Insanity and a 3 day trip to India for a test match.

You must be insane was the first reaction. But boy am I glad I did it !

Planning to go see "the" test match of my career and that too only for 3 days. Yes that sounds really insane but something I really wished that I did at some point. It was really simple, got a friend to arrange for a ticket, packed a small backpack, booked tickets and got the holidays that were due. I did take a punt that India wouldn't bat first but it was sad that West Indies couldn't even last a day when batting first. It meant that I would miss the first day and some bit of the second but the hope was that one would get to see him bat. However I digress, there was still the small matter of getting to the flight on time, but luckily the the trains were all on time and one could get on the flight just before the final call. Traveling with just hand baggage is highly underrated.

All this was on a wing and a prayer though, the hope I could see him bat one last time. Despite clearing customs and immigration in record time at Mumbai, I entered the stadium slightly disappointed, tired but exhilarated . I had done it, I was there. I'd done the NRI thing that one kept reading in books, travel to watch a game at the drop of a hat. This though wasn't just any other game, it was the last time one could see a certain SRT play in a test match representing India.

The crowd cheered, kept cheering another local boy Rohit, on but also cheered when he got out. There was a chance that SRT might bat again. Then there was the anticlimax, getting caught off a no ball. A low key plea started by a few folks, pleas to Dhoni to declare. Further furious demands followed. Rohit got his century in the end, a really good innings with the tail, but the crowd was interested in the presence of another man. The pleas continued, requests went out to the West Indies to clear the tail, but it was in the end Shami's dismissal that brought the loudest cheer. This was a day for insanity - an Indian captain boo'd for not declaring, the fall of an Indian wicket getting the biggest cheers.


The next day wasn't great - the heart wished for a strong West Indies performance. Boundaries would be cheered today for a West Indian batting performance. There were cheers when the runs were flowing slightly, couple of partnerships but overall everyone was there to just have fun. Nothing more, nothing less.

There could not have been more ways of saying his name

Sachiin sachiin ... the refrain
Saachin saachin ... the refrain...

Wow, what an experience. After a point people started pleading with Dhoni to let Tendulkar bowl. Pleas went out . 

Tendulkar bowl kar. 

Dhoni hai hai and whatever not. 

It was absolutely crazy. Then Tendulkar got the ball, and the whole stadium was standing and making so much noise. I don't know what the batsmen thought of it all - the atmosphere was electric and it was certainly goosebumps time. The match proceeded at a break-neck pace, wickets kept tumbling and in the end we were done. However something that should be realised is never again shall there be a number 4 with the initials SRT for a long time for India in tests.

Woh!

Saturday mornings , Chepauk and Australia.

Wake up at 8 a.m. , potter down remembering there's Australia playing India in Madras. The last few weeks have been odd talking to folks about cricket seems to put me off. The familiar players have either turned to the commentary box or become administrators and then there's the small matter of India losing a lot of test matches home and away. Living outside India in a country that still follows cricket it's hard to have a conversation which doesn't meander cricket wards. The usual things come up , IPL, Dhoni (and him being super cool or not caring), India not caring enough about test cricket and folks only caring about money, losing to England in England, Australia in Australia, England in India, BCCI and DRS. Amid all this you then hear in the papers Tendulkar's quit ODIs , a format he defined, he's going back to play Ranji Trophy and the Irani trophy. You search youtube and then find him flaying Sreesanth all over in the Irani trophy final and all that . So, there's hope at the back of your mind, you want him and will him to do well against the Aussies.

Then turning on the TV at 8 a.m. and then figuring out over a cup of tea (note, not coffee), that India are batting the familiar feeling starts up again. The memory of the '98 series with Australia being in India came up. One still had the odd memory of sixer Sidhu hitting a six and Krishna a good friend next to me claims to have touched the ball as it went past. There was that slight bout of jealousy then, six inches this way and one might have caught it. You then realise the H stand might have gone and replaced by pointy turrets which makes Chepauk look nicer and all that but one thing hasn't changed, who comes out at #4 in the Indian cricket team. You watch Vijay play on and then notice that the glasses don't help Sehwag protect his leg stump. Ofcourse then there's the usual crescendo of noise that's been increasing ever since '89 usually means a certain SRT is walking out into the middle. Right, here we go again - 12/2 again SRT in the middle - nothing really changes does it ?

