Why did the chicken cross the road?

Best and worst of IPL

Best 1: When Sharad Pawar, BCCI President, was booed on-stage.
Best 2: The cheerleaders (duh.......obviously).
Best 3: McCullum's 150.

Worst 1: Banglore's Jersey.
Worst 2: When Dravid was bowled by Ishant.

Short story: Love in the time of an 11 year old.

If someone asks me about the first time I fell in love, I would point to Donna. Or maybe it wasn't love, just an infatuation, the beginning of my own adolescent feelings of attraction towards the opposite sex. But how does one know. Maybe one does not know, it can only be felt.

It all started when I was eleven years old. The words ``Cable TV'' were just being heard in our apartment complex. Nobody could believe it. You could watch TV without the mind numbing consistency of the Doordarshan (the state run TV channel). Everything was rationed, lest it corrupt the nations kids, lead them to morally unhygienic places. So when people tuned into these new TV channels which could show songs all day, movies all day, nothing but crap all day, they were just surprised. I was lured away from the regular games like window-breaking cricket, knee-bruising football into this TV box shaped black hole.

Moviesmoviesmovies, that was all they showed. My mom let me get sucked in as she didn’t have to deal with the neighbors' broken window panes or applying dettol on my knees. They came one after another these movies, just to keep me glued. Just as though there was a Darth Vader sitting somewhere controlling my mind with these moving images. I didn't want to do anything except watch these movies. And there were so many of them.

Would I ever be able to watch them all? Would the Darth Vader let me do it? Oh, he probably would have, if it was not for my mom. On a summer sunday, I was glued asusual watching a stereo-typical Indian movie with its characters reduced to caricatures. This one was about how bad rich mean fathers don't want their daughters to fall in love with good poor big hearted boys. Like any movie there were fights, songs, dances, crying mothers and the traditional rape scene. This particular movie was no different from the ones I watched before, except for the particularly grotesque rape scene. The problem is that while Darth bombarded me with these movies, my mom still kept monitoring me. Lest it corrupt my childhood. So while I was devouring this rape of a scene, she almost ran up to the TV and switched it off and shouted at me. ``What is wrong with you. Why are you watching this dirty picture.'' I was locked up in my room while my mom and dad brainstormed the remedy to my corrupted childhood, correct me from my virulent path. Darth was probably pulling his mask off or murdering one of his Generals in rage. He had lost an effective disciple in me. Poor old Darth, to this day I sympathize his loss.

My dad came up with the brilliant plan, now on I would be shown only one movie a week and that would be chosen by my parents. So after a week of brainstorming, my father had a flash, he found the movie that would repair his son's corrupted soul. I sat on the floor, starved of my supply of movies. He walked into the drawing room with his face glowing. And like a magician he asked me, ``Guess what movie you're going to watch today .......''. The eleven year old me didn't care. I felt like screaming at him. ``Just shove it into the VCR. Please dad, let me watch those moving images again. Please stop this torture.'' But I did blurt out ``I don’t know''. My father like an announcer on a TV show said ``IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIts ............ a Wonderful Life, Starring James Stewart and Donna Reed.'' He put an end to my torture and started the movie. It was an old black and white movie. Darth would never have approved.

But for the first time I saw something beyond those images. It was a woman, a beautiful, naive and completely vulnerable Donna Reed. The divine Donna playing the ``Buffalo girls won't you come out tonight'' singing Mary. The Mary, who would fall in love with George.

After the movie, I was in a daze. I knew profoundly this was not a movie Darth would choose. Mary talked about loving George. But what was love. Could I feel it? George was a man and he felt it. But I was only a boy, an eleven year old boy. How come I don't feel it for anyone? Thus started my hunt for the Mary of my life, the divine Donna Reed.

I found her in the unlikeliest of people. A few weeks into my search she descended on me as an uncomfortable visitor. My mom had spoken of her cousin who was coming from England. The cousin who married an English woman. So my mom made some of her best dishes for the guests. Yummy fried rice, gravy chicken curry, fish fry, potato fry, curd and ice-cream all on the same table. My mouth watered so much I almost forgot the idea of Donna for a few minutes. But only for a few minutes.

