Horn NOT OK Please!

I was on a two wheeler waiting patiently at the red light of traffic signal. Behind me was a car constantly blowing horn at every 4 seconds. How am I supposed to move ? How can I give way to this impatient, senseless and insensitive car fellow ? I wish I was shaktimaan or superman and could take a jump high in the sky to let him get ahead of me. I wish there was light in the rear of my two wheeler which would blink and show middle finger every time there was a horn from this car fellow. If he still did not understand what I mean I wish I could press a button which would show FUCK in the rear light. If some automobile company provides these features in rear lights do let me know, I will buy its vehicle at once.If there is none, someone should starting implementing this and pay me the royalty.

Honking unnecessarily has become the usual practice. It has become kind of a safety net. If I have blown the horn and if someone comes under my car, no one can blame me. The person under the car is to be blamed even if he has died. It is my vehicle, my fuel and my right to blow the horn. If I am in a hurry I have the right to make everyone deaf on road. No matter if the red light shows 100 seconds to go I will blow the horn. If I am driving a vehicle and someone ahead of me wants to cross the road, I will make sure I will blow the horn loud enough to scare him. How dare you cross the road in front of me ?

We do not want to slow down. We think if we keep blowing horn we have the right to maintain the speed. There are enough horns coming into your apartment on a Saturday afternoon that if somehow they stop you will feel something is wrong with the world. I am sure we have missed the whole point of having a horn in our vehicle. I am not sure who innovated the horn but for sure by now if he is alive he would have become deaf. 

How peaceful the world would be without these horns ?

Pan Singh Tomar

I decided to leave half of India-Pakistan match in Asia cup to go for Pan Singh Tomar. It proved out to be a good decision as India bowled poorly for the first half of the match. For the first time, I went to see a movie alone. The plan to watch it with friends did not work. Plans often fails, planning is overrated. By the time I went for it everyone has watched it or did not want to see it. I could not resist the interesting things I was hearing about it. In fact, I feared that they might stop showing it as it was already more than two weeks old. Fortunately it was running successfully just like Pan Singh Tomar ran successfully for steeple chase. As usual I did not read any reviews but I cannot prevent myself to hear that it was the story of a national record holder in athletics who becomes a rebel (baghi) in Chambal. Fascinating and intriguing. I was a bit hesitant to say 'one' when at the ticket counter I was asked, "How many tickets of Pan Singh Tomar?". But once I was inside, I don't know how time went by?. The only thing I didn't like in those two and a half hours was the trailer of Houseful-2 in the intermission.

It was a brilliant movie. True stories are brilliant. True stories are about life and life is not only interesting but uncertain too. Else we might get bored living just fifty years of life. The uncertainty in life of Pan Singh Tomar was crafted in this movie. I wanted to see more of sports in the movie. I wanted to see more about how Pan Singh prepared, struggled and won or lose. Perhaps, the limitations of a movie. But it was fine. His transformation into a rebel was sad enough to move you. The transformation was not sudden, it was gradual.  In some way I can relate the story to the lifestyle of my village. In villages it is not very easy to do something irregular. There are enough traditional roadblocks, jealously and feudal reasons to poke you if you decide to do something unconventional . Pan Singh Tomar was called 'Bhagoda' by his cousin, making fun of his talent and ability to run. The feudal wars about land runs deep in families. I have witnessed several such stories which ended not so happily in my village. In one such case a person was shoot at when he came back to meet his sister by his cousins and uncles. Pan Singh Tomar was all genuine. It was also nice to see glimpses of my alma mater in the movie.

I conveniently call myself a sports lover but I had never heard about Pan Singh Tomar until I saw this movie. It made me realized how limited is our exposure to sports in India. The one aspect where diversity of India loses is richness is its sports. Cricket is uniform all over our geography. It sounds cliche and unfair to say in India cricket takes the center stage in sports but it is true. Still we cannot blame cricket. We need stories of our great sportsman in Schools to inspire the kids. True stories inspires you.

We are not a sports crazy nation. We need to be! 

We run to reduce effects of our diet on our body. He ran to placate his voracious diet. That was Paan Singh Tomar. 

Let's criticize Sachin

They say it is very easy to be a critic. For example, you can become a film critic easily and just say the movie was good in first half but lost its grip in the second half. Similarly, you can criticize an aging cricketer such as Sachin even on his slightest failure because you know he won't play that long now to prove you wrong. And, it just feels good to criticize.

Yesterday, after a long ( by Sachin's standard ) wait, Sachin completed his 100th century in international cricket. A significant yet just another record in the bag of a maestro. It was not an easy journey for Sachin and at the same time it was not an easy one for his fans. Like him, his fans also face the heat from his criticizers and fans-turned-criticizers. It happened every time he went through a lean patch ( again by his standards). I have had many arguments with my friends, colleagues and family members defending myself as a Sachin's fan.

The criticism was severe and harsh during this wait for 100th 100.  More people joined in the criticism. The voice against him became more strong. Now Sachin's critics were also joined by his fans who wanted him to retire right after winning the 2011 world cup. Their point is that a cricketer should retire at his peak or after achieving a certain goal. Even Kapil Dev joined them. I grew 10 years watching Kapil Dev taking those last 34 wickets in his test career. We all forget our time. Probably these fans did not want to see Sachin passing through anymore lean patch. They wanted to remember him as a player who retired on a winning note gloriously. Sometimes, I felt people have made it their personal objective to make him retire. I wonder, Why people are going so crazy about his retirement ? Were they the one who told him to start playing cricket ?

Yesterday, when Sachin started playing and he was coming close to 100, there in came the argument that even if he scores a hundred it would be against a very weak team - Bangladesh. They would have criticized him if he would not have been able to do so against the very same team saying, Hey he cannot even score against Bangladesh now. In the end Bangladesh defeated India. Thank you Bangladesh for proving that you were not a weak team. A tight slap on the face of those who were saying Bangladesh was a weak team.

Media, in particular Hindi media, was not far behind too. Star news had this headline, "Sachin did not score on 82 balls". The stupid journalists of Star news wanted to imply that Sachin's slow century was responsible for the loss. But when you say he did not score on 82 balls, it means his 114 runs were scored on remaining 65 balls of his innings. Overall, it was a healthy strike rate of around 78. This is what happens in every batsmen innings. A batsman plays many dot balls & also take 2s,3s, 4s and 6s. Star news journalists knows it very well. It was just an attempt to sensationalize and manipulate statistics to present something spicy and controversial with a background music of a thriller making full advantage of the fact that our opinion, thoughts and arguments are gullible.

Fans and followers are usually unreasonable. We make GODs out of our greats and then we are not prepared to accept a single failure from them. We will also not tolerate any act from them which is not ethical or is against our value system no matter how we personally treat ethics and value system. Our greats should be pure. Our standards of judgement are very straight forward, a single mistake and you no longer represent us.

Profession defines whether your are young or old. So while Rahul Dravid, 39 bid adieu to cricket, Rahul Gandhi, 41 is still a young politician. A sportsman has a short career on field. It is true that Sachin is not what he used to be. Even if you put that question to him he will admit it. But let him and/or selectors decide about his career. Don't just use him for the sake of proving yourself to be a tough decision taker, unemotional or a person different from rest of the others.