner, while a child or two wrapped in rags sleeps in a corner and is moved places as the sun moves direction. I think of the effect of this activity on their lungs, heart,skin and whatever else.It all seems so inhuman and I feel there should be a ban on making men do such jobs. It is just not right.

Today in the neighbouring plot, a fancy machine has come to do the same job -it looks like a dinosaur motorised and on tyres. In one day the diggingwill be done for the same sized plot and the earth trucked away to some other location. One man sits on the dinomotor and pulls at various levers and steers the machine in different directions, which digs the earth with its claws , and then scoops up the earth in loads and drops them in a truck which is then driven away to dump it. It is a delight to watch the machine work so efficiently except for the terrible noise of the engine. Now this is right!

As I stand there watching, I see the men and women from the opposite plot watch the machine too. And in their looks I see despair, anger and fear of future.
I do not know what is right any more.

Victor navorski embarks on a short trip to New York to fulfill a promise to his dead father. While he is in his flight, there is a bloody coup in his country Krakozhia. On landing at the JFK airport, he is told that he cannot get a visa to enter New York because the new government in his country is not recognised by the U.S.Government. All flights to his country have been suspended until further notice. In 24 hours, he has become a person with no country, no rights , no priveleges - actually a non- person. Thats where Speilberg's "Terminal"begins and then we have a delightful movie which tells you of the victory of the individual over the system and good over bad etc.. I hear this is based on a real individual's story and he is still there roaming the terminal of an international airport. A person who became nobody because of no fault of his.

My friend's mother who is from Lahore and moved to India during the partition told me stories of lots of people who lost their possessions, friends and family in one stroke when officials drew a line right in the middle of their property and told them that what was on the other side of the line was a different country from that moment onward.

My friend built her house in Jaffna putting into it all her dreams and hopes and all their life's savings. Exactly one day after the house was completed, she had to move to another city because of civil war. And this was fifteen year ago - she has not been able to go back to that house ( or where it stood) yet!

Scary, how everything that you have always taken for granted can be taken away in the flash of an eye! Perhaps Life is after all a transit terminal as Shankara says in his Bhaja Govindam:
Maa Kuru Dhana Jana Yauvana Garvam
Harathi nimeshath Kaalaha sarvam
Maya Mayamidam akhilam hithva
Brahmapadam tvam Pravisha Vidithva.
Bhaja Govindam, Bhaja Govindam!

( Don"t stay in the cosy comfort basedon proud thoughts such as : " I am rich, I have so many relatives and I am young". Time can snatch them all away in one instant! Remember that this world is nothing but an illusion and attain the state of Brahman.)

I realised that I have not blogged in a while. It is one of those times of pseudo nirvana when you do not have the urge to say anything and actually "know" that it does not make a difference to the world if you did not utter another single word for the rest of your life.

But I came across some delightful expressions in the past week:

Phebe in "friends" referring to a "superlative - addict" boy friend breaking into ecstasy at the most mundane things:
"He is like santa claus on Prozac in disneyland."

Tom Robbins in "Skinny legs and all":

"Babylon was riding tall under its powerful leader nebuchadnezzar. My, oh my, they don't make names like that anymore. Ronald, Gary, Jimmy, just plain Bill: these modern mediocre monikers aren't fit to shine the shoes of Nebuchadnezzar. John is a label. Nebuchadnezzar is a poem. A monument. A swarm of killer bees let loose in the halls of the alphabet."

Lynne Truss - "Eats, shoots and Leaves"

"As with other paired bracketing devices( such as parenthesis, dashes and quotation marks), there is actual mental cruelty involved, incidentally, in opening up a pair of commas and then neglecting to deliver the closing one. The reader hears the first shoe drop and then strains in agony to hear the second. In dramatic terms, it is like putting a gun on the mantelpiece in Act 1 and then having the heroine drown herself quietly offstage in the bath during the interval. It's just not cricket. Take the example, " the highland Terrier is the cutest, and perhaps the best of all dog species." Sensitive people trained to listen for the second comma (after "best") find themselves quite stranded by that kind of thing. They feel cheated and giddy. In very bad cases, they fall over. "
(Lynne Truss - "Eats, shoots and Leaves")

Boy, if only I could say something like that!!!!

It is a great learning process for me to observe and listen to the young people who come to the French course I take at the Alliance Francaise. The oldest of them is about 26 and the youngest is 12 ( seems so far back in the past for me).
Last week the teacher announced a mid-course test, the questions started from the group.
For how many marks?
What is the pattern?
What is the break-up between written and oral?
Will the test be only on Unite 8,9 and 10 or would concepts from previous lessons be included?

Neither the teacher ( who is closer to my age and from The Rishi Valley school) nor I understood the relevance or need for any of these questions. This is a foundation course in language where you either knew the concept or you did not. And the concepts from one lesson flow into the other - how does one use past tense if one didnt know how to make a sentence in the present tense?
As for marks the only relevant question according to me would have been, what is the mark required to pass? Does it matter whether one gets 70 or 100 as long as 50 lets you go to the next level?

I guess this has a lot to do with their experience with the educational system - so much premium has been placed on the marks that even the study of a language is not excluded from it.The students are careful to frame the sentences on a known pattern and re-use previously used sentences rather than try out new words or new sentence structures, so you are sure not to lose marks! Does n't this kill the whole joy of learning a language which is to learn the rules and the million deliteful exceptions and experiment with them and create your own style of expression? A paper in Language affords a kind of freedom and possibility for creative expression that is not possible in a science or a Math paper. Why should we bind ourselves in a chain of marks - and when this is not even a course that decides your career?

Wasnt it Shaw who said that he never let his schooling interfere with education! May be it is time our educational system stopped interfering with the joy of learning at least the languages.

The other day there was a traffic jam in the centre of town because of a few hundred people in a peaceful protest march ( Of course there were policemen walking along side to ensure it was peaceful.) I could not see what this was about as it was tough to read the banners while trying to manage to steer my car through the human and vehicular traffic. This brought back memories of processions in calcutta where I lived 25 years ago for a brief 8 moth period - people marching for causes like liberation of the oppressed in kampuchea, protesting violence in yugoslovia or somewhere in latin America. It seemed amusing to my inexperienced mind at that time that a few hundred people marching in calcutta hoping to be heard by governments in far off lands.
Now 25 years later I realise that silence in the face of crime is tantamount to participation in the crime. We live in a time which will be remembered by posterity - if there is one, for we seem to be hell bent on wiping out human race in the next few years- for inhuman crimes in the name of God. In this age of networked terrorist operations , we have to break our silence and voice our protest any time there is a terrorist activity or crime against humanity anywhere in the world. After observing the customary three minutes silence for the innocent victims, let us scream - on the roads, through any channels available for us and express our disapproval. Let us do it in the remote corners of India for the babies and innocent victims in Russia and America and Spain and Iraq as much as in Kashmir and Gujarat. Let us not stop screaming until the violence stops. Let us not say it is happening in "far away" places. In today's world nothing is faraway - it takes minutes for anything to reach your door step.
Let us break our silence. That is the only way we can save this earth for posterity.

We shall have to repent in this generation, not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.