Mysorean

Read this. My reaction was “What the &@#$?!!”

I just want to quote the first paragraph to make a point:

The world champion Test and one-day team arrived in India this week in time to see, if you can put yourself in their shoes for a moment, a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears cricketers showered with cars, houses, cash and the unbridled devotion of a billion people because they managed to win a hit-and-giggle Twenty20 contest in South Africa.

The world champion Test and one-day team…:
From when did we start having a World Test champion? Come on Australia. There is a limit to boast.

…if you can put yourself in their shoes:
I didn’t know anyone could fit the shoes of the Aussie cricketers. Nobody can get as arrogant and high-handed as them.

…a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears cricketers:
What are the Aussies? Well, I don’t need to answer the question at all. The same Australian team lost to the same ‘bunch’.

…they managed to win a hit-and-giggle Twenty20 contest in South Africa:
hit-and-giggle? Well, yeah, Australians are only known to sledge and crib. Clearly a case of sour grapes.

Now read this. I couldn’t stop laughing after I read that. The Aussies are simply J. They don’t know how to react to the fact that they lost a tournament. Losers. And above all, look who’s talking?! Andrew Symonds! LOL!

If I can get so fired up after reading all this nonsense, imagine how Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly (“they ll add a li’l bit”) and Dhoni (“stand-in captain”) should feel after reading those words. I just want the Aussies to be tamed in this series just like our city corporations tame street dogs. Come on India! All the best!

Someone pinch me please…

It was the shooting of the final episode of the TV program “Ooh… la.. la.. la..“. My brother-in-law Girinandh [Link to one of the news articles on the formation of their band] leads a band called ‘Oxygen’ which has entered the finals. A R Rahman was the judge for the final round. After Oxygen’s performance, Girinandh and his band members went to Rahman to get a group photo done. Apparently, Girinandh had asked my wife to call me [while he finished with his group photo] so that he could introduce me to Rahman. [Can you imagine being introduced to A R Rahman?! As compared to meeting him as yet another guy on the road!] My wife ran up two flights of stairs to call me and I will be eternally grateful to her for the physical strain she undertook at 3AM in the morning.

As soon as I came to know what was happening I dashed downstairs and was standing next to the stage in a jiffy. Girinandh was still involved with the group photo. A R Rahman presented them [all the band members of all the finalists] with an autographed “Pray For Me Brother” DVD. And the band members dispersed after thanking Rahman. On his way back from the stage Girinandh spotted me and waved asking me to come onto the stage. I ran.

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It was the year 1996. Hyderabad was the city. The then CM Chandrababu Naidu was on a Hyderabad beautification spree. One of the main items on his agenda was road widening. Too many encroachments and the roads had become too narrow for the growing volume of traffic. If he wanted investment to come into Hyderabad he had to make the infrastructure attractive and make it easier for people to move around within the city.

During his road widening spree, there was one thing that he religiously followed. He would go around demolishing everything in the way of his proposed wide road except places of religious worship. It could be a temple, mosque, church or a gurudwara, he would just leave alone that area of the road that’s covered by the structure and convert it into a roundabout. He did that to respect the beliefs and sentiments of the religions involved. He did not want to arouse riots in the city because of relocating a structure of religous belief. He never thought about demolishing any of them.

I only wonder why our central Government cannot have an ounce of sense while deciding to go ahead in demolishing the Rama Sethu (Adam’s Bridge)! It is connected too deeply to the sentiments of the Hindu religion. It is considered to be the bridge built by the vanarasena for Rama to cross over the sea to Lanka to bring back his kidnapped wife Sita.

Now questions like: Whether the bridge was really built by man or not? (Technically, the question should be ‘whether the bridge was really built by monkeys or not?’) OR Whether Rama existed or not? OR any other such inane question is irrelevant. Rama is a Hindu God and he needs to be respected for it. If there is something in this world that can be connected to people’s faith about Rama then it needs to be respected. You cannot go and demolish it straightaway. Apart from the sentiments, faith and belief of the Hindus, you also need to consider various other points.

In my opinion, the Government would be committing political harakiri by going ahead with the demolition. Even the US wants to preserve the Rama Sethu. [Link] And TN CM Karunanidhi (He leads a party called DMK that’s a part of the coalition government at the centre) isn’t quite helping matters by releasing statements like these. “Who’s Ram?”, he asks. Hey Ram!

A few of the sentences (those scrolling headlines) I came across while changing channels on TV:

This was on Headlines Today. It should be called Headless today!

First scroller:
SALMAN KHAN IS TRAVELING IN JET AIRWAYS 9W… IN SEAT NUMBER 3C

Second scroller:
OUR JOURNALIST IS SITTING NEXT TO HIM

Third scroller:
SALMAN IS SENDING MESSAGES TO HIS NEAR AND DEAR

Fourth scroller:
SALMAN APPEARS COOL AND COMPOSED

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I have been looking at upgrading my mobile to something that works! Do you remember the 6610i phone? I use that as of now. I went into UniverCell to find out how much discount I would get if I offered my cellphone in exchange for a new one (N72 I am looking at). The sales guy tried really hard to supress a smile on seeing the phone in my hand. He said, “Rs. 1100/- saar”. I was crestfallen. I am transmorgified into the past (the C&H cartoon strip effect). It was my dream phone three years back. I had paid a fortune (around Rs. 6,000/-) to get it then. And today I hear in the background (foreground main dream chal raha hai na yar!), “Outdated. Camera is not at all useful. Nokia has stopped production. No Bluetooth also”

My primary reason of buying this phone was that. I just needed a device to make and answer phone calls and listen to FM Radio while driving (You get to watch movies if you do this). It was the need to be connected that drew me to it. Infact my first preference was a plain vanilla 6610 – the one without the camera. But by the time I could buy it, Nokia had stopped production of that one. And by the way, I am one of those who buys only Nokia mobile phones, Sony Walkmans and Apple iPods. So 6610i it would be.

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