Cricket in the subcontinent lately

Cricket has been quite depressing lately both on and off the field.

Be it India losing to the Srilankan minnows playing without the mighty Murali but still being able to bundle out the long battling line up of India in no time (if the new kid in the block Mithun could hit a score close to 50, the batting line up could be called long I guess).

Or be it the most disappointing moment for a billion cricket followers (especially Sehwag followers), when Sehwag was denied of a century that he actually completed with all honesty (not to mention about the dishonest Suraj aka run and Dive into the sea bowler).

Or the spot fixing scam that has hit the already deep in trouble Pakistan cricket.

And of course I am not getting into the post IPL fights and controversies going on between the Governing council and the ‘main hoon Don’ Modi. Cos the moment one starts talking about the IPL fiasco the debate could go on for years (just like modi sent a 15000 page reply! that can’t be read in a decade I guess) without any result.

First things first, though India reached the finals of the tri series (with newzeland and srilanka), each one of us was very sure that India did not deserve the place in the finals but luck I shall call it, that it did make it to the final but as it was supposed to end, it did! India lost shamefully. The batting performance of the team was not just below par, it was plain simple pathetic. Except for ‘THE’ Sehwag who after quite some time has come into form in ODI’s, the rest of the team seemed to be playing cricket in their colonies, playing lousy shots trying to while away time with nothing else to do. There’s no doubt that we had the best team on field that we could have had (I know we can keep arguing on whom we could have included or excluded) as each member in the playing eleven had a considerable experience playing international cricket, so no doubt about their abilities but execution was something that looked alien to them. I don’t deem it important to comment much on the Indian bowling as that has never been something as interesting to talk about, it always has been the weakest area of the Indian team in the last few years (once a bowler does well in a series, the next thing that happens to him is injury and we don’t see him for months together or he just loses his natural good skill as he’s too flattered with the hype and money he gets to his share).

As I see it, cricket in India may soon lose its charm in the near future as team India continues to perform miserably, accusing the board of tight schedules at times and other things at other times, never getting to the core  problem which is inconsistency and lack of focus. With the world cup coming up, a first round exit would be the first of these shockers that we may have to face apart from the retirement of the Master Blaster and probably two other maestros of Indian batting The Wall and Mr. Elegance (VVS if u dint get it at once). The lesser I speak about the fall of Indian cricket at this moment; the better it would be for me! ;)

It’s not a bit exciting to even think of the condition Pakistan cricket is in today. They can’t play the game against any cricketing country on their own field (I doubt if they get to do it themselves at all?) That’s just the tiniest of the problems for them at this moment. Not to forget the recent banning of ‘a lot’ of senior players for various periods in different cases and then revoking the ban on some of them and getting them back to the team instantly and just to mention, the drug abuse of two leading bowlers a few years back was like just not enough. Pakistan cricket looks nothing more than a comedy show on the television, every day you switch the television on, it reaches a new high in getting into trouble. The spot fixing report is told to be just a mole in the mountain.

In the last one year or so they have had at least 4 captains representing the national team in different tournaments and formats, with infighting being one of the major reasons of the teams’ problems. No one now wants to play cricket with them, English players in someway or the other are showing their disinterest in playing any further cricket against them in the near future at least (not to forget the world cup is just a few months away!). And as a result of the recent spot fixing allegations, a few player sponsors have immediately indicated their fear of not being in a position to sponsor these players anymore keeping in mind their own brand values. A situation where all the major sponsors call off their sponsorship deals with Pakistan cricket is not a very callous prediction to make I believe. If that happens, I don’t see Pakistan cricket getting back on its feet on the cricket field, not to forget there might be much more that could still happen to Pakistan cricket in the coming days keeping in mind how PCB is dealing with ICC lately.

Nothing is exciting talking about cricket in the Indian subcontinent at the moment, just hoping that the Champions League brings some excitement back to the otherwise gloomy outlook towards cricket.

Today’s Favorite Line – Only those who seek shall find

Today’s Favorite Song – Man Lafanga (Lafangey Parindey)

Common Wealth Games – India bula liya

The most upsetting coverage on all forms of media in the last 6 months has been on the preparation levels of India for the Common Wealth Games (CWG). The negative marketing of the CWG has gone down to an extent that a huge chunk of the population has started to believe that India should never have taken up the responsibility of conducting such a gigantic event when we knew we don’t have any experience or expertise to do the same. In fact a lot of experts and amateurs have gone down to say that CWG is nothing but a quick way of wasting thousands of crores of public money, that would do no good to the population at large, in no ways except for may be a few desperately made unfit stadiums (called ‘world class’ by them selves to give it that feeling at least for name sake) and more damage of infrastructure and chaos in daily life for ‘delhiites’ for close to half a decade now in the name of development which is yet to be seen in shape.

Now I guess its time we did some damage control and focused on certain face saving events rather than reporting and promoting the other not so happening things about the games(though the fact would remain that a lot of things are not right, agreed!! But they will never be at least for these games). Now this is a genuinely concerned citizen’s appeal that instead of beating the trumpets against our own people and events, lets try and stick to the fact that this event is some thing that may either bring the country laurels or might shatter the chances of the country having any image with regard to conducting any major event (not specific to sports alone) ever again.

