Unadhikakritamkritam

It's not all spiritual stuff in God Lived with Them. Once in a while, one runs into scary stuff as well. Like this one from the chapter on Swami Trigunatitananda: (page 492, middle)

Like his food habits, Trigunatita's actions and behavior were unusual and sometimes not understandable to others. He had indomitable energy and was undaunted by any situation. He was skeptical about the existence of ghosts; he had visited a number of haunted houses and found nothing to substantiate claims of ghostly inhabitants. This aroused in him a determination to see a ghost, should one really exist. Someone told him about an old empty house near Baranagore Monastery where he could see a ghost at midnight. Without telling anyone, Trigunatita went there before midnight and waited for the ghost. Suddenly he saw a faint light appear in the corner of the room. The light grew brighter until, in the center of the light, there appeared an eye. It approached him with deadly malevolence. The swami felt his blood dry up in his veins and his body wither like a green tree before a forest fire in the sinister light of that eye. He was about to faint, when all of a sudden Sri Ramakrishna appeared. Holding his hand, the Master said: "My child, why are you so foolishly taking chances with certain death? It is sufficient for you to keep your mind fixed on me." With those words, the Master disappeared. Trigunatita's spirit at once revived and he left the house, his curiosity about ghosts satisfied forever.

~@~*-*~@~

The ghost story i enjoy the most is Unadhikakritamkritam ("what has been done is too little, too much, and not done at all") from the Penguin Book of Indian Ghost Stories. Maximum heebie-jeebies per page! It goes as follows: (pp. 1-3)

Underdone, overdone, undone!
FW Bain

There was once a Brahman called Kritakrita ("Done and not done") who neglected the study of the Wedas, and walked in the black path, abandoning all his duties, and associating with gamblers, harlots, and outcasts. And he frequented the cemeteries at night, and became familiar with ghosts and vampires and dead bodies, and impure and unholy rites and incantations. And one night, amid the flaming of funeral pyres and the reek of burning corpses, a certain vampire of his acquaintance said to him: "I am hungry: bring me fresh meat to devour, or I will tear you to pieces." Then Kritakrita said: "I will bring it, but not for nothing. What will you give me for it?" The vampire replied: "Bring me a newly slain Brahmin, and I will teach you a spell for raising the dead." But Kritakrita said: "That is not enough." And they haggled in the cemetery about the price. At last that abandoned Brahmin said: "Throw me a pair of dice that will enable me always to win at play, and I will bring you the flesh you require." So the vampire said: "Be it so." Then Kritakrita went away, and knowing no other resource secretly murdered his own brother, and brought him to the cemetery at midnight. And the vampire kept his word, giving him the dice, and teaching him the spell.

Then some time afterwards, Kritakrita said to himself: "I will try the efficacy of this spell that the vampire has taught me." So he procured the body of a dead Chandala, and taking it at the dead of night to the cemetery, placed it on the ground, and began to recite the spell. But when he had got halfway through, he looked at the corpse, and saw its left arm, and leg, and eye moving horribly with life, the other half being still dead. And he was so terrified at the sight, that he utterly forgot the rest of the spell, and leaped up and ran away. But the corpse jumped up also, and a vampire entered its dead half, and it rushed rapidly after him, shuffling on one leg, and rolling its one eye, and yelling indistinctly: "Underdone, overdone, undone!" But Kritakrita fled at full speed to his house, and getting into bed lay there trembling. And after a while he fell asleep. And then suddenly he awoke, hearing a noise, and he looked and saw the door open, and the corpse of that dead Chandala came in, and shuffled swiftly towards him on its left leg, rolling its left eye, with its dead half hanging down beside it, and crying in a terrible voice: "Underdone, overdone, undone." And Kritakrita sprang out of bed, and ran out by another door, and mounting a horse, fled as fast as he could to another city a great way off.

And there he thought: "Here I am safe." So he went day after day to the gambling hall, and played with his dice, won great sums of money, and lived at his ease, feasting himself and others. But one night, when he was sitting among the gamblers in the gambling hall, throwing the dice, he heard behind him a noise of shuffling. And he looked around, and saw, coming swiftly towards him on one leg, the corpse of that dead Chandala, with its dead half rotting and hanging down, and its left eye rolling in anger, and calling out in a voice of thunder: "Underdone, overdone, undone." And he rose up with a shriek, and leaped over the table, and fled away by an opposite door and left that city, and ran as fast as he could, constantly looking behind him through the forest for many days and nights, never daring to stop even to take his breath, till he reached another city a long way off. And there he remained, disguised and concealed, as it were. But all the gamblers in that gambling saloon died of fear.