Pattinson is bowling quick, the commentator says he's spent 20 minutes warming up. You scoff, It's Madras, how much more warming up do you need there ! after all this is the hot season . Then you think hmmm Tendulkar, middle stump full and straight he's got bowled too many times. And then you keenly move forward , the tea is forgotten and watch the first ball - what's happening here. The usual crisp footwork, precise motion of the bat meeting ball and then you hear the sound of the ball hitting the bat and you know it's 4. The next 2 balls disappear to the boundary with similar precision, the mind goes back to the dismantling of McGrath and a few others with India being in a similar position.

You just know, he's going to play well again. Sanity is restored, the world is back to normal and there's nothing more you want. You switch off the TV, potter about for a while doing other things after those 4 balls, and then come back and watch him calmly get to a 70 in what can only be described as a knock of someone showing who's boss.

So, in conclusion - Chepauk might change, the world might still be clamouring for Tendulkar to retire and he probably might at some point, but amid all this Saturday morning was still worth it. 


So here's to a Sunday morning of discovering a rare Tendulkar century. Surely these are collectors items now :)

Noises of a different kind.

Awwwww Oooo Ooooo Helloooooo, kuchi koooo, cutie pie, achi pui, oooo sweeetieeee sweetuuuu sweeetuuuuu sweetieee pie, shee's sooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute naaaa..... Ooooooo Oooooo Ooooo Oooooo


Allelllellelele lellelellelellleee... ala kukuku .. allalelelele. cluck cluck cluck ..

You might be wondering what these noises represent. Is this a form of greeting in alien-speak, a martian air-craft landing or the sound effects from a new Bollywood movie ?

It doesn't stop there - it goes on and on ...

kidhal dekh raha hai...... mela sonu bacchu.... hasla hai mela baccha ... Ooooo Ooooo Ooooo Allelllellelele lellelellelellleee... ala kukuku .. allalelelele. cluck cluck cluck ..

Ok so to put the reader out of their misery, this is the reaction that greets the sight of any new baby in the family, the friends circle, the friendly harmless baby on the street / in public transport usually travelling with it's parents in tow. These come at different pitches, decibels depending on the situation in which the baby is spotted. If the baby is spotted in a public area, they are usually whispers or very carefully out of anyone else's earshot. Whatever is lost in decibels or pitch is gained by the facial expressions of pleasure or happiness in seeing a cute baby. Nowhere else was Newton more right, there is amazing conservation of energy - the only time this is violated is in the case below.

If it is a picture (of the latest addition to the friends circle or in the family) being examined in the comfort of your living room, then all bets are off. Decibels increase, the shrillness increases and along with it comes the warning of threats from the neighbours and folks wondering if this is a new form of a train horn. At the same time the happiness index in the face also rises and the facial expressions reach a new zenith.

Well then who emits these noises ? These are emitted usually by the female members of the species universally, most recently by the wife on seeing photos of a new addition in the friends circle. A recent survey showed that husbands and boyfriends not exhibiting an enthusiastic (not necessarily acoustically) response to these noises would result in one of the following consequences :  any allowance would be cut,  a massive loss in the brownie points index and servitude by peeling onions for the next n years ( 20 < n < 50) .

Not that I have much against babies or the particular one under question (definitely ranks high in the cuteness quotient) - I usually find them pleasant company, fighting (usually a losing battle) to keep my glasses on or preventing my pockets being picked. There are the occasional moments when I have to find some apparatus for drying my wet shirt.  Nevertheless I find them enjoyable company and having watched at close quarters a nephew and 2 nieces grow up was quite good fun.

But but but I can never be brought to make such noises at their sight either in the form of an attached photo, a video or indeed in person.

Why oh why ... oh why .. oh dear god why ?

P.S.  Before anyone asks if there is any "good" news ... There is not :)
P.P.S.. When the wife reads this: there is a prediction for a sharp fall in the brownie points index ;)

Vinyl records and the joy of old Hindi songs.