No matter how bad the progress of the infrastructure development projects is, no matter how ugly the organizing committee and other contractors have gotten in the process of making the CWG happen (both in terms of corruption and bureaucracy), no matter how much money has already been wasted, no matter how good or bad our own athletes are, no matter how miserable life for a delhiite has become, no matter how good you expected the theme song to be and how Rahman may have disappointed the country at that Cost. Let’s just understand one thing; this is an event that our country has promised the world that it would host & conduct to the best of its abilities by making available all kinds of world class facilities both for the athletes and for the spectators who’ll be visiting our country to witness the mega event.

So let’s just stick to this particular thought and support the cause for the country in whatever fair way that we can. If that requires us to be spectators on television or on field as per our convenience, or if that requires us to stop reporting/promoting all the shortcomings till the games are over and done with, let’s make sure we don’t do it till the closing ceremony. Now, when I say that we should not promote or report the shortcomings during the course of the preparation and conducting of events, I mean it to be paused for a while and not for ever. Do all the accusing and pinpointing the day after the games are over.

Once the games are done and completed successfully (at least to say so), open up all the files of shortcomings and corruption and catch each of the culprits by their collar and take them to task, no one is going to stop you or the care takers of law. But until that time, just keep a track of everything, so that you can open the Pandora of complaints when it won’t hurt the country’s image. It does not make sense to take them to task now, as these are the people who know the event and the plans of its conducting in and out, if they are taken to task now, the progress of the preparation for the event and its smooth conducting will fall in to jeopardy. So let the goons make merry while we worry about the country’s reputation. Once the country’s obligation is taken care of, then we can reward these goons aptly. Till then lets just follow the lyrics of the theme song of CWG ‘rukna rukna rukna nahi, harna harna harna harna, harna nahi’. Because, ‘O yaaron. Ye India bula liya!’

Today’s Favorite Line – Have faith, when you have nothing else!!

Today’s Favorite Song – Lehrein (Aisha)

Broadband access a legal right in Finland, we still lack sanitation!!

In the first week of July providing high speed broadband service to all the citizens became a legal right in Finland. Just while reading this peace of news from a national daily, I was wondering we at India are so, so backward that we still haven’t solved our sanitation problem leave alone technological stuff like broadband and 3G or 4G.

This particular news item on Finland was of significant importance to me more than others as, if things would have happened as planned for me a year ago, I would have now been almost enjoying this right (not as a citizen but as an employee of a Finnish company though). And there I would have wondered about having high quality broadband service while we in India still suffer from low quality voice calling to say the least. We at India are still ages behind if we compare ourselves with countries like Finland in terms of technological innovation, human rights, crime, employment, infrastructure and many other parameters.

How will we get ahead while we have nefarious animals in the form of humans in our country killing innocent youngsters in the name of honor? If that time and energy was spent on doing certain other productive things for one self as well as the country, that would have fetched them and the country some global honor may be, and saving both them and the country some crime, brutality and sharp minds. Anyhow such is the kind of treatment one could expect in a society(country) that is uneducated at large and is tied in the bonds of self proclaimed tradition and other nonsense of past.

We lack so many basic rights as humans that broadband is still irrelevant to more than three quarters of the population at least. How can we think of broadband as a right even in our wildest dream when we seem to have nothing in place to even make a connection available in almost half of the living area of our population? There is neither the infrastructure (roads, power and so on) nor the education required with a huge chunk of the population to be able to access broadband services even in case they could be made available by some miracle.

So let’s make sure we give sanitation and education as legal rights at the earliest to all the citizens and then we can become eligible of dreaming about broadband services or other technological innovations in some portions of the country to start with per say. And then we can think of people moving around with latest gadgets in their hands downloading stuff from the internet early in the morning instead of them moving around with broken dirty mugs containing contaminated water walking towards the railway track to unload the stuff they managed to beg, borrow or steal the previous day to feed themselves. And that day we would also already be seeing tidy kids with clothes on their body, oil on their hair, with polished shoes and instead of dirt and grease on their hands (from being bonded labor) we may expect a book or a newspaper at least, to start moving towards being one among the best countries to live in, in the world.

P.S - While writing this post, just a second before I was about to finish writing, there was a power cut and I lost the document as a result ( I forgot to save the same while typing). Fortunately I managed to get it recovered, else living in one of the best cities of the country, I would have had to curse the infrastructure even more than we usually do for it is of no use having a broadband connection at home when such power cuts interrupt my work to the extent of almost losing it. Grrrrr...!!

Today’s Favorite Line – The slower we move, the faster we die.

Today’s Favorite Song -  Allah ke bande (Kailash Kher)

Marriage – an institution of 'love' or 'Coercion'?

A lot has been happening with regard to marriages recently and a huge chunk of population in the country is still way behind in BC (read – Before Christ) times in terms of their attitude towards it.