And after some time he again accumulated wealth by gambling in that city, and lived in extravagance at his ease. But one night, when he was sitting with a courtesan whom he loved, in the inner room of her house, he heard the noise of shuffling. And he looked around, and saw once more the corpse of that dead Chandala coming swiftly towards him on one leg, with its dead half, from whose bones the flesh had rotted away, hanging down, and its left eye blazing with flames of rage, calling out with a voice like the scream of Rawana: "Underdone, overdone, undone." Then that woman then and there abandoned the body in her terror. And Kritakrita rose up, and ran out by a door, which led out upon the balcony, while the Chandala hastened after him. And finding no other outlet, Kritakrita flung himself down into the street, and was dashed to pieces, and died.

Here's wishing you a happy Halloween.

Easy as PII

Naren sent an interesting NYT article about poverty-inspired innovation, which i refer to as PII:

Perhaps for less altruistic reasons, but often with positive results for the poor, corporations have made India a laboratory for extending modern technological conveniences to those long deprived. Nokia, for instance, develops many of its ultralow-cost cellphones here. Citibank first experimented here with a special A.T.M. that recognizes thumbprints — to help slum dwellers who struggle with PINs. And Microsoft has made India one of the major centers of its global research group studying technologies for the poor, like software that reads to illiterate computer users. Babajob is a quintessential example of how the back-office operations in India have spawned poverty-inspired innovation.

Sometime back, there was a report on how Microsoft was working on an idea that lets kids operate multiple mice on the same computer!

Success Sutra

In 2001, came across this quote by Albert Schweitzer:

If there is something you own that you can't give away, you don't own it, it owns you.

Last Monday, there was one more by the same gentleman in A Word A Day and i loved it even more:

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Used to have a similar idea when i used to visit Put-apart-the-i in the late 1990s; i would consider them as visits to the fount to rejuvenate oneself so that one could expend all that energy gained in regular life.

Of course, the visits have reduced as i have now realized that the fount was all the while inside, having become a medi"ochre" devotee as per Sri Ramakrishna:

The inferior devotee says, "God exists, but He is very far off, up there in heaven." The mediocre devotee says, "God exists in all beings as life and consciousness." The superior devotee says, "It is God Himself who has become everything; whatever i see is only a form of God. It is He alone who has become Maya, the universe, and all living beings. Nothing exists but God."

Baddy '007 Blues

One of the most tiring days of my Life.

Baddy '007 got off to a start y'day and, by the time i finished today:

• The best-of-three (15 points, old rules) singles game
  
• Three doubles (21 points, old rules) games

i was so pooped that i really understood the meaning of:

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak*

in the context of sports.

The net result was that i could do justice neither to the Singles nor the Doubles :-( That's what is known as falling between two stools, or as WC amusingly observed:

Stalling between Two Fools

* Supposedly translated by a computer into Russian and back into English as The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten!

Smile Simile

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
—Raymond Chandler

The smile of Julia Roberts (Wiki), who turns 40 today, could well become a simile.

There was this news item very recently:

Gere's magical meeting with Roberts

"I think just meeting her,” he told Us Weekly. "I remember very clearly her coming into my office, and she had done Mystic Pizza at that point, and you could feel there was something magical about her."

Her dazzling teeth, famous smile, loose laugh and the uncanny ability to look like she's always having the time of her life have charmed everyone from producers to the public on and off the big screen.

"There's something too magical in her to ignore," said "Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer. She has "something singular and some radiance that can only come from inside."

Bill Gates also turns a year older (52) and he's a Scorpio Goat like Ms. Roberts.

Getting Closer to the Brink

When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully because we know the faces of our future generations are looking up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them—Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation

The ToI had this news item right on page one today:

Man consuming more than earth can handle

The heat is truly on. As humankind persists with thoughtless and extravagant consumption of natural resources, the earth is hurtling towards an unprecedented resource crunch. Put differently, we are living way beyond our means, consuming 40% more than what the earth can regenerate.
…
The UN report warns, “The earth’s climate has entered a state unparalleled in recent prehistory.’’ It has demanded that countries put environment at the heart of their decision-making processes to check untrammelled consumption.
…
The result: 45,000 sq miles of forest are being lost per year, 60% of the major rivers have been dammed and the fresh fish populations have dropped by 50% in 20 years.

