Things and Stuff

Random stuff, things and thoughts over the last weeks.

Every time I'm outside later than 10 pm, I observe the absolutely teeming metropolis that is Bangalore (now Bengaluru) city and wonder - I can understand why so many people live here. I simple don't understand what they're doing outside after 10. I mean, I understand a night walk in the unfailingly lovely weather at that time, but to be speeding along in cars in absolute hordes, I do not understand it. A couple of oil-burners from offices here and there, and vehicle sporadically zooming past, yes. Not seemingly a whole city attempting to get somewhere. I mean, come home early. Relax. Watch a bit of news! Take a stroll. Go for a drive somewhere further. The sheer number of people can only mean people getting home from offices. I guess...

Chess! I've been playing chess over the last few weeks. Lots and lots of chess, online against strangers. It is a curious thing. Back in my 12th standard, I took to playing chess during my studies as what I thought was a smart way of giving my mind a few minutes free from books and academics while keeping it sharp and ready to gulp down more information that I needed in the short term then, information I would struggle to recollect today. Back then, my rating on chess.com, the site on which I played, hovered between 1050 and 1150, sometimes ascending upto 1250 but never dropping below a thousand.
Earlier this year, I started playing again after a gap of two years and found to my utter dismay that I had gotten relatively terrible. My rating was now around 850 and for a couple of terrible days, when I thought my very IQ has halved or quartered, had gone all the way down to around the early 700s. Those were dark times and once my vacation began in earnest, I invested some time in chess books and chess tactics to slowly watch my rating rise. It is now back around the 1100 level, to my relief and if two years in college has not improved my IQ, it has at the least not diminished - to my utter relief.
Another thing I do to keep myself entertained while I reel off game after game on this chess.com is to do a bit of mental role playing. For the slow early exchanges I picture two armies organising themselves, drawing battles lines. I think of the King as a fat, lazy old slouch, perhaps ailing or requiring walking sticks. I picture the queen as athletic, energetic and bold. No sexism here, it's just the king hobbles around the board one step at a time and the queen bounds along diagonals and straight lines as she pleases and is the most powerful piece. The King however, is decisive and holds all power, so I think of the king as an arrogant sod.
After every victory, I picture an actual war with the pattern of the battle following the pattern of the unfolding game, the army absolutely storming the castle gates and crushing all before taking the king, or the army desperately short on ammunition and numbers getting beaten to a pulp before one soldier somehow wriggles through into the kings very chamber and taking him, or mating him, as you will.
Now that I come to think of it, it's very suspicious that the game ends in a 'mate'. Who mates with whom? Haha!

My vacation has truly gone on long enough for me to start flinging stones at all the time, the lack of work and boredom that it has brought me. In a nutshell, I am itching to return to my college and resume my course and am thoroughly hostel-sick. The cold of Pune, while extremely crisp, is somewhat enjoyable and odd semesters are infinitely more fun than the even semesters that end in blazing, life-sapping summer sunshine.

The Ashes are going on and I was for a few days thinking what made these test matches so absorbing, apart from the charms of test cricket. At first, I thought it's the fast-paced, seaming wickets and swing bowlers really pitching it up and having a go, but still felt the answer was incomplete. Then I thought I hit upon it. One the great intrigues of test cricket are little personal battles, little periods of time that go against the overall run of play. For example, an excellent spell of fast bowling with swing and pace and bounce can enthrall you so much that you forget that the scoreboard reads 600 and the batsmen are dominating overall. This little passages of play give life to test cricket. And what makes The Ashes so much more watchable than any other test matches is the history between these players, given how often they play each other. These are players who openly despise each other, players the crowd openly jeer and hate. If they weren't armed with bat and ball, you get the impression they would tear at each other's throats. It is that intensity, a relentless one that in my mind really sets it apart. Sports is so much more enjoyable when the players truly dislike each other. Oh, and the commentary is so detailed and romantic unlike the parrot-mimickers who occupy the Indian commentary boxes.

Kannada! My mother tongue. Over the last half year, I really took an interest in setting right one of the most shameful facts about myself - I wasn't literate in my mother tongue. I spoke it well enough, but reading it was not in my repertoire of skills. So, over months of help from my mother, reading roadside bilingual English-Kannada signs and comparing and repeatedly visiting the Wikipedia page on 'Kannada Script', the unintelligible squiggles and "Jalebis" suddenly turned into meaningful, often beautiful words and I can finally read the language I uttered my first words in. Suddenly, a world that was closed to me is wide open. The more languages we learn, the more we expand our world-view. The Telugu and Kannada scripts being very similar, quite suddenly I can read two new languages, though only one in intelligible, It is my hope that one day, I will be able to read Tamil and Malayalam as well and be a fluent speaker of the Marathi language.

