Too much of sharing
(Bill Cosby talking to a kid on the Show “Kids Say the darndest things“)
BC: “Do you know who Cher is?”
K:”Unn huh yes. What we do on Passover.”
Darndest indeed. 
(video here)
Nuff Said – World Series
The only thing more pathetic/ ridiculous than the Yankees being crowned World Champions is finishing second in a fight with yourself.
Nuff Said.
Nuff Said – Battle of the vices
To know which is worse – A pack of cigarettes or A bottle of wine – hit yourself on the head with each one.
Nuff said.
He’s the man
An aunt of mine from Auckland is in town right now, and she had quite a few interesting anecdotes to share today. We all know that Australia started off as a colonial prison – it’s something we’ve given them enough heat about quite often. What we don’t know (at least I didn’t) is that New Zealand was the retirement home for England’s mentally challenged individuals. This apparently is the reason for there being an usually high proportion of individuals with those kind of problems there. This is not the anecdote, just a fun fact, stretching the definition of ‘fun’ to its limit.
My aunt’s a big fan of cricket as well as a big supporter of the Indian cricket team. Credit to her, she’s managed to sustain this interest in spite of staying outside the country for more than thirty years. New Zealand (and Auckland in particular) loves its cricket. The Indian diaspora there have been fairly cricket-crazy, and they’ve been closely attached to NZ cricket ever since Glenn Turner married a Punjaban and settled down there (and she went on to become a Mayor of some town as well). As a result, every visit of the Indian cricket team to New Zealand is a pretty big deal for people there. With the advent of the Indian Premier League, a lot of talk shows have had discussions about how cricket has started displacing Rugby as a lucrative career option due to the opportunities in India!
A friend of my aunt knew someone who knew someone, which allowed him to go and visit the team which went there early this year. This was around six in the evening, and the only person he managed to catch up with was V. V. S. Laxman. Laxman, tells my aunt, leads a pretty spartan and religious lifestyle, sleeping on the ground to keep his back in shape and doing pujas on a regular basis. There was speculation that the match we lost in Auckland (although we had won the series already) was in fact thrown by the guys because they had booked slots for Scuba diving and Parasailing and such stuff, but Laxman didn’t seem too keen to comment on this. When asked whether it was possible to meet any of his teammates, he said that all of them would be out partying hard, so the chances of that were extremely remote. Sehwag would be around, he guessed, but only because he was there with his family. The only person he was certain would be in his hotel room was … well, it is quite obvious … Sachin Tendulkar.
Every person who’s grown up in Bombay/ Mumbai is by default a Sachin fan (devotee, to be precise). I am one, so is my aunt and so was her friend. So naturally his discussion with Laxman led to the topic of the Master Blaster. Laxman told him the real reason why Sachin continues to be an automatic selection to the team even after two decades of playing the game at the highest level. The mere fact that Sachin is in the team gives people hope, no matter how bad they might be playing. If he is yet to bat, the ‘boys’ have the assurance that Sachin is yet to come, which allows them to play their natural game. If he gets out, they feel obliged to play for Sachin as his desire to win games for the team continues to be infectious and unmatched. Laxman talked of how Dhoni has always maintained that he doesn’t mind being given a squad of youngsters without any seniors for ‘advice’ or ‘guidance’ with one exception – Sachin has to be a part of every squad. Sachin is not just the run-getter, he’s the rallying point, the morale-booster. The sentiments of the entire nation are mirrored in the team, clearly. He talked of how Sachin still feels bad about not being picked for the West Indies tour in 1989-90 because the selectors felt he would ‘get hurt by the fast bowling’ (Sachin apparently cried like a baby when given this excuse. He was just sixteen then, so his reaction is quite understandable). And he found it laughable (demonstrating it with a loud laugh) that people raised doubts about Sachin’s commitment and motivation. Laxman talked of things we have discussed and contemplated during extensive sessions of armchair coaching, and it feels nice to receive validation from a source so very, very special like him.
Some people consider this to be a bad thing – the fact that even after twenty years, a country of a billion individuals has been unable to come up with even one worthy replacement. But given that it’s taken us ages to get an Olympic gold medal, I think we need to put our sporting achievements in perspective and stop being so harsh on ourselves. Also, we need to realize that Sachin is a once-in-a-lifetime / once-in-a-generation player. So maybe we should do ourselves a favour by simply marveling at our good fortune at having been a part of ‘the generation when Sachin played.’
Note: All those people reading this post right now who are already brushing it off by calling it ‘just another crazy fan’s mad ravings’, all I have to say is – well, nothing much other, really. ‘Guilty as charged’, for one. ‘I know who you are, and it’s never too late to join the club,’ for another.
Chiggy Wiggy
‘I wanna Chiggy Wiggy with you boy
I wanna Chiggy Wiggy with you fella’
When Kylie Minogue says this to you, only a fool will not respond with -
‘Kar le chiggy wiggy mere sang soniye
Kar chiggy wiggy mere sang jaaaniye
Kar le chiggy wiggy sang sang heeriye
Kar Chiggy Wiggy Chiggy Wiggy Chiggy Wiggy’
a.k.a. Yes I will Chiggy Wiggy with you. Screw the ambiguity.