The biodiversity register of the planet is becoming thinner. Some 30% amphibians, 23% of mammals and 12% of birds are under threat of extinction, while one in 10 of the world’s large rivers is running dry every year before reaching the sea.

Feel that Mahatma Gandhi was extraordinarily prescient when he said:

The Earth has enough for man's need, but not for man's greed.

An ancient American Indian proverb goes:

Treat the earth well:
it was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our
Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.

Baddy '007

"If you want to smash, smash…don’t drop"
—Prakash Easwaran

Baddy '007 is starting off tomorrow and there's a frisson of excitement in the air.

15 folks trooped in in the morning cold to get that one last feel of the court before the games begin. With three courts, folks had to wait!

Shuttle Badminton Courts in WikiMapia (under the cross-hairs)
at the Palm Meadows Club

Of all the events conducted by our PMOA, this is the one that generates the maximum enthu. Squash, swimming, and tennis, what're those? Am reminded of that quote by Robin Williams:

Cricket is basically baseball on valium.

Replace cricket with tennis and baseball with "shuttle badminton" and you get the drift.

Check out this amazing rally at the All England Open 2007: (rally ends on the 92nd shot! Thanks to Gopa for the link)


Sweat is a deep cleanser.

Closer home, a rally from last year's men's singles final.

Kaushal Singh (near court), the champ, vs. Arun Muthukumar

Never tire of watching it.

Cash-ual Observation

Came up with this at the shuttle court this morning:

Cash is King; not Cassius Clay.

Petri-fying

An unusual news item:

Enzyme switch may help grow "eye in a dish"

Paris: Researchers say they have identified a key enzyme that triggers eye development, in a discovery that could one day lead to "eye in a dish" replacement tissue for the visually impaired.

Shades of William and Mary!

Finding Rest in the Self

Have been reading the chapter (3) on Swami Shivananda in God Lived with Them and have been thoroughly enjoying it. Today, i read: (page 162, middle)

During his brief stay in Deoghar, Shivananda caught a chill that developed into a bad cold accompanied by asthmatic spells. One night the swami could not sleep. The next morning, in spite of his sickness, he cheerfully greeted everyone as usual. He told them his experience:

"I suffered a great deal last night. I felt almost suffocated. The passages of my nose became stopped up because of my cold, and the asthma was very much worse. I did not feel at ease whether sitting, reclining, or lying down…. Gradually i felt as if all my senses would stop and life would leave the body. Being at a loss what to do, I started meditating. It being the meditation of an old man [which came from his lifelong practice], my mind soon became absorbed within. I noticed then that there was no pain or suffering and the mind became quiet and placid. The storm and stress of the outer world could not reach there. After remaining in that state awhile my mind came down to the external world."

Curious, a monk asked: "What is that, Maharaj?" The swami replied: "That is the atman." Shivananda's experience substantiates this verse of the Katha Upanishad: "The Purusha, not larger than a thumb, the inner Self, always dwells in the hearts of men. Let a man separate him from his body with steadiness, as one separates the tender stalk from a blade of grass. Let him know that Self as the Bright, as the Immortal" (2.3.17)

It's interesting that a similar XP is described in The Razor's Edge, which i have started re-reading from, of course, page 244. Larry Darrell narrates: (page 263, top)

After that I went to the Ramakrishna Mission and routed out the Swami who'd spoken to me at Elephanta. I didn't know his name, but I explained that I wanted to see the Swami who'd just arrived from Alexandria. I told him I'd decided to stay in India and asked him what I ought to see. We had a long talk and at last he said he was going to Benares that night and asked me if I'd like to go with him. I jumped at it. We went third-class. The carriage was full of people eating and drinking and talking and the heat was terrific. I didn't get a wink of sleep and next morning I was pretty tired, but the Swami was as fresh as a daisy. I asked him how come and he said: "By meditation on the formless one; I found rest in the Absolute." I didn't know what to think, but I could see with my own eyes that he was as alert and wide awake as though he'd had a good night's sleep in a comfortable bed.

The Tricky Thing about Fire

Sad to read about the fires ravaging South California. Gazpachot had a stunning post on the same.

My mind harked back to an old NatGeoMag which talked about an unusual property of fire. Ferreted* it out and found the following: (July, 1998, page 28, bottom)

California had 8,989 wildfires in 1993 alone. And fire's tricky. "It jumps", says ecologist Mike Harding.

* Took less than a minute to find the same in my stack from May, 1997. Call it plain lucky or totally organized ;-) However, finding the image below on the computer took much longer.

