Chronicles of Cycling

I got a bicycle. Two days back after a long deliberation I finally made up my mind and got a new 26” Next Mountain bike. So my experience of buying the bike and my first ride in years ranged from bliss, nostalgia to finally as with everything nowadays some philosophical thoughts.

May 1985

My first cycle was a tri-cycle which I think I got by the time I was a year and half or so. I cycled so much that if there was a marathon for U-03 cycling I would have won hands down. It was a red colored mean machine. I don’t know if you have noticed or not (usage credited to Emani), a tri-cycle is a real dangerous toy, you turn your back on the kid and he/she is rolling down a slope at 90 km/hr (feels like). Then your tri-cycles don’t have brakes (really insulting for the 3 year olds, I am sure they can use brakes), so your legs are your breaks and every kid sooner or later figures out how to use ‘leg breaks’. But, my cycle was special, I had head and rear lights, and believe it or not it also had a horn (I am talking about 1986, these things weren’t common). The cycle didn’t come with all this; my dad put it for me. I used to stand in the front when we went on the scooter, as most of you are remembering, I had access to some cool stuff, viz the horn and the head light, so I wanted them on my cycle too. Occasionally I pissed my dad off by putting my hand into the clutch and break and getting my fingers stuck, then howl in pain, then not knowing what to do with the greased hand, rub it onto my pants and his pants, I guess to figured out the rest. So my dad got a torch bulb, powered it with a battery, stuck it to my seat using tapes and also got red LED which served as my taillight. I was a ‘cool’ kid. After my brother was born, I used to take him on rides (yeah we could fit into the single seat).

Oct 1989
Then I got Turbo Sport on my 6th birthday, complete with support wheels to help me learn to balance on two wheels. It was better than the average BSA Champ, because it had Shocks! So I started cycling with it, and even after a month was still cycling with the support wheels. I made the mistake of cycling outside when my dad was returning from his office, it suddenly occurred to him that it’s been a month since he got me the bike and the support wheels are still on. He took it upon himself at 6 in the evening to bestow upon me the art of balancing a cycle. The expected happened, in half an hour he declared that I am in capable of learning how to cycle and that I won’t learn it in a lifetime and the end result was that he removed the support wheels and said; now you have no choice but to learn. Every day for the next week my mother used to hold the cycle and run behind me till I learnt to cycle and at the end of the week dad came and declared that if not for him I would still be using support wheels.

One of the earliest memories I have of the cycle is, with a few elder kids I went pig hunting. It involved taking stones and cycling fast to sling them at pigs (yeah we had pigs on the road). On one such attack I lost balance and as a result lost a pound of flesh… a thing my brother still reminds me of. In two years I had to share the cycle with my brother, and as there were no support wheels, I had to run behind him till he learnt to cycle. Thankfully he didn’t take a month to learn like I did !

May 1993
In 1993 I got a BSA SLR ‘Light & Sporty’ bicycle for Rs. 1200. I thought of getting a Hero Ranger, but my dad said that I won’t be able to cycle with such huge tires. I agreed. Before buying my dad took a test ride; that was the first time I had ever seen him ride a bicycle and a chuckle was imminent. I used that cycle for the next 8 years, had multiple ‘services’, couple of tire changes, numerous tube changes and a whole lot of punctures. Finally when I reached 6th Std, they (my parents) allowed me to take the cycle to school. The advantage of cycling is that you get to keep money, in case you had a flat tire. So the first day, my dad followed me on the scooter till I reached school, which he did for a couple of days till he found out I was doing good. I was given clear instructions to get down at a busy junction, which I never followed. After a few days, my brother who was walking to school, asked me to carry his bag home, the next day with the bag even he was on the carrier. Of course I used to drop him a cross or two before I reached home and we were very happy that my mom couldn’t figure it out.