Listening to your favourite song in the time before the iPod, the boom boxes on music channels, in my generation was restricted to whatever came on Chitrahaar on a single monopoly (Remember DD?), in some cases the radio (Vividh Bharathi) and in other cases tape players if you had enough cassettes and they survived the tropical weather.

For today's instant generation of getting everything on youtube or the variety of stores that proliferate the smart phone market depending on which vendor you want to pay, this is a reminder that there existed something known as the LP record or the gramophone record where you had a needle run on top of a vinyl record (yeah something like that round thin circular disc that you saw Dr. Lode hand to King George VI in the King's speech) . Yes, one can listen to Mukesh, Rafi, Kishore, Manna Dey on a CD that's been digitally reproduced with whatever bit of computing power can be thrown at removing extraneous noises and enhancing certain chords. However there is a certain joy in listening to that needle scratch through an old record and when it manages to get it right as it does right now , the nostalgia evoked with the days of listening to the songs is quite a nice feeling. It getting stuck on a particular track as it does once in a while is another bit of nostalgia. It wasn't just the Hindi film songs that one enjoyed, it was also classical music - having one of the few LP's where the 3 violinist brothers (L Shankar, L Subrahmanyan and L Vaidyanathan) play together, or listening to the MS performance at Carnegie Hall or listening to music from the slightly forgotten figures today ( ChittiBabu on the veena, Lalgudi on the violin). It wasn't just that - waking up on a Saturday morning at 6 a.m. to listen to the Venkatesa Suprabhatam or even the Vishnu Sahasranamam and Bhaja Govindam was a nice thing to listen to even before one got a cup of the truly Tamilian beverage ( filter kaapi).

One of the ways in which one caught some decent music (before the age of the tape recorder) was essentially Vinyl. This was the mode in which yours truly listened to old songs till the time the gramophone at home conked off at which point there was a hiatus of nearly 8 years till a new one was procured in one of the trips abroad. Of-course by then Dad had moved on to listening to tapes and then on to CDs, having supplemented his collection into tapes and later CDs with the result that one inherited the LP collection.

There are a few folks one has to give thanks to here, one is an aunt who instilled the joy of listening to old songs rather than watch TV and of-course the other is Dad for having carefully and meticulously collected, catalogued and maintained a large number of old LPs and 45 rpm records which I've inherited now (some of which are older than yours truly). It would not be right not to thank the cousin S who held on to a large number of these records when there was that long hiatus .

So if anyone is looking to get rid of some old Vinyl Hindi LP records, STOP !! Think twice about it  - we are happy to find a way of accepting such records and giving them a home . Give me a shout !!

Bollywood jai ho.

So, after a long time I've been watching a Bollywood movie and the movie we got out of our monthly DVD service happened to be Dabang. I had seen parts of this during my last trip to India and it appeared to be a laugh riot, so it was worth watching this on DVD compared to what you get on the back of a airline seat. The story is typical Bollywood - take all the cliches, think about a large number, multiply the 2 - then take the result and raise it to itself. Angry step-father, righteously corrupt (Robinhoodesque) police officer, dumb step-brother, favouritism, a corrupt police force that still reaches late to a crime scene, the vivacious but stubborn leading lady with an equally stubborn drunk dad, stunts typically stolen from the Matrix ( replace bullets with flying glass panes in slow motion) , the Transporter ( the oil layered fight scenes) and what not . A villain who tries to shoot sallu with a powerful sniper rifle and misses 25 shots ...

Some of the dialogues were simply laugh riots - chedi singh ham aapke badan mein itney ched kar dengey ki kahaan se saans  logey aur kahaan sey .... Typical Salman Khan dialogues,  some nice music and a nice way of spending an evening with the wife.

The Autorickshaw effect !

Alert readers would remember that a while back I had commented about how to get even with the infamous Madras Autorickshaws . Needing to get to a place where there was unfortunately no MRTS connection I decided that it was time to haggle. Now themadrasi of 3 years since that post is a little more mellow, portly stout chap who beats the heat typically in a cotton shirt and 3/4th of a pant left specifically in the old homestead for precisely the purpose of use in such hot weather. The auction for the contract was unspectacular . Going to Adyar signal - sir, 60 rupees - illai 50 rupees . ok let's go. Having conducted the business I needed to , I needed to find my mobile and then discovered that it was missing. Now losing a mobile phone is a bit of a pain especially as you don't know how many numbers you end up losing. There is ofcourse the spectacular crash in the brownie points index with the wife and the sheer pain of having to try and retrieve the phone number of every person you knew using other means of communication. No this ain't a smart phone that can sync contacts etc. !

