Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Across the pale parabola of joy ...

Achievement of the decade. Procuring a printed copy of Mike and Psmith, the "pre"quel to all the Psmith books by P G Wodehouse was the highlight of the day . I had read it off Project Gutenberg but the joy of having a printed copy is something else. This is the origin of sentences that have given absolute joy to readers over the years . Having tried to lay my hands on this book out of print unsuccessfully since class 9 when I first lay my hands on a work of art by Wodehouse, it was a significant achievement to obtain this at long long last...

To quote one of these as PB mentioned to me .

Mr. Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two short steps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps and ended with a combination of a step and a jump, during which the ball emerged from behind his back and started on its slow career to the wicket. The whole business had the dignity of an old-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigour of a cakewalk. The ball when delivered, was billed to break from leg, but the programme was subject to alterations.






Indian Summers...

Managed to get to Crossword in the middle of answering an SOS to my sis over what I would term an eventful weekend . It began with a game of cricket on Saturday what folks would call an intra company match to help unearth new talent in our organization to play cricket ... Yours truly was the first person to appear on the ground at 7:30 a.m. which left our captain K rather impressed considering the fact that he's usually had to give me some 30 wake up calls after reaching the ground on a couple of previous occassions.

Inspecting the pitch showed that it was a beauty with the length of the crease so much that some one would be hard pressed to bowl a no ball. I must say I came very close to overstepping but then pulled out of that delivery at the last moment. The moral of the story was that we lost thanks to a typical collapse after a fantastic start . 59 for none after 9 overs became 67 / 4 ... 2 spectacular catches by my particular nemesis P who usually plays a game with a hangover with either a build the previous night with some P0,P1 blocker critical bugs fixed or with sufficient quantities of suspicious liquid jostling in his innards. One of the catches was to get me out , still cannot believe that he managed to take a catch while falling backwards and still managed to pull that one out centimetres above the ground. What hurt me more was losing a bet to one of my friends who still thinks that I can't bat for nuts.


After this we had a few interesting innings from folks who tried running with Ph (Now I have P so I should refer to Ph as Ph. ) involving an interesting sequence where many a time one would find Ph at the same end as the other batsmen... Thanks to our democratic practices we allowed all our players to get a hit but this noble approach enabled us to score just 115 in the allotted 20 overs.

After a short break where we bemoaned global warming and how heated Pune was becoming before we started on the second innings. We had few brief hopes of winning but all that was dashed once the other batsmen batted through. If only we had held on to a couple of catches, 2 tough c&b's off my own bowling and a skier at long on , there was a chance that we might have done something different. However the dudes of the day were Pr and KP (not Kevin Pietersen but another guy who shares a similar outlook to batting) .. Pr was batting well in the 18th over and suddenly went for an ugly reverse hoick which resembled a cross between a pull and a slash .. I was umpiring then and as Pr walked off I couldn't resist questioning the reasoning behind the shot - (we were not too greatly placed ) to which he replied as an excuse that this was the last over. It turned out that he'd been done in by a smart piece of work by the keeper ( a smart alec) and KP who insisted this was the last over despite feeble hints from the square leg umpire. However this makes Pr the dude of the week and pushes him close to the hall of fame which KP currently occupies...

Monday, April 09, 2007

Namesake

Gogol Ganguly - whats in a name you may ask , but if you have a name which goes Nikhil Gogol Ganguly I am sure you'd sit up and question the wisdom of your parents choices. Its from a superbly crafted movie called the Namesake which I managed to see with 3 Swedes and my niece M bringing to an end a mixed weekend . The movie is well made and the performances are really good - Tabu and Irfan Khan stand out and so does the kid who plays the role of Gogol in the movie . Almost everyone questions their name at some point of time and wonders if their parents could have done better - However you live with your name and its not too far before you make the same mistake.

Watching Australia play England before dozing off . I hope England does a Bangladesh today :)

South Africa do an India .

by losing to Bangladesh - So the win against India wasn't a fluke - the match wasn't fixed and all that to all those losers who went around burning the effigies . Greg Chappell's gone but Dravid stays on. Its been a while since I have been delighted by someone losing and I was backing Bangladesh all the way yesterday .

The last few days have seen a lot of noise and chirp about Indian cricket and the way its the system which sucks and our players who are treated as demi-gods when the team wins and then worse than dirt if they lose. Its possibly to do with our psyche and as my mom's grandmom would say with an old Tamil proverb "Veccha Kudumi Saracha Mottai" .which means that either we are all punks with waist long hair or with a completely shaven pate that resembles more the MCG with lights on... Some balance guys or we'll never achieve anything ...

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

I went to the new Landmark store that's opened here in Pune to see if I could pick up a copy of Mike and Psmith that I had ordered a couple of months back . However discovering that it wasn't available promptly picked up Colin Forbes' 34th and last thriller. Colin Forbes is an author that I have read since class 9 and I usually manage to pick up one of his books either when I am travelling or haven't read anything interesting in a while.

The central character in all his novels is the head of the British Secret Service or the SIS as it is called Tweed. Tweed spends most of his time looking out for the Brits and saving the world and Britain from total destruction . His enemies in the time of the cold war were the Russians and the Eastern Europeans who morphed once into the Al Qaida . However his favourite enemies in recent times were huge conglomerations lead by rogue industrialists. There's a familiar pattern to Mr. Tweed's madness and there is a method too! Hence the weird title in the honor of Mr. Tweed .!

Rest in peace Mr. Forbes - I shall have to go searching for a new Tweed pretty soon !