Don't do it

My tonsils have decided to act funny once again. As a result, I've been coughing like an old, beaten-up Chevy's starter on a sub-zero morning. Each time I cough my cough, every muscle in my body feels like it's compressing into a bolus, and then exploding before coming together again and repeating the cycle. The back of my head especially feels like it's going to come apart at the sutures.

Enter Roxid. I finally gave in(after consulting Dad, OBVIOUSLY), because Wikoryl didn't work, and Crocin was useless - the bodyache was killing me. So, last night I gulped down my first Roxid and for the aches, a Nimesulide tab went down with it.

And today, thanks to Mamu, I had a Combiflam tab a while back. And as I am now on antibiotics, having(or not having) cold stuff to drink makes not a jot of a difference. So, in the past 4-5 hours or so, I've slammed down a glass of chilled orange juice, 2 cans of Diet Coke, a giant glass of self-made cold coffee, and several glasses of chilled water. All this despite my rebellious and sorely sore throat.

So what if you've fallen ill? Just do it.

And stop reading this asinine blog.

What if...

This is going to be a very short post. I am mega-pissed off that the USTA is doing this to Rafael Nadal Parera. Or it's just the Fates who probably think it's some kind of joke. He now has to play 4 consecutive days of tennis at the US Open, and all this after having to play the last night matches in the previous rounds. After the match against Gael Monfils, I think both of them left the court at 1:20 AM NY time. I shall not talk about his strained abdominal muscles because the man himself doesn't want to. It seems as if the stars are all aligned against him and are doing everything they can to prevent him from holding aloft the trophy in the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

However, having said all that, I also know that if anyone can tide over these obstacles and still do it, it's that man Rafa. And what shall be even more satisfying is that we fans can shout, "Up yours, USTA, the Weather Gods, and whoever else wants him to give up!".

It is a very tall order and his championship hopes might even be snuffed out by Gonzalez tonight itself. But what if he does it? I know it's a bit like speculating on the taste of the omelette even as it is still a zygote within the hen, but hey, can you stop me from enjoying the hypothetical occurrence of this happy possibility?

But what are you going to do if this slight possibility becomes a reality?

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From an AFP newscast:

"Nadal hopes to complete a career Grand Slam with a US Open title and such a run would continue a tradition of historic crowns won in rain-hit years.

Don Budge completed the first calendar-year Grand Slam in 1938 after a hurricane halted play for a record six days. Rod Laver finished off the second men's Slam with a Monday win in 1962 and his second Slam in 1969 on a Monday."

Is my evil, shrieking laughter making your ears bleed?

RIP Lusk, Surtees, and all the others who've left us. And SHUT UP, YOU HEALTH AND SAFETY RETARDS.

It’s been a tough year for motorsport – chiefly because of the high-profile deaths that have brought back into sharp focus the proximity to death these superstars face every time they put their machines into gear and gun their engines.

Chief among the casualties have been Jeremy Lusk - Metal Mulisha rider, Freestyle Motocross superstar and Henry Surtees – F2 driver, son of the legendary John Surtees. Another recent headline-grabbing incident was Felipe Massa’s crash during the qualifying session of the Hungarian Grand Prix. And there must be several others I've missed.

These superstars who straddle the worlds of adventure sport and motorsport have come on board and given the best years of their lives to their chosen sport, knowing full well that their next stunt or race could turn out to be their last.

Which is why this stupid furore that’s been raised by these armchair ‘experts’ over the safety protocols existing in these sporting disciplines and whether they are enough to ensure the absolute safety of the people involved in it, right from the drivers and riders to the girls serving beer in the hospitality areas is totally infuriating. However, not for a moment am I suggesting that a Robbie Maddison should wear a fluffy magenta tutu while performing his backflip.

