Watched this movie ‘Taare Zameen Par’ twice already. I think it’s a movie worth watching on the big screen. Don’t watch it for Aamir, don’t watch it for Darsheel (the kid), watch it for the issue that it handles – dyslexia. The way the society looks at it or rather overlooks it in the race to be the best. As Nikhumb (name of Aamir’s character in the movie) says, “Agar race main daudaana hi tha, tho breed race horses damnit, bachche kyon paida karte ho?” (If all you wanted was someone to run in races then breed race horses, why give birth to children?) The movie is a fantastic take on how we as human beings want our children to fall into the framework that the society has derived and push them, knowingly or unknowingly, into it. I am in love with the movie. And recommend that everyone watches it. On my scale it is a * * * * *

Coming to what I am, and the rest of the country apparently is, following now, almost obsessively, the Indian tour of Australia. The Sydney test was a fatal blemish on the so far good resumes of Benson and Bucknor. I think they will meet the same fate as Darrell Hair did. In my personal opinion, the ICC needs to atleast ask for an explanation of their decisions. But what has happened is there for all of us to see. Their explanations can almost be anticipated. “I didn’t hear the nick because of the crowd”, “I didn’t think it was necessary to check with the third umpire because I was sure that Symonds’ foot was inside”, and so and so forth. So, what is the solution to this? Nothing. We must stop venting our anger on these umpires and just carry on as if it was a bad day at office. That will really put us up there as the only team to have played in the ‘spirit of the game’.

And the ‘monkey’ issue. I agree with what Steve Waugh says. It is a culture issue. Here, in India, we just can call anyone a monkey and that wont mean anything offensive on the contrary might be taken as a jovial remark and laughed away. I think what Symonds wants here punished is the ability to talk back to him. He admits to having provoked Bhajji and Steve Waugh says that Australians always thought that he was the easiest to get a response from. So, what we are seeing here is actually a well-laid trap that Bhajji has walked into. I am not getting into whether he said “monkey” or not, all I am saying is that the Aussie players could have very well evened the matter out on the ground itself, as they usually do, rather than crying out to the umpires and the match refree about it. This act of ganging up against a single player of the opposition combined with the royal ignore that Sachin got during the hearing simply points towards the disrespect of the opposition team down under. And I don’t know who the legal counsel was for Mike Procter. He/she must have been sleeping during the hearing. There is something called conclusive evidence that needs to be produced for a decision that extreme to be taken. Obviously, they haven’t heard about it. Neither has anyone. So, what’s the fuss all about? Just carry on.

Here is what the Indian team should do now. Play the practice match at Canberra and the Perth and Adelaide tests. I don’t see them winning at Perth going by the tradition of bounce that the pitch has. Adelaide has been a happy hunting ground for India and we have done well there. Maybe we should look at coming back with a 2-2 scoreline but if it was not Perth in the way I would have said we could do it. But still, with these kind of things running at the back of the players’ minds I don’t think we will be able to avoid a 4-0 whitewash either.

News just trickling in suggest Bucknor being pulled out of Perth test. That should increase our chances by 50% ;-) Am just being nasty here. The nature of the pitch is going to be such that we will have a tough time negotiating it rather than thinking about umpires and such. We should include VRV Singh and drop Ishaant Sharma for this test. And maybe try to get Pathan also in at the cost of Jaffer. That would widen our bowling and batting options as well. I feel sorry for Jaffer if this happens, but then we need to have our best bowlers at Perth. We need to get Australia out for less than 300 in any one innings if we want to stand a chance of winning.