"The French Correction"

Was intrigued by this news item:

Halle Berry has revealed that she wants to raise her baby to grow up speaking English and French fluently. The actress, who is four months pregnant with French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry’s child, is herself learning French these days.

The Oscar winner divulged that Aubry has already started speaking his native language to his unborn child.
…
“French is hard, especially when you’re over 40. I’m putting Post-It notes all around the house because that’s one way that Gabriel learned English,” she said.

Wonder whether that would really happen. In Anurag's case, he doesn't speak Telugu, my mother tongue, though he understands it to some extent. Sometime back, Wikipedia had an interesting bit in their Multilingual page:

Receptive bilingualism occurs when someone has the ability to understand a language, but (for various reasons) doesn't speak it. Receptive bilingualism can occur when a child realizes that they are dominant in a community language over the native language of their parents, and choose to speak to their parents only in the community language. While some see this as a failure to become bilingual, family who adopt this mode of communication can be highly functional, and receptive bilinguals can rapidly achieve oral fluency when placed in situations where they are required to speak the subordinate language.

But the last word on this has to go to Lawrence Elliott*, who wrote that very amusing The French Correction.

* He also wrote Beyond Fame and Fortune, that very-moving story on George Washington Carver, which was used as the Book Section in the 50 Golden Years treasury of Reader's Digest in 1972.

DVD and Conquer

One of the great features of the Lawrence of Arabia DVD was the number of subtitles it had. Out of the maximum possible 32, it had 20! Hindi was one of them.

Of late, i have seen DVDs such as Swades with subtitles in many European languages.

But the one that intrigued me was the Omkara DVD which had subtitles in the South Indian languages: Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. Even though my speed of reading Telugu has dipped of late, being somewhere between compiled and interpreted mode ;-), i could enjoy the movie more; my Hindi is quite terrible, anyway.

Laughed longest & loudest for this:


Can't bring myself to translate it; but Sri Ramakrishna has no such qualms, which is one more reason i love Him. Check this out:

From the temple the Master went to Jadu Mallick's house. Jadu was surrounded by his admirers, well-dressed dandies. He welcomed the Master.

MASTER ((with a smile): "Why do you keep so many clowns and flatterers with you?"

JADU (smiling): "That you may liberate them." (Laughter.)

MASTER: "Flatterers think that the rich man will loosen his purse-strings for them. But it is very difficult to get anything from him. Once a jackal saw a bullock and would not give up his company. The bullock roamed about and the jackal followed him. The jackal thought: 'There hang the bullock's testicles. Some time or other they will drop to the ground and I shall eat them.' When the bullock slept on the ground, the jackal lay down too, and when the bullock moved about, the jackal followed him. Many days passed in this way, but the bullock's testicles still clung to his body. The jackal went away disappointed. (All laugh.) That also happens to flatterers."

Easy Pickings

Numerology has some nice fringe benefits. The T20 match between Australia and India was held today that added up to 12 (20 + 10 + 2007), the same as the name number of India and i for one had no doubts about the winner.

Prem at the head of our lane wanted some help extracting some songs from a PHD, so i went over with the iTunes download. At the end of that activity, the T20 match started. Soon we got into a bet, which finally got upgraded to a brunch at the Leela Palace or The Windsor Manor. The icing on that would be driving there in Prem's Merc-Benz Kompressor.


This is what i refer to as: stay cool and collect.

Anyway, numerology came in really handy in two very specific instances, but that's another story.

Going Offline for a while

Have been having serious Net connectivity issues this month. Guess it'll be a while before i can be back online.

Not that i am minding it ;-) Have been reading more and enjoying it.

Happy Dasara.

Trip to Sakleshpur

We had a great trip after all that planning :-)

You can see the photoset on Flickr.

14.OCT

A lovely drive to Sakleshpur.

15.OCT

A narrow and tough road on the way to Kukke Subramanya via Bisle Ghat, but some truly great views.

A tremendous road to Dharmasthala from Gundya Forest Gate, and the most horrendous road on the way back from Gundya Forest Gate to Sakleshpur. But the Innova, our Rocinante, was like a rock.

16.OCT

WiFi drove excellently almost non-stop and we were back in BLR by noon. Of course, the intra-city traffic ensured that we reached home only by 2 PM.

Jaunt-y

Off to Sakleshpur, should be back on Tuesday.

