The juggernaut that is the IPL.

So, the last few weeks have changed the face of cricket in the country that yours truly resides in . At the end of 50 odd matches - the semi-finalists have been identified , Punjab, Chennai, Rajasthan and Delhi . Its also a sight to see all playgrounds full and to watch some new kids come and play fearless cricket. It was a revelation to see that there is talent in a lot of the local kids - S A Asnodkar , A M Nayar, Manpreet Gony, Sidharth Trivedi, Badrinath, Suresh Raina and a few of the new overseas kids Albie Morkel, Shaun Marsh , Luke Pomersbach, Shane Watson to name a few. It was also good to see the old warhorses ( Glenn Mcgrath, Shaun Pollock , Jayasurya , Shane Warne) also give a fair run to the new kids. as well as show them the work ethic that has made them into the legends that they are.

At the time of writing this, Rajasthan are in the semifinals whilst Chennai and Punjab square up to decide the other contestant. Much has been said about Chennai not having enough good players once the likes of Hussey and Hayden left. However they've just about hung by the skin of their teeth to make it and in the big semifinal it would be a fair comment that Punjab would be feeling under the cosh at 63-7 . However as many people say , its a funny old game and funnier things have happened. As the sobriquet under which I write this blog suggests ,I must confess a soft corner for the Chennai Super Kings and can't resist writing a couple of lines indicating my support for them.

Come June 2 I wonder what I shall do at 8p.m. on a week night without changing the channel to the official broadcaster. The national teams shall start capturing public attention from the next week and the existing city based teams will disperse. I wonder what would happen with international cricket. However with tactics learnt about various players from different team mates , it would be interesting to see the impact on international cricket. If nothing else it will show up the wannabes from the true masters and would make life that much tougher for the international cricketer. It would also improve the game that much more and provide a way of taking the game to newer markets as well as rejuvenating it in older staler markets (read the UK).

However lets keep the gyan aside, for now its time to, sit back , relax and enjoy Albie Morkel ( A South African) captained by Mahendra Singh Dhoni ( A Bihari adopted as a Madrasi) bowl to Wilkin Mota ( a Mumbaikar plying his trade with the Punjab Kings XI owned by a Mumbaikar - Preity Zinta) at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

A Prisoner of Birth

Yesterday, Lord Jeffrey Archer decided to drop by at the local Landmark store here in Pune. So, one managed to get there by 6:30 sharp, bought copies of his latest novel Prisoner of Birth and his first book - Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less and sat down to listen to the master speak . Having grown up reading his books as a kid and Not a Penny more Not a Penny Less being among the first, I was quite joyous of the occasion and the opportunity to see him in the flesh .

He started off talking about his routine and what it meant to have Not a Penny More Not a Penny less rejected nearly 20 times as well as going through 17 drafts of his latest book. Its very interesting to note that every successful person has a routine that they fall back on , to ensure success. There were a large number of people gathered in the first floor hall of the Landmark store in Pune , much beyond the expected capacity. There were as many people standing in the aisles as there were sitting on the chairs. All in all a typical jam packed room . Jeffrey Archer paid tribute to RK Narayan and claimed to have started reading Malgudi Days and said that he was going back to read that every time he got a break. That's exactly how most folks seem to read books that they really like - A Prisoner of Birth was no different for me as I started it around midnight and finished it by about 3:30 a.m.

He also promised to sign every single book and said that he wouldn't leave before doing so . The queue started off 3 rows wide in the front of the room and by the time it reached me it was a single line - At some point I started getting irritated with the Indian adaptation of the queue, something that Lord Archer must have been horrified at . In Britain you form queues for everything and you leave 1/2 a foot between 2 individuals as well as stand in a single file, very unlike our Indian queues which are serpentine and jam packed with people.

A prisoner of birth raises interesting points, after all - you don't choose which country you are born in , you don't choose your parents, you don't choose the environment in which you get born in and you don't choose what skin colour you have. So what do you choose really in life ? Make do and do the best in the circumstances that the game of life pushes you through.

