Mumbai....Meri Jaan...

It's finally over...I hope it's over...

dont know when I've been so completely taken up with something thats not had any direct effect on me in anyway...and i dont think it's just me ... Everyone i know has been glued to the tv sets for the past three days...everyone has an opinion...and everyone has something brewing inside...

Visuals of a city under siege..horror stories of unbridled mayhem in places which anybody who's been to mumbai..would remember to have walked freely about..admiring the view.... 

Terror has never hit home so hard, and so close to our generation at least...ever....

the death toll as i hit out at my keys is touching 190....

and rising....

200+families in mourning today...a son, a father, a sister,a  mother...dead for no reason at all..or a reason that we, the ordinary people will never understand ...

a bunch of loons..armed to the teeth, just seemingly floated into India's most influential city and caused this mayhem leaving destuction and terror in their stay...and we as a nation have watched this unfold in our living rooms...with a growing sense of frustration, anger and rage. What?? How?? we actually let em do all this??  

Forget the 'why' for a while...whatever god forsaken political, religious, national alliances they had...goddammit...let that be damned for a while...

The fact that our nations security hangs by the finest of threads..and lives of innocent millions are just there... ripe for the picking for those b##$$ is ridiculous...and scary....

and this strike brings home a lot of other incidents..i confess that all the other blasts that have happened this year, Malegaon, Delhi, Jaipur, Guwahati.... they hardly registered on my radar... people died there as well...not in such; if i may use the word 'glamorous' situations....but human lives have been lost...

There are fewer things that disgust me more at the moment than an ad by the BJP in the newspaper accusing the congress for these lapses...is this the time to indulge in such political one-up manships?? are our chosen national representatives such insensitive oafs ?? ...

Running a  close second would be the homegrown 'terrorists' we have...a bespectacled 'Marathi' idiot who sets aflame passions, with 'his city'  Mumbai under siege... he conveniently went missing for two days...and the Janus sided Gujarat CM who offered a widow a cash reward, thankfully to be rudely rebutted...

I see a shattered Major Unnikrishnans mom...Hemant Karkare's wife...Gajendra Singhs children... and a mass of multitudes at their last rites...

and thousands of others like me who grieve alongside..and have been rather tragically shown what being a 'true hero' is all about... the army..the forces... the police... who ' give their todays for our tommorow' ... we salute the men... better late than never...

As a worked up Barkha Dutt on screen put it... "Today...we are all Mumbaikars..."

I sit; a scared and frustrated man today... frustrated that in our country incidents and events like these, are becoming a daily occurence...and all I can do is sit, twiddle my thumbs...and blog out my rage...

scared that tommorow..it just might be somebody i know, like it's been today for so many in Mumbai...will i be able to take it??

Not sure..not sure at all... 

 

Why Do I Quiz: Part 2

For anyone who's read part-1 of the similarly titled piece....this is not exactly an extension of whatever was stated then...

It's more out of want for a better title on what has been a trying and tribulating day...

The Hindu Young World quiz in delhi 1999...led a team from school to the event...came nowhere close to qualifying for the finals...even as the audience...couldnt know a word of what the quizmaster was hollering about...just knew that the chaps from DPS were answering left, right, centre...went home a shaken, make it terribly shaken kid...

A quiz by 'pickbrain' in college 3rd year...somehow after a miraculous prelims...make it through to the finals...after an enervating 1 hour..come back down with 5 points..1 answered question...and a devastated ego...

Another quiz called 'quiztrac' in Coimbatore...fellow college goers would recognise it to be coimbatores biggest open quiz...I rather remember it as my biggest heartbreaker..three times in a row...2004-5-6...could just sigh as was left high and dry in the prelims itself...all the bloody time...

2007: BT Acumen Finals....the euphoria was yet to set in..was actually in the east zone finals....
with the closest thing to an idol that i have...harsha bhogle hosting...walked onto stage at the IIM-C audi...before an amazing harsha and a fabulous audience............
...and went to pieces.... finished in last spot....

2008: Tata Crucible Semi-Finals: Land up in the shooutout round for a spot in the finals of Crucible...the holy grail of any campus quizzer..take three minuses and one plus.... end up in the negative at the end of the round...out ..and that too in some way....

and today...The BT acumen 2008 finals...qualified again...same IIM-C audi...Harsha was there again..the audience too...heck i even got the same spot that i had last year...
...
...
the lakes at IIM-C have a curious thing about them..little ripples come up...break up, recede...and then back up again...