Thanks for visiting :-)

The Power of Rama Nama

Was quite touched to read this post:

Rama Sastri from Guntur District composed eight slokas on Sri Bhagavan and read them out with feeling.

The Sastri then prayed for guidance. "I am a samsari unfit for jnana marga. The affairs of the world are distracting me. Please instruct me what I should do."

Bhagavan: Think of Bhagavan. How will the affairs of the world distract Him? You and they are in Him.

Devotee: May I do nama smarana? What nama shall I take?

Bhagavan: You are Rama Sastri. Make that name significant. Be one with Rama.

Was given the same name when i was born, being named after my maternal grandfather. My Mom told me a stupendous thing about his death:

After he died, my grandmother* saw a celestial chariot parked outside their house.

Guess that's one reason they say:

The whole of one's life is the preparation for one's death.

* She was a non-nonsense lady who checked her own insulin levels with a test tube in those days. When SkyLab was about to come crashing down on Earth in JUL.1979, she joked with other ladies that it might fall on them. She died peacefully the next day.

Driving Ms. Crazy

En route to my Mandarin class, saw this interaction near Kundanahally Gate:

A lady in a Honda City was trying to do a U-turn at this point, but a MaxiCab, one of the many "cockroaches" on the roads of Bangalore, was parked at the bus-stop, right in her way. The driver could have moved his cab a couple of meters and cut her the necessary slack to make the turn. But he didn't. He was giving her instructions how to convert the U-turn into a K-turn! It pissed her off quite a bit, but the MaxiCab didn't budge an inch.

Was recalling the three rules of driving indicated by Jackie Stewart in an old RD:

• Concentrate
• Anticipate
• Be Considerate.

Using these three simple rules, Mr. Stewart went through 282 Grand Prix races without a single accident. What works for him is good enough for me, even on the roads of Bangalore.

The Essence of War

Was quite amused by this news item:

Pioneering research into a "gay bomb" that makes enemy troops "sexually irresistible" to each other has scooped one of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes.

This idea is straight out of My Uncle Oswald, that raunchily hilarious book by Roald Dahl. Uncle O discovers his own version of the Spanish Fly in the Sudan, but that much more potent and makes guys go "jig-a-jig" the moment they get a whiff of it.

So he ties up with a dowdy scientist to make this "ruth" serum and Yasmin Howcomely to collect the essence of famous folks such as Einstein. The idea is to make a killing once these famous folks are dead ("Einstein is dead? Not to worry, we still have something left of him").

Just when the story is getting repetitive, Dahl injects, if you would excuse the word, some twists with Yasmin H having to collect the essence of Marcel Proust, a known gay.

By the end of the novel, Yasmin H and the Dowdy S run off together with the fruits of their hard work. After some time, Uncle O reads a news item of how Yasmin H and the Dowdy S are cruising around the world in their private yacht, called Sperm, because they are having a whale of a time!

Shirdi Baba…Live

Had to go to Lal Rakhra Sports y'day for some shoes and a yoga mat. Since the lovely Shirdi Baba temple in Cambridge Layout is just a couple of hundred meters from there, i went over for a darshan; feel that this idol is even more beautiful than the one at Shirdi.

As it was a Thursday, the afternoon arati was in full swing. Since i am not too crazy about crowds, i beat it quickly. At the bottom of the steps, a guy gave me some wonderful hot prasad and i went into the basement to enjoy it. There was hardly anyone there, which suited me just fine.

While leaving, i remembered that i didn't take the udi prasad. Didn't feel like turning back, due to some episodes in the Shri Sai Satcharita.

After the Sai Bhajans later in the evening at Palm Meadows, which had some interesting starfish type orchids behind Swami's photo, i went over to Uncle's place (locate it in WikiMapia, under the crosshairs, as usual) to take some udi prasad. Love the idol there.

Uncle duly obliged, and told me a stunning thing: He had seen Shirdi Baba alive in that idol, with a nice beard and moving His eyes around for about one to two minutes.

Canoodle with the Kaboodle

Or, డబ్బు^{డబ్బు}, as Yandamoori put it.

At the end of a very nice siesta last evening, in that peaceful alpha zone, i was wondering about the 100 shares that Infosys offered me at a premium of INR 85 when it went public in 1992-93. How much would those be worth if i had the prescience, or the sense, to take them?!