Of what I have learnt and understood of marriage in the 2 plus decades that I have lived, it is an arrangement where a male and a female start living together, to share their thoughts, lives, relatives and a lot more and ultimately for reproduction i.e. to help the world go on with enough number of people living on it at any point in time (to continue legacy’s, to put it differently).

In the past, marriage was more about some older generation people having not much to do in their free time, so they spent quite some time to find an ideal ‘family’ (mark my words here, they looked out for a family not a bride or groom) for their boy or girl ( I literally mean boy or girl here, it wasn’t man or women, heard of child marriage?) and once they found a family that they thought they would gel well with, irrespective of the fact that whether the boy and the girl would be able to spend the major part of their lives together ‘happily’ or not. All that mattered to them was their compatibility with the other family and certain other material things, to put it graciously.

If we talk about marriage today, the context is completely different and rightly so to an extent*. It’s an institution through which 2 humans of different genders spend a majority of their life together, for which they need to like and understand each other, so that they can bear with each other and can be there for each other at times good or bad, happy or sad and simultaneously can help the world have more people to live in and happily if possible.

The most important criteria today for the younger generation to get married is love. If they think they don’t like someone, they will seldom marry him or her (as far as they are courageous enough to speak up to the otherwise egoist world about their choice & liking). While we still are fighting the likes of khap, intracaste, inter caste and so on. We hardly seem to understand the logic behind such traditional burdens we are carrying. Some religions/ castes are against inter caste marriages, some are against intra caste marriages and some are against love marriages to be more specific. To my mind all of them are wrong and are only selfish and cruel to the right of ‘loving’ (can I call it ‘living’?). They want to compromise with lives of others, supposedly for the sake of some self created/felt honor. They are imposing self created beliefs which mean nothing if thought rationally about.

Let me pose a simple question to solve a major part of this marriage riddle. Did Adam and Eve know their Caste/religion/gotra? We have come a long way since Adam and Eve and we have learnt that they are supposedly the ones who began reproduction in the universe of humans. It is our older generations that have created such sects and sub sects as we have increased in numbers in the world. And to put it bluntly, they have done so to serve their own ego’s, selfish benefits, likings and many other such individualist reasons. Why should we continue with such illogical practices that have been imposed up on us? We are following it just because we have never questioned their existence at the first place.

I have observed some positive change in the younger generation recently, though only a few instances, they look to me like a huge step towards a better future. It’s about couples abstaining from mentioning their caste in certain places where that information is sought. Not just for themselves but even for their kids. In one particular case a couple did so because the husband is a muslim and the wife is a hindu, so they simply dint want to decide what caste their kid wanted to belong to. They thought that it was his choice whether he wanted to be known through some caste, if at all or doesn’t want to flaunt one like his parents did and he could take that decision the day he is grown up and mature enough to take a call on this divide and rule game. But the couple had to face a lot of problems before having made their point clear and still face tough situations at various places.

My thought on what should be the deciding factors for a marriage are summarized below, though we still have problems including dowry, domestic violence, female foeticide and many more such problems looming our society at large even today. In an ideal society we must, just let ‘love, liking, compatibility and understanding’ take over ‘caste, creed, greed and religion’ while choosing a groom for a bride or vise versa. As the former are the most important ingredients in any relationship and not the latter, which are just artificially created barriers that most of humanity still fails to understand fortunately.

* Let’s not get into the same gender marriages, which if not mentioned to do the least here while talking about ‘marriages in today’s context’ would be utterly ignorant of me. Though I am completely against that idea as its against the law of nature and so I think I would like to not comment much on it as I am not supposed to make judgments on other peoples lives, they know their own life and world better I guess.

P.S – This post was triggered by the incessant inhumane acts of the khaps in the northern part of the country, highlighted in the media lately. Such devilish acts must be condemned and the people behind these ideologies (at least the idea of taking lives, if nothing more or less) taken to task.

Today’s Favorite Line – Competition in life is necessary but in love, it just might be fatal.

Today’s Favorite Song – Love Don’t Care (Firehouse)

Grow up OLDIE and let us too!!

We often complain about progress in a lot of things in our life as citizens, as humans. We say the government has not done much for infrastructure, for education, for poverty, blah blah blah, yap yap yap, buk buk buk. Hold on!! Have we ever thought about ourselves? How far have we progressed in our thinking?

We are still the same old British ruled creatures who keep getting imposed up on. The only difference is, now the imposition is more to do with thought process and its outcome and not as much of slavery as during British rule. We haven’t progressed even a mile in terms of maturity in thinking, in thinking ahead, in adapting ourselves to the changing time and ways of living. We still take all the shit that people around us give, just because they think something is right, are we obliged to take it as they give it to us? Let’s stop taking it!! Who do they think they are? They aren’t doing any favor by sharing their wisdom or experience. They are, simply said, just dumping their own view on us by exhibiting it as a ritual or so. It’s a plain white ‘lie’, is how I see it.

Lets take a few examples of how things have changed in decades and how different things are perceived now vis a vis how they were being perceived in the past supposedly.