On a wing and a prayer.

The headlines scream - Air travel in India is the next big thing after world peace. World war II pilots used to fly missions on a wing and a prayer describing a situation where they possibly ran out of fuel on the return legs to their bases or nursing their aircraft back to the base.

India's started building new airports and hopefully (when there is no ATF left or impossibly expensive to travel by air because of the increase in the costs ) these will be ready. Last week when one was on a Deccan flight from Chennai to Hyderabad the aircraft taxied on to the runway and prepared for the takeoff sequence. After going on 1/4th distance on the runway, the pilot braked hard, did a hard veer to the left and moved into the taxiway and went back around in the queue of planes to take off. No one knows what really happened beyond the ATC, the pilot and the staff. Sitting in the first row, yours truly was able to observe the stewardess give me a conspiratorial grin and then laugh away to glory and describe a story to her colleague about how it was possible that there was another aircraft attempting to land at the same time.

Reading an article in India Today about the chaos in airports one is really not surprised about seeing the current situation develop. Meanwhile 3 cheers for Laloo Yadav and the Railways.

The great tamilian rickshaw ripoff

Conversation

Me (near home) : Need to go to Spencers (about 6km away)
Autorickshaw guy: 75 saar
Me: 40 .
Autorickshaw guy: 65 saar ... too far.. Too many oneways Saar ..
Me :45 - 65 is too much for 6 km. and one ways are in your favour dolt.
A.G. : 60
Me: 45
A.G.: 55
Me: 50 . lets go

The same rickshaw driver to go to Adyar which is about 2 km from home will demand 40 bucks and have no clue about why he is asking that. When asked about this dichotomy he would say Spencer i will get savaaari (passengers) but then in Adyar I won't. I say "what splendid rot" , the rickshaws in Madras or Chennai as it should now be called are a bunch of rotten thieves, with meters as a show piece. Very recently I happened to be a part of a quiz where there were questions regarding Standard, Diamond, Ashoka and asking what linked them. I was one of the few who knew the answer thanks to the non-working meters of these auto rickshaws.

So one more cross for Chennai to bear and its great politicos now mulling over whether to start a BRTS or a Metro Rail similar to DMRC . I have been reading the papers with great interest about public hearings on the metro rail and the BRTS. First I say, do something simpler , fix autorickshaws with meters that work.

The fascination for early morning walks.

Conversation .

Mom : You were a worm when you were born. Everyone was worried if this kid would even grow. Now we wish the reverse were true.

Uncle : My Activa cries if it has to carry you.

With such callous remarks pointed towards the slight increase in adipose tissue around the waist, yours truly decided that it was time to go for what is the Madrasi's true passion, an early morning walk. After enthusiastic friends gifted me a Nike + ipod pedometer with some inspiring words from PB , one had decided to put it to good use. But of course it needed the prod from one's close Rs .

Boat Club Road in Madras is one of the few beautiful areas left in Madras - Tree lined avenues, clean roads, zero stray dogs, no overflowing garbage bins and a healthy smattering of walkers who don't gawk at an oversized creature attempting to get back into shape with an ipod for company. The walk to Boat Club Road is about 800 m from my house and then a full circle around the avenues with trees that form a canopy on top is about 1.2 miles. Its certainly interesting to note one's old HOD turn up for a walk in the same area and to be remembered by him despite one's vagabond Bachelor days during under-graduation. Then one gets to see old classmates parents and check on his / her existence and which part fo the planet we call earth they exist on. All the while you sweat by the buckets, the rag which is a towel is soaked with sweat so that you can wring out more buckets. Ofcourse you then look out and hope that you don't have to sing Here comes the Sun, lets sweat gallons of sweat instead ..

If only there was an easy way to collect the sweat of all the walkers in Madras there would never be any water shortage in Madras.

Now thats a disgusting thought and on that note shall head out ...



