Guest Article: What is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar?

This Article was written by a friend for the cricket blog which me and my room-mate Pattrow maintains. Just couldn’t stop the urge to post it on my personal blog too. Enjoy the article:

What is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar?

Apart from the fact that you were born in India there is one more reason that makes you proud of being an Indian, it is Sachin. It is that Sachin Tendulkar is an Indian. It is that Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar puts on that blue jersey which makes you proud.

Some people become talented. Some people are born talented. Then there are some people who are gifted. Sachin does not fall in any of these categories. Sachin Tendulkar is beyond talents and beyond being gifted. He is, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

There are some people on screen you wait to see. There are some people on screen for whom you skip other things. Then there is Sachin who makes you leave everything, mind you, everything else and watch the screen. Sachin Tendulkar makes you hide the remote because you cannot take your eyes off him. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar makes you hug your television set, quite a few times, many a times.

There are some people who break records. Then there are some people who make new records. When Sachin plays, you don’t watch the score-card, you watch him. Sachin Tendulkar is beyond records, beyond statistics. So, when an under -19 or gully cricket is happening, one says...see that shot was like the Master Blaster’s. One doesn’t anymore compare him to anything or anybody. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is the comparison.

There are some people, who when they fall sick make to the front page of national dailies. Then there are some people who when they fall sick, comments are taken from doctors and made the headlines. When Sachin falls sick, the whole country prays for him. When Sachin Tendulkar falls sick, quotes from fans, common masses across the nation make the news. When he had a tennis elbow, there were front page infographics showing what exactly has gone wrong in a certain ligament of the posterior side the elbow. It is then, that people, newspaper vendors, tea-sellers, pan-shop owners, who have no clue, absolutely no clue about what those photos are, discuss those intricate biological diagrams, test reports and x-rays, knowing that they do not understand a word of it all. They do it because of one simple reason; those graphics are of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

There are some people who play. There are some people who play exceptionally well. Sachin is crusader on the pitch, so even if we lose, we know there is this one man who inevitably fought till the end. Sachin Tendulkar is the hope on the pitch, the hope that as long he is there at the crease, a miracle can happen anytime. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is the smile on the pitch.

There are some people who are role-models. There are some people who represent a sport. Sachin is the other name for cricket in India. Sachin Tendulkar is the super-hero of millions and millions of kids and youngsters, a super-hero of his own kind who wins the combat by sweeps and strokes. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is the photograph of a man with his bat held up under the tag, C for Cricket, on a worn out poster to teach kids alphabets.

“Sach is life.”

Info: Writer is an admirer of Sachin and a potential journalist. Also the writer badly wishes to know what you think of the blog entry.

PS: If you are feeling the urge to describe the two big O’s of Sachin then feel free to drop your article with your intro at cricketwithoutballs@gmail.com

"Patt’s - Row"

Last Sunday as I was sitting in my room, something struck me. In fact I was lying down due to shear pain. The pain from playing cricket or to add, doing anything remotely related to something called “physical exercise” straight after six months! If you ever suffered it, you might be aware, what I am talking about. You go on the practice for a corporate cricket tournament. You see the VP of your company is there. Many other big shots are also present. You try to give your extra, thinking that it might add to your appraisal process. You work hard to add that extra little pace in your bowling; try hard to convert singles into doubles. And the result is – you end up lying in your bed waiting for someone to drop some food or water in your mouth.

So while I was lying down, I was thinking about old days. Do you remember the days, when some guests used to bring those famous Dubai/ US chocolates and it was the only thing you could think about until they get over. When it used to happen with me, I used to make a deal with my younger sister to divide the stuff equally. But you know that sort of “mutual-benefit-agreement” never works out. You always remain cautious about the intention of your sibling. You make several rounds to ensure that the other one is not getting more of the lot. While at the same time, you are plotting ways to get the maximum share without making it suspicious. In the end, it always used to come to that one single day when you had a fight with your younger sister leading to cease fire by Mom-Dad and seizing all the chocolates in their own safe possession.

Now the time has changed, world has moved ahead and I am living far far away from my home. But I guess life is still the same. Chocolates have been replaced with bandwidth, sibling with roommate, but still the aim is same - to get the maximum out of it.

You see, in India we have a decent connection speed of 512kbps-1 Mbps and it is usually shared between 3-4 roommates. In my case it is shared between two, me and Pattrow(my roommate). The speed is very much sufficient for two people if they are just browsing through sites. But the real problem starts when it comes down to torrent. I guess nothing on this planet can satisfy the desired speed for torrents. So is the case with us.

Just as it used to be in the back ol’ days, we have a deal to share the connection mutually. But this evil, evil thing called torrent makes you to go for maximum. We both keep sharp eyes on each others movements. If one of us goes out of the house, even to collect mail, the other one will start the torrent immediately because he has the excuse that – “I thought you left for somewhere.”