It is perhaps a reflection of my mood in these long stretched vacations that before I knew it, I've rambled on and on and now feels like as good a time as any to put an end to it. To match my mood and situation, I publish this post without a proof-read; let it look like a piece disinterestedly put together from scraps, or like one long ramble without thought,

Adios.

Transition

Something I'd written a couple of years back. Somehow never published it. 

If life is full of contradictions, then India is full of life.

Consider the traffic signal in front of the Navrang theatre, Rajajinagar, and enjoy the contradiction, the conflict. Be confused. Fact or fiction? For real or a face-wash? Lines of eunuchs, assertive ones at that, waiting for the signal to turn red and continue their demand for alms. The click-clang of the nearby digger neatly and mechanically shifting mud at extra-ordinary rate, to make way for the state of the art "Namma Metro". Long stretches of impatient, poorly managed traffic, men dressed in rags on century old scooters as well as men in suits within the confines of their personal, air-conditioned BMWs, both drumming their fingers impatiently, eyes glued to the signal, already revving up their engines. Women covering their faces with veils to girls at whose sight you would be thankful that anything is covered at all. The gates of the theatre which shows James Bond movies along-side Anna Bond. One would have to pity the judgemental foreigner attempting to form an opinion about this new country he is visiting. And he wouldn't be too far from the truth if he labelled it as third-world. Nor would he be far from the truth if he labelled it as "developing". Soaring. Rising. In a hurry.

Well, one can do nothing but pity the poor soul who has taken it upon himself or herself to judge India. He could be driven to ITPL and readily made to believe the country is as advanced as any other, as well to do. Or he could be escorted with a closed nose through Dharavi, and equally readily be made to believe that the country is poor to the last molecule, rivaling even the destitution of sub-Saharan Africa.

So where exactly do we place India. Contradicting, surely. Unequivocally. Developing? Perhaps. Changing? Again, unequivocally. It is quite befitting that a country so diverse, that presents such contrasting images of itself should find an identity in change. It happens everyday in India.

So what has changed? People have turned more proactive. As the faltering "India against Corruption" lead by Anna Hazare showed, ineffectively proactive. Or in better, less cynical terms, the activity of the average Indian is evolving.

Evolving slowly, but surely enough to make Darwin proud. You see it sporadically on the streets, you see it deep in the mind of the urban youth, armed with a self-confidence and an assurance that the India of old would look unto as arrogance.

Indeed, it is still looked upon as arrogance. The India of old is still very much among us. In majority perhaps. As we put the years between the liberalisation of the economy in 1991 and the present, a new India is taking shape.

How do we gauge this change? Look what India has brought to the world of cricket. IPL. In nearly every home, families crowd around the TV, rooting for their favourite team, as the cricketers go through the grind, doing what was thought to be impossible, with the same self-confidence mentioned above.

So what made it possible for us Indians, just one generation off the grafters like Sunil Gavaskar, to hit a mind-boggling 200 runs in 120 balls, when equally gifted cricketers of the past considered bringing up the same score after a whole day’s play in a test match a day well spent.

And there can only be one answer, the mindset. Back when Mr. Gavaskar and Co. plied their trade, every ball was a threat. The ball was malicious, spiteful, ominously bobbing up and down. Every delivery was dangerous. To hit the ball in the air went against all societal norm. Denying the bowler your wicket was stressed on. We have seen great stroke makers in the one day game over the years, Sir Viv, Jayasuriya etc, but test cricket has perhaps never seen true freedom of batting and fluent stroke-play until the advent of those men with no feet and a great eye for the ball their only strength, Sehwag and Dilshan, who prefer to take the shine of the ball rather than waiting for it to happen.

T20 is a whole different ball-game. Every delivery is seen as an opportunity than as a threat. A ball not sent flying beyond the boundary ropes is considered wasted. Flamboyance is not looked down upon. The conservatives continue to harp on the demise of the classic formats, the loss of technique in the modern game, but the mindset has changed.

Not only in the cricketing context, also in the Indian context. What previously was perceived as threatening, as a risky endeavour, is today relished as an opportunity. A golden age, heralded by visionaries such as Narayan Murthy and Kiran Mazumdhar Shaw, who were among the first to break the shackles and show the rich dividends that a little enterprise can pay.

Indeed, it is time every young Indian adopted the T20 mode of living, taking a proactive role in society rather than waiting for things to happen.

In the words of Swami Vivekananda, one of the first men to truly take an effort towards making us proud of our country and our heritage, "Arise, Awake and stop not till the goal is reached!"