Disease – It’s easier to start with a topic that at least most of them would agree with me on. If someone would have uttered the word ‘cancer’ a few decades ago or for that matter even a few years ago, it would have meant only one thing to anyone whether literate or illiterate, the word would have only related to end of life, ‘death’ (whether soon or a little later). So generation over generation, people started believing in that and lost hope. Scientists around the world have been working hard to find a cure for it and thankfully to an extent there seems to be some relief and cure for some of them who caught this deadly disease.

But today if one utters the word ‘cancer’, ‘death’ is not the first thing that comes to ones mind, its dialysis, treatment, cure, hope or life that comes to our mind. To quote an example we can look at the story of Lisa Ray, we read and understand that she fought the battle and survives today trying to lead a better life. There are thousand such stories today and the numbers are just going to increase manifold in the coming days. I guess the older generation better start believing in the future and the youngsters who are working hard to make it a better one.

Cricket - Now coming to a sport that a large proportion of the country follows. If we would have spoken about cricket say 3 decades ago, we would have nothing more to talk about than test match, bouncers, West Indies, defensive batting and so on. No mention of the terms money, cheer leaders, doosra, sixers, 20 – 20, power play, day – night games (in fact soon we are gonna have day- night test matches!). It’s clear that with time, we have come a long way. A lot of things have changed and a lot more will change with time. But if we still keep talking about how a team batted for 3 days continuously in a test match and the match ended in a draw, people would laugh at that team and of course us; it’s not the way we play cricket now. So instead of complaining about how people/money have changed the game, lets take what’s more relevant today and how to make it better with how its working better today. The veterans have no other work, they have already retired, they are obviously expected to speak highly about the past, but how does it matter? They aren’t the ones who are gonna play the game now, are they? So it doesn’t matter as much as to what they felt like while playing the game then and what they miss now.

Communication – Our grandparents would tell us, we used to write letters and it used to take 2 weeks or so for it to deliver and so on. While our parents would tell us we used to make trunk calls and at times we had to wait all day before we got the line free and so on. Now with the launch of 3G technology, we can communicate live from anywhere at any time seeing each others face and for as long as we want. If an oldie still is against such stuff because he/she dint have access to it during their times, ask them to get a life now! We have it now, are we still supposed to listen to those people who don’t even have an idea about what we are doing, why and how?! Think of a scenario where instead of these oldies grumbling about the advancement and the way youngsters use it, start trying to understand it and use it for their own good. But no! They have to impose their thoughts (wisdom), don’t they?!

Marriage – Its one of the things that we are most backward in our thinking till date about. We to an extent have progressed in our approach with a lot of other things mentioned above, but when it comes to marriage we are still old wine in old bottle stuff. We have neither changed the wine, nor the bottle (if that sounds like a saying at all). Earlier it used to be 2 families getting together into a relationship through 1 person from each family and the affair would be concerned more with the families and not the bride and the groom whose lives were at stake ultimately, but the oldies wouldn’t care less.

Now marriages are more concerned with the 2 humans whose lives are going to be affected the most and we seem to think that’s the better way to approach this institute of love and life. But can we ever get rid of caste, khap, honor killing, sati, child marriage, female girl killing and so on? We have all these problems in abundance even today across the country. Can the thought leaders of such chauvinistic attitudes ever find a rational behind their acts? Where have we progressed in these issues yet? We are still many centuries behind with our approach to these issues of immense importance to every individual life on earth. It’s all just because of the thoughts of the older generation who are so myopic, that they don’t want to see progress; they can’t bear a better life for the younger generation, because they themselves haven’t lived one, how can they see their younger generations live happily after all? 

Education – To my understanding, the older generations studied only for one reason – to secure a job. There was no other meaning to them when it came to education. It did not mean progress or innovation or growth or intelligence or wisdom and so on. All it meant to them was, ‘it’s going to secure me a government job’. A good proportion of people in the country have realized how important it is for them to enroll their kids to school, instead of using them for chores or working on farm or doing some kind of bonded labor. But there is still a majority of population spread across the country which doesn’t understand and realize the importance of education and how it can make or break lives in today’s context. Children are still used on farm or as bonded labor (agreed that in certain cases it is because they can’t afford it, but it’s not the same in all the cases, I guess we needn’t worry about it now though, RTE has just arrived). This requires a radical shift in thought and attitude towards the life of our beloved. Education would certainly lead to a better life no matter where one lives, what one earns or thinks like. Need I mention about the reservation system we have in our country that the older generation has believed in firmly for the last 6 decades and more, which is literally killing the country and its younger population in some way or the other. The more we dig deep into the reservation problem the lesser it is. It is such a big mistake the government has down in decades and more so lead by a lot of old generation power houses to seek votes of people whose lives they are working to not be better off ever, so that they keep getting their votes for ever by highlighting the reservation favor.

We need a huge thought revolution (like the green revolution), which puts sense into millions of people who are fooling and billions of them who are being fooled by a lot of bigoted people. We need to adopt progressive thinking, the world is changing a lot for the better and even more for the worse, but we need to still adapt to it for the better, by not staying regressive. If we stay regressive worrying about the world getting worse, we’ll get no where, we need to understand that first.

