Maverick

Records are meant to be broken.

But this record is unexpected and affected many lives.

Hope normalcy returns soon to India's financial capital.

The Ashes starts from today with the first test at Lords. It is interesting to read here the history behind the title "Ashes" i.e. the defeat of England in 1882 and its panning by the British Media. In the recent times, we all know that the Ashes has been one-sided due to the Australian dominance. While everybody is saying that the current England team is the best ever, I am not sure if they have the killer instinct to back up their talent. The British do have a tendancy to hype things up, you can see it during World Cup Football when their team is playing, and also, when Tim Henman is playing Wimbledon. As the wikipedia article also suggests, I think that India-Pakistan, or even India-Australia matches are more keenly contested.

बावरा मन देखने चला एक सपना,
बावरे से मन की देखो बावरी है बातें,
बावरीसी धडकने है, बावरी हैं सांसे,
बावरीसी करवटों से निन्दीया दुर भागे.
(For complete lyrics, click here.)

This is an excellent song from the recent off-beat film हजारों ख्वाइशें ऐसी. This film is the story of three young persons who are deeply affected by the political events which culminated in the emergency of 1975-77. It seems to be a very apt song to describe the mentality of youth at that time, when they had such dreams of bringing change to their country. I haven't yet seen the film though.

Talking about the emergency, I have read in 2/3 books, most recently in Shashi Tharoor's "Nehru: The Invention of India" that, people remember emergency as the only period when government offices functioned efficiently and corruption was almost nil. Yes, there were excesses no doubt, the press was muzzled, there were arbitrary detentions and killings, and ofcourse, compulsory sterilizations which had the North India in terror.

Cho Ramaswamy believes that this is the right time to impose emergency. See his interview on
Rediff. He however adds that neither the PM nor Sonia Gandhi are the right persons to lead such a dispensation.

...is a brand new Canon PowerShot A510. Scheduled to arrive anytime now.

तो बोल मंद हळवासा,
आयुष्य स्पर्शुनी गेला,
सीतेच्या वनवासातील
जणु अंगी राघव शेला !

I am not exactly clear on what this means. This is the Nightingale again singing for her brother, lines from Grace aka Manik Godghate. Thanks a ton to themanwhowrote again for this out-of-the-world song (भय इथले संपत नाही).

PS:
Baraha really makes typing in Devanagari, a breeze. And since it supports Unicode, no additional font download is required to view the script. The only thing needed is a browser having unicode support.

What makes me happy today is a clean bill of health during a general medical checkup arranged by our company. However, the management at Medinova (JM Road) was not entirely satisfactory.

The checkup had its share of moments. For example, I was in splits when the lady taking the chest xray asked me to hug the stand. And a colleague said that during USG or Ultra-sonography of Whole Abdomen, he felt tickled by the USG probe but controlled his laughter. And another one was anxious about liver function tests because of his drinking habits.

Some wise man has said "Jaan Hain to Jahaan Hain". It is good to have such checkups once in a while. In today's stressful life, chronic diseases are afflicting the young also.

Cincinnati (Ohio) downtown, June 2003. The Cinti skyline is shot from the other side of
the Ohio river, which separates Ohio from Kentucky. To the extreme right is the Great American Ballpark. The tower at the centre is Fifth Third Bank, if I remember correctly.

ने मज़सी ने परत मातृभुमीला,
सागरा प्राण तळमळला !

Loosely translated as:
Take me back to my motherland,
O' sea, I am dying to get back.

Well-known freedom fighter Veer aka Vinayak Damodar Savarkar wrote this when he was incaracerated by the British at some place (I don't know which). Hridaynath composed a excellent song out of this and sung it with his famous Mangeshkar sisters.

I am a teetotaller and proud to be one. And I also boast of having some friends and relatives, who can easily sport the tag of being the "most seasoned drinker". However, I am irritated when some of my relatives who (I think) believe that drinking is an act of extreme courage and bravery, criticise me for not drinking. Even my mother, when I told her that I don't drink, said that nowadays lots of people are staying away from the bottle. I was aghast and told her that NOT everybody has to drink, and so why "not-drinking" should even qualify to be a topic of discussion. For better or for worse, drinking has come to be socially accepted and those who don't do it (usually) have to do a lot of explaining.

I believe what is happening to Shiv Sena was inevitable. If they had won the elections last year, it would only have got postponed. The party which derived its strength from being a one-man party, is weakening precisely because of the same reason. To add to it, there is intense factionalism among the next gen Thackerays and other senior leaders. Also, you can't win popular support only on emotional issues every time (I agree, it happened in 1995 but that was on the back of Mumbai riots). You need to have programmes and policies on the basis of which you ask for votes.

The same thing can be extended to its ally, the BJP which is also in the throes of an ideological crisis, whether to toe an aggressive Hindutva line or a centrist one. Even in 1999,when it got highest seats in the parliament (182) its vote share didn't exceed 25%. Also, to form a government at the centre, it had to dilute its agenda.

The writing on the wall is that, you can rule India only if you have a centrist ideology. That is the precise reason which I think makes the Congress as the natural party to govern India. The nice thing that democracy is, pulls the right and left towards the centre. I can't imagine any other system than democracy to flourish in India.

Got this in a mail today :
Why are Indian husbands called "MADE OF SILVER"
And
Why are American husbands called "MADE OF GOLD"

Indian wives call their husband "A g" ( Scientific Symbol for Silver)
American wives call their husband "A u" ( Scientific Symbol for Gold)

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And, the reason I am posting it here is not to endorse such kind of non-sense but to condemn it in the strongest words.