4:45 PM. Hosur Road was just recuperating from a stressful morning rush hour and there was a semblance of sanity about the Baap Of All Roads!
Sanity is an attribute you can seldom associate with Hosur Road and it ceased to exist this monday evening. At around 5 PM, it seemed the whole of Bangalore was on an exodus to Hyderabad. Space-time froze again and all the drivers became extremely "Horn"y :-)
I should have expected all this; after all, India is the land of a billion cricket fanatics!! And missing India in action in a world cup final is tantamount to disservice to the nation!! And what a match it promised to be; India beat England,South Africa and Australia in the previous three matches and were on the threshold of lifting the world cup after a 24 year hiatus.
India Vs Pakistan - The World Cup Final!!!! It just cannot get better than this!!
May be I was dreaming; May be the whole of India was dreaming!! Dreams are a luxury you ill afford on Hosur Road; Reality bit us very quickly and it was a nightmare near BommanHalli :-)
Sports they say is that theater of human emotions where only unscripted drama rules; It surely did in the last 2 weeks in South Africa.
We were old, slow, meek, ugly, predictable and boring a few months back when we were knocked out of the biggest tournament of the game in the very first stage!! It was definitely not a shock - we had professional actors in the team who considered cricket a side business and we had Munaf Patel who believed that diving on the field amounts to blasphemy :-)
The show dragged on and the tournament lasted for a few more months in remote grounds where the players out numbered the ground staff and the audience combined :-)
A fortnight ago, to give India a chance in the 20-20 world cup would have been like expecting to see Rajesh Khanna driving a 1000 CC bike in Dhoom 3 :-)
I think Dhoni and his boys hardly cared if anybody gave them a chance; India rose like a phoenix from its own ashes in the last few weeks to script a spectacular ascent to the finals.
Back to Monday. In the race against time, I lost by 15 minutes and Yousuf Pathan was out minutes after I reached home.
For an hour, it seemed the Indian batsmen had it under control; It was like the calm before the Yuvraj Storm. Yuvraj, in sublime touch took batting to heights unattainable in international cricket; He batted as if he had been waiting for a decade to play in the 20-20 world cup.
Umar Gul, with the look of a breed of dog I cannot name, almost spoiled the party for India before young Rohit Sharma played as if he was batting on a Mumbai street after school hours to take India to 157.
I felt it was enough and for a moment, Imran Nazir made me believe that it was just a figment of my imagination. He continued from where he left off in the previous match until Robin Uthappa showed why India, beating all expectations was in the world cup final. With fire in their bellies, Dhoni's boys played like possessed fighters, there to prove a point. Noo..they were doing much more than that; it seemed they were having the best times of their life there - youthful exuberance unseen previously in Indian cricket.
Franklin D Roosevelt, the legendary US president said that Fear is the Only thing we need to fear about; And fear was conspicuous with its absence in the Indian contingent as it put reputations to rest.
Shahid Afridi, a 23 year old for the past 7 years was out the first ball and everyone thought it was the end of the road for Pakistan. Misbah Ul Haq at the other end was busy calculating moves, runs and balls with unmatched precision to take the match to the wire; Dream Finish to a Dream Final! :-)
Joginder Sharma prevailed and phewwww...we WON THE WORLD CUP!!
9 PM - I havent seen scenes like that in Bangalore before and dont expect to see in the near future.
Cricket truly galvanised India once more!!.
Dhoni And Team....YOU ROCK!!
CHAK DIYAAA INDIA!! :-)
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Myth And Reality
September 12th 2007 was an exceptionally unique day in the history of India - the government of a country with an 80 crore Hindu population said that the greatest King in Hindu mythology may not have actually existed!!
Pheww..for a second I thought I was hearing a forecast of the news in 2027!! My happiness was shortlived; there was nothing unique about Sept 13 - within a day, we degraded back to common place politics with the Law Minister making unlawful, sweeping statements about Ram.
The Ram-Sethu project, in all probability, might be off and Tamil Nadu may lose a lot of business. But to me, this misadventure by the government is one of its best achievements so far. It has set the ball rolling on one of the oldest and most vital debates of all time - Myth vs Reality in particular and science vs religion in general.
From times immemorial, the three-letter word GOD has instigated more hatred and love, peace and violence, passion and mithya than what the rest of all concepts could cumulatively manage.
One of the first words to be taught to a child is GOD; and the last word most people try to speak before they die is GOD..not to forget the innumerable times GOD is spoken, taught, read, heard and thought of, in between!!
