Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Shameful


I found this picture in a Facebook album of some contact of mine, and it has been disturbing me since then.

If you haven't figured out already the picture shows my contact, a little girl then, getting ready to go to school and another little child, looks like a domestic help is tying the shoelaces of the contact's elderly male relative.

It's just revolting. And the point is not how she could put up this picture, but how could this take place? Okay, I know it happens all the time and the previous question may seem naive, but if we for a moment manage to get out of the conditioned state we are in, and ask ourselves the question once again, how could this take place?

Has left me really disturbed.


P.S: No questions about the contact will be answered for obvious reasons.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Net Practice

I feel like that little kid, woken up at 5 in the morning and sent packing to the cricket coaching centres which have mushroomed all over the cities, big and small. Carrying the dreams of their parents, of becoming the next Dhoni, they practice. They run, they stretch, they dive, they bowl, they bat. They do anything that can take them to the doorsteps of the national team, and then wait for the little push from behind.

This is a country of a billion plus population and two passions, cinema and cricket. There is engineering and MBA too, but that is for the less adventurous. And these little kids hit the balls day in, day out with Arjuna like focus to make the cut. Their mothers model themselves upon Sehwag and Yuvraj's moms and start practicing their lines for milk drink ads once their precocious child makes his mark. His first fifty against New Zealand in a 20-20 match at the age of fifteen, and the media is all over him. He is the next Sachin, the next Sir Don. Everyone develops a keen interest in his choice of music and women. The former he didn't have the time to listen to during all the practice, the latter he is too young and busy to give a thought to. He is a machine, a run scoring, wicket taking, money making machine. Cricket is not his favourite sport, it's his profession. Getting through the Ranji team is like the board exams, the national A team like higher secondary and finally cracking the national team is akin to cracking the IIT-JEE test.

He has to do something, anything. He has given up his education, mostly. His parents have cancelled all the vacations during the childhood years because that's when all the tournaments are held, his school teachers have given him secondary treatment and asked the other boys to concentrate on studies and not be distracted by his strange ways. After all this how can he just be content with the state under 19 side? What happen's to all the sacrifice? What happens to him? Who cares if he got up at 5 all his life to smack leather with wood?

I don't the answers to any of this, but I don't feel like that kid anymore. I started this piece as a practice session for my big blog dreams, but am ending it relieved and satisfied. I may practice or may not, but I don't have to make something I love take over my life and take the fun away from it.

Maybe you found this writing most pedestrian, but that's perfectly fine! I wrote because I wanted to, not because my parents or anyone wanted or forced me too. Maybe I will not write again for days, maybe I will. Maybe I will read this after a few weeks and find it so bad that I will delete it. But the fact is I like to write, so I wrote. And I also realised I don't want to take up writing as a profession. I don't want to mix my love with deadline and numbers, because then it will not be too different from writing codes or selling soap.

Practice over, time to go selling.
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Monday, September 08, 2008

A Nudge, A Push, A Little More...And A Comeback...I Wish!

If the great bong, the cricketer not the blogger, could make the historic comeback a couple of years back then why can't this lesser bong?

With Dada and Greatbong (www.greatbong.net) for inspiration I decided to resume this blog. Resume is not quite the word because this was not really ever an active blog in the true sense of the word, besides that one crazy night of some one and a half dozen of essay uploads. I want to write, to blog. I have always fancied myself to be a writer, actually more of the blogger variety, but after repeated tries I just had to give up.

Don't quite know the reason but as soon as I start writing for my blogs I contract the worst form of writer's block. I don't get ideas, words, sentence structures, one-liners, incidents to share, nothing at all. Take this post as an example, if I could compare it to a 'real life' example what I am doing right now is like going to a boring party and making it more so by just shaking hands belonging to half known acquaintances and putting up a tired smile and saying I am good and asking what's their news. See, even the comparison was more drab than one can come up in the middle of their sleep.

I don't know why this happens with me when I blog, but I have decided to take the crude way of overcoming it, by blogging more. Everyday. More than once a day. Every now and then. About anything, everything. Okay, all this enthusiasm will die by tomorrow morning but I hereby promise to myself and the readers who don't exist, never existed, never will, that I am back! Ha!

And believe me I can't even try to write in such a boring fashion, so please don't think I am trying to be funny and failing. I am really suffering from writer's block ( I won't call it blogger's block as that is cliched, and I know I just did, because this is the most average cliche ridden article) and I will get over my malaise. If Lance and a few others could get over more serious ailments I too will tackle this.

And really the reason you are not smiling while reading this is not because you are missing any subtle humour, this is actually a bad, voluminous, meaningless, un-funny post! I would hate to read this as a reader as much as I am loathing to write it. But I have been told time and ...yes, I will use the cliche, again(!) that the only way out of a writer's block (can you believe it, I used that overused phrase 5 times or more in one post?) is by writing more and more.

Okay, if ever there was a forced post lacking any depth and content then you have just finished reading it. Be happy. Go, waste more time. Bye.


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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Device