P.S. Why am I in Madras - To sweat out buckets and enjoy the sun in the middle of summer..

Of funny signposts.

So when John Wright in Indian Summers mentioned funny roadsigns along rural India , I was loath to believe some of them (or believed they were on their way out) until I saw a couple of them on the long winding East Coast Road from Madras to Pondicherry. The 2 signs that I was referring to above read something like

"Atoms for Prosperity" and "Fast Reactors for prosperity - Bharani" .

If a government organization can dish out such heavy stuff , private enterprise will (what's that word ?) better it in orders of magnitude and efficiency.

After a point I realized we had crossed Kalpakkam on the East Coast Road from Madras to Pondicherry and that's one of the towns that hosts nuclear powered plants in India. Not soon after I happened to see a sign post proclaiming Wooster Nagar in Pudupattinam (new town), (a new settlement on the East Coast Road ) , a testament to the spreading reach of Wodehouse in the south of India .

Teaching again ..

So, one managed to get to the university again this month to teach on a couple of days about what the Department calls Operating Systems / Low Level Programming. Many folks say that teaching is a pain , its an art and its definitely not a science. I enjoyed it as long as I didn't have too much load at work and not too mentally tired. The last thing you want to do after a strenuous time at work is to come back home and prepare for a course lecture. Today was one day where I enjoyed myself again. Choosing to go the blackboard chalk and extempore way that I went ahead with my talk instead of what could be German or Japanese efficiency in putting everything into a presentation - I found myself in a position where I had to pull the audience along , open up to them , have some of them open up to be able to ask reasonable questions and not just sit there as mute spectators. Seldom has one felt a thrill equivalent to the kick I got today out of teaching 35 -40 post graduate students about Debugging logic , theory , how does source line numbers map to addresses, where to look for information etc. etc. etc. I think I had a reasonable class given that they laughed at all my simple jokes which sometimes don't come out all that easily.

Thinking about teachingg as such, I realized that one needs to enjoy it or (s)he'll be a total misfit in that community. Its also a bit of a thankless job but the satisfaction one gets in addition to a total ego kick about teaching at the university is quite a carrot.

In the mythical quest of your lakshya.

There's a line in the movie Lakshya where Preeti Zinta describes Hrithik Roshan "uska zindagi mein lakshya nahi hai" . All uncles, aunties, grandparents and parents alike since time immemorial have gone one to say that their kids (even if they are nice fat adults in the mid 30s) don't have the so-called Lakshya. Now what is this lakshya that people keep alluding to - Is it to be a mission statement like all these Six Sigma (or whatever is the latest fad in the world of quality) to be hung around your neck and proclaimed to the world ? Is it something that needs to be advertised to the world in general about what the so called Lakshya is and then one noisily goes about achieving it ? Is the Lakshya to be multiple XXXXX $$$$$ in your bank account, or vast tracts of land or the latest gadgetry or such materialistic goals ? Or is it to be something like the experience of running your own company or achieving a Ph.D or getting an MBA . At a particularly interesting cross-roads of life, one has made certain changes inclusive of quitting a steady job to work on relocating one self to a totally alien country (the only link to which is history books, the television and tons of Wodehouse novels) . But then the future is unknown and thats why its so exciting isn't it ? So does one really need a clear cut Lakshya and put out one's own mission statement.

Nostalgia and all that.

So the last few days have been spent in recovering from jetlag , thermal shocks ( a jump from 35 deg. C to 3 deg C and then back to 38 deg C cannot be very pleasant) and an impromptu vacation to the city of Hyderabad where unseasonal rain brought the temperature down over the weekend.

Working from home 24x7 is very interesting. One has to have far more discipline to work from home rather than from an office is something that I am realizing by true experience now. Having worked from home in the past I've always found it nice but then there was always a feeling of being able to get into office at some point of time .

Drove back and from the university today sometime around lunch as one got tired running to and from the passport office and ended up visiting my old alma mater. Was worth going in and having a chat with my old prof - had lunch ( Masala dosa Sambar awful as is the case in most restaurants in Pune including the fabled Vaishali) for 10 bucks. However good old HFC is gone .

