Big Boys Ply at Night

Had fun going through The Wild Ones article in the latest issue of Outlook, where most of the action happens in the night:

Most avid racers agree that the best time to ride their bikes is well after dark, when the crazy traffic subsides. As Chopra explained, "In the day it's really a pain to ride these bikes cause they tend to get overheated and then you're in a mess. My favorite time to ride is either early in the morning or late at night. I love cruising down the Bandra Worli Sea Link, you can really open up your bike there at night."

It had a surprising reference to the roads in Vizag, where Life's a beach:

Delhi is the best place to ride in India—we have the best roads in the country. I was quite surprised when I saw how good the roads were in Visakhapatnam too.

The article ends with:

Jagdish, a Delhi-based Hayabusa owner says, "There's an old biker maxim that I love: I'd rather be riding my bike thinking about God than sitting in church and thinking about my motorcycle."

Ha, ha. That reminded me of this one from Steinbeck in Travels with Charley:

They used to say of the woodsman that he did his logging in the whorehouse and his sex in the woods!

Travels with Charley

Cassette to CD conversion

The other day, I tried a Cassette to CD conversion, using the "AVI" method. The end result was a humongous file of ~250MB, for seven minutes. Evidently, that's no way to do it.

HPR does it the high-tech way, with the TASCAM CD-A500, but you can't do that without burning a hole in your pocket.

So, I pinged the Palm Meadows user group and got this cool idea (a variation on the above AVI method, but sticking to audio):

I had a similar problem with my grandmother's MS Subbulakshmi tapes. This is what I did. Quite late at night (there is significant traffic noise during the day and eve) I placed my cellphone in front of the speaker to record the audio; takes a couple of tries to get the correct clarity without distortion. Saved it on the removable memory card of the phone, uploaded it on to the computer, and burned them as mp3 files on a CD. The output is not stereo, but its clear and clean and my grandmother is really happy as she has almost 6 hours of music on a CD, so she doesn't need to keep changing tapes, etc.

As they say in Telugu:

శతకోటి దరిద్రాలకు అనంతకోటి ఉపాయాలు
A billion issues, a gazillion ideas

See Gizmos: Philips Rip-All AZ1856 as well.

Parvardigar

On the 113th birth anniversary of Meher Baba, am reminded of his first meeting with Shirdi Baba, mainly due to the astounding word that Baba uses:

Then he goes to Shirdi to meet Sai Baba, the "Qutub-e-Irshad"—the head of the five Perfect Masters. As Sai Baba was returning from his "lendi" procession, Merwan stretched himself full length on the ground in front of his feet. Paying obeisance to the young lad in return and in a deep resounding voice, Sai Baba uttered one majestic word, "Parvardigar" meaning God the Almighty—the Sustainer.

In that instant Sai Baba conferred Infinite Power upon Merwan.

…

Much later, Meher Baba wrote a poem called O Parvardigar, sometimes called the Universal Prayer or the Master's Prayer, made public on September 13, 1953:

O Parvardigar! The Preserver and Protector of All,

You are without beginning and without end.

Non-dual, beyond comparison,

and none can measure You.

You are without color, without expression,

without form and without attributes.

You are unlimited and unfathomable;

beyond imagination and conception;

eternal and imperishable.

You are indivisible;

and none can see you but with eyes divine.

You always were, You always are,

and You always will be.

…

Long John Spider

Was quite surprised to see this Long John Spider on our Landing Unit.

5/8 legs didn't prevent it from skittering about with vim and vigor, including leaping off the Landing Unit!



What an inspiration to live in the present moment.

Blue Beauty, nearing Midnight

PS sent me this PPS about a Blue Beauty. I was a bit hesitant to open it, but it turned out to be one on Mother Earth.

Ain't She just amazing? Btw, did you notice Ben Franklin in the Arctic ice just above Alaska? ;-)

A beautiful sapphire in the midst of nowhere, all due to that water.

Swami says that there's no water elsewhere in the Universe. Can't say whether that's a fact or not, but today there was this news item:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have gotten their best look ever at the composition of planets outside our solar system, but were more surprised by what they didn't see than what they did see.

Three teams of scientists described on Wednesday data collected by NASA's orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope on two Jupiter-like gas planets hundreds of trillions of miles away—one in the constellation Pegasus and the other in the constellation Vulpecula.