We pay special attention to each other’s sleeping time. Whoever sleeps last has an advantage of sneaking into others room and shutting off the torrent and has the whole 1Mbps speed for the whole night at his disposal. Excuse – “I was doing something really important and with your torrents open, the speed was not coming so I switched them off”. Till now this night thing has been my forte.

Pattrow has his own ways. The modem is in his room and I have a cable connecting it to my age old desktop. So sometimes this evil creature goes to the length of pulling my data cable out of the modem and when I inquire, he fools me saying that his internet connection is not working too. Brilliant!! Isn’t it?

Last time we used some of the competitive exams, we were appearing for as our weapon. I used my CFA in December and justified that “ I have to attempt online test papers so kindly switch off the torrent” or “ I have to download this really important .pdf from net so kindly switch off your torrent” . It’s a killer tactic which is cannot, just cannot be defended. Just one flaw- Now it’s been used by Pattrow, who is using his GMAT for the same purpose. I wish he gets over it with soon and fast.

And as usual it always come down to that one single day when we both keep our foot down, add 5-6 torrent file and start downloading at the same time. “If I am not getting it, so are you”

And people say – ‘Life changes’. But I believe “zindagi isi ka naam hai mere dost” (Please add Rajesh Khanna tone and style to it!) All these little things make you feel alive. They amuse you whenever you look at them from a third person’s point of view. They give you a reason to look back at life and smile. More importantly they keep the cunning and dark part of your nature breathing and give them a reason to come back again.

PS: After revealing all the secrets, I guess we both had to work on new ways. Ideas are welcome

b-day and The V Day

Oooooh! I will be 23 tonight. 23!! I never imagined that I will reach this age.

I imagined that when I will be 15, I will get a bike - I got Hero-Puch

I Imagined that that when I will be 18, I will be in a college with tones of chicks around. (Like we see in American pie) - I landed up in IIT Madras

I imagined that when I will be 22, I will be working for all the large investment banks cracking M &A deals all by muself. I landed up in….err….I guess I am currently working in the firm so I should not comment.

So on none of the occasion I felt special as I imagined. But this b-day is new. I am feeling special. I am feeling – Fucking old!!

Yeah when ever I see the figure 23, it made me think of the little time I am left with to complete the Top-10-things-I-wish-to-do-before-28.

Why 28??? Because after that you get married.

But anyways fuck this 23 and I should let the party begin.Anyone of you who want to send gifts, flowers, booze or wish me – Just feel free to drop your contact number. I will handle the further proceedings.

And now the ‘ V’ day. The great V day. The dream of every single guy. I still remember when I was a kid, I used to dream about celebrating valentine day . In my 10th grade, I got my first chance. Me and my group of classmates which included 2 girls went in a restaurant for lunch. That was like such a ‘ Woohoo’ moment of life for me back then.

On the next valentine day, when I was in 11th grade, me and a girl with whom I used to go around went to a card store. Those used to be days when I used to get pocket money of 40 bucks a week and petrol money. We selected card, we gave them to each other, read the card and thanked each other and put the card back on shelf. It was fun!! You can give so many cards you want, without a penny shelling from your pockets. Then we moved to the gift section. We gave each other some really expensive gifts. But in the last, what started as a fun, became boring. Anyways it was the bestest V day ever.

In my college, on my first valentine day my then-gf gave me a card and a pen because we had the mid terms from next day. And a douche bag I am, I gifted her Chlormint lying in my back pocket.

I don’t have any memory for my second year V day which I quite strange but I clearly remember my third year Valentine day. I was single by then but I celebrated in a royal manner by putting up a status message wishing everyone ‘Happy Valentine Day’.
What?? This is not lame. Half of the engineering male students celebrate like this.

The fourth year V day was pretty special. Paplu set me up for a Night out Turtle walk along the Mahabalipuram beaches with a group of 6 (!!) girls. The trip never turned into reality but we got the most out of it because for one complete week, we were the guys who had a potential dates or plans for the day. That bastard Paplu still made it.

So I guess this has been the journey till now. What about this year?

Well, let’s see. Tomorrow is my b-day and I am lying down with viral but since I have 3 bottles of liquor in my cupboard, I guess we are going to celebrate it tomorrow night. Plus my roommates have arranged a secret party tonight. 

What about the V day you moron?? We are not interested in your B day. Tell us about ‘The V day’.

Oh okay. This Sunday, I will go to the office. I will burn my ass since I have a project review meeting on Monday and I have been of completely no use this week. May be later, I will go to Bus stand which is BTW 15 km away from my place to pick paplu up who will be dropping his GF over there. So I guess this is pretty much.