Muttering curses to self for being so careless I decided to hunt this down in a systematic and organized manner. First established the fact that the missing mobile phone hadn't accidentally been left at home. Past performance has suggested such a behavior and it was time to nip this rumour in the bud. So, it wasn't at home and the mother based on descriptions of the autorickshaw driver named a name and it was time to go back and try and see if I could find Muthu at the auto stand near home. Thanks to Kutty the other auto-rickshaw driver at the stand, I managed to track down the elusive Muthu and I gratefully received the phone from him. This has been an eventful trip so far and not short of fun, but Muthu and Kutty today managed to restore some faith in the old creed of Autorickshaw drivers. We still agree to disagree on "meter"ing issues .

Themadrasi - 0 Autorickshaws - 10000

Travel o travel o travel - Covering the miles all 1835 of them !

The next day started with a flight out at 730 a.m. from Bombay to Calcutta to be followed by a 3:30 hour train journey from Calcutta to Jamshedpur. Since I had to get to Jamshedpur from Bombay a distance of  1835 km according to google maps, the best way was to actually take the flight to Calcutta ( 2:45 hours) followed by a 3:30 hour journey by train. There were a couple of variables here, one the journey between Dum-Dum and Howrah and the infamous traffic jams on Howrah Bridge and the second was the company that one would get in a sleeper class compartment on the train journey to this place. The first variable was pretty well handled by a competent local cabbie and the journey ended up taking only 1:10 minutes of the alloted 3 hours.

Howrah is one of those huge stations that you love to travel from - well planned with 23 full sized platforms and 4 more planned with each set of 4 platforms has 2 service roads , so folks after the payment of a fee can *actually* alight next to their compartment (no there are no 'a' and 'b' type platforms as in the UK). It is the largest station that I have travelled from and I suspect one of the largest stations in India but no one seems to be able to confirm this suspicion.

Taking the train in a 2nd class sleeper compartment (for those who don't know what these are see the linked photograph though look at the compartment behind the kingfisher.) was an experience after nearly 8 long years . I had forgotten the experience of being seated in a heated tin-can with the sights and the smells of the country-side or urban area that you were going through. Ofcourse the fun bit was in the various cries of caffee cafee or chai jhai and looking out of the window seated in a forward facing seat ! The cheap thrills of looking out of the window on a curve in the tracks to spot the locomotive or the tail of the 24-25 compartment long train are unmatcheable. The company on this trip was a cute little kid who was hell-bent on teaching me ABCD and counting numbers from 1-100. This was interspersed by a few attempts to throw out the latest Frederick Forsyth novel that I was reading .

In the middle of this , the kid also managed to read the book by flicking through the pages, cheated on a spelling game and checked if I could spell G-A-P . Just when you thought that the temperature was reaching it's heights and you would continue to swelter it was time for a refreshing summer shower.

It's remarkable how many times nature manages to cool things down especially one when is going through a really hot summer afternoon, if it were the UK I would have cursed the rain given that we only seem to get a lot of it and it would surely interfere with my cricket game ! , but here it was fresh, pleasant and the smell of fresh rain on what had been a hot muggy and sweltering afternoon was extremely refreshing. The biggest advantage of travelling in a second class compartment is the ability to actually take in the weather, the sights and the smells of the places you go through. It can be tepid, boring and quite ghastly in some of the urban areas but that's all made up by the smell of the first rains hitting a parched ground but if you really want to travel through India there are no places better than a seat in a super-fast second class compartment with the odd forays to the door of the compartment to sit down and soak up the scenery. Soon enough it was time to alight the train at Jamshedpur to be welcomed by the gang of 5 who made sure that everyone at the station knew that I had arrived with garlands, placards, a homemade director of events and quite a few noisy statements .This sometimes begs the question - with friends like this .... I leave it as homework for the astute reader to finish ......