Games !

As I walk in front of my street, I hear kids playing cricket with a good measure of, what is most essential to gully cricket, Screaming.

Yes, be it fighting over who gets to bat first (because the ball is invariably lost before the end of the game) or over a misfield ("thoothu!") - screaming in gully cricket is the highlight of the kids' evenings, as much as it reminds home-owners of their dear glass windows.

Back in 5th grade, I remember playing endlessly in the hot sun on weekends. Too bad the ground I used to play in, has been converted into a park - 'keep off the grass' - Blah!

Vinay, Me, Amit, D.T, Asim, Junaid, Baddi, Vaadi and Chunts. (Hmm..Who am I missing?) We had a team of 11, and we fought cricket battles every weekend with the formidable "Scouts" and the quite-beatable "Korag-ers"[ LOL did you get that? 'Koragu' is Kannada for 'Crib'. They were notorious for cribbing on wanting to bat]

Good times.

So the culture of gully cricket, replete with all its expressions, has passed intact to today's kids.

" BOWLED'IM !!" probably made sense but, it took me a loooong time to realize what "AWZAAAAOUT !!" meant back then or how one should spell 'SCREEEZ' !! LOL.

So, that's the good news about cricket.

But what makes me a little sad is that I hardly see kids playing BUGURI these days. Buguri is an expertise game, where you spin wooden tops with metal tips using strings of ropes. An advanced players can hoist those tops anywhere - make them spin on their palms, for example (ouch). And then we had contests where we break the opponents' spinning Buguri with ours. Very skillful I must say. I wonder if shops even SELL buguri's these days.

And then there was LAGORI. Yet another amazing game. You pile up stones of different sizes and make a pyramid. There are two teams with opposing goals - of 'making' the pyramid and of 'breaking' it. The team making it must dodge the attack of the opposite team, which uses a ball as its projectile. Highly recommended when you have a big group.

There was CHINNI KOLU and there was TYRE ! The latter was totally a no-brainer. Meant for kids of the AATAK-UNTU-LEKKAK-ILLA variety. Essentially, those who were too young to understand any rules. You just give them a stick and find an old discarded vehicle tyre lying around somewhere. (We couldn't afford the whole vehicle you see!) And off you go speeding tyres and maneuvering them with sticks. Gosh ! I used to get so black and dirty playing with tyres :)

I wonder if kids today get out and get dirty as often as we used to.

Actually, today's kid prefers a WHOLE car to play with. Not just a tire. Hmm, evolution.

Liberal Bull

This is an advertisment. Not for a soap, nothing tangible. I want to advertise an idea. I chanced upon this very well-written piece (Facebook has its uses after all !) and felt totally compelled to advertise it. Here you go :

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/clicklit/entry/don-t-pity-us-arundhati-not-yet

It is amazing what Arundhati Roy manages to get away with. Don't get me wrong. By 'get away with' , I am not saying she got away with not being 'jailed' or 'punished'. She gets away with insulting your intelligence. I mean, her arguments are so supremely dumb : "Dalit" soldiers - ROFLMAO !! Even people born yesterday know that the Indian Army doesn't have a caste system.

Btw, I found "God of Small Things" boring and even kind of disgusting (couldn't even complete the book)...Really I don't know why she is what she is.

Well, feel free to disagree with me and the article above. I am probably "liberal enough" to allow comments. Whatever.

Ayodhya

The same land, but two buildings of stone
" Mine's sharp while yours is round "
1 billion people can only think of geometry
When His true nature is that of Unity
Ekam sat vipraa bahudaa vadanti.

Riddles anyone ?

My first is the last of an American gent
His writings dark, of hearts that tell tales

My middle is a first of a Latin address
Famous-speak before a Roman treachery

My last is a Third, yet only a prefix
That Newton pondered in equal and opposite measure

Your greatest clue in this game’s feature:
I am this that you see and this is..me !

Douglas Adams: An Epilogue

Life, Universe and Everything.
An honest man's profession.

Software engineering.
An ideal. For a country of 1 billion.

Outsourcing.
The fountainhead of Indian software.

Low cost.
The birth of outsourcing.

Exchange rate.
42 Indian rupees for 1 U.S. Dollar.

42.
The Answer to Life, Universe and Everything.

The Chill Pill

I think I am making the same mistake all over again :-

Taking life too seriously.

I don't know why, but it is definitely something to do with growing old. If this were 1997, I would have been that white-shirt-khaki-pants school kid, cycling back home in my Street Cat, excited about those interesting things I learnt in school (from GB's sanskrit subhashita's to TKP's geometry ryders !)

I wouldn't worry so much about 'life', like I sometimes do now.

Grow down Kandarp, grow down.

Fight Club

Investment banking is like this movie.

When I was a programmer, I used to think I worked 'hard' if I left office at 10 pm. That almost sounds laughable now. Life, not light, is based on a Special Theory of Relativity :

And the theory says that 'hard work' can be consistently re-defined relative to itself.

There are 'normal' levels of hard work where you : a) work in shifts b) manage to sleep 6-7 hr a day. [ By shifts I meant, all 3 of them - morning, day and night! ] So essentially, those are your 80 hour weeks. The first rule of the club.

Just when you thought you had all your rules in the bag, you experience something : The next level of 'hard work' - when you begin to lose sleep. ( i.e. You become irritable and develop a f**-all attitude).

So I keep oscillating between these two definitions. And I have heard my peers in some of the other clubs have a harder set of rules. If you believed me so far, you might as well believe that.

To all these dudes, I only have this to say :

Gentlemen, Welcome to Fight Club.