India After Gandhi- A book by Ramchandra Guha

I am from a country with 1.2 billion people, 22 official languages, 28 states, and presence of all major religions. Whenever some one from another country talks to me about India I pretend to be omniscient and confidently so! I will not be modest, I usually do know more about India than them and also most of my Indian peers, so my pretence works well. But once in a while someone exposes your ignorance and once such incident got me thinking. The conversation started with a discussion on Kashimir, why India has a claim on it and moved on to a more basic question on what makes India a country.

A cusory glance of the past shows that for most of the recent history India, as we know it today, has been a collective of nations. In fact the key states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala have almost never been a part of any Indian empire! Signficant Indian empires at their largest extended in the west to what is today known as Afghanistan, covered the gangetic plains and ended slighlty beyond Bangladesh in the east. The southern extension tapered of at the edges of the Ap/Maharashtra. The India we talk and are passionate about originated with the coming of the Britishers. It was widely predicted at the time of our independence that it would cease to be so with their leaving.

But India has persisted and prevailed, despite all odds. And when I say all odds I don't just mean it rhetorically. A western statistical instritute which had developed a model to correlate the political state of a country with other variables like literacy, poverty, education etc kept predicting India as a dictatorship for the period of 1950-1990 and could only explain the results by terming India 'a major outlier'.

I have always wanted to understand what keeps India going, despite all common sense predicting otherwise. Recently I found a book that tries to answer these very questions. The name and author of the book are in the title. I have started the book with a hope that when I finish I will be a little wiser about the country I so glibly talk about.

Bangladesh bullies India enroute stunning upset

I will try to be matter of fact here, because objectivity might suppress the disappointment and anger seething inside.
I will not say 'India' lost, because the spineless and scared bunch of 11 overpaid and underperforming men who represented the country did not in any way symbolise its energy, enthusiasm and never-say-die spirit. These incompetents allowed themselves to be bullied and harrassed by a group of 17-18 year olds.
I said i will try to be matter of fact and apologies for my miserable faliure. But after yesterday anything goes.

Lonely Planet

Gunjan left for India today morning and for the first time since marriage I came back from office to an empty house. It is something I used to do regularly about eight months ago.
There is something inherently depressing about coming home to an empty house. I must have felt it when I was a bacheolor but the feeling is so much stronger once you get used to living with someone you love.
I came back from office, went for swimming, came back had eggs, apple juice, started surfing the channels on TV, looked through the fridge and heated up what Gunjan had cooked for me before she went - Rajma Chawal. Then I fixed myself a drink and put on a movie that we'd bought last week but couldn't get around to watching. It turns out its a pretty good movie and maybe we should have watched. We'd got 4 movies and ended up watching three together and not this one, now i think we shoudl have watched this one. We kept avoiding watching this movie for no good reason- it had seemed interesting thats why we'd got the movie then why did we not watch it. Maybe we do the same with life, just leave out some parts which could be more interesting and fulfilling for no good reason. Like this diving course i have been thinking of enrolling on. I think I should do it now or I might end up not watching the movie again .

How can Cinema survive the onslaught of piracy...

Today I commited a crime without too many guilt pangs and more importantly without any kind of danger usually associated with such things. I downloaded some songs from the net on my laptop and created a CD. Infact I created 2 CDs, one for myself and one for my parents. Te ease of doing this made me realise that life is indeed very difficult who are trying to stop such piracy. The world today is chracterised by the ease with which information can be trasmistted, shared and accessed etiher through web or mobile or the various manifestations of such digital devices. And it will get even more ubiquitous prevalent. The only option film makers and songwriters have is to look for a revenue stream that harnesses the advantage of the new medium. Much like netwrok television works. Its revenue depends on how many ppl see the programme and the more the merrier.