It’s a humble appeal from a novice to all the oldies out there (across classes, castes, generations, colors, genders, regions, professions, literacy levels) – Please kindly stop imposing yourself and your thoughts on the younger generation. They don’t need your wisdom; it is no more relevant in today’s context. So kindly get with them and acquaint yourselves with the current trends and try to work together for a better life both for you and them.

Today’s Favorite Line – The older I get, the younger I want to be and the younger I am, the older I want to be. That’s life!!

Today’s Favorite Song – Man in the mirror (Michael Jackson)

Why blame the IPL

If players don't perform to their potential in under pressure situation on tracks that don't go with their comfort zone, is IPL responsible?

Who is to blame when you play only 2 seamers and rest slows bowlers on tracks that suit pace men more. But for Suresh Raina and to an extent Rohit Sharma (for a lost cause) all other batsmen failed in the World Cup. What happened to our Pathans and Yuvrajs and the captain cool himself? All of them failed miserably. Most of them were disappointments even in the IPL except for a couple of knocks here and there in a dozen plus games played by each of them. So did IPL sway them to continue their poor form? Not at all, it gave them a much required chance to have some match practice in fact, that too against the best bowlers from across the world. The same Mallingas, Mathews and the Pollards are the ones whom they played with and against.

If IPL is responsible at all, then have a look at Mahela Jayewardane, no one in their wildest dreams could have ever thought this guy could adapt so well to this format and win games for his team almost every time with brilliant knocks. Now you should also say IPL is responsible for giving him such a nice platform and opportunity to let him tune himself according to the games needs. There are many other players who continued their form from IPL or bettered it in the world cup. If Indians couldn't do it, it’s not for the IPL to take the blame. In fact the top 5 batsmen in this world cup at this moment are all who played in the IPL as well - M Jayewardene, KP Pietersen, C Gayle, J Kallis and S Raina.

But was it not known even before the start that Indians are miserable against short pitch bowling? So why select people who are not time tested with short pitch bowling even if it was the shortest version of the game? The team selection was not to be made based on IPL like conditions for heavens sake, the world cup is being played at the Caribbean land!

The team failed in several departments including poor captaincy by Dhoni, picking wrong sides, choosing to bowl when anyone on earth would have chose to bat, selecting more slow/spin bowlers in the team when the conditions are tailor made for pace men. It couldn’t have got any more worse.

Indians performed miserably on the days when they needed to fire all guns. The crucial thing for a team playing any tournament is its fitness level and the performance of every individual player on the match days, which in India’s case was lackluster and so it lost and that it rightly deserved to say the least.

Let’s stop using the IPL, its money and the late night parties as an excuse for a blunder which the players did on the field.

Today’s Favorite Line – ‘Patience is not much about waiting; it is more about how one behaves while waiting’.

Today’s Favorite Song – Aye Khuda (Paathshaala)

What's Superior - Religion or Law

This is a very very tricky question; the answer more often than not would be different in different contexts. But it’s a really important question at this moment in India.

We all, in our lives as civilians are expected to follow or abide by two things as per our social setting, religion (am taking the discretion of treating caste also as a part or an equivalent of religion as it’s just another form of division) and law. There are two interesting cases that India at this moment is debating and arguing about, two completely different contexts but they both involve religion and law as the center piece of the argument and more importantly life of someone at stake as the backdrop.

Case 1 - A boy and a girl from certain rural parts of the country love and marry without approval of their families and society. As they married with in their family (they are siblings), it was out of question for them to seek approval of any of the above before their wedlock. The khap panchayat sees it as dishonor to it and ordered killing of the couple for this misdemeanor wholly supported and backed by the family of the guy/girl. When the doors of justice were knocked at some court, the honorable court condemned the ruling and act of the panchayat. (For complete story here)

Case 2 - A 20+ guy from across the border infiltrates into our country and mercilessly massacres dozens of lives with his companions and unfortunately (for him) survives while all his partners in crime die in the process of this mini war. After playing hide and seek in his response to the Special Court trying his case for almost a year and half, he finally is found to be guilty of the crimes he did which the entire world saw bits and pieces of every now and then on different forms of media. He manages to get a death sentence on several counts, bringing some sort of closure to the kith and kin of the victims. Majority population of the country is praying for his execution immediately without any delay for him to play any other games with the friendly law of the country (he was given the food he liked in jail, he got a lawyer for free to prove he was innocent, though all of us knew he wasn't innocent, more over he got such a royal treatment, on day of the verdict he appeared in the court in a nice white kurta pajama. Human rights people got him nice treatment from the cops & what not).