The scientists had been confident of finding water, in the form of vapor, in the atmospheres of the two planets. They were wrong.

And one of the planets had evidence of small sand-like particles, called silicates, in the atmosphere, suggesting it is wrapped in high, dusty clouds unlike any planets in our solar system.

I think the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence will meet the same fate as that of AI: a big fat zook.

The Incredible Design of the Earth and Our Solar System calculates the probability of finding a planet like Earth:

1 in 10^99

Sample one reason (my favorite):

The Sun and our Solar System have been located in a stable orbit within our galaxy for the last 4.5 billion years. This orbit lies far from the center of our galaxy and between the spiral arms. The stability of our position is possible because the sun is one of the rare stars that lies within the “galactic co-rotation radius.” Typically, the stars in our galaxy orbit the center of the galaxy at a rate that differs from the rate of the trailing spiral arms. Thus, most stars located between spiral arms do not remain there for long, but would eventually be swept inside a spiral arm. Only at a certain precise distance from the galaxy’s center, the "co-rotation radius," can a star remain in its place between two spiral arms, orbiting at precisely the same rate as the galaxy arms rotate around the core. Why is it important that we are not in one of the spiral arms? First, our location gives us a view of the universe that is unobstructed by the debris and gases found in the spiral arms. This fact allows us to visualize what the Bible says, "The heavens declare the glory of God." If we were within the spiral arms, our view would be significantly impaired. Second, being outside the spiral arms puts us in a location that is safer than anywhere else in the universe. We are removed from the more densely occupied areas, where stellar interactions can lead to disruption of planetary orbits. In addition, we are farther from the deadly affects of supernovae explosions. The 4+ billion year longevity of life on earth (the time needed to prepare the planet for human occupation) would not have been possible at most other locations in our galaxy.

Looks like the issue with SETI and similar setups is the same as that with most folks:

Don't look outside, look inwards.

Then, at least, we have a chance to save ourselves on this Blue Beauty. We're just a blink in the eye of Mother Earth and, if we screw around too much, She'll look after Herself first and then us.

"Kotak, Kot jella"

That used to be our rallying cry at school.

Quite busy setting up a second PC at home and trying to move dox to Google Docs for ease of use across these two PCs. Btw, just wondering when Google is going to come out with their OS. Hope they do it asap; have already thought of a name for it: GOSsamer :-) It adds up to the same number as Google: 28.

Anyway, had a good laugh over this:


One thing I really liked about that calendar is how the weekend days are kept together, a basic thing that most Indian calendars miss out on.

Flickr Blinkd

Got an early-morning shock when I noticed some other images in my set of Flickr photos.

Was someone fooling around? Turned out to be a bug as clicking the photos showed up the correct ones (in their own page).

Flickr has also cottoned on to this, as the header on my Flickr page goes:

Seeing weird images? Please try a SHIFT+REFRESH. (Sorry about that.)

Ah, well.

Death Gets Even

I wasn't really surprised to see this news item:

Smith Fought Over Husband's Body, Too

The fight over Anna Nicole Smith's body in a Florida courtroom is reminiscent of the dispute that followed the death of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall II.

The Los Angeles Times said Smith and the elderly Marshall's adult son split the oil tycoon's ashes and held two funerals.

As for Smith's body, which was embalmed Saturday, her estranged mother wants to take the body back to her home state of Texas for burial. Smith's companion Howard Stern says she would want to be buried next to her adult son, Daniel, who died last September and is buried in the Bahamas.

Smith's lawyer, Ronald Rale, said she would have found the court battle over her remains sad, the Times reported. Rale said the endless court battles upset her.

The observation in the Bible, Galatians VI seems to be holding particularly true in the case of death.

Heard a similar case at Madras in the early 1990s. The mother of one person (Mr. X) died and her body was kept in the mortuary. However, Mr. X was least interested in collecting her body for the cremation. Instead he came back home and had a solid saapadu.

What happened when Mr. X died? His son was away in Pondicherry and couldn't be traced for a whole day. By the time he could get back home, Mr. X was in the morgue for well nigh two days.