And if the board decides to abandon the tour, for whatever reason, then it would be the saddest thing to happen. According to the ICC, Indian board will have to pay USD 2 Million for not abiding by a pre-signed contract. Well, it should be the National honour on which the boards makes a decision and not money. It already has a lot of it! :)

Sitting in a room right next to the TV Room was my kid-cousin Akshay. He was sitting on the computer browsing the net or doing some complicated stuff. He was totally unruffled by the noise and excitement in the adjoining room. In fact from where he sat he could easily see us jumping. He was the youngest in the family (then) and was having such a composed look on his face while we were behaving like children at a zoo! Cricket didn’t matter to him. Everytime there was a roar from our end he would just shout, “what happened?”, to us. We would reply, “Yuvaraj just smashed Harmisson for a boundary! Only 30 runs to go and 4 overs remaning!”. He would reply, “Oh aste na. sari”.

But his best reaction was when we were all thrilled when India won the match. He casually walked out of his room and said, “Did India win?”. He said that, he didn’t ask because nobody answered!

We were all totally surprised by the total rejection of cricket! Our family is known to go bonkers about the game. Anyone you meet, even those whose name you don’t remember, and you don’t know how to start a conversation you can just say, “Don’t you think Simon Taufel should be sacked for his LBW decision against Sachin Tendulkar when he was on 91?”. That’s it – you have started a conversation! But be careful it can flare up emotions like nobody’s business.

Born into such a family, Akshay was an outlier. He almost hated cricket though he never said that. And we never realised which other sport excited him untill we saw him sitting in front of the TV every Sunday without fail. Schumacher it was, who captured this boy’s imagination with his consistent victories and stamp of supremacy on F-1. Formula-1 racing caught Akshay’s fancy like nothing else could. And Akshay was and is our one-stop shop for anything on Formula-1. Today he has decided to share his passion with the blogsphere at http://axf1page.blogspot.com/

Akshay writes well. To testify my appreciation, here’s what my good friend Anand Balaji has to say about him,

Amazed at the clarity of thought; highly impressed by the manner in which you pepper a topic such as F1 racing with your little exciting twists and turns; speechless at the way in which you have dealt with the subject in an engaging way.

It’s not often that one comes across a good writer. You are one. Having spent a considerable amount of time as a journalist in the print media, I am well-equipped to judge good copy from bad. Your effort is laudable.

So, this is the link you need to go to, to keep yourself updated about Formula-1 racing.

(Akshay Iyengar is pursuing BE in Computer Science from Mysore. He can be contacted at axman1000@gmail.com)

And the result on the blog:

10 users online! Isn’t that great?!

Innovation everywhere. Inspiring every moment!

Please click on the picture above to read the full article on the real Superstar.

Thank you all! :)

Yes, I will now be blogging at http://www.aol.in for their Bollywood blog which is here.

Everything else apart from Bollywood will carry on at Mysorean.com as usual.

Just thought of sharing this piece of news with you. Thanks for being there and giving me your feedback.

The sidebar here will get updated with every post I write at AOL to ensure you don’t miss them. Well, not that you will miss much if you miss reading them, but still… Thanks once again! :)

I checked out if Mysore was on their rolls. Then I realised Mysore was Mysore because it was not on the radar of such things. Next I checked on Hyderabad. Even that was not on. They weren’t accepting applications for blogging on Chennai’s metblogs as there were already enough active bloggers.

Bangalore was my next stop. They were accepting applications to join the team of bloggers already doing their job. And my application was accepted. And here I am with my first post on NRN retiring. Check it out!

It is an amazing confluence of Google Pages and Blogger.com. Includes:

• Tags! Can help us categorize at last!
• No publishing required! Changes are reflected automatically on your homepage
• Drag and drop to create a template of your choice
• Comprehensive dashboard service
• And many more…

Google’s vision is clear. They want your internet experience to be totally on “Google” services. Hence this amazing merging of their brilliant individual services.

Oh and yeah, my second sentence doesn’t mean that those conditions will last forever. Google is working on them and they will include all of us on the new service by default in a phased manner.

When Google says “New and Improved”, they bloody well mean it!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: (Dated: 21st Aug, 2006) Thanks to Hardu who migrated her blog to the new service recommended by me here by just taking my word for it. It seems she was told that she cannot get back to her old settings anymore. So, please make the move keeping this in mind. All the best Hardu!