Both these cases deal with death as the verdict, in one it’s given by a caste based outfit and in another it’s given by the body of law in the nation. As far as I've known and learnt, no religion teaches to kill, none of them teach 'an eye for an eye' behavior. But still the khap panchayat managed to kill young guys and girls for loving and marrying in the name of honor, in multiple cases. Whose honor? For whose sake?  They only loved, they only got married, and it’s in order with the civil society's code of conduct. Why worry so much about caste? Is death the only way out? Will they get back their honor by killing those innocent, loving humans? All this was done and the law of the land couldn't do much, instead the khap panchayat advised the judicial body to not interfere, such a shame. This is a total disregard and ignominious behavior towards the legal system of the country. How do we punish them?

In the second case, though majority of the population wants kasab to be hanged ASAP, there are a lot of people who are actively lobbying towards banning or revoking capital punishment in the country. They say, our religion and leaders (spiritual) have not taught us to kill. We have always been taught to be merciful, to transform people from being wrong doers to being good humans. The judge while giving his judgment mentioned that reforming kasab is out of question, he is a killing machine and deserves only to die. In this case death has been awarded for killing, contrasting to the first case where death was given for loving. But now law sees killing as the only option while religion says reform is still a way that could be tried. We shouldn't start this game of tit for tat or tooth for tooth.

I am very confused as to what my opinion on the second case is, while am very clear to my mind that in the first case killing the young couple was the most brutal acts of crime post Hitler era. While the killing spree that kasab and his team went on for was as atrocious as it could have got, for which reason my mind says kill kasab, hang him, hang him now, don't give him any more time, he has already got 18 months of extra life, he should have been shot at site the day he was caught (not that we have got any extra ordinary links or clues while having him in our custody, he has been taught well enough to hide and die rather than speaking the truth). But heart says did your religion and gurus teach you to be supportive of violent acts? Agreed that this violence is to kill a killing machine and is also endorsed by law but don't we think so much even before hurting an ant in our daily life? Now we are talking about killing an adult. Will this do any good to further terrorist acts or will it deter them from pursuing such inhumane crimes?

The side affects of executing or not executing him could be any of the following as far as my mind can think.

1. If he is not hanged, his handlers would use this as an example to enroll many more kasab's into their gang by assuring them their lives even if they were caught (just like kasab).
2. If he is not hanged, they could do a kandhar type hijacking they did few years back to get him free and then we'd lose both justice and may be lives of our loved ones as a few paid their lives during kandhar.
3. If he's not hanged, we'd have to take care of another terrorist in our already overcrowded jails, we'd be spending money on his life for several decades, that money could be used for some developmental activity in the country to stop terrorism. We have already spent a lot doing a fair trail while keeping him alive and in the pink of his health.

1. If he's hanged, may be LeT may plan another attack to show retaliation and revenge(his hanging is a non incident for them to cut down their terrorism, they sent him with a plan for him to die after the attack, unfortunately for them their plan failed in his case causing some distress)
2. If he's hanged the confidence level of the Indian citizen in the law of the land would increase manifold (it already has to a great extent as we tried kasab very fairly and are giving him what he deserved best - death)
3. If he's hanged may be many other criminal outfits will take a lesson out of it and slow down on their delinquencies.

There can be many more arguments for and against the life of this animal in the form of a human. But I am not really able to decide what’s superior to me, Religion or Law; head says the killer doesn’t deserve to live but heart asks, is that the only way out? This is a real life test and let law take its own course and religion do its own thing. After all law says – Satyamave Jayete and religion says – Live and Let Live. Neither is worth ignoring, so let’s just be truthful and accommodate nice things in our life, as truth has won its battle and justice has been done, now it’s a test to our religious beliefs, is this man worth to let live? I don’t have an answer, do you?

Today’s Favorite Line – There is anger or sadness behind every smile (mostly)

Today’s Favorite Song – So Sick (Ne-Yo)

What about now

I was the topper in high school…

You were such a nice guy when you were a kid…

I will be a billionaire some day…

You are spoiling your future…

To all these statements I have one question - What about now?

What are you today? What do you think today?

Are you happy, successful, well mannered, responsible, etc today? Now?

I basically subscribe to a school of thought that doesn't believe in past, doesn't listen to or agree with what the ancestors or earlier generations did or thought. It doesn't matter what and how they thought about certain things and how they dealt with issues or circumstances.

They did what they liked, the way they liked! They must not have necessarily followed or agreed with their own ancestors. None of us actually ever bothered to check that, not that we could check it actually. So why are we being forced to follow them or their thoughts/views?

They had their reasons for doing the things they did the way they did.

• They got back home before sunset because there wasn't light in their times, so it was best getting back home safe early.
• They dint go to disco cos there wasn't one.
• They woke up early in the morning because they had nothing to do till late in the night so they fell asleep early and weren't feeling sleepy anymore in the morning and of course since there was light only in the day they better did what ever they wanted to in the day. They walked miles cos there wasn't a vehicle back then or they couldn’t afford it, if at all there was one.
• They used to talk only for a short while on phone because it either wouldn’t get connected for long or it was costlier than robbing a bank.
• They ate more natural stuff because they hadn't invented the stuff used to make these junk/fast food which got invented much later.
• Who said they dint have ailment like sugar, bp and so on? There wasn't a lab out there for them to checkout so they never knew and just lived with it in denial.

