Oh God! It's Thursday @#$#

I hate Thursdays.

Thursdays are like the proverbial fat guy sitting between you and the cutie at the movies. Thursdays are like the nerve wracking commercial breaks that come on when the eye brow raised queer CID guy says “The Killer is … !” - And you have been waiting to hear that name since the past 4 weeks. Thursdays are like the 1979 Maruti that breaks down in front of you as the signal goes red.

The point is – I hate Thursdays.

Lot of people hate Mondays – so much that we have dedicated some blues to it. But how can anyone? I mean – just how can you? I welcome Mondays with open arms – almost as if it is one of my closest friends. And the reason is delightful - - It presents a perfect opportunity to let everyone in office know how much fun you had on the weekend as compared to their routine, dry, parchy, pathetic weekend.
Mondays are the perfect Thai massage for the ego.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are mighty helpful. They basically give you an opportunity to justify your existence in the office cubicle, warming the chair. Mind you, they can be pretty devastating for the ego but are absolutely essential to have a body – without which your ego is as good as a tomato . And if by luck, if you like your work, you might actually look forward to these as redemption days.
I mightily enjoy Tuesdays and Wednesdays!

Before moving on to Thursday, let’s quickly settle a minor issue – All those who hate Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, please say AYE………
Since the sound of silence if deafening, I quickly move on to the professional’s true, unrecognized nemesis – Thursday.

The problem with Thursday is that it just doesn’t fit in with the other days. And its not it's fault. It’s as if it was a terrible after-thought of some drunken Emperor after his erudite advisers had finalized the 6 day week.

It is too solemn, too catch 22ish.

You don’t feel like slogging out (like you do on Tuesdays and Wednesdays) because you still have to safely tackle Friday (which can be very tricky at times, especially if you are based in a low cost country which boasts itself of workaholics). And you think you deserve a break because of the hectic activity of the past 2 days. The splitting dichotomy can send any true Libran worth his salt running into the sea.

I am not sure if Arthur Dent was a Libran, but he too could never get the hang of Thursdays – the day the earth was destroyed! The earth still have to safely navigate 6 more hours to get rid of this horrible day. See you tomorrow, if the earth is still around.

Four Weeks and a Headache

Whenever I consume alcohol and get a little bit high I get thinking about life. But it has to be just the right kind of a high - where I start thinking not from my head but from way down - I mean the heart, you pervert! If it is less than that I act normally - too logical to be interesting. And if it is more than that...Well, I don't remember how I behave.

The point is it has to be the right point.

About 4 weeks back I started thinking again - from way down.
I was faced with the usual questions - What is my aim in life, What have I achieved so far? How I can get rich by tomorrow morning, How can I get laid? And so on...You get the drift, I hope.

I was young, I was intelligent, I was determined to have an answer this time and I wanted it now! So I began...

I thought - I struggled with my own self - I looked for answers in places I didn't even know existed - I racked my brains - I racked some of my closest friends' brains (Yes!) - I connected with my past - I disconnected with my past - I even cursed Bacardi and 'that' point.
But what I got for answers instead was more questions. Nothing seemed to work.

After 4 weeks of high stress, high anxiety, ruining endless telephonic conversations and botching up lunch with a close friend who thought I was in deep shock - I suddenly got it!

No, not the answer - but a severe headache.

I mean, come on! A guy gathers some courage (on a weekend!) - sits down to take a cold, hard impassionate look at Life and all he gets in return is more questions and a headache! Not fair - I say.

I decided to take revenge. After all, a Libran can only be that patient - and has to take a firm stand!

I quickly trashed all those questions and zapped myself back to normal Life. If life didn't care to give an introduction, I was fine by it. And that's the way it ended.

There's just one thing that really scares me still... I am not even sure that the headache was not the answer to my questions!

Kiss Kiss Scratch Scratch

He insisted that Pakis were upto Scratch Scratch
As a result, the fans saw no match
Oh! He thought he again managed to pull a coup
But Hair had just landed in hot soup

Another Aussie has stirred the hornet's nest. This time the man being Umpire Darrell Hair. And the results appear to be more far reaching than just the sport.

Infact it is not about cricket at all!

After Dean Jones infamously blurted out his terrorist remarks referring to Hashim Amla, Umpire Darrell Hair has gone one step ahead and labelled the whole Pakistan team as cheats. This inspite the fact that none of the 26 Sky TV cameras picked up anything suspicious against Pakistan players.

Pakistan itself is no such stranger to such controversies and not without reason too. In 80s and 90s when cricket technology was still in its infancy stages, ball tampering, field restriction violations amongst other things were seen as instruments that could be used to gain competitive advantage. Some teams were good at it while some weren't. The Pakis were the best.

But today when on-field umpires have support from off-field umpires having access to cutting edging technology, manipulating any aspect of the game is not only difficult but almost impossible. In this context Umpire Hair's discretionary call about ball tampering by Paki players was not only uncalled for but totally unjustified. What further puts a black shadow on the unfortunate decision is that Umpire Hair did not deem it necessary to discuss such an important matter with anyone. The penalty decision could have been easily reserved till tea time when there would have been time to discuss it. By taking an unilateral decision, Umpire Hair not only placed the interests of the game at risk but also provided one more example to the raging debate on racism in sport.