As Emily Dickinson wrote:

Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --

One guy told me a weird thing: that, after Death, the soul tries to re-enter the body; after all, it had done the same trick at the time of delivery. But, it finds that it can't. That's the reason the Hindus burn it; to tell the soul:

Machan, it's all over; now get lost!

Michael Crichton writes of a similar XP in his fiendishly forthright Travels, chronicling his inner and outer travels: the day after his father died, he could feel the soul hovering around the room, but only for a day.

The Year of the Pig and the AquaMonk

A great start to the Year of the Pig. Right on the 171st birth anniversary of Sri Ramakrishna.


Suzanne White, High Priestess of Chinese and Western astrologies, has detailed predictions for the Year of the Red Fire Pig. Other news indicates that:

Sunday marks the start of the Chinese New Year and it's a lucky one for those starting out in life. But the rest of us are in for a rough ride. Expect epidemics, disasters and violence in much of the world. "The Year of the Pig will not be very peaceful," said Hong Kong feng shui master Raymond Lo.

The good news is that this will be a Golden Year of the Pig, which comes once in 60 years while there are others who say: Make that 600 years! Let's see. The future can't come our way too soon.

Coming to Sri Ramakrishna, what a phenomenon of an Incarnation. It was my luck and His Grace that I bought the Gospel on Pi day in 1992. Ah, what joy one felt going through, say, His Visit to Vidyasagar.

As blogged the same day last year, Suzanne White has nothing but praise for the Aquarian Monkey:

A person of exceptional breadth and depth arises from the union of Aquarius and Monkey. The natural detachment of Aquarius assists the Monkey in forging his destiny without cumbersome sentiment or extraneous emotion. Monkey gives the visionary Aquarian a sound sense of fact and helps him to deal with the present. The combination is harmonious and promising.

…

Some other interesting quotes about Him:

• Sri Ramakrishna cut the hinges of the heavens and released the fountains of divine bliss. ~Joseph Campbell
• You have to experience duality for a long time until you see it's not there. In this respect I am Hindu. Ramakrishna has the solution. ~Thomas Merton
  

Ramakrishna makes an intriguing connection between a Paramahamsa and a Sai. On page 513 of the Gospel, we read:

According to the Sakti cult the siddha is called a koul, and according to the Vedanta, a paramahamsa. The Bauls call him a sai. They say, "No one is greater than a sai." The sai is a man of supreme perfection. He doesn't see any differentiation in the world. He wears a necklace, one half made of cow bones and the other of the sacred tulsi-plant. He calls the Ultimate Truth "Alekh", the "Incomprehensible One". The Vedas call it "Brahman". About the jivas the Bauls say, "They come from Alekh and they go unto Alekh." That is to say, the individual soul has come from the Unmanifest and goes back to the Unmanifest. The Bauls will ask you, "Do you know about the wind?" The "wind" means the great current that one feels in the subtle nerves, Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna, when the Kundalini is awakened. They will ask you further, "In which station are you dwelling?" According to them there are six "stations", corresponding to the six psychic centres of Yoga. If they say that a man dwells in the "fifth station", it means that his mind has climbed to the fifth centre, known as the Visuddha chakra. (To M.) At that time he sees the Formless.

The best part is that Ramakrishna has indicated that He would be incarnated again as a Baul singer. Call it coincidence, Osho talked of the Bauls in yesterday's Speaking Tree:

Between Sex and Samadhi, The Bridge is Love

The Bauls are called Bauls because they are mad people. The word 'Baul' comes from the Sanskrit root vatul. It means: mad, affected by wind. The Baul belongs to no religion. He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian nor Buddhist. He is a simple human being. His rebellion is total. He does not belong to anybody; he only belongs to himself. He lives in a no man's land: no country is his, no religion is his, no scripture is his.

A Baul is a man always on the road. He has no house, no abode. Existence is his only abode, and the whole sky is his shelter. He possesses nothing except a poor man's quilt, a small, handmade one-stringed instrument called ektara, and a small kettledrum. He plays with one hand on the instrument and he goes on beating the drum with the other and he dances.

Dance is his religion; singing is his worship. He does not even use the word 'God'. The Baul word for God is Adhar Manush, the essential man. He worships man. He says, inside you and me, there is an essential being. That essential being is all. To find that Adhar Manush is the whole search.