The perfect song
As tough as it might be to find a song both technically and aesthetically perfect, this one comes pretty close to my perception of a perfect song -
Main Zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya – Hum Dono
Lyrics: Sahir Ludhianvi has got to be the finest lyricist of his generation. To come up with gems like
Barbaadiyon ka shoq manaana fizool tha
Barbaadiyon ka jashn manaata chala gaya
or
Gham aur khushi mein farq na mehsoos ho jahaan
Main dil ko us muqaam pe laata chala gaya
or my favourite (also the lines I used right after getting my ‘bonus’ at work)
Jo mil gaya ussi ko muqaddar samajh liya
Jo kho gaya main usko bhoolaata chala gaya
It requires a different level of brilliance altogether.
Singer (Mohd. Rafi): A once in a millennium voice. Soulful, stirring, melodious and oh-so versatile. He is my favourite singer from the (g)olden days – although I am might be a bit biased because he was the singer for all Shammi Kapoor songs, who was my favourite actor from that era.
Music (by Jaidev): Simple. Memorable. Wonderful.
The video: There was a time when Dev Anand nodded his head and didn’t look spastic – this was that time. He can be forgiven for trying to be the Indian James Dean ’cause he did look (and act) quite cool back then. Also, here he doesn’t have to ‘turn it on’ and be all playboy-ish as there are no chicks around.
(I decided not to translate the lyrics to English as I would not have done justice to the composition. Ok Thank you)
(Lyrics via Shama and Friends)
Stupid
I caught Bill Maher on Conan O’Brien’s ‘The Tonight Show’ last night.
He calls Americans stupid. Now that is a bit rude – Americans are pretty self-involved, I’ll accept that, but stupidity and world domination seem strange bedfellows.
He then throws random statistics just to prove a point. Like this one -
… did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That’s right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.
Sigh. How can you argue with people who make rational arguments? No wonder so many people hate him.
Here’s an article on similar lines by Maher which contains stuff he said yesterday – quite hilarious and quite frustrating, it is.
How about uncomplicating Geometry
Warning: Slightly geeky post. Might end up being slightly more geeky than ’slightly geeky’.
It was back in those days, when ancient history was current affairs; when pigs had just sprouted wings (yes, swine flew); when the Indian cricket team was eternally underachieving and when the English football team was hugely overrated. This was when I was about nine, although not much seems to have changed since.
Anyhoo – I used to walk to school back then, a nice little 20 minute trudge with my lil’ sis yakking away, both of us discussing with equal ease a range of topics from problems afflicting humankind to the weird dressing sense of some of our teachers.
Our standard route to school was as follows -
My building was not a funny piece of architecture, my MS Paint skills are a wee bit limited.
I was quite fascinated by the fact that, just by taking the diagonal through the vacant lot, I could cut down on my distance quite substantially. This led me to hypothesize that, for any given triangle, if a, b, c are the lengths of its sides, then always,
a < b+c, etc.
As obvious as this may seem to some now, my nine year old mind found it immensely gratifying that I had proven this by using, of all things, unused land. I promptly went and told this to my teacher, who:
1. Asked me to curb my enthusiasm as this was not really that path-breaking a discovery. Some greek guy had already postulated this a very long time ago. This, btw, is one of the reasons why I sometimes crib about being born so late in history- all the simple things have already been discovered, so now all your efforts are just an increment/ improvement on existing stuff. Or you need to come up with something too radical. Damn.
2. Put me down for my arrogance and called me delusional and fairly full of myself for actually believing that I was the first person ever to have figured this out. She didn’t particularly like me and thought that I was an insufferable smart-ass because I wasn’t humble enough after scoring well in class. Clearly, my childhood was fairly traumatic.
3. Told me that I needed to prove stuff in geometry with something more substantial than arbitrary lots.
Rebukes 1 and 2 would had surely pushed me into depression – thankfully, I was never particularly fond of this ma’am, so I didn’t get too worked up about her comments. Plus she talked in a weird way too, not that it is relevant here, but still …
However, in response to point 3, I took out a rubber band I happened to have in my pocket; stretched it out around my thumb and forefinger; and pointed it out to her that, just by stretching out one side, I could recreate any triangle. The fact that I had to stretch the band implied that the length had increased. Clearly, a is, indeed, less than b + c.
She then asked me (ordered, rather) that I should not bother myself with stuff which was ‘out of syllabus.’
It took me four long years after this incident to be ‘completely equipped with the requisite techniques’ to prove this inequality. The proof (here, if you are actually interested) is nice, but it is as boring as you expect geometry proofs to be.
So how about uncomplicating Geometry?
This post is a result of two things: the daily five minute walk I take from my office complex entrance to my workplace, and this piece titled ‘Do dogs know Calculus?‘ (alternate link here) that I read a few days ago (via Boiledbeans)