England would have won the match, Hair would have made his point by sticking to his conviction and Pakistan too will redeem their pride when they come out clean, which they will - sooner or later. The only undeserving loser in the whole controversy is the spirit in which the series was played.

This series was seen as some as a step in bridging the growing discontinuity between the Muslim world and the Western world. What instead remains is a whole lot of mess that needs to be cleaned up. And even after the mess is taken care of, the stains and the reminder of the ugly incident will continue to haunt the people of both nations and cricket fans all over the world for a long time to come.

Deja vu

Women are peculiar in some ways and annoying in others.
But there are some in which they can be both.

One of such is their obsession to keep things in the 'right' place.

I was too young and innocent too realize this at first. But it was not long before I was not so young to comprehend the reason behind my dad's tensed and jittery look on some Sunday mornings. It was the deep-in-thought face of my mother staring vividly at the 7 ft Godrej cup board! And as was the ritual on Sunday mornings, she was determined to show the cup board its rightful place. In fact her thoughts on this topic were so strong that they would have surely moved the cup board itself. But seeing her husband toil against the 2 tonne cup board is a spectacle that, I guess, even, otherwise, a doting wife would not sacrifice.

Ofcourse the cup board was a mere pawn misplaced in the larger scheme of things. I was a witness to my father shifting a universe of things in our home ; right from the honorable cup board to the first photo frame painted by my mom's distant neice that hung proudly in our drawing room.

After staying away for home for 5 years, this primal fear of married men had completely escaped my mind; that is until my room-mate's parents arrived in Bangalore a perfectly normal morning to pay their son a dear visit.

Before I left for office, I discussed the fine Bangalore morning weather with my friend's smiling parents. But when I returned home in the evening, old memories came rushing back with such momentum that I was literally taken aback:

The drawing room looked slightly upset as the dining room had intruded in its place, the kitchen looked like an 'once attractive' woman who has just got an expensive face uplift and old bathroom mats were retired away to make way for young, bright ones. But the most affected was my friend's room. Till yesterday, chaos had appointed itself as dictator for life and ruler of everything that lay there! Today, order prevailed and the room looked positively sullen. I could almost sense it holding my friend's mother guilty of robbing it of its favorite past time - playing hide and seek with my friend's belongings.

And ofcourse the ultimate symbol - The 2 tonne cupboard !! It was proudly enjoying the view from it's 'rightful' place.

The triumphant look on my friend's mother face and the slightly agitated look of my friend's father was enough indicator that nothing need be said about the coup. I discussed the fine Bangalore evening weather with my friend's parents, had dinner and proceeded to my rightful place in the house - my room.

Sigh! How I wish at times that I too was a 'thing' that could find its rightful place in this world.

Oops! Inzy did it again

Inzamam-ul-Haq is a marked man!

Word has it that when Allah was distributing running-between-the-wicket skills, Inzy was eating Mutton Biryani in Lahore's Gawalmandi.

Apparently his recent dismissal against England in third test match at Headingley only adds more support to the above claim.

Inzy was dismissed hit wicket trying to sweep Monty Panesar from Headingley to Lords, 120 miiles away. The events following the dismissal were as sensational as the dismissal itself.

As said ealier, Inzy generated enough momentum in his sweep for the ball to travel 120 miles away to Lords on a windless day. There was only one hitch. He failed to connect. So instead, the tremendous torque generated resulted in to an unstable centripetal force that caused Inzy to do a sort of semi-backward-sommersault-semi-frog-leap that ended directly on the stumps.

Geraint Jones' first reaction was to ask Inzy if he was hurt; but when he saw that the stumps had been displaced his reaction wias something like "Hey mate! Are you ..Holy cow! The bull killed itself..ha ha ha (manic laughter)"

There was a minor commotion during the evening cocktails after someone spotted a dog with his tail between his legs looking for a place to hide in England’s dressing room. It was later clarified that it was just a scared Geraint Jones, after Inzy reportedly walked up to him and said ‘Next time, I am not going to fall on the wickets but you!’

Inzy is also considering writing to the ICC to include his hit wicket under his own wickets tally. His logic is that no one was responsible for his dismissal but him and the bowler should not be a given free wickets when it was an out and out the batsman's ffort.

Movie: Omkara

Omkara is like the crack of a horse whip...it gets things moving.

And you hear this whip in the first sentence of the movie. Something inside you screams to stop munching pop corn and devote all your senses to the drama unfolding before your eyes.

Being good at something comes at a price. After the skilful adaptation of Macbeth Vishal Bharadwaj would have felt Othello's weight heavier on his shoulder. This inspite of the fact that Macbeth was much tougher plays to execute that Othello. But he has carried it off in convincing style.

The movie scores on all fronts - be it the perfect casting, the enthralling background music, the contextual songs or the sizzling chemistry between various characters.

The real high light of the film is the casting and Bharadwaj scores a perfect 10 here.

I have not read Othello so dont know how sincere Omkara is to the play. But even if it is not, who cares. Its a treat to watch the way it is! However there is this feeling of missing out on some dialogues in the movie because the movie is made in Central UP Hindi. And missing anything in Omkara is simply not acceptable!