Airports and what not ...

So travelling from Leicester to Heathrow by cab was an interesting task. One got hold of a cab and then slept all the way in . The motorways here (see I am now blogging like a Brit ! ) are quite unlike the kinds back home. Lots of information about whats wrong with the junctions, tom-toms away lane systems and speed limits. I certainly don't think I'll be driving here very soon . Its going to be darned painful to follow the rules and unlearn all the Indianisms from one's driving habits which will be rather painful .

Thankfully the security lines at Terminal 3 were very peaceful - not too much to wait and just walked through without even a frisk though one had to remove his belt, shoes put his laptop through X ray machines and what not. However given all the hype about long lines today was rather peaceful and one got in ok. It was then time to pull out the credit card and put it to merry swiping use.

Rightho my man .

What ho What ho What ho . Right ho , Right ho ,Right ho. These were the words that rang through the idiot box the other day once I had added myself to the evergrowing list of owners of the Jeeves and Wooster series. I've watched about 6 episodes until this point of time, each about an hour and a laugh riot. Now I am at peace with the world, the sun is shining out even though in a windy watery sort of a manner and one can admire the gales blowing outside with a hot cuppa inside and a warm fire lighting up the fireplace. Now this is what is Lord Ickenham would refer to as cheer and joy .

Cricket where art thou ?

In a cab from Queen Square to Welshback , I heard sound of bat on ball , a comment from David Gower and then realized that finally someone in this country was also following Englands progress in New Zealand. So, finally one gets to hear cricket in this country. Its amazing that everyone wants to know about how much cricket is followed back home in India and expects automatically that as an Indian I would be as fanatical about cricket. This certainly is the place for cricket and looks as though I shall come back sometime to play cricket in the English Summer.

Now thats something to look forward to ain't it.

A tour of Bristol

Its just a 2 week trip to attend a formality of an interview, which I've cleared now and figure out about housing in the UK and moving over to the UK. Its been a great trip over and jumping right from 30 deg. in Bombay to 3 deg in Bristol was like jumping from the oven into the freezer . As is the standard warning from everyone - cover yourself in layers, keep warm, eat good food, don't take any pangas and have fun !

So Monday came bright and shining at 7 deg C which was said to be brilliant weather and I was thinking hmmmm .. If this is the best, what can be the worst. The cold is fine and can be tolerated pretty much everything is heated and kept warm but then the wind chill kills you. I've been walking around a lot the last few days meeting up with my good ol' mate RVK as well as figuring out things about England. Its been good long walks and I must have walked more in this whole week than I would have done in India being the lazy bum that I am. So I wondered if today would be the same, nice sunny and maybe I can walk around and sit with my laptop on College Green off Park Lane and use the free wifi. Pretty much all of Park Street free wifi and I wanted to sit a bit in the sun. Alas, that was not to happen since it started coming down and down and down and down . A bit boring one might say but that didn't deter me from walking to Broadsmead (a big mall) and buying myself a thick jacket 3 books and some dvds of Yes Minister and Yes Prime minister. After that it was time to open up viks tomato chutney, put it on some bread and eat it enjoying re-runs of the dvds I'd bought.

More I think will be later since I am tiured.

Brrr. old chap and all that !

Hi there old chap - What ho and all that . Its freezing up here in Bristol and I am loving it . The British housing system is interesting and I shall be looking at finding some houses in the City Centre where all the action really is. Its freezing and a huge thermal shock to jump literally from the frying pan at 30 Deg in Bombay to 3 deg . and last night it went down to almost 2 deg. ! And with a wind blowing it felt like sitting in a freezer with an industrial fan blowing at you !

Other than that things are pretty neat and nice . Like the organization of things so far and would like to see the worst of the weather. More updates later. !

Work Week begins.