Anyways guys, I hope you will have a day of your life time out there. My sincere wishes to all the engineering students and a Plead to all the girls of world. Please be generous for one day.

Carrying-the-Bat

On a sweaty, boring Chennai Sunday Mr p talks to Mr P

p: Dude we know so much about cricket!

P: Yeah we are so cool.

p:We also have a Terabytes of statistics stored in us!

P: Yeah we are so cool

p: Dude, I saw a dream last night where I saw god giving us instruction to free this planet from the brutalities of Stuart broad

P: Yeah God is so cool

p: and he also told me that in the Kaliyuga – internet will be the most dangerous weapon. So he advised us to open a blog and use it as brahmastra over all the Stuart Broads, Rameez Razas, Arun lals and Paul harris-ss.

P: Yeah , Brahmastra is so cool.

p: so lets open a blog….watsay?

P: Yeah Blog is so cool.

Who knew that this great conversation will change the course of history in the coming time and will be the reason for new cricket blog - http://cricket-without-balls.blogspot.com/

So friends the p and P is none other then me and my room mate and we request you to have a look at this blog completely dedicated to cricket. To give you a brief idea about blog:

“We are bunch of cricket maniacs, more of a two-some pair, born and brought up by cricket fanatics and befriended by cricket maniacs throughout life and belong to a country which has donated precious talents like Venkatpaty Raju, Ashish Nehra, Nayan Mongia and Ajit Agarkar to the gentleman’s game.

We talk about Sex (Yes.. we do talk about it), Fashion (rather... Whatever MS Dhoni thinks is fashion), Drugs (err …. Performance Enhancing Aids) and Entertainment: by entertainment we mean – the batting abilities of the Indian lower order batsmen, the acting abilities of Harman Baweja and the PCB. We worship Sachin. Despite that our blog will be clearly biased towards Shahid Afridi, Paul Lee Harris and Ashish Nehra. We love to discuss Avataar, Rameez Raja and Lalit Modi too; given the constraints that Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and Shilpa Shetty leave enough room for them.

We love numbers especially those that represent Chris Martin’s batting record or Navjot Singh Sidhu’s fielding records. So, do not be surprised if our statistics defy every rule that Euclid or Pythagoras created.

Caution (!!!) –
The only secrets that we reveal are ‘Victoria’s Secrets’ and all predictions that we make have already been made by Baba Ram Charan Bhojpuri in the Dwapar yuga.

We don’t believe in copyright, which should be evident from the fact that we have shamelessly ripped off the name of the blog from here.

We are ardent believers in the power of ‘Open Source Revolution’ (even though till yesterday we assumed that Ubuntu was the name of Nina Mercedes’ pet penguin) and we invite entries from anyone out there who wants to be another Sreesanth with the desire to display his booty-writing-skills.
Just reach us at cricketwithoutballs@gmail.com.

Only condition: Nothing against Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar and Kamran Akmal.”

Tags and Template

As you must have observed I have changed the template. The last went haywire. It used to show different fonts in different browsers and the colour of the post title kept changing automatically. Apart from this – the black hue was making me sick. So changing the template was on the cards for a long time now but somehow all the drinking, gambling and sex kept it waiting (yeah, I like to exaggerate and to live in a dream world). Finally it is done and your comments are awaited, which will be put to effect no sooner than 3 months.

While I was changing the template, I decided to change the tags too. I had a brainstorming session with some of the most advanced minds of our time and came up with some of these catchy phrases. The idea was that if you are bored to death or you are generally killing time, waiting for the clock to ring 7, so that you can pack your bag leave office, it will help you navigate through the blog in a much more comfortable way.

So anyways these are the labels that we came up with:

• Bhankas : This will be the chestnut of those posts where I go on writing without any logic or sense. Parental advisory is strongly recommended for these posts as they can cause hazardous, irreparable damage to your grey cells.

• Aaila: Anything related to Sachin or remotely related to cricket, ashish nehra and nayan mongia will be categorized under it. We have also decided to put Pakistan Cricket board, though it was a strong contender for ‘Bhankas’ too.

• Chal-Chitra: Yeah, you got it. Everything ranging from Nisha Kothari to Tushar Kapoor, to Altaf Raja to Himesh Reshamiya will be dumped under this tag.

• Emotional Atyachar : This is my favorite part where I portray the role of an emotionally sensible, stable guy and narrate stories of my mis-adventures in life and ‘how life has betrayed me’. In short, this will be a storehouse of posts that give you the false notion that your life is far better then mine.

• Gagged : Tagged

• Gyan Vigyaan : All the posts where I enlighten the world with my vast repertoire of knowledge on “Everything under and above the sun”.

Disclaimer: These fundaes are given by experts: Viewers are advised to follow at their own discretion.

• Machau : One of my friends told me that ‘Michi is Machau’ and this tag symbolizes him. We also decided to respect the Life-Long contribution of Paplu to the world and any post related to either of them will fall under this section.