It’s all rubbish when people use past instances and future predictions to dump their views on you.

• We get home late cos we are busy meeting friends or doing our own thing as evening is the only time we get after office/college, why not use that time?
• We get up late cos we hardly slept for a couple of hours by the time they woke up, don't we need some rest? What’s wrong if that's our lifestyle in the changing times?
• We have the convenience of transportation so why not use it?? What’s the point in comparing by saying ‘in my young days I used to walk so many miles', who cares?
• We talk on phone for long cos it costs just a handful of peanuts worth money to talk for a while.
• We consume more of junk food cos we have improved taste buds than they probably did, is that our fault really?
• Disease was not uncommon during any period in humanity and neither will it be in the future, so why always crap about it?

Talking about the future, no one knows what’s there in store for us tomorrow. We could be anything, anywhere, we just never know. No amount of experience can predict tomorrow in these times when change happens like the speed of lightning. So no amount of gyan on future is of any use, its better they rather shut it.

I firmly believe, the younger generation is a victim of false information and self opinionated guidance which doesn't necessarily have a empirical evidence from past and even if it does it is most likely going to not work in the future, cos with time situations and a lot of other things have also changed. Experience is the most irrelevant thing in today’s context. What you do or be now decides your now, not someone else's experience from past is gonna do any trick. In fact the use of past examples is a trick to fool you, to get your actions and thoughts under someone else's control. The older generations are just adamant and dictating which is neither good for them nor for the younger generations.

Respect for all is the call of the hour. So stop getting fooled by useless wisdom from the creators of history at their own will and handle your situation your own way. All you need to be asking yourselves when ever in doubt is - what about now?

Rest will following automatically!!

P.S – This is just my take on living, probably it feels harsh and rude but don’t forget that’s how life is. If humans are not easy on change they either will be left back or will keep fighting their ego and get no where. I guess older generations should get a little easy on the younger ones so that we could live in a better world where the thought divide is not as large as it is today. This is just an attempt to bring to fore a certain common examples that everyone could relate to, can come up with many more examples though, but this probably is not the right way or forum, one sided affair. Just wanted to emphasize on the importance on now and progressive thinking.

Today's favorite line – Past is a cheat and future is a liar.

Today's favorite song - What about now (Westlife)

Summer of '09

 Date: 10 – 04 – 2009, Time: 22.00 hrs

This day and time, a year ago I boarded a train for a quick trip to my native and to see a lot of saints, relatives and of course temples. Wondering why I am recalling this particular journey? Because the reason why this journey was undertaken never got off the mark, though the journey happened and happened quite satisfactorily. I did all the things that I was set out to do. Just dint do what I was supposed to do after this journey, what I prayed for and met people for during this journey. I was supposedly set out for Finland after this journey but who was to know a journey right after the end of the start of a summer at one of the best places I've spent 2 years of my life got over. I was supposed to fly and not just fly; it was supposed to be a Finnish start for all that I hyped it. I thought it was going be a start of scaling new heights, how about a flying start to an upcoming career and a life time opportunity?!

So, as planned the trip to native and north India for other purposes happened and so did I join my Finnish company, but not quite yet, I had just joined the Indian office of the Finnish Company and awaited my visa and other documents to be ready for me to leave for my Scandinavian endeavor. I was supposed to wait just for a week as told initially, week turned to a month then to 2 and not too late to 3 and some more and then came a day when I stopped fighting!!

No it wasn't a fight with my colleagues or anyone; it was a fight with myself. Every single day was a challenge, during the day the challenge was to kill time, to keep away boredom and to avoid stress, stress of not having much to do in fact anything to do. Each of those 109 days took a toll on the tiny little brain that I have to think and better myself on ways to while away time and feel normal because, if that didn’t happen I would feel unproductive and useless and so I did, did all sorts of stupid things to while away time, always sad and upset. That was supposedly a flying start to a dream career!!

The moment the digital clock on my office pc turned to 18.35, I hardly took any time to leave the lavish premises of my work where I seldom worked to go to my home sweet home which I was gonna supposedly miss for the next year or more and there I was at home close to 7 with a dull stupid day at the back of my mind, with a mild head ache and of course the war that I was having within my brain which asked me a single question in different ways and contexts repeatedly all through the day and night :- Am I going to Finland? Should I? Does my mom want me to? Will my dad be ok if I go? Is this the career start I even thought of/wanted? What if I don't want to go? How do I make things at home easy if I really am going? What's good/right for me? For my family? When will I come back? Or will I? The head felt like a complete army is shooting at me from all possible directions and all at the same time continuously and neither was I a Jackie Chan or a Rajnikant to be able to save myself from even a single bullet of these questions that were shooting my head.