In she walked with my uncle. Blond hair, blue eyes wrapped in fair skin wearing a blue shirt and black jeans. She came in and said a sweet hello to everyone. She bent down to me and said ``Hello young man. You look mighty smart. Im Donna, you can call me Aunty''.

The reader might consider the writer a pervert. ``How could you fall in love with your aunt. Man, now that is gross''. But I was only eleven, I didn't know whom to love and how much to love. It just came to me, like a cool wind.

I probably would have tried to control myself if she didn't say it. What did she say...... She said to my mom while shaking my hand, ``You have such lovely kid''. For a minute I could only hear my heartbeat. Did she actually say I was lovely. Deduce it, shorten it, do anything with it. But did she use the word "love"?? The divine Donna in love with me????? Could this really be happening? I ask for it and I find it? Its so simple, she was right there with her blond hair, big blue eyes, blue shirt and black jeans.

But blond hair and blue eyes have other relatives to visit and planes to catch. She left the next day and I never saw her again. She walked out of my life, just like that. I never tried to stay in contact with her. It all happened so fast. At eleven, while other kids nursed bruised knees and ankles, I nursed a wounded heart.

Years later, I watched a movie which said ``Time has passed, and I have loved many women. And as they've held me close, and asked if I will remember them, I've said, ``Yes, I will remember you.'' But the only one I've never forgotten is the one who never asked.... '' Every relationship eventually becomes a shadow in eternity.

Review of Kari by Amruta Patil

I recently bought a book (yes, i had money). Kari, a graphic novel by Amruta Patil.

On the first reading, the novel sounds extremely narcissistic. Kari is a heart-broken lesbian who suffers from a deep sense of alienation. She works at an ad-agency and gives the impression that she is not-so-bad at what she does. Kari aims for a Chou yun fat hair style and is a voyeur sitting on the roof top. She is attracted to a dying woman, ironically named Angel. But the narrative seems a bit fragmented and I was not sure what to expect from the next chapter. After finishing the novel, I was wondering what it was all about.

So I decided to read it again, to see if there was something beneath all the wisecracks and the supposed boldness. And there was. Kari's sense of alienation is something most of us experience. "A bed the size of a football feild.........", now there's eloquence for you.

I especially liked the part, "we go back travelling in too much proximity. Two inches from one another and expressionless." I instantly remember one of Grass's quotes, "because man - each man and all men together - is alone in his loneliness and all men lumped together make up a lonely mass without names and without heroes."

Kari uses a Woody Allen style narcissism to address the profoundly moral and philosophical questions in a contemporary context. Don't miss Kari if you like watching Allen.

Mistry, Heller and God

"What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power he had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. It's obvious. He never met a payroll. Why, no self-respecting businessman would hire a bungler like Him as even a shipping clerk!"
- Catch-22, Joseph Heller about God.

"What sense did the world make? Where was God, the bloody fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet. He would have been sacked long ago if He was managing a corporation? The things He allowed to happened to the maidservant, the thousand of sikhs.........."
- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry.

Two people who share my views on God.
Free advice from the Tinker: Read A Fine Balance only if you intend to spiral into depression with a capital D. Its worth reading this masterpiece.

Harsha, the Tinker

A recent browsing of the old pictures made me realize how I have changed since joining this place. The photo of a long haired, happy, half-ass tinker. A Tinker(no, not a "thinker") only has weird, half-baked, cynical ideas about his own life. Now I'm this new hope-filled man. I detest him. Cynicism was so much more easier to handle. It was earthy and rooted in the fact that I was not good enough for anything. Hope, on the other hand is a beast and gives you those false ideas of grandiose. Oh tinker, where hath thou gone.

Myself and the feeling like shit

Ive got the blues. Suddenly the lab is deathly empty (at other times its just empty). why care I ask, then I remember a conversation,

A: Dude, what do you want to become in life?
Harsha: hehehehehe......
A: Im serious.
Harsha: I was just going to say, thats a good one.
A: I want to become a professor.
Harsha: whoa, really? But why a professor?
A: Because, you can treat people like shit and walk away with it.
Harsha: Hmmmm....
A: It is the only profession where absolute rational thought is required, but none is expected.
Harsha: Yeah, I guess.
A: Besides my professor treats me like shit, his professor treated him like shit and the entire genealogy is based on feeling like shit.
Harsha: But why dont you aim to be a change agent, like if you wont treat your student like shit, maybe he wont treat his student like shit, the genealogy might still be saved.
A: You foolish nincompoop, its not up to me change things. im just a pawn in the greater scheme of things. How will i affect a change even if I dont do it. So just have fun (at other people's expense) while you're here.