May 1999
Then the glorious years of cycling came. It was as the legendry Bryan Adams Song goes, ‘back in the summer of 69’, in my case the summer of 99. I had finished my 10th and a long holiday awaited me. Mickey, Malla, Pilli, Jeevan, Bandu, Pashu and myself; sometimes joined by the girls Shruti, Minnie roamed the entire city on our cycles. Sun, wind and rain were disregarded and it was a glorious year of cycling.

My brother had got a new cycle called Photon, a very trendy bike, and throughout the school years we cycled to school every day. He never allowed me to touch it; completely forgetting the years I had shared my cycle with him. After I reached my 11th Std and after a few days of cycling I got a Hero Puck and I thought my cycling days are over. My cycle was given to the college going brother of a daily wager.

May 2002
In the first year of degree (Engineering) I had to cycle for a few months due to a stand-off I had with my dad. He asked me to give my Hero Puck to my brother and promised me to get a Motorbike. But the bike he wanted to buy and the one I wanted strangely didn’t match. So as a result – read till he agreed I cycled to college, which made me kind of cool in college. And it was my brother’s Photon as my cycle wasn’t there. He finally had to let me use it.

May 2009
Now coming to the present cycle. I was walking to office which was at a distance of 3 Miles (approx. 5 kms) and later moved to a place which was 4.5 Miles (approx. 7 kms) away. So I decided to buy a bicycle. The first stop for anyone in my position is WALMART. I went to their website, sports section in that bicycle section and finally sorted the result from low to high value. There I saw the 26” Next Mountain bike for $ 89. I made up my mind to buy it. When I conveyed my decision to GK and Dhake (guys I hang out with in Kansas), they said they too wanted to buy a cycle and that WALMART isn’t the right place, we should look at Bike America or Dick’s Sport (that’s actually the name). So all of us went, first stop Dick’s Sports, it had a wide variety of cycles and the least one cost $ 200. Dhake immediately said, yeah dude we should get it, since you are going to use it regularly, it should be a Hybrid (Road + Mountain). GK kept quite. Then second stop, Bike America where the lowest possible thing was $350. So after all the looking I went back to WALMART, got the $89 bike. We always do this, we I mean Desis. We know where we are going to buy, yeah the cheapest, but we still want to look around, just to satisfy our self that we have the best product which happens to be the “cheapest”.

I got ready for my job, formals and all and got on my bike with a helmet on my head. You guys must be scratching your head, where have I seen a similar thing, don’t think much, if you have seen the movie ‘40 year old virgin’ you have the picture in your head. So after riding for a mile or so, I realized that cycling is a ‘pain in the butt’, in my case it was literally a pain in the butt. The edges of the seat just tore into the soft tissues and it was as if I am seated on pins. Without grousing you further, let me explain my experience. I don’t understand the ‘gear’ concept on a bicycle. Mine is an 18- speed bike and I can’t figure out what gear I am on, what I need to be on, what will make the whole experience better. I had a motorbike for a long time and I have driven a car for quite some time, but I can’t figure out the gears on my bicycle. And I realized that if the slope is more than 40 degrees I can’t cycle up even if my life depended on it (lately I re-learnt that you got to stand and pedal). The worst part about growing up is, I don’t even enjoy riding down the slope any longer. All the time I keep telling myself, ‘oh shit, now while I am coming back, I need to climb this’. This spoils all the fun of just sitting on a cycle and let it roll down. When you are young (comparatively- I am not old), one doesn’t care. If it’s a slope you go down it as fast as you can. The most you will think when you are cycling up is the thought of riding down when you are heading back. Things change and so has my cycling skills. My butt doesn’t fit on the seat, I can’t figure out the gears, I don’t enjoy cycling; I can’t ride up a slope, etc. But the second day felt better and on the third day I could climb half the slope and slowly I am getting back into the groove of riding down the slope as fast as possible so that you go as far as possible without peddling.