Pressure kept mounting day after day as did my preparation and the delay in the process of obtaining the required documents. One not so fine morning I was late to office, (not that I was on time any other day) as my boss and team had arrived before I did and to my surprise(was a shock actually) the process of obtaining the documents for my travel were almost done (something that hadn't even moved for almost 100 days) and this news was given to me by my boss himself waiting for me near my desk for me to arrive for the days work(he kinda thought I was working) and congratulated me and asked me to be set to leave anytime in the coming week! Instead of cheer there was fear kinda expression on my face with a made up smile which did look fake though it got over looked because of the summer heat that I was entering the office with already some sweat. The fear was of the unanswered questions I had in my mind that got triggered every now and then and now it was almost time for me to answer them and zero in on something else I was up for a big disaster with in. I was about to explode any time soon, it was time I took a decision, the biggest ever decision of my life till that day.

The days following that shocking news got even tougher, pressure built on as at the one end I was just getting set to leave and was shopping and packing and meeting and what not, all the things for me to leave for Helsinki and at the other end my mind kept fighting the same old questions and thoughts and it sort of found an answer which was a very daring and bold one. Not many were going to back it except a few who have been vouching for that answer for quite a while and many others who shifted from support to retaliation and vice versa making things worse for me mentally. But I knew I had to take my own call, no matter who thought or said what, it was my heart and mind that had to decide and so I did.

I decided to give a pass to a career start that lot of like minded and/or like aged would envy. For me my family came first. As I thought if I can help things remain normal at family level I could figure out something for my career and concentrate on it better than worrying about both(which I was literally doing for the 3 months that had passed) and being bad at both. It was a Sunday that I had decided to be the last day to take a call and on Monday morning I would go ahead and communicate my decision to everyone concerned, whether they knew about such thoughts earlier or not. It was going to be the toughest day and meeting of my life. I had to tell my boss that the faith he had in me and the resources that he had spent on me were all going to be a waste as I was not in a condition to take an abroad assignment due to family concerns.

I wouldn't have been embarrassed with myself any more ever than that day, I could hardly manage to see anyone in eye and neither could my voice go beyond a certain level. I was feeling that low and embarrassed, but my boss treated this whole thing extremely well, he dint speak a single word in anger or disappointment which was a bigger shock for me than the shock that I was already in by doing something which I never imagined I would do so early in my professional career. He in fact asked me to stay back in the company at Chennai itself and take up some other profile, but I had other plans in mind long before I took this decision. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't imagine working at that place any longer. Not only because I wanted to do something on my own but also because I never again in my life wanted to go through the same kind of embarrassment.

So I called it a day for my professional working career that day. I knew this was going to be my first and last employer, I never wanted to work for too long and especially for someone else whom I am not sure how comfortable I would be with. So with a really heavy heart and mind I walked out of the office finishing formalities generally that take quite some time in a matter of few hours because I wanted to be saved of those questions and gossips and self respect issues and boy I guess I did well, the fear and worry that I was carrying in my mind for the last 100+ days had gone once for all in  a matter of few hours and you bet that I was relieved, though I dint know what I was gonna do the next day, I was sure I had nothing to worry about, the guilt pangs remained for quite sometime but I at least could catch up some sleep after having not slept like for ages, worrying every night about what was in store for me in the near future and how was I going to handle it and that night I slept, I slept like a baby. No worries about the next morning/ day at least. A break from a lot of tensions and the everyday mental agony, that lasted indeed for more than just a summer. That was my summer of 2009!!

Epilogue – The next morning after I quit my job, I woke up a little late than usual, it was a phone call that woke me up. To make things even weirder it was one of my uncles who I respect a lot who called and said ‘Now that you are not going to Finland and you say that you want to do your own business, I have an opportunity for you right away!! Why don’t you go to South Africa for some export business??’ Its but obvious that I shot his request down at once!! After a struggle of almost 6 months on going abroad or not, after rejecting a hi fi opportunity to make things comfortable at home, I got another abroad opportunity right away.. bah!! I was not even over the guilt pangs of the previous days happenings and here I was with another chance to fly, a flying start again may be. That’s how life gives you what you don’t want the most when you don’t want it at all..!!

P.S – Just got the courage to put all this down in writing, it took almost a year! Keep watching this space for more on the last few months as a continuation to this, post summer ’09 & the big fat entrepreneurship dream – in the making, coming soon!!

Today’s Favorite Line – Silence speaks volumes, if you can comprehend!!

Today’s Favorite Song – Catch my breathe (West Life)

I feel numb

You think that I don’t care,

But that thought isn’t fair.

Its not tat I’ve forgotten,

It’s just that my feelings have rotten.

You think that I am not hurt,

But believe me I am a hiding expert.

I said that I’ll always be there,

Whether you give me happiness or despair.

I’ve always tried to be funny,

To bring a smile above your chin(ny).

And I miss that smile,

Cos I haven’t seen it for a while.

You never had to lie,

For I was never going to be a spy.

For believing in u was so dumb,

That’s why today I feel numb.

P.S – Sometimes its fun to write such sadist lines, doesn’t necessarily have to relate to the writer. Work of fiction.

Today’s Favorite Line – Maafi talaafi kar li, minnat bhi kaafi kar leee, kho dia phir bhi.. tujhhe…!

Today’s Favorite Song – Fool Again (West Life)