A serious post

Life had always been an unfulfilled dream for him. That is, until he met Arundhati. She opened his eyes to the world and told him "To love, To be loved, To never forget your own insignificance". Her kids Estha and Rahel were the strange and inseparable twins who only wanted to love and be loved. She introduced him to Salman. Salman could dream up a new world in his thoughts and so could his boy Saleem. They talked to each-other, but never talked to each-other. They could tell you stories of someone sending an important letter but not the details. Salman introduced him to Gunter, his alter-ego. Gunter talked about why future novels will not have heroes, "because there are no individualists". Gunter's Oskar symbolized everything he detested. "That midget", he thought. But love was when he loved Oskar. The kid for all his innocence was just a villain. But was Oskar the the villain or was it him.

He went back to Arundhati and asked her about his life. But for all his questions, she only told him, "to respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget." She asked him not to go. There were people to meet, like Jack and his Buck, Joseph and his Yo-Yo, Leo and his Anna, Ernst and his old man, and many many many more. But he was not to be stopped.

It was on this journey that he met Ganga. He wanted to tell Arundhati what he wrote down in his mind. "Mountains, like love, come in all shapes and sizes. Watching through the window, the Himalayas appeared brown, dull and mighty. Outside, in the bright sunlight they appeared lavender. The rocks were lavender, the snow was lavender, the soil was lavender, the sun was lavender and everything around me turned lavender, except the bluish green ravines of Ganga. I gazed in wonder as the mountains turned green. Suddenly, Ganga herself looked green. Green turned brown, brown turned orange and orange turned lavender, and on and on they took every color possible as my eyes grew larger with joy. A cloud flew below me to dance for the soft and surrealist tunes of the gurgling Ganges. Danced every cloud for now I was above them and Ganga sang with love and abandon. Beauty and love were right here and they came in all shapes and sizes."

He walked and walked and walked. Until he reached the end. A stone pillar in the snow read, "China 7 km". But love was nowhere to be seen. He was driven away by a gruff man for being "stupid and coming here". He fell and fell and realised he had finally reached the end. He was a good listener and joined in the local school as an English teacher. The kids thought he looked funny and spoke funny. For all his sorrow of not finding love, they still thought he looked funny. The gruff man came one day and told him, "Leave you fool, they are coming, and when they come, we wont be here. Leave.....". But he hadn't found love yet. How could he leave. He asked Tawang, she assured him it was here and he would find it. They came. Walking steadfastly into his life. The gruff man left with a few wounds. They came to him steadfastly and told him, "Leave or Die". But how could he leave, Tawang had told him he would find love here. They wouldn't understand. They only repeated, "Leave or Die". Finally, they wanted to get rid of him. For a second, he had a vision and then there was love.

He wondered "What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now? "

Ganga and the Himalayas

Mountains, like love, come in all shapes and sizes. Watching through the window of the bus, the Himalayas appeared brown, dull and mighty. Outside the bus, in the bright sunlight they appeared lavender. The rocks were lavender, the snow was lavender, the soil was lavendar, the sun was lavendar and everything around me turned lavender, except the bluish green ravines of the Ganga. I gazed in wonder as the mountains turned green. Suddenly the Ganga herself looked green. Green turned brown, brown turned orange and orange turned lavender, and on and on they took every color possible as my eyes grew larger with joy. A cloud flew below me to dance for the soft and surrealist tunes of the gurgling Ganges. Danced every cloud for now I was above them and the Ganga sang with love and abandon. Beauty and love were right here and they came in all shapes and sizes.

But how did this wonder come about. If the himalayas were formed by the mere designs of a superior being, they are probably the most wonderful of his creations. If they were formed by the geographic and tectonic collisions, then coincidences have a life of themselves, transformed into an art form.