INDIA'S TOUR OF THE CARIBBEAN- The final act

It was the fag end of the 3rd day. West Indies had lost 8 wickets but they were now just 49 runs adrift of an unlikely victory. I had my share of doubts as I think all the Indians who had followed this team would have had. We will choke now- West Indies will pull it off, i said aloud trying to tempt fate to prove me wrong. Ramdhin was on strike, facing Sreesanth, looking for a single of the last ball so that he could shield Pedro Collins from Kumble. "He will bowl the yorker" said the omniscient commentator. It was a short sharp bouncer over leg stump and Ramdhin ducked. No run taken and Pedro Colllins on strike to Kumble. Kumble came into bowl what would have been the penultimate over of the day. First ball on the middle stump, Collins plonked his front foot forward, swung his bat across his front pad... and met nothing. The ball had long passed and thudded into his pad trapping him plumb in front. Classical Kumble dimissal. Out came Corry Collymore with more creases across his forehead than cracks in the pitch. First ball, a straight one pitched up outside off stump and played back with a dead straight bat. Will we finish it off now - ofcourse... but what if... and it continued such in my mind. Next ball a shorter one outside off and going away, Collymore cut fiercely. There was a sound and the ball went into Dhonis waiting gloves. Oh it was a 20 yr long wait and it had come on a dodgy pitch, but it was worth it all. India had finally won a significant test series outside the subcontinent.

Krrish- And the mautrity of the Indian movie going audience...

I and Gunjan had gone for Krrish last weekend and thouroughly enjoyed the extraordinary stunts and action sequences in the movie. But this post is not to wax eloquent on how good the movie was. It is infact an ode to the demise of the 'Larger Than Life' Indian Hero of my childhood days. Someone who did not require Jadoos powers to jump over buildings and beat the crap out of 20 goons in one go. All he needed was a little bit of blood from his cut in his lip and 'Maa ka aashirvaad'.
The instances of such sequences were so ubiquitous in the Hindi movies during late seventies and eighties that a hero without such powers could not even be conceived.
The one thing Krrish has bought to fore is that Indians directors and more importantly Indian audiences of today realise the difference between a Hero and a Super Hero. And more importantly they will not accept things unless there is some inherent 'logical' explanation.
Krrish was not the first Super Hero to hit the Indian screens. There were others before him with Shaktiman being the most popular one. But these were limited to the TV which traditionally has been a more experimentative medium. TV with its lower production costs and massive reach could identify a niche and still be succesful for success, like only children. Whereas the success of Krrish on the large screen depicts a change in the way the masses view the potrayal of Super Hero and by the same benchmark the hero.

INDIA'S TOUR OF THE CARIBBEAN - Why we need that elusive All Rounder

The last time India won a series abroad was in England 1986, and India had then played 5 bowlers through out the series. Before we crucify Dravid and Co. for playing 4 bowlers against WI one teeny weeny detail to remember is that 4 of those 5 bowlers were Kapil Dev, Ravi Shastri, Roger Binny and Madan Lal. The first two could have played in the top five of any batting line up and the other two were also genuine contenders for th all rounder tag.
Everbody knows that you need bowlers who can take 20 wickets in a test match, and very few teams can do it with only 4 bowlers. On an average good bowlers have strike rate of 60+, that means they need to bowl atleast 10-12 overs for each wicket. To take 20 wickets you need to bowl atleast 200-240 overs, so your 4 bowlers have to bowl close to 50 overs in a test match. And now do you realises the futility of that? I mean 25 overs in a innings will kill a bowler, especially that of the faster variety. Also what happens if one of your bowlers has a bad day, whom do you go to?
The answer to the above conundrum is simple as Sreenath insists 'Play 5 bowlers'.
But then what does it do to your batting. Again talking about averages your top batsmen have an average of around 40-50, lets settle at 45. So assuming all play true to form you will get a total of 270 from your top 6,hadly a total to inspire confidence. This is where you need the 7th batsman who you hope will play better than form and give you around 100 additional runs. Add 30 -40 runs by the tail and you have a relatively safe total of 400. So unless all your 6 batsmen are in cracker of a form you need an additional 7th batsman to provide you with a cushion.
Just talking mathematically you need 7 batsmen and 5 bowlers to win a test match. And one of those should be a batsmen with an average of arnd 40 and also a bowler with a strike rate of arnd 60, in other words an all rounder - QED. Do I hear some say Flintoff?