On a Monday morning which I so hate. A thought that has certainly persisted from school is one of getting rid of Mondays . The last few weeks have been hectic, we've been struggling with a particularly onerous bug report that hasn't yet been fixed and is leaving me with some incredible questions. The other thing has been some of the feedback coming out of MWC for my employer (Azingo) and the phone we are building - its been quite impressive to see the feedback . I haven't been that greatly involved with the phone but some of the performance work my team did last year on this is finally paying off. Also some of the other stuff that I did which is still under wraps would be good to see later this year. I shall be leaving this place soon and its been a pretty poignant journey from a wide eyed fresher to a roly poly experienced engineer in the industry today. Lots of good friends made for life, lots of happy moments - quite a few disappointing moments . Teams set up and dispersed and then finally as one of the first members of the tools tribe, slightly nostalgic about leaving the place . Lots of people talk about Android, Azingo and all the linux phones coming out - It would be very interesting to see how this whole thing plays out. I shall be watching from the sidelines popcorn in hand. !

Work @ 7:30 a.m.

There is an eerie silence as you walk past all the quiet monitors , some of them blinking away others maintained silently. The office assistance staff has only a skeletal crew of 1 chap filling up the water and you wonder if it is the same place that is usually a beehive of activity. There is the sound of utter silence possibly broken only by the noise as one types out this blog entry and the whine of my workstation as it continues chewing on a CPU intensive task that we compiler writers love to burden our machines with.

It is quiet and peaceful and one is so much more productive and not distracted by all the noise that starts creeping in with the influx of people. This really is an odd time for me to get into work though one hsa done this on a regular basis nearly 7 long years - getting in early and leaving by 6 p.m.

So what ho ?

And pigs can fly and the sun rises in Western Australia. India just beat Australia in their own backyard at Perth. Perth - the so called grave of cricketers from the sub-continent, on what would be the bounciest wicket in Australia . Pakoda Kadar, ex student of RKM Vivekananda College and currently Bullet enthusiast called to ask me for status of the requirements from my last blog post.

1. A double century by one of the fab 4 whacking the famous 4 pronged attack to all corners. If it is a certain Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar it would be a repeat of 1992 .

No double century from anyone . Not even a century. The highest score from Dravid for 93.

2. An opening dash by Viru .

There it was . Perth seemed to suit him

Also the interesting exchange.
-> Viru to Kumble - One more over to Ishant Sharma . Ponting strike pey hai.
-> Kumble - ek aur daalega.
-> Ishant Sharma - Haan ek aur.

This after Ishant worked on Ricky Ponting in the morning for 8 overs making him play , miss and get hit on the body was the reason for this exchange. 3 balls later Mr. Ponting was trudging back to the pavilion wondering if a certain H Singh had come out as I Sharma.

3. A 5 wicket haul for Harbhajan Singh (including the wickets of Ponting, Clarke, Hayden, Symonds )

Damn! he was dropped.

4. A century by Anil Kumble

He got a pair but then he got 6 centuries of wickets. Wicket 600 came up and yesterday he learnt how to get the leg break going . The leg-break turned. Way to go, Jumbo may you confuse more batsmen now with actual leg spin rather than flippers, top spinners and wrong 'uns .

Tranquility on the Expressway.

Driving back from Bombay on the express way at night is quite a tranquil experience. For night birds like me its easiest to finish dinner in Bombay and then drive all the way back to Pune under 3 hours instead of waking up early in the morning and driving back. Accompanied by music , your own merry thoughts about life and the flashing lights on the expressway make for a mesmerizing drive.Throw into this heady mixture, races between 2 juggernauts in the first gear on the ghats at a top speed of 25 kmph, the weaving indicas and qualises trying to make their way past these juggernauts, the sneering corollas and the sedans trying to push their way past your humble WagonR , the hulks of Volvo's which refuse to let you overtake and threaten to push you out like a fly and you have a delectable drive. As an added bonus you can add Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd, Coldplay and a variety of other artists crooning and make you feel at the top of the world. Once in a while you floor the accelerator, watch out for the response and then utterly enjoy in the thrill of what is essentially a union of man's thoughts and the machine's actions.