The Baul wanders singing songs. He has nothing to preach; his whole preaching is his poetry. And his poetry is also not ordinary poetry, he sings because his heart is singing. Poetry follows him like a shadow, hence it is tremendously beautiful. He's not calculating it, he's not making it. He lives his poetry. That's his passion and his very life.

His dance is almost insane. He has never been trained to dance. He dances like a madman, like a whirlwind. And he lives spontaneously, because the Baul says, "If you want to reach to the Adhar Manush, then the way goes through Sahaja Manush, the spontaneous man".

Spontaneity is the only way to reach to the essence... so he cries when he feels like crying. You can find him standing in a village street crying, for nothing. If you ask, "Why are you crying?" he will laugh. He will say, "There is no 'why'. I felt like crying, so I cried". If he feels like laughing, he laughs; if he feels like singing, he sings — but everything has to come out of deep feeling. He's not mind-oriented, not in any way controlled and disciplined. So you cannot find two Bauls that are similar; they are individuals. Their rebellion leads them to become authentic individuals.

He leaves the world to itself. He does not interfere, he does not meddle with it. He starts changing himself. His revolution is absolutely inner.

A Baul is ready to die any moment because he has lived life as deeply as it was possible to live. He has no complaint, he has no grudge against life, and he has nothing to wait for. So if death comes, he is ready to live death also. He embraces death.

A Baul dies dancing, a Baul dies singing, a Baul dies playing his ektara and his duggi. He knows how to live and how to die. He knows how to transform sex into samadhi; he knows the secret.

And what is the secret of transforming life into eternal life, time into eternity? The secret is love. Between sex and samadhi, the bridge is love. Through love, the Bauls say, one reaches the eternal home.

So that is the only provision for the path: love. Love is their worship, love is their prayer, love is their meditation. The path of the Baul is the path of love.

Service, with a simile

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxServiceSimile

Some of the City Taxi operators in Bangalore are doing some sensible stuff, which should have been done quite some time back. But better late than never.

When you call up Spot City Taxi (+91.80.2551.0000), the folks identify you using the caller ID so that you don't have to repeat your address, which could be quite a pain as most folks can't easily figure out the Meadows in Palm Meadows.

Contrast this with some interesting stuff that we did some time back:

Tell me your mobile number and I'll tell you the time on it

Which brings me to the question of service to your customers. Some of the so-called MNCs are quite careless when it suits them.

Last October, I had renewed my RCI membership for three years, since those timeshare folks promised that I would get INR 1,000 off every year on booked trips. And when I called them the other day, they had no record of that deal. This is what I call the back "orifice" not knowing what the front one is up to.

Had a similar XP with Citibank in AUG.2004.

Sri Ramakrishna has some very interesting points on service. Swami Turiyananda recalls: (God Lived With Them, page 362, middle)

One day at Dakshineswar the Master said to me: "Go to the Panchavati. Some devotees had a picnic there. See if they have left anything behind. If you find anything, bring it here." I went and found an umbrella in one place, a knife in another place, and some other articles. I gathered them up and took them to the Master. The knife had been borrowed from him. I was just placing it on the shelf when he said: "Where are you putting it? No, not there. Put it underneath this small bedstead. That is where it belongs. You must put everything in its proper place. Suppose I need the knife during the night. If you put it anywhere you please, I will have to go around the room in the dark, stretching out my arms in search of it, wondering where you put it. Is such service a service? No! You do things as you like and thereby only cause trouble. If you want to serve properly, you should completely forget yourself."

Can we expect the MNCs to do this? Don't see that happening any time soon. Another unusual thing I notice when I call up some of these MNCs (especially RCI) is the way they talk down to you. As if they're doing me a favor by taking that call. I would have found it funny if it didn't put a burr under my @ss. What was that Gandhi said on customers?

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

Anyway, I am happy that there are solid Indian alternatives coming up such as ICICI Bank (great call center) and Club Mahindra.

Moobifying

Saw this news about tea-tree oil some time back:

According to the National Institutes of Health, the New England Journal of Medicine has released a study that links the use of tea tree oil and lavender to breast development in prepubescent boys. The condition is known as prepubertal gynecomastia, and is extremely rare.

but it was only when I saw Jay Leno joking about it did I realize the seriousness of it.

Where did I see that ingredient before? Very close to the bone; right on my shampoo and quite prominent.