All I am saying is, ‘LEAVE THESE PEOPLE ALONE’. What more can the FIA do? Limit speeds in Formula One to 2.2287 km/h? Make the X-Games a video-game contest? Mistakes are made. Shit just happens. There is no way one can protect himself against the fickle ways of chance. Each of the people involved in these high-risk sporting events are the best out there. And they are certainly not irrational or stupid or unreasonable. If they think about doing something, it’s because they think and, more importantly they know they can. Whether they will, or whether they go out in a fireball of metal and glory is something they just have to check out for themselves. And they also have to perform the onerous task of filling out gazillons of health and safety forms.

An accident is something that is always waiting to pounce on even the most benign of human endeavours. You can slip in your bathroom while taking a bath and singing ‘Start me up’, bang your head on the faucet and be as dead as a doornail instantly. If you want to protect yourself against this eventuality, don’t take a bath. Ever. But in that case you will end up choking people around you to their deaths, your body is going to be infested with all micro-organisms known to man and you’ll die a slow, painful and, worst of all, malodorous death. And nobody will be applauding you as you go out with a whimper.

Take the bathroom option instead. In the tribute show put together by ESPN for Lusk, a segment talked about the kind of injuries these athletes have had to endure during the course of their career, and some of the responses were – “I had the entire left side of my torso ripped off”, “The handlebar went through my gut”, “I lost my kidney”, “One of my testicles was ripped off”.

So why do they still do it? These guys also have families – Jeremy is survived by his wife, Lauren. Is it worth risking it all when you can lose the people you love the most?

Of course it effing is. These people risk it because they don't know how to do anything else. They tread the fine line between daredevilry and lunacy day in and day out because they have to. And they aren’t endorphin-addled teenagers going mental with all the horsepower under their right foot or wrist. They are supremely skilled, extremely meticulous in their preparation, and they have a support team that does everything to ensure their safety. But they can’t accident-proof themselves. And I also think they don’t mind dying while doing something they love doing. It’s all worth it.

So, the next time you hear of such a death due to a horrific accident, feel a little sad for the dude who screwed up, and all the people who were behind him. But don’t, for a moment insult his memory by thinking he’d been stupid. He was being perfectly rational. It’s not like he had a choice. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to change anything he’s done in his life, if he were given a chance.

RIP Lusk, Surtees and everyone else who’s no longer with us. We’ll miss you guys. The loss is ours, and only ours.




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While I'm eagerly waiting for 'Relapse 2' and 'Detox', I'm listening to 'The Marshall Mathers LP' and 'The Chronic'. Fall Out Boy is also good fun to listen to. All this peppered with the occasional Aerosmith, U2, Springsteen, Sting, Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam song.

Sheer Uselessness

Again, this is one of those intelligent Facebook-Notes enterprises, which I shall use to fill my blog up. I suck. Big time.

There are a lot of artists I’d have wanted to select for this. But I realized I had no other alternative. His music occupies the rarefied zone of my subconscious. No, I'm not 'putting pseud' here, but this is something I just can't put a finger on. For me, Slim Shady is the first and last option, despite the fact that choosing The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, The Police, U2, Aerosmith or some other such band would have been a lot more conventional(and the answers would have come more easily) and I like those bands just as much.

But when has a Shady fan ever done ‘sensible’?

Anyway, here we go:

Pick Your Artist:
Eminem (Marshall Bruce Mathers III)

Are you a male or female?
Superman

Describe yourself:
Soldier

How do you feel:
Hellbound

Describe where you currently live:
Amityville

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
Underground

Your favourite form of transportation:
Under The Influence

Your best friend is:
The Flyest Material

Your favourite colour is:
The Sauce(That's the closest to red I got)

What's the weather like:
Beautiful

Favourite time of day:
3 AM

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
No Apologies

What is life to you:
Same Song and Dance

Your current relationship:
Crazy In Love

Breaking up:
My Fault

Looking for:
Medicine Ball

Wouldn’t mind:
Bagpipes from Baghdad

Your fear:
When the Music Stops

What is the best advice you have to give:
Stay Wide Awake

If you could change your name, you would change it to:
Jimmy Crack Corn

Thought for the Day:
Just Lose It

How I would like to die:
Like Toy Soldiers

My motto:
Run Rabbit Run




Well, that's done. So you can do something useful. Chew on these lines from 'Till I Collapse':

Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out
Till my legs give out, can’t shut my mouth.
Till the smoke clears out - am I high? Perhaps
I'ma rip this shit till my bone collapse.
Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out
Till my legs give out, can’t shut my mouth.
Till the smoke clears out and my high burn out
I'ma rip this shit till my bone collapse.