Thanks to the number of trips I have done to Bombay in the past few months especially to Powai and Mulund I've now been able to mark out the fastest route to the Eastern Expressway from Pune. Also one knows the turns and the curves pretty well that handling the WagonR is quite a pleasure these days. However as they say, all good things must end soon and I should enjoy the last few months of driving on this expressway.

Monkey business.

Journalists should possibly stop covering the big Sydney imbroglio that led to Peter Roebuck calling for the sacking of Ponting as captain in what was the most hard hitting article I have read in the recent past and brutally honest. The funny bit was opinion polls suggesting that the Australian public was quite with the popular sentiment as in India. The other funny articles online include one by Pranav about one-tup cricket as is famous in the various terraces of various apartments in every Indian city.

The latest in what seems to be an unending discussion on what was possibly said drags Andrew Symonds poor mom into the whole discussion. I wonder what levels will journalism stoop to in this case. There even was talk in Australian papers about Indian arrogance with the ICC . The funniest part of the decision was the apparent contradiction in Mike Procters statement.

The whole thing however has put a different perspective for the Perth test. I wonder what would happen there . Will it be played in complete silence ? Or will Australia continue with their mental disintegration to have some of it dished back at them . I still remember the seminal 2001 series where the Australians first got the mental disintegration dished back at them and famously got Steven Waugh out. I can't find that particular issue of India Today but I remember how India started giving it back to Australia since then. Ofcourse the funny part according to a lot of legends has been that Australia have behaved like cry-babies and only the Indian captain and team have moved on with their heads held high. Certainly Australia are going to have to think a lot about what they want to do or show in the future. There has been a very strong statement by Anil Kumble about the spirit of the game and that has been made in such a statesmanesque fashion that everyone is thanking their stars for him being appointed captain instead of Dhoni.

Lots of people have talked about how India is using its arrogance thanks to it having the richest board . Its interesting to note that none of these folks question the US dominance in the world economy. Money does speak. This series is financially lucrative to Cricket Australia - make no mistake about that . Even if the team leaves early and India has to pay out the money , there would be no issues since the payout would happen , India would invite Pakistan over or have a tri-series with someone else in India and make up the moolah. Its high time the ICC started giving some respect to India for the amount of commerce it is bringing to this game. Otherwise how do you expect the market for this to grow ? The biggest migrants in the world today happen to be the Indians and the Chinese and this is the way that cricket will spread with the Indians playing it in different parts of the world. So the spirit of the game and all is fine but treat India with some respect. The BCCI doesn't demand it , many times the BCCI blunders in the ICC with short term commercial gains in mind but its high time the ICC, Australia and England got off their high horses because they started the game. England might be the birth of cricket, but today crickets home lies in the maidans of Bombay, the streets of Ranchi, the beaches of Madras and the bylanes of Jalpaiguri from where the next big cricketer would appear.

Finally what every Indian fan would like to see in Perth -
An Indian win comprising of :

1. A double century by one of the fab 4 whacking the famous 4 pronged attack to all corners. If it is a certain Mr. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar it would be a repeat of 1992 .!
2. An opening dash by Viru .
3. A 5 wicket haul for Harbhajan Singh (including the wickets of Ponting, Clarke, Hayden, Symonds )
4. A century by Anil Kumble

R51 RIP - Welcome T61

So, its finally done - the good old R51 that I used at work decided to conk off making a weird noise something like a "platch" and I had to sadly put it away to rest yesterday. Within a couple of hours I had a shining new T61 that is much faster, lighter and more powerful than the R51.

However I have feisty running on it and getting sound working on a T61 using feisty is quite a painful task and I don't yet know how to make it work. In addition to backing up and reorganizing all the data on my old laptop its going to be a while before the T61 starts playing any music. Anyways RIP old one . I shall quite miss the brick .