One can't help wondering whether the bubs, referred to nowadays as moobs, are due to advancing age (malheuresement, Time is a one-way arrow) or this goddamn "tit"-tree oil!

What is Spirituality?

When I bought the DVD & CDs at Chennai, got a couple of cassettes* as freebies.

One of them was a talk titled "What is Religion?", by Swami Vivekananda.

I feel "What is Spirituality?" is a more appropriate title, but the talk was given on 17.JUN.1900—SUN, long before religion became a bad word. If you are wondering about the difference, the Guru of Joy has wonderfully clarified the same:

Spirituality is the banana and religion the peel.

My corollary to this is how fast the peel shrivels up when there is no banana inside ;-)

What a pleasure it was to hear that mellifluous voice expounding on the deep truths of the Vedanta. Two things struck me from the talk:

• The worm is more important than any of our creations. Why? Because, it has Consciousness, that Holy Grail of all those unsuccessful AI cats such as Marvin Minsky.
• Freedom is a fundamental right of all persons. Swami pushes that envelope further, to a spiritual level. Freedom, oh, freedom!
  

Check out the first seven and a half minutes of the talk.



* A weird thing happened. My DigiCam shows the space left on the SD card in terms of number of pictures and, when I was about to take the macro shot of the cassette displayed above, that number was 1863, the same as the year of birth of Swami Vivekananda!

Sliming in a V-day message

Notice that Seda… bit?

Looks like some Wiki user is "miss"using his privileges to shoot off a personal one.

Heh.

Mother Frog with Brood

Last morning, in our pond 117, I was zonked to see hundreds of tadpoles with their mother.

Reminds me of Sri Ramakrishna saying:

Sometimes I see the Consciousness wriggling about even in ants.

OZholes Down Under

It's not my style to be happy at the expense of others, but I would gladly make an exception in the case of the Aussies.

Everyone at our shuttle badminton court was positively happy, nay joyous, when the OZ cricketers got hammered in the finals of the ODI series.

And what's all that stuff we keep hearing about "What happens on the Mile, stays on the Mile"?

Doesn't apply to the Aussie fans, as I read (without being surprised, I must add) in today's Cricketana in the ToI:

Aussie fans abused us

England batsman Kevin Pietersen accused Australian cricket lovers of indulging in incessant abuse during the Ashes series, saying there was an enormous mental stress for the visitors during the tour.

"You’re so highly strung all the time", he was quoted in The Australian.

"I’d go down to breakfast in the lift and some bloke would say something snide. I came out of a nice restaurant with Jess (girlfriend Jessica Taylor) and her mum and was called the worst names you will ever hear. You try not to react, but ... It was nasty, it was racial, it was really bad", he said. Other members of the touring group privately tell similar stories of Australian fans verbally attacking them in the street.

Andrew Flintoff apparently copped abuse in restaurants and out with his family.

So, my response to their "oznoxious" query:

is pretty straight-forward:

Any place except yours, OZhole!

The State of Bihar

Was always amused by some of the spelling suggestions in MS Word:

• Bizarre for Bihar
• Pastry for Sastry.

This image reflects the state (pun intended) of Bihar.

SMile…*

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsxSMile

Saw this marvelous photo of Meher Baba last week and am yet to get over it. Someone said that the true test of spirituality, which is of course philosophy in action, is a constant cheerfulness. Photos like this certainly help.

Sri Ramakrishna was supposed to have a smile like a "cracked melon"!

Ramakrishna As We Saw Him

There's a sweet story as to how he got that smile:

About this time he began to worship God by assuming the attitude of a servant toward his master. He imitated the mood of Hanuman, the monkey chieftain of the Ramayana, the ideal servant of Rama and traditional model for this self-effacing form of devotion. When he meditated on Hanuman his movements and his way of life began to resemble those of a monkey. His eyes became restless. He lived on fruits and roots. With his cloth tied around his waist, a portion of it hanging in the form of a tail, he jumped from place to place instead of walking. And after a short while he was blessed with a vision of Sita, the divine consort of Rama, who entered his body and disappeared there with the words, "I bequeath to you my smile."

