Why D?

If you are reading this, then you know me. If you're reading this, then we're friends -- though some are better friends than others. One of you helped me recently by making me aware of the bitter fact that I suck at choosing title for my blog posts. And probably, he was right. Sometimes I do injustice to the title of the post. Like, talking of the the previous post, there was hardly anything there pertaining to LOVE. But for those who accuse me of writing long posts, I am sorry guys, I can’t help it. I know, after reading the title of this post, you must be thinking that probably I failed again, but not to worry, I’ll prove you wrong. I know it sounds absurd, "Why D?". But, I know that this title is quite fearsome, for AITans at least. For others, let me introduce to this term YD (Why D), which stands for year down or its generally known as year back in other colleges, when you have to sit back home and take a drop for one year to clear your subjects. People in AIT don’t like to face results, 66% of my batch is below 60% and hence gives enough reason to why people don’t like facing the D-day. Last year, I was standing at the gateway of this so called YD. Eleven theory exam in a span of 21 days and three practical examinations is hell of a reason to get a YD. But somehow, I made it through and cleared all of them. These are the words of a man, who didn’t see a single sunset in AIT last semester, not because he was busy studying in room, but because he didn’t want a reason for a YD afterwards and regret. Believe me, it was height of pessimism, I spent half of my time thinking period aftermath YD. My parents still don’t know about my critical stage, but their blessings were always with me, and now I don’t care, even if they come to know of it.

I was not the only one who was on the verge of getting year down. There were others too. Most of us were fortunate enough to make it through, some could not. Some people played a great role in each of our's success. Apart from parents and relatives, there is a third kind of relationship that I can’t stop praising since they helped a lot by providing me with moral support throughout the semester. There were people around me providing me with all sort of help, and I call this category of people, “friend”. Believe me, getting out of such a situation (YD) requires a lot of mental balance, and I bet you can’t accumulate that all alone. I have seen people getting ripped off with mere six theories. I remember people coming to me regularly and asking me to study. Some of them, came drunk some sober, but all of them were worried for me undoubtedly. It’s not just about clearing exams, that make me say that, but there are many more reasons to support the call.

and then I fell in what they call LOVE

Note: This is for anyone who has been in a one-sided love affair. If you have pined over someone, idealized them to the point you question your own worth and felt continuously disappointed by the affection you have not received...this blog post is for you.

My blog “the THIRD eYe” is getting older day by day, and as it gets older, it’s getting cooler. Sounds nice, when people complement you that way. I took up blogging as a hobby, thanks to some wonderful seniors I have been with. Now, I encourage others to take up blogging as a hobby and exercise it regularly. People now value my opinion and often come to me with doubts of different sorts. Believe me, it feels very nice when you come back to your room in the evening, and you are completely tired and when you check for the “Stats”, and there are visitors from all over the map. The “Stats” also provides the administrator with some interesting facts about the blog, like the audience source, most read post and the traffic source. “Farmville” is an all-time hit, the most read post, but there is convincing number of hits on other posts too. Getting complements from people encourages you to write more and more. It feels very nice when people value your suggestions and take it as a word of advice. One of them, an aspiring blogger asked, “What do I write on my blog?” I answered, “Write what you feel”. Yes, and that’s the truth, one of my friends, my old roommate has flooded his blog, either with technical posts or posts on “love”. This is because he is either on phone, talking to one of his many so called “just friends” or he is busy with his routine technical stuff. Today his blog is one of the most read, he lives life like a “Prince”.

Recently, I came into contact with one of my schoolmate. I have been talking to her a bit more than I do to others. So, people around me in hostel and on Internet, have become quite suspicious of me. Since, I had discussed the same with some of my friends, hence one of them asked me to write a blog post on “love”. I told him that I could not do so, since I love writing on topics I pursue interest in or have acumen for. Since, I have never fallen in love so writing on such an abstract topic would be impossible for me. And truly speaking, the topic seems to be limited, I mean you don’t have much to write. You will probably agree on the same view, until you have seen my dear friend Dexter's blog. He has written some 6 or 7 posts on love. It’s not like that I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s been difficult for me to write even two paragraphs. On the other hand, he has been writing versions of the same post, “An open Declaration of love”. I wonder how he finds description in there. I simply can’t, but sooner or later a time comes, when you start feeling it. Dear reader, don’t get excited and keep reading and don’t ever ping me or comment below the post, asking her name. Mind it!!! By the way, you will do justice to the post if you consider my affair to be absolutely one-sided.

A Football Match

Sounds like another home assignment to a 6th class student, I know that’s what you must be thinking of. Being an Indian, I do not expect more than that from an Indian. A football game is limited just to his fantasies and fake essays and stories where he himself chooses which side to win. But here it’s none of those fake essays that you might be thinking of.