In the 15 years that have elapsed since, the Infy share had gone through these:

• 1:1 bonus in 1995
• 1:1 bonus in OCT.1997
• 1:1 bonus in MAR.1999, just before it debuted on NASDAQ on 11.MAR
• 1:1 split in FEB.2000
  
• 3:1 bonus in APR.2004 for hitting a billion USD, two weeks after Yerramsetti gave me that wonderful Ganesha mantram
  
• 1:1 bonus in APR.2006 for hitting two billion USD.

In 15 years, 100 shares at an investment of INR 9,500 would have become 12,800 shares (thanks, Chery) that would have been worth, as of now, … you do the math. That's approx. 2,700 times the original investment!

Wonder whether even GOOGle, that other famous 28, can match these returns.

So when Sammy San says:

We should try and get into the ground floor of an opportunity,

you know what he has in mind.

Of course, folks who were working with Infy as on 31.MAR.1992, before it went public, got in in the basement ;-)

How BIG can you get?

Got this nice FWD:

Once an unhappy young man came to an old master and told he was very sad and asked for a solution. The old Master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. "How does it taste?" the Master asked. "Awful," spat the apprentice.

The Master chuckled and then asked the young man to take another handful of salt and put it in the lake.

The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and when the apprentice swirled his handful of salt into the lake, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake."

As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the Master asked, "How does it taste?" "Good!" remarked the apprentice. "Do you taste the salt?" asked the Master.

"No," said the young man.

The Master sat beside this troubled young man, took his hands, and said, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount we taste the 'pain' depends on the container we put it into. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things ..... Stop being a glass. Become a lake!"

See this as exhorting us to stop being the small i and identify with our true nature, the Self or the Consciousness, which is the basis of all things and present in humans as the Conscience. Become a Lake. Why stop at that? Become a Great Lake :-)

A recent post, Looking for the Ocean, goes:

The wave thinks that it is different from all the other waves. It says, "I have a name, a shape, I have movement in a particular direction'. The ocean, knowing that all the water is itself, just enjoys the dance.

The waves can think, 'I am independent; I have many friends in front of me and behind me; we are all moving along together.'

The waves might even decide to have a satsang. They may get together and say. 'Let us go off together and find the ocean. Let us meditate together and try to find out where the ocean is. I have heard it is very wonderful there.'

So, they travel along, looking for the ocean, and hoping that they will one day find it.

The ocean doesn't know anything about this. It just knows that the still, silent depths and the froth on the surface are all itself.

Sri Ramakrishna has, of course, condensed all this very beautifully in His inimitable way:

The inferior devotee says, "God exists, but He is very far off, up there in heaven." The mediocre devotee says, "God exists in all beings as life and consciousness." The superior devotee says, "It is God Himself who has become everything; whatever i see is only a form of God. It is He alone who has become Maya, the universe, and all living beings. Nothing exists but God."

The Tyranny of Expectation

It was a tad sad to see the fracas over the non-cricketing heroes getting short shrift for their laudable performances. In today's ToI, one reads:

The brightest jewels in Karnataka's sporting crown gathered at the KSBA on Sunday morning and called upon the government to recognise their achievements, just as it has done for the triumphant Twenty20 cricket team.

Vishy Anand is the new World Champ and says:

Yes, I heard about the welcome given to the T20 cricket team. It’d be interesting to see what reception I get when I come to India by Oct-end.

Someone said that there's no such thing as a bad audience.

It's just that cricket mirrors life, as my pal Sammy waxes so eloquently. And the government plays and panders to that tune. What does billiards mimic?

Anyway, let's take Joginder Sharma, the chap who bowled the last over so successfully against both Australia and Pakistan in Twenty20 World Cup. But do you think you'd see him in any ads? i don't think so. Because he doesn't have that defining whatchamacallit, which MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh possess in abundant measure. How many ads have you seen that Very Very Special Laxman in? Personally, i can't recollect any. What applies within the sport cuts across as well.

IMHO, i feel that it's better to deserve and not get it rather than to get and not deserve it.

This is one reason i loved Geet Sethi's Success vs. Joy (read a review) so much. As he says:

"Hitting that sweet spot repeatedly and relishing the joy of the sweet sport is what I constantly aspired towards". A sweet spot is possible in every human endeavor - whether one is a chef, plumber, cook, or gardener. "To me, success is a job well done. For society, the formula of success is money, fame and power"

One plays for the love of the game, whatever it might be, and not for anything else. This is the reason why we slug it out every morning at our shuttle badminton court. For the pure joy of it.

Sweat is a deep cleanser.

A rally from last year's men's singles final at our yearly ShuttleMania tournament between Kaushal Singh (near court) and Arun Muthukumar (far court).