Cricket and India!!

Come on India dikha do...duniya ko hila ho...thoda sa dil thodasa will le aao....
Most of you won't remember this "energetic" and "inspiring" song that Shankar Mahadevan sang at the top of his voice to encourage the Indian cricket team as the brave players (read warriers) embarked upon bringing home the ICC world cup trophy home. Every Indian was so sure, the magic of the '83 world cup was bound to repeat again. The optimism of Indians is plaudible. It is a cricket crazy nation..almost fanatic. That we never made it even in to the semi-finals is a different story. So what?? Its just a game..

Cricketeers in India are given the status of Gods..they are what every young boy dreams of being..and almost every young girl dreams of marrying :)well maybe I am exaggerating..but just a bit :) 1983, I was just about six years old. Didn't understand much about winning...forget about winning a world cup. But I remember that after we won that historical (and the only) world cup, I stood in our balcony and yelled at the top of the voice.."India won!!" I didnt exactly understand what had happend..but the atmospere was so contagious, that one couldnt help but join in. I remember when Ravi Shastri got the Audi. Audi meant as much to me as did our Premier Padmini. But all the excitement was something that has been etched on my mind.

As the influence of media grew, and with the advent of "cable" television in India, cricket slowly took over a lot of our sensibilities. It has started to rule over the minds of young boys and girls. Boys ape the likes of Sachin, Rahul and Saurav. Its nice to see something apart from academics as an option for kids. But from a country of one billion, only 11 make it to the covetted "Indian Cricket Team". Parents just do not want kids to not go to school and focus on sports, not enough money if you do not make it to the top!

The top players in India are minting money. I sometimes think they owe more victories to us, their fans. My 7 year old cousin cries everytime India has lost a match. Such is the passion this game has created among people of India. The team has the so-called best batting side. Yet we seem to collapse almost regularly. Once Sachin is out, nobody even tries to put up a fight. The whole team rests on the shoulders of this one person. Sir Don Bradman, the legendary recluse of Australian cricket, especially invited Sachin for his birthday, which is a huge honor for the little batsman. (I know they called Sunil Gavaskar that name, I plead guilty if I am wrong :)). But then Sachin is sometimes just not "the Master Blaster", and then the whole team is not in form. Its no excuse for the entire team to collapse like a pack of cards.

Anyways, the India - Pakistan match is this Saturday. Its something that is not just a game of sport, its like a game of honor for people from both the country. Even though a part of me warns of the possible "massive" upset if we do not win, I know I will still stay up all night to watch the game and will pray for that miracle of victory that seems to elude us so often.

Valentines day!!
I am in a much sunnier mood today!! After all it is Valentine's Day..well Neeraj and I decided to rebel not making a big deal out of a day..after all if you are in love, any day should be a Valentine's day. And do we nee d a specific day to celebrate love? I guess not..So I decided to look up the significance of this day..how did it all start?

This is what i found on the historychannel website
the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men -- his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first 'valentine' greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl -- who may have been his jailor's daughter -- who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed 'From your Valentine,' an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It's no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.

So well I am not sure if St. Valentine would have imagined the way it is celebrated now. :) Well the amount of money spent on gift is slowly calibrating the amount of love. I wonder if sending 100 dollars flowers is a way of showing how much you love. Actions usually speak louder than words, but in this case I think words speak a lot louder than actions. Being told genuinely that you are loved is probably more invaluable than flowers. Of course its again a very personal preference, if you cannot be with your loved one, then being thoughtful and sending something that is meaningful is probably a good idea. What I usually like to do when I give gifts is think more personally, usually if I have heard a person saying they want something, then I got and buy that.I like to put more thought in gifts than just the regular flowers, candies.

I remember a few years back when there was a huge protest against Valentine's day being celebrated in Maharashtra, my state in India. There were a couple of points in the protest.
1. Do we really need to embrace alien culture blindly just becase its shown on Cable Network and because it is the hep thing to do?
2. The point I made above, do we need a day to proclaim love?

Lets all keep the spirit of love alive..Love is pure, Love is innocent, Love is understanding......

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So I am back...for those who dont know...(thats everyone..:))I used to maintain a blog earlier.
That was just for a week or so..Its been almost 5 months..I have promised meself to be more regular.

One of the most disturbing sight I ever saw was the anti-abortion pictures I saw in a school campain. One fine day, very sunny and warm day, I was walking from home to my department and as I approached the student center, I saw a whole lot of people flocking around some hoarding..and a number of people still bringing more boards. As I got closer, I could see horrifying pictures, a lot of blood. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. It was a campaign against abortion. There were dozens and dozens of pictures of babies, unborn, covered in blooed, severed limbs, heads, young mothers doing drugs. The huge hoardings were almost two storeys high. They drove their point home. After all that was the stark reality they were trying to project. The next day again there was a similar crowd. The student center I knew was always full of kids who were fooling about. That day there was a somber atmosphere, it seemed as if the sunny warm day, had suddenly turned bleak. Irrespective of what you felt about abortion, nobody wants to see pictures, blown up to show each detail. There was a lot of debate about whether such a thing should be allowed in schools. The team that took those pictures said they faced a lot of criticism. The reason i remembered all this was today when I decided to blog again, I mistyped the url. wwwblogger.com, and that seems to be owned by a similar group. I have to be honest, the memory of those pictures made me close the browser even before the entire page loaded. Call me a coward, but being as protected as we are, it is hard to accept such things when they stare at you in your face.

Made me want to type a more serious blog than I would have wanted my first blog to be after such a long time. After all a lot happens in 5 months. But it is something that is a growing problem all over the world. I have an aunt who is a gynaecologist and who tells me stories of the number of young girls who are getting abortion done in India. Girls from so-called "good" families, so-called "cultured" familes. It is all very alien and yet it is happening. So it makes you question the very rights of women, the rights of that unborn child, the mindset of people towards single mothers, the issue of the girl child. There are so many issues that we seem to conviniently ignore, after it does not happen to us? We are afterall educated individuals from "good" families. It just does not happen. Such things donot exist in this Utopia that we live in. Probably that is why those pictures scared the wits out of me...