'Adu - Idu' This and that

Phase III of election over and these are the things on my mind:

‘Secular Fundamentalist’- The person who coined this term is either a lunatic or an extremely intelligent soul. Basically, it has no meaning. It just doesn’t make sense. BJP wanted to counter their tag of ‘Hindu Fundamentalist’, and what do they come up with???? Secular Fundamentalist. They just wanted to add the word fundamentalist and some random guy sitting next to Rajnath Singh suggested this and then all of a sudden all of them are singing to the tune. ‘Pseudo-Secular’ was a better term for congress.

‘Dynastic Politics’ – Congress are accused of being a dynasty and not a democratic party. I personally agree with it. In congress the mantra is any ‘Gandhi’, except Varun- a new ‘clause’, is born to rule India, there isn’t any second thoughts to this. But wait, the others are catching up. Deve Gowda has made JD(S) a family affair and now our CM, Yeddy has got a ‘ticket’ for his son. If you look closely into this, why not?? A doctor’s son/daughter (just to be politically correct) is expected to be a doctor but a politician’s kid shouldn’t be a politician. Yeah sure he/she should have the talent, but if you talk about that what about the experience they have. They are seeing this from the time they are born. Would you watch AB jr if he wasn’t BigB’s son??? So won’t you vote for Yeddy jr, just because he is Yeddy Sr’s son? But congress takes the cake. Talent or ability doesn’t matter. Even a retarded Gandhi is ‘special’. 

Pro-Hindu / Pro-Dalit- BJP is accused of being Pro-Hindu and Congress pride themselves in being Pro-Minority, Pro-Dalit. If you look closely, it means BJP are pro 80% of Indian population (80% of Indian population is Hindu) and Congress are pro 50% of the population. (Dalit + Minority). So in essence by Cong’s own admission, BJP want 80% of the country to prosper and they themselves want just 50% of the country to prosper. Because when they say BJP are pro hindu, I assume they mean they hate the others. I just extended the argument when they say they are pro-minority/pro-dalit. 

Support to Farmers- in India 65% of the population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. So obviously; every party is out to woo them. What do they promise? Loan waiver, Support prices etc etc. All this will make is that it makes them more dependent and not self sufficient. What about some strategies like community farming, scientific farming? Offering scientific consultation. We all know India provides some schemes and support to farmers that no other country allows. It’s time we get out of the feeling that agriculture is sacred; it’s a job like any other and a business to be handled as any other industry. Tax rebate, loan waiver is just eye wash. If the government has to waive tax of 65% because they are farmers, where will they get money from?

‘Jokers making news’ 

Deve Gowda is pissed. He is pissed that BJP is playing the caste card to win elections. Wow now thats news, wasn’t that the brain child of Gowda himself? Wasn’t be the guy who wooed voters based on caste? Now that the tables are turned he is crying foul. Common old man, get a grip on yourself and make a quiet and peaceful exit. For all you know he might become the next PM. Howzzat!!

Mallika Sarabhai thinks she is smart. Sorry you are not, MS Sarabhai. She comes on TV shows and tries to act smart. She gives a sarcastic laugh when a politician makes a point and mocks him. Given a chance to speak all she can say is, I will provide sadak pani etc. Common grow up and wipe the stupid grin of your face, as it is you look retarded. When will our politicians learn that the duty of a MP isn’t to provide roads and water, he/she should pave the way and make policies so that these things become a reality. Policy making should be high on the agenda. Sadak Pani will be taken care by the Corporators or MLAs around.

LK Advani doesn’t want mid-term polls. If Manmohan Singh or LK Adavni becomes the PM, this might just happen. Not because they will lose support, it’s because they might no longer be there. A nation of youths is voting to make 80+ year olds as the PM.

On a different turf

My friend GK recently got engaged. Congratulations to him!! And best of luck to Hema(His fiancée) . We are thinking about giving him a bachelor party, but I feel Hema needs a bachelorette party (she will the one missing the good things in life) more than GK needs a bachelor party. 

Shah Rukh Khan returns from SA. To vote. Thank god for elections, we don’t have to see him any longer in IPL. With his return my hatred towards Kolkota Knight Riders is ebbing. I feel sorry for them. 