Totally, Em! We'll be screaming for you till the very end.

Random 1

Malvika Singh in The Telegraph(Calcutta) today, in her column, writes:

The strange reality in India is that whenever an individual performs, delivers or acts outside the borders of status quo politics, the rest in the larger ‘club’, who have not made it, pounce on the person, usually surreptitiously, in a desperate effort to destroy the credibility and dignity of that individual. This happens in politics, in business, in the service sector, everywhere. If you are under attack and being abused, accused and more, it means you have arrived. That is the insane way in which India celebrates its best and its brightest. Examples from the realm of politics are Manmohan Singh, who was deemed ‘weak and malleable’, Sonia Gandhi, who was damned by the Opposition for decades, and Rahul Gandhi, who was pooh-poohed as an incompetent ‘heir’. When the trajectory changes, critics become sycophants.

I have to say I agree.

And I shoved down two slices of bread smeared with a combination of barbecue sauce, mustard sauce and a little bit of salsa.

You haven't ever done this?

But then, have you ever thought of cutting off your left arm and then beating yourself to death with it?

For old times' sake

‘And this time, it's going to be brilliant’, were my thoughts when I disembarked from the train and was mighty chuffed to find everything so ‘in-sync’(for want of a better expression) – that car, that front seat, that stereo playing the same old CD, passing that Green-and-Yellow gate on GT road, that Kolkata Knight Riders’ Billboard(:o), etc.

And yet there was this voice at the back of my head which said, ‘Stop it – this rummy feeling isn’t going to last for long. Before you know it, it’s gonna be gone’. Understandably, I scoffed at even the slightest thought of the hols ending. Three months is a long, long time yaar. Now I have to go and vote as well, first thing in the morning. Will it be the Reds or will it be a Trinamool whitewash (err, greenwash)? Why am I thinking of all that bilge? And so I filed away that unsavoury thought somewhere far, where it wouldn’t be able to needle me.

It’s surprising how easily one can get back into that old way of doing things. It’s no point living in the past – I know someone who’d sneer and say these exact words. Well, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to live in the past. The past lives on… in you. And you don’t take a couple of days to ‘acclimatise’ to the change. You know how to deal with it. I trudge into the dining hall first thing in the morning, which has the TV no. 2 tuned to Times Now/NDTV 24x7/BBC World and that familiar genial man sitting in front of it, sipping his morning tea, and then downing whatever he can find in the fridge or in the loft. The lady in the kitchen reacts testily –‘Your cholesterol levels are going to get you!’, to which all he offers is a sheepish grin. A 13 year-old bloke emerges from the bathroom in a towel and yells – he’s getting late for school.

And I’m back there. In the afternoon at 2, I go to school to pick the brother up. Familiar faces smile and wave – the juniors, the teachers, the guards at the gate (Traffic duty, boss :D) and the usual question ‘Kemon aachish/Kemon aacho/How are you?’.

In the evening, I make a couple of phone calls, zip down to Polo Ground/Apcar Gardens/Burnpur Club/somebody’s house(whichever is convenient) and kickstart those adda sessions which seem neverending, until there’s a missed call from mum at, say, 10:30 pm at the earliest.

I come back home, shove dinner down my throat and then flounce off into the study. I switch on the PC, resume the inactive torrents and transfer the completed ones onto my laptop for viewing later on. Then I watch some TV, after which I switch on the AC in the bedroom and read whatever it is I’m reading at that point in time.