Recently I got a lifetime opportunity to watch the National team playing a friendly match against Yemen in the Balewadi Sports Complex, Pune. I could not afford to miss this one. Match was scheduled at 7:00 pm on 13th of October. We reached there in time, got ourselves tickets (Rs. 300, the most expensive available). There was a different entry for people with different tickets. There was a board which asked people with 300 wala ticket to enter. We entered and took the stairs which went upwards to the top of stands. I was left a bit behind, when one of my friends, who had already reached the top, came back and held me tight and told me that I was about to witness something which will leave me spellbound. So, I got an idea, that I was going to confront something stupendous and sensual, I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I took a deep breath before I could grasp that scene into myself. As I stepped further, I could see floodlights flooding the stadium with light and making the green look bright green and red, bright red, in short it was unbelievable. My limited vocabulary hinders me from explaining the feel further. It might not sound a big deal to you, but for me it was.

The stadium on a whole appeared like a 3 year old child’s den because it was splashed with bright colors all around, but in a regular fashion. We went and accommodated ourselves in the best seats available. Since, we had the costly tickets, so the view from our seats was very much clear and we could see the whole ground in horizontal (F6 view for those who play FIFA). There was one Ghati commentator, who was trying his best on mic. In front of us we had the Yemen dug-out and beside us there were some odd 30 supporters from Yemen. Everybody was waiting for Sunil Chettri to appear on the ground, his hat-trick in the previous match against Vietnam added to his fan club. Soon both the teams came in the center with their respective flags and a FIFA flag of course. National anthem of Yemen was played followed by Indian National Anthem. Game started with Yemen supporters cheering for their team and yelling at the top of their voice, soon Indian supporters started too. Game had hardly started when Yemen hit a goal, taking a lead of 1-0. I will not go into the details, or it will not be different from the 6th class student’s homework. Apart from hits and misses, there was lot of drama, including an own goal, bookings and other stuff.

That stadium has a capacity of 20,000 and I guess the attendance was hardly even 3000. Most of the stands were empty. Had it been India vs. Kenya cricket match, I am sure the tickets would have been sold 2 days back. Indians are crazy about Cricket. World's most popular sport Soccer is not much preferred in most parts of the country except West Bengal, Kerala, Goa, Punjab, Sikkim, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya & a other few states. Quite expectedly, when FIFA.com wants its followers to name their countries all-time best football XI, not a single entry is found from our country. If we are asked to select nation's all time Cricket XI, it is blatant obvious that not less than hundreds of thousands of entries from India would jam the website. Our country has definitely produced quality footballers of highest international standard, but still the audience support is missing. Even that day, as always the crowd was part of the supposedly rich “yo” and “dude” generation (the ones you see in “youngistan” and “fastrack” advertisements).

Is it so, that football is considered a poor man’s game since it requires such limited infrastructure that you can start playing anywhere and anytime. The entire professional kit, shin-guard , socks and shoes would cost not more than 2-3 k, on the other hand the cost of a good bat alone surpasses everything that is required in football. But Indians(read people in the sub-continent) usually have the tendency to buck worldwide trends, here mostly it’s the street urchins playing cricket, almost always with a rubber ball while a piece of wood from a broken down piece of furniture serves as the bat. There is no luxury of wickets and a bunch of items usually serve as a replacement for the batsman’s wicket, a two wheeler perhaps , an abandoned wall sometimes, unused bricks from construction site or on many occasions the stump of a tree(mostly in the countryside). As for the bowler’s wicket a chappal or a piece of stone usually does the trick.

I can think of several possible reasons why this is so, but all of them appear as weak and lacking in evidence as the next one. One may also say that Indians as a whole tend to be less sporting and prefer to hide their bodies under tons of clothing and sit inside a house. This is partly true as our Olympic record till date shows, but there’s no reason it should apply to Football in particular. Most of the Arabian countries share our passion when it comes to hiding your body under clothes and not participating in sports but they still have good Football teams none the less. Then there are the usual accusations about Cricket being a lazy man’s game (a game where Tea is served in between sessions!!) and how no other country plays it, but people obviously choose to overlook Golf in this argument (The laziest game in the world, which also happens to waste a lot of precious real estate), which in-spite of it’s lethargy is quite popular worldwide. So no reasons seems to satisfy enough, if you have any please do mention below.