And to end; a really nice joke from IPL – Brendon Mccullam has a tattoo of his jersey number in roman numerals. Someone suggested why don’t he tattoo his IPL scores, but then there is no symbol for zero in roman numerals. 

Cricket @ work

It took 6 days and 10 matches to get a really exciting game in this edition of IPL. It was the mother of all nail biters and the loss KKR suffered made it all the sweeter (Sharukh Khan has single-handedly made KKR into the most hated team in IPL, no wonder he is the Badshah; more Aurangzeb here). I was all the time sitting in my cubicle, cricinfo livescorecard open; refreshing it every second (it auto refreshes but people outside India will definitely know what I am talking about). When ‘Dada’ hit one of his 4’s it was too much to take and I let out a ‘Shahbash’ loud enough to make people across the hall came over and see what was happening.

They wanted to know why I was so excited and the next thing I know I am streaming the game on my laptop with 4-5 people crowded around me. Trying to catch the game and simultaneously tell them what was happening. So from the initial, ‘you got only two bases in this game?’ to ‘how many outs in an innings?’; I answered their questions patiently though a bit irritated as the game was turning out to be a screamer. Rajasthan at one stage were home and dry only to be pulled back into deep water by ‘Dada’. Then Kolkata seemed safe but for the new kid Kamran Khan who got 'Dada' out and tied the match. By this time cricket had atleast 3 more fans and they were standing behind me. All of a sudden one of the guys asked, ‘Dood which is your team of the two’, I casually answer ‘neither’. ‘HOLY CRAP, you are excited about two teams which you don’t even support, don’t give me this SHIT!’ one guy exclaimed. Once he said it, even I was surprised but in my defense I am a true cricket fan :-) and anyway I enjoy seeing KKR loose.

So they were going to have some ‘Super Over’ to decide the winner, about which I had no idea. Thankfully Jamie Alter (if you are a true cricinfo fan, you would know who it is) gave the rules. Yusaf Pathan made my day by hitting Mendis all over the park. Oh I forgot! In the meantime I called Dhake to discuss what would happen. ‘Pathan is a brute’ was the conclusion of that discussion. Then I and Emani had a chat about the match, he is a fellow fanatic, and we relived the entire match and it was time to get back to work.

By the way the other match between Chennai and Delhi went down to the wire too. Flintoff was the man of the match for me, though he won it for the opposition. He went for 50+ runs in his 4 overs and got out at a crucial stage where he could have just pushed for singles and won the game. Does not speak very high of the costliest player in IPL. Today IPL also saw the first century of this season and what an innings by Abe Devillers. He is the most prolific batsman in world cricket only behind Chandrapaul. Watch out for Abe!

Bangalore plays Punjab, a weak team this season. Apart from the changes I wrote about in my previous blog, Pieterson would do well if he could win the toss and bat. All the teams which have batted first have ended up winning (unless the match is decided by D/W method). Best of luck BRC.

Lastly, have you guys seen the blogs of ‘fakeiplplayer’? He is an awesome writer and really entertaining. Though of late he has become predictable and boring, you can read the initial blogs.

Bangalore Royal Challengers - A review

Two matches two batting failures and 1-1 win-loss record rounds off the opening weekend for BRC. The win made possible by an extraordinary knock by Dravid and some very good bowling. I would say the best bowler against Rajasthan was Praveen Kumar, though he ended with just 3 wickets.

Let me just write a few lines about Dravid. He showed the world how to bat in such a situation. Every team irrespective of the format needs a Dravid in the side. As Sachin showed earlier, we need some one scoring at around a run a ball and batting through. Dravid scored at a strike rate of 140 and finally his score was the difference between the two sides.

Bowling has been generally good, except for the first ten overs of the second match, we have had good 30 overs with ball. Praveen Kumar has been doing really well and its heartening to see Kumble back among wickets. As Pieterson said, class cant be bought. The weak link in the team has been Steyn. His pace is being used by the batsmen and he is being hit to all parts of the ground. He is starting where he finished last season and that isnt good for BRC.