• Meri bhains ko anda kyun mara: I get frustrated easily and I love ranting about it. I love it even more to write about it. So if you think you are in a happy mood and it had been a long time since you felt bad about the world - try this category.

• Office Humour : A recent attempt to capture the on going inter and intra departmental professional synergy to revolutionize plug-and-play value of the product and to optimize peer-to-peer networking that drives visionary initiatives and such shit like these will be carrying this tag. [ Courtesy : http://www.bullshit-generator.com]

• Purani jeans and Guitar : Everything about the ‘ Good ol’ Days’

• अभियांत्रिकी: About the days when life used to be much simpler and all you had to worry about was the mess food and the morning lecture. The time when we used to feel young and ready to fall in love. The years which passed by without seeing the clock or the calendar. Yes I am talking about my IIT engineering days.

I guess this is it. If you feels something is left and you are a part of the elite advanced insane mind of the world, feel free to drop your ideas and suggestion.

With all due Respect.....

It has nearly been two years since I started this blog and today, I am taking a few moments out to look back at these 2 years.

I started this blog the night India got disqualified from the 2007 World Cup. I was devastated and I wanted to let my frustration out. Plus the blog was the ‘in’ thing at that time. So I decided to try what they say “Two Birds in One Shot”.

Initially, I used to blog out of frustration or when I had nothing to do. Never thought anyone would pay attention to it. But soon couple of friends started talking about it or rather started mocking about it. Gradually, I was able to get a few people who appreciated the concept behind my posts. This kept me going.

It has been two years now. Mocking is still there but at times, I can sense a bit of silent appreciation between the lines. Few people are more few people now. The count of posts has been exponentially increasing. A lot of things happened in life and so with the blog in the last two years.

I just want to thank few people.

• Sumedh- Always been a victim of my post. Poor lad was always forced to read and comment on my blog and he actually went on to do it. He cribbed, he cried but he did it.

• Abhishek aka Dharmshala - The first person with an esteemed blog to comment. He gave me the confidence to carry on.

• Pattrow - A guide to blogging for me. He is like those big writers who do selective pieces, crack GRE, do crosswords etc etc. Pained him enough and got several of the posts edited by him.

• Nipun - A constant follower and always the first to comment on the blog posts. Plus he also buzzes and gives me his important feedbacks.

• Anshul - Always believed that he had a sharp eye for critical analysis of writing. But what do you expect from a person who has a blog titled “The Art of Fart”. But his critical analysis sessions are the funniest thing in life after Inzamam’s post match speech

• Jadoo- His comments always depends mainly on the meal he has had.
Dinner in Hotel – no comment…. ZZZzzzzz….
Dinner in mess – One ass fucking comment
No dinner – Gtalk buzz reminding me of all my family members in all the wrong sense.

• Ravi occasionally drops by to enlighten us with his great thoughts. Konark only comes by , if there is something related to Michi. Chhavi is always ready with all her gears loaded after every post to tear away every inch of self respect left in me.

• Tangerine- Last summer, she gave me the Blogger Friendship Award. Plus she was my first follower outside my friends circle. I guess the first independent, unforced follower of the blog. This meant a lot to me. Since then, I try harder every day.

Special Mention - Friend’s friend - Now this is the latest and the most interesting. There is this friend’s friend. She is pursuing her course in journalism. She said she liked my blog. No Kidding. I thought only lame engineers can be fooled by my writings but I got the shot of my life. I know this raises questions on the competencies of this journo but trust me, she knows her work really well.

When she told me that she liked my blog – I confirmed twice with her whether she has landed on the right blog or not. She even mentioned about Hakuna Matata on her personal blog. Now that is something big. Isn’t it? For me it matters a lot.

And yeah lately if you can see perfectly written English posts, it is because she has been editing my posts. And trust me, she offered me the help, I didn’t force her as the case generally is..
Don’t you think that is a little awkward? Yeah, I know, I had the same feeling. I rechecked the credentials of this friend’s friend with my friend and he confirmed it. So what is it? Is she jobless, Is she insane or what it is? I still have to figure that out.

Not to mention, it is really embarrassing to see your edited posts having more red marks than your 10th grade English quarterly answer sheets.

Double Special Mention: Vatsa, Sorcy, Nipun, Abhishek , Ashwin, Tangerine , Quirky and many others whose blog inspire me, envy me and amuse me.

Triple Special mention: Plus, I have some 23 followers. I am really thankful to all those jobless morons who are following my blog. A request to you all –Go, get a life for yourself.

Conclusion: I never expected to see any response to my creepy posts but I guess the world is full of insanely troubled morons like me and now I strongly believe in it! Long live the community!!

Thanks thanks thanks to all of you!!