I think that I can easily categorize football fans in India into three categories, one “The true blue fans”,  two “The wannabes” and three “The don’t cares”. People who belong to the first category, like one in the picture on the right regularly follow football, whether it’s local, international or club and at times may have played themselves. The “wannabes” wake up to football during times like these and watch the game because everyone else is watching it, their knowledge of footballing talent is usually limited to well-known names like “Messi”, “Rooney” or “Ronaldo” which they like to profess to others by wearing cool t-shirts. There is also the desperate need to appear “cooler” than the guy next door who only knows about the “desi” cricket and it’s other “desi” avatars. Then there’s the last category who would happily watch a Bangladesh-Pakistan encounter during the world cup finals, these are the die-hard cricket fans whose hatred arouses when he comes to know of the fact that no one bothers to report news about the Santosh Trophy when the World cup is going on.

Things like these intrigue me and convince me that the lack of popularity of football has in fact nothing to do with any of the things listed above and has in fact more to do with the fact that cricket in India is subjected to the grants and donations of a benevolent organization like the Government of India and soccer is not. The condition of buses to take the two teams back to their hotels after the match, said a lot about the arrangements made for the team. I bet I travel in a better bus than that one carrying the players. After a good finish in the Commonwealth Games, I hope that Govt of India should concentrate more on sports(other than cricket) and its players rather than flooding out money to corrupt people like Kalmadi. 

How long cricket dominates other sports is a question only time can answer. Hopefully the beautiful game(soccer) will indeed take its roots in India.

What an idea, Godji!

“What’s your take on Ayodhya verdict?” pinged me one of my juniors on Facebook chat. I went blank and could not think of a sensible answer instantaneously, so by the time I could make up an answer, I asked him the same question back. He seemed to be satisfied with what the three bench judge had passed. I thought after the verdict came, it would be over, but to my surprise the whole blogosphere was flooded with reviews on the verdict. Bloggers are busy making passionate calls for maintaining peace and harmony, the whole of cyberspace is flooded with tweets and blogs for peace within minutes after the long awaited Ayodhya verdict. I know I am doing the same but it’s just a written matter that is not related but written by one man and hence united.

In my opinion, this verdict was a test of religious tolerance. The judgment seems to have been decided in favor of Hindus and Muslims praying together, which is the hallmark of our composite culture. It seems judges have gone the extra-mile in trying to settle the case and also come up with a workable formula where no side gets absolutely heartbroken or feeling that there is any sort of injustice with them.  Sincere thanks to the public who themselves want to come out of the shackles of communal riots which have taken a lot of lives by now. Some say judges made a “diplomatic” judgment, where no one lost and no one won.

TV channels are making the scene worse. I have been avoiding watching news channels, but does it help. No!!! I think the noise decibels were getting to me. Does shouting out the news or questions/ comments make everything more credible? Most news anchors certainly seem to think so. Both TV and print media simply try to make the conditions worse by arousing the emotions. Like the next day TOI said, two parts went to Hindus and one to Muslims. It could have been presented a different way too. It is not expected of them. I wonder why they try to play tricks and give a wrong view to the public. A Newspaper reflects society and hence is expected not to misinterpret the verdict. No harm with that as long as the people remain peaceful. I hope that all sorts of media live up to our expectations.

Whatever be the restriction imposed by the authorities, the virtual world literally experienced the meaning of “freedom of expression”. They had no reservation in mocking and making fun of politicians, media and even the judiciary. Interesting, most of the blogs were spreading peace and harmony rather than hatred. One of the bloggers declares IIPM to be the rightful owners of the land. The blog mentions IIPM to own the land much before Mughals invaded India , forget Britishers, further mentions IIPM’s legacy to date back to days of Nalanda-Taxila and affirms to possess banner-ads as proofs. Funny, ain’t it? Some guarantee a better judgment than three of our esteemed qualified judges, they recommend a hospital to be made in lieu of mandir or masjid, which will serve the general public without any sort of discrimination. I liked a suggestion, which I would like to share with you. It was building of a structure which is probably visited by every sect in India, be it a Hindu or a Muslim. It is like every other religious place, where the respective religion is practiced. But it pertains to a religion which is followed unanimously by every Indian citizen. So, the religion I am talking about is cricket, and its temple is cricket stadium. It doesn’t sound feasible as the place of contention holds a lot of religious significance.

It’s time to stop acting like fools, and think like a human, a responsible citizen, for the prosperity and development of the nation. Let no one be compelled to prove his/her patriotism alone. Why should a single community suffer when all pay the same taxes, when all are governed by the same institution. It was one of the most awaited judgments in known history. Though people are satisfied with the verdict, but the fact that this dispute has invoked unprecedented frenzy and passion in the past, it was expected that no judgment can completely satisfy any of the sides. Everyone should hope that the issue is over. This, our motherland, gives equal shelter to people speaking different languages and following different faiths. After all, Ayodhya means “a place of no war”, and hence another bloodshed or conflict over the issue in future is not expected.