I finished second to last today....after the home team had all but decimated us...once again...came home with just a bagful of bruised dreams...

My quizzing ripples too have always seemed to break-up..sooner or later...true...winning isn't everything...and i can hear a couple saying.."hey...isnt this the same guy who said he quizzed for the sake of quizzing"...sure ...still am....
but the problem with being passionate is; the fact that passion unfortunately; hates being told you're just not good enough...

but the best part of the ripples are that they just dont stop coming...to break-up maybe..but they just dont stop...not their style...

so i pack up and look towards crucible'08...another disaster in the offing perhaps..but never mind...i live to die..another day...

Goodbye Jumbo...

Surprisingly...have never written about another lingering passion of mine ...cricket; on the blog...ever...

the tipping point though arived today 3:00 pm....

was standing outside 'south indian' as it is called...after a very very heavy curd rice meal ready to drop off on the road itself...thats when it arrived...

"score kya hua hai??" ...
"kucch tha 208 declared....aur haan....kumble's retired by the way...."
"kyya????"
"haan haan....just declared it in the morning...injured bhi to hai...."

and that was that....
not for the first time..was left speechless and shocked in the middle of a road...

drifted back to my first lingering memory of kumble...
think it was the hero cup final against west indies in 1993....

a lanky, bespectacled...rocket scientist lookalike...stormed the windies; who were demolishing teams till then..in the finals...
6/12 his final figures i still remember...amazing,astounding,magical bowling...
as eden gardens erupted in fireworks...india...and lil manoj suddenly had a brand new hero...

was in third standard at that time...remember twirling my arm over for a year after that wanting to be 'kumbleee'....

another match in 1996...against the aussies..before they were 'THE' aussies....India had fallen apart after sachins departure as usual...and a tearful lil manoj was watching crestfallen till kumble and srinath took the likes of fleming and co by the scruff of their necks and actually batted india to an improbable win...

1998..at the kotla...on a dirt bowl of a track...much to a slightly older lil manoj's sadistic pleasure..batsman after batsman had absolutely no answer to jumbo's doosras,teesras and 'etc'ras that were coming at them....remember cursing aloud when the 10th pakistani batsman skied up the ball in somebody elses over fearing that his perfect 10 would not arrive....
thankfully...even the gods didnt want it that way...only the 2nd person ever to take a perfect 10 in the history of cricket...wow....just wow...

was not following a series in the carribean where India were getting slaughtered...a friend in college mentioned one fine day..."kumble's got guts dude...damn..you should have seen him yesterday..." confused...started to the nearest cyber cafe...remember my first reaction on seeing that pic of his bowling replete with strapped jaw..."shit...holy shit" courage thy name is kumble...

and strangely...the most recent memory comes from a quiz question.... "who scored the only century for India in england last season....??" ... before i could get my rusty brain on track... another team burst out on the buzzer excitedly... "Kumble!!!" ...

"whoa?? well....yeah..actually...kumble!! wow!"

Jumbo's cricketing heroics would require a separate blog per se...and these stray reflections are more of my personal memories...in a cricketing world replete with bully's, overtly macho and overtly competitive 'super-stars', holier than thou attitude throwers...Jumbo was always a revelation....fiercely competitive...a tiger on the field...and yet always the perfect gentleman off it...

"he cant spin..." , "no variation" "medium-pacer" "indian pitches only" and many many other things...said the critics...and toady a report card that says 500+test wickets...India's highest wicket taker...and that too by quite a number...

for over a decade when India's bowling languished..Jumbo valiantly toiled for that elusive breakthrough...on flat pancakes of tracks...in killing conditions India's lone bowling hope....jumbo...walked on...without complaining...he spun on...

the old guard is changing....Dada first....now Jumbo...and there are quite a few fledgings right in place...yet....yet....

stray idiots will rejoice that "the oldies gone..he was no good anyways..." cynics will say.. "was a paper tiger...harbhajan has always been better" ..and tearful goodbyes like this one shall also be penned down...

the fledglings shall take over the ball...and the advent of 'captain courageous' dhoni will finally be complete...

and yet...amidst all of this...valiantly...silently...manfully...and as ever..humbly....kumble shall declare his innings over...

a legend walked off a cricket field for the last time today....a legend...

was not shedding tears (that is reserved for the damned day the lil master will decide to hang up his boots), but with an absolutely heavy heart walked off home...
cos a little part of me, a bit of 'lil manoj' had also walked off into the sunset...