It is not my aim here to prove the existence/non existence of GOD. I am just intrigued by what is in store for the human race because of the dichotomy in approaching religion(or GOD) and everything else.
As the world becomes smaller, flatter and smarter by the day and as institutions, people and societies are scruntinised in every possible way, how can religion and faith remain untouched by rationale and ridicule? And how long will it continue?
When you talk about religion and God, all other things are trumped over - a fact the self proclaimed cultural saviors of our nation have successfully institutionalised in the last 2 decades. People become emotional, hysterical and extremely irrational when you question anything about their faith.
Douglas Adams had this to say on the trump card that religion is......."Religion..has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you are not allowed to say anything bad about; you are just not. Why not? - because you are not!' If somebody votes for a party that you dont agree with, you are free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I must not move a light switch on a saturday', you say, 'I respect that'."
An extension to this in the context of the present issue..
ASI says "The characters of Ramayana are fictitious and there is no evidence to prove that Ram existed and the Ram-Sethu is a natural formation and not a man-made construction".
SPCB(Self Proclaimed Cultural Brigade) says "You dare not say that".
ASI asks "Why not??"
SPCB says "You just cannot".
A famous shloka from Bhagavatam in Telugu says "Never doubt if GOD is present here and absent there..GOD is all-pervasive..you just need to look around, he is present everywhere!" Well Ram is omni-present and why the hell are we making a fuss about just the Ram-Sethu project?? Why not the Bangalore International Airport? In all possibility, Ram might have made his foot impressions there!!
Given this ambiguity, I think SPCB would need the validation more than anybody else - they would know precisely when andwhere to object :-)
I like many characters of Ram and so do millions of Indians...Ram is a legend that does not need any physical existence to inspire and amaze.
But it is time we understand the difference between a myth and reality.
Pheww..for a second I thought I was hearing a forecast of the news in 2027!! My happiness was shortlived; there was nothing unique about Sept 13 - within a day, we degraded back to common place politics with the Law Minister making unlawful, sweeping statements about Ram.
The Ram-Sethu project, in all probability, might be off and Tamil Nadu may lose a lot of business. But to me, this misadventure by the government is one of its best achievements so far. It has set the ball rolling on one of the oldest and most vital debates of all time - Myth vs Reality in particular and science vs religion in general.
From times immemorial, the three-letter word GOD has instigated more hatred and love, peace and violence, passion and mithya than what the rest of all concepts could cumulatively manage.
One of the first words to be taught to a child is GOD; and the last word most people try to speak before they die is GOD..not to forget the innumerable times GOD is spoken, taught, read, heard and thought of, in between!!
It is not my aim here to prove the existence/non existence of GOD. I am just intrigued by what is in store for the human race because of the dichotomy in approaching religion(or GOD) and everything else.
As the world becomes smaller, flatter and smarter by the day and as institutions, people and societies are scruntinised in every possible way, how can religion and faith remain untouched by rationale and ridicule? And how long will it continue?
When you talk about religion and God, all other things are trumped over - a fact the self proclaimed cultural saviors of our nation have successfully institutionalised in the last 2 decades. People become emotional, hysterical and extremely irrational when you question anything about their faith.
Douglas Adams had this to say on the trump card that religion is......."Religion..has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you are not allowed to say anything bad about; you are just not. Why not? - because you are not!' If somebody votes for a party that you dont agree with, you are free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I must not move a light switch on a saturday', you say, 'I respect that'."
An extension to this in the context of the present issue..
ASI says "The characters of Ramayana are fictitious and there is no evidence to prove that Ram existed and the Ram-Sethu is a natural formation and not a man-made construction".
SPCB(Self Proclaimed Cultural Brigade) says "You dare not say that".
ASI asks "Why not??"
SPCB says "You just cannot".
A famous shloka from Bhagavatam in Telugu says "Never doubt if GOD is present here and absent there..GOD is all-pervasive..you just need to look around, he is present everywhere!" Well Ram is omni-present and why the hell are we making a fuss about just the Ram-Sethu project?? Why not the Bangalore International Airport? In all possibility, Ram might have made his foot impressions there!!
Given this ambiguity, I think SPCB would need the validation more than anybody else - they would know precisely when andwhere to object :-)
I like many characters of Ram and so do millions of Indians...Ram is a legend that does not need any physical existence to inspire and amaze.
But it is time we understand the difference between a myth and reality.
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