And then drift off to sleep until next morning, for which I can’t wait. That’s because I’m going to take out my two-wheeler at 5 am and go someplace with my bros. Or do something our group feels like doing, like having a gang over at our place to watch some movies or duel it out in Gran Turismo on the Playstation or indulge in the usual guy-talk (cars/sports/films/THAT girl).

These are my life’s little pleasures.

It’s been rightly said (here I go again, cockface) that people seem to get nostalgic about a lot of things they weren't so crazy about the first time around. How effing true is that!

That’s why I’m typing this out, while sipping Diet Coke, biting into the last pieces of that chocolate cake Mama made, and listening to ‘City of Blinding Lights’, which I feel is weirdly suited to the tone of the sentimental hogwash that you’re reading right now.

He didn't have to

I watched Double Indemnity the day before yesterday and now these lines from the film are, inexplicably, spinning around in my head:

Phyllis Dietrichson: I wonder if I know what you mean.
Walter Neff: I wonder if you wonder.

and

Walter Neff: It's just like the first time I came here, isn't it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.


I didn't quite like the way the film ended. I wanted Walter Neff to let Nino be falsely implicated in the murder of Mr. Dietrichson alongwith Phyllis, and wash his hands of the whole thing. But unsurprisingly, he has a change of heart when he realizes Phyllis was playing Nino along as well. Benevolence and kindness sweeps over him, and he wants Nino and Lola to be together. So he does the noble thing, and turns himself in.

The general consensus, most certainly, is that he did the right thing.

And that, exactly, is what put me off.

He didn't have to.



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It's such a pity I hadn't been a regular listener of The Rolling Stones a lot earlier. However, I am one now, and so 'Street Fighting Man' is now on repeat on me laptop.

They are bwwiillliant. :D

Could be worse

He looks up at the brilliant blue sky
and then at the parched earth 'neath his feet
the relief of rain is, yet, all but a wistful dream

Undeterred, he puts his next foot forward and soldiers on
and in his quest for the ever-elusive water,
he marches into the wasteland further deep

Not even once does the poor soul rage or curse
for, he knows full well
It could have been a lot worse.

Medley I

Aaiye dukaan kholta hoon:

1. Re-vive: Coming along pretty nicely. I’ve now sort of realized what I had been missing for quite some time. The ubiquitous adda session that happens every day from sunset till 11 o’ clock has become very, very essential to my daily existence. Pausing to think, I also realize that earlier, we never ever had to call each other to a specific place just so we can have this – we had the tuitions which served the purpose. Commendably. And Mukherjee hasn’t changed. Not. One. Bit. And that keeps things jazzed up all the time, although we sometimes go a little overboard! The Polo Ground is perfect for this kind of timepass. Made my second trip to school with Babai, Souvik and Roy. And we ended up singing a plaintive - and pathetic - rendition of ‘Winds of Change’(Or...did we?). School school naa raha(sob). Siddhant ‘Choos-Lee’ Bhartia came down all the way from Calcutta to meet up with us. We appreciate it, Sidd – it’s a pity our plans to get smashed together in Bangalore never really materialized, and now you're no longer in Bangalore. Now it’s Calcutta for the next 3 years, pucca. Right then. We’ll get smashed in Calcutta one of these days :D
And I still can't decide whether I want to go for that reunion party in school. Most of us are undecided - we're unsure of the crowd... what if the grand old men of SPS Alumni take centrestage and we newbies are summarily ignored? Wisely, the organisers are dangling the bait of having ex-students from AG Church and Loreto on board for the '3 day extravaganza' :D We shall see!