In response to my post on The River Mother, Krishnan, my good friend in spirit, responded with:

One nice incident is that Sri Guha was the only person who was granted the vision of the Manthahasam (bewitching smile) of Lord Rama. He said that it seems when the Lord was about to climb on to Guha's boat by ascending on a piece of stone, Guha request Rama to take care lest the stone become another lady by contact with the Holy Feet, to which the Lord laughed. Even rishis crave for this sight, so it seems. … But it filled me with some inexplicable happiness to hear this.

Searching for smile quotes on the Net threw up some unusual ones:

• A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home.
• A smile is a powerful weapon; you can even break ice with it. ~Author Unknown
• If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it. ~Andy Rooney
• If you don't have a smile, I'll give you one of mine. ~Author Unknown
• Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. ~George Eliot
• Wear a smile - one size fits all. ~Author Unknown
• She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. ~Raymond Chandler

That last one reminds me of Julia Roberts.

* If you are wondering about the unusual capitalization, it actually stands for Share Milegaya, but that's another story ;-)

XPing The Formless

Last Monday, I had blogged about running into a guy who saw the Formless. Yesterday, closer home, I ran into yet another guy who says he saw the Formless, not once, but thrice!

Shekhar Kapur tells Atul Sethi in the I Am section in the Mind Over Matter page of the Sunday Times of India:

They asked the Sage "Is there life after death?" And the Sage replied, “Is there life before death?” If we have truly experienced life before death beyond the illusions of the five senses, then all questions about death would be irrelevant. For death would merely be a continuation of consciousness freed of the Karmic influences of the body — of the illusion of the individual self.

Our mind or ego is the trickster that is afraid of the truth. Even quantum physicists have come to the conclusion that particles exist in space or time only when you try and observe them. Beyond your own observation nothing in this universe has the reality of existence. Space and time only exist when you try and measure them against something else. They have no absolute value.

Only infinity has an absolute value. Space therefore is infinite and so is time.

Spirituality for me is a battle to let go off my finite sense of individuality into understanding that I actually have none. I am not a drop but a formless part of the timeless, spaceless ocean. I am God as God is I. Yes, I have had three experiences where I sensed formlessness—where any separation between the I, space and time dissolved. You are overwhelmed at that time by an incredible emotion of compassionate love. That one word is the key.

For a stunning explanation on how everything is happening only in one's mind, please see Reality and Consciousness: Turning the Superparadigm Inside Out by Peter Russell (in his own words). As Sri Ramana Maharshi says:

It is the mind that is vast, not the world. The knower is ever greater than the known, and the seer is greater than the seen. That which is known is contained within the knower, and that which is seen is in the seer; the vast expanse of the sky is in the mind, not outside, because the mind is everywhere and there is no outside to it.

Whose Factory is it Anyway?

That doesn't refer to either that of Mr. Pitt nor that of Ms. Anderson, but to this mall in Marathahalli.

Two Little Masters

Qk.ly: http://bit.ly/bsx2LilMas

Sachin Tendulkar was blessed by Swami on Republic Day and went on the rampage in the 3rd and 4th ODIs against the West Indies, scoring 60 and 100*, his 41^st century.

Here's a little known incident. Sunil Gavaskar writes in the 75th Birthday issue (NOV.2000) of Sanathana Sarathi: (page 345, right column)

A few years later, I was privileged to arrange the players for the Unity Cup Cricket Match held on 30.Dec.1997 at Puttaparthi.

Swami has always said, "Life is a game. Play it." Bhagavan wanted to show that there could be unity among different countries, cultures, and communities through sports. So, the Unity Cup was played with players from all over the world, including Pakistan.

Several senior retired players were honored and had the good fortune to be blessed by Bhagavan.

Who can forget Bhagavan patting Sachin Tendulkar on the back and telling him, "I am with you!"

What a season Sachin had after that as he virtually single-handedly demolished World Champions Australia with his batting that seemed to be of a totally different dimension after that pat from Bhagavan!

I remember the final, played on the 25th b'day (24.APR) of Tendulkar. In the morning, I was attending an HP seminar on data warehousing. The speaker was an Aussie and he was gloating on the pasting that the OZs were gonna give India. Too bad none of us retorted; anyway, Sachin did that for us later on in the day.

In the 2007 Cricket World Cup, the first semi-final will be played on Sachin's 34th b'day. What's the chance that it would be the same teams battling it out 9 years before? Looking forward to that!