2. Brit GP, Silverstone: So the Brawns finally came unstuck. Low temperatures weren’t letting their tyres warm up properly, and Button was undone (*smirks*) and Barrichello wasn’t exactly giving a great account of himself (Massa and Rosberg almost jumped him). But I’m dribbling on about a mere bagatelle. Why don’t we sidestep this issue and yell ‘SEBASTIAN!!’ - What a performance. What a thundering performance. Granted that the Red Bull car was flattered a little by the nature of the circuit and the air and track temperatures, but you simply can’t gloss over the fact that Vettel, on a heavier fuel load, first put in a stonker of a qualifying lap to take pole, and then pulled away from the two old goats on the grid at over a second a lap consistently during the first stint of the race. That was the day he did a Schumacher. Fab job!

3. Wimbledon: It’s no secret which camp I belong to. And yes, Wimbledon without its defending champion feels a bit like showing up for a college prom night and having to dance with Bablu the channawallah. OK, that was monumentally asinine of me, but you shall, at this juncture, have mercy on this mentally challenged individual and get the drift. And, much as I don’t mind Roger Effing Federer and really, really respect him, the Savile-Row bedecked tennis-racket swinging Rolex commercial really gets on my nerves. The other one with footage from his matches is OK – I mean, Rolex has being doing that sort of ads for years, but this one is, well, phhbbbt.

4. Shantaram(the book): I won't say anything except describing it in one word : 'staggering'.

More later. Run along.

Oh, Roger!

Roger fans (I'm half a fan myself :-)), savour your moment under the sun :-).

What's with the excessive smileys I'm dishing out?

He is the greatest now. Now even critics who held his inability to win the French Open as a trump card have to shut their fucking traps up. Hats off, man. He and his camp have every right to be extremely chuffed about this victory. They badly needed this one. We always knew he had the game to triumph at Roland Garros, and it would only be a matter of time before he'd hold aloft the Coupe des Mousquetaires on Court Philippe Chatrier. There was only one thing he needed. Badly.

The absence of a certain Rafael Nadal Parera on the other side of the net.

Inexplicably, Nadal caved in against Robin Soderling, after decimating Lleyton Hewitt in the previous round. The only saving grace is that Soderling reached the final. Nadal summed it up himself - 'His game didn’t surprise me; I was more surprised by mine.'

And Bjorn Borg's gesture of sending Soderling a congratulatory SMS wasn't offensive at all. Its content was. Apparently, what he said to Soderling is that he was happy his record at Roland Garros remained intact. I've lost some respect for Mr. Borg. Great champions never think on those lines. Sad.

It looks like Federer's luck has also endured at this year's French Open. Nadal had been eliminated. Then, he narrowly managed to scrape through against Acasuso, Haas and Del Potro. Once he was in the final, there was absolutely no stopping him. Soderling didn't know what hit him.

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Federer and his worshippers have more reasons to rejoice. Nadal' s pulled out of the Queen's tournament, and his entry in Wimbledon 09 is also in doubt. We all know why. But if you are a berk, here's why:

http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=1015677

So King Federer says in an interview:

"I was surprised to see him pull out of Queen's, and now the debate that he might pull out of Wimbledon is quite frightening. I don't like to see it, because you want the best to be playing in the biggest events."

I think not ;-)

Anyway, Nadal has no intention of disappointing Roger Kumar:

"I am going to give 200 percent to be ready for the most important tournament in the world, the tournament that I always dream about,” Nadal said. But he also added that he would not play if he wasn't 100 percent ready.

Fingers crossed. Until the day they announce the draw at SW 19.

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I wasn't aware of this - When Nadal burst on to the scene, he wasn't welcome at all. Frankly speaking, I myself hated him initially.

He had to face a lot of hostility from fans in Paris. Guy Forget, commentator on France 2 detested him(still does, obviously) and said, "We don't need construction worker arms in tennis." After the 2006 Roland Garros final against Federer, Nadal started by praising Federer in his speech. The translator mistranslated the speech, leading the public to think he was praising himself. Nadal was thus booed and whistled at throughout the speech.

Beautiful. These people have had to eat their own words. Repeatedly. And hopefully they'll have to do so for some more years.