Batting has been pathetic and generally really bad. Pieterson has got the team composition wrong and the batting order wrong which is making the matters worse. The weakest link here is Ross Taylor at no. 3. I believe this place belongs to Pieterson. The other worrying factor is lack of experience at no. 6,7 and 8. The likes of Boucher will be of great help. Ross Taylor doesnt deserve a place in the eleven.

Fielding has been below par, the missed catches in the second match cost us a lot. Definitely a thing we can improve.

So here is my team for the next match:
1.Robbin Uthappa
2.Jessy Ryder
3.KP
4.Dravid
5.Kallis
6.Boucher
7.Gaurav Dhiman
8.Balchander Akhil
9.Praveen Kumar
10.Vinay Kumar
11.Kumble

I open with Uthappa and Ryder. Its a potentially explosive team, which can get us great starts. Utahppa has looked lackluster but we have no other choice. No. 3 belong to Pieterson. A player like him has to stamp his authority early on in the match. Then I have Dravid, who is scoring fluently and will carry the innings till the end. Depending on the situation I will have Kallis or Boucher come in next. If we are in commanding position, it makes sense to have Boucher come ahead and throw his bat around. I think it is criminal not to play Boucher in the team as we are playing in SA and we need his experience to play in with the lower order batsmen.
At No. 7 I have a surprise and that is Dhaman, we all saw what he can do in the U-19 world cup, he is a explosive batsman and a useful medium-pacer. Kholi has been given too many chances and needs to be kept out of the side for his own good. Then I have Akhil, Akhil gets the nod ahead of Kholi because of the bowling option. Moreover he is a useful or useless as Kholi in the batting department. He is followed by the bowlers, Praveen, Vinay and Kumble who are no mugs with the bat either.

The bowling is really strong, we have Kumble, Praveen and Vinay in a resonably good form and the remaining overs needs to be shared between, Kallis, Ryder, Dhaman and Akhil. I would have Boucher behind the stumps which is quite obvious.

Finally I feel, Boucher cant be ignored any longer and Taylor needs to pack his bags.
Lets see what happens tomorrow. Best of luck BRC.

PS: Did you guys watch Shane Warne spin a mile in the first match. What a player- a true genius.

Ross Taylor might score a century in the next match, but I would still drop him.

Bangalore vs Hyderabad @ Durban

Rahul Dravid on strike for Bangalore and Ishant Sharma with a shining new white ball; opening the attack for Kolkata. There is a buzz around the ground, the spectators are anxious and here are two youngsters in the crowd playing ‘inky pinky ponky’. Why are you boys doing that? “We don’t know whom to support” comes the answer. Of course, we are in Wanderers, South Africa not in Chinnaswamy or Eden Gardens. This is IPL2, it’s about Shahrukh, Preity, Shilpa; it’s about Buchanan and his idiocracy and finally it is about Lalit Modi and his money spinning affair. Sorry officially it’s a cricket tournament.

Just some things happening in IPL

1. “Even when he is 106, Ganguly will be the captain of KKR”- Shahrukh Khan (owner), 2008

“Mccullam replaces Ganguly as captain of KKR in IPL2” – Headlines, 2009

2. “T20 isnt Gavaskar’s cup of tea, if he wants, let him buy a team and run it the way he wants” –Shahrukh Khan

“ If Gavaskar ‘Saab’ asks me to stand on my head and run the team, I will do it” – Shahrukh Khan a week later.

3. “This year I am going to sleep with all of them”- Shahrukh Khan on how to bring the best out of his players.

4. “ I hope you can spin more”- Shilpa Shetty about RR ‘fast bowler’ Shiddhart Trivedi

And many more such…….

Open ibnlive.com or ndtv.com, you can see Shahrukh, Preity and Shilpa all over the page, either releasing their team’s T-Shirt or dancing in the inaugurals. Then we have the hero of IPL Mr. Modi posing for photographs with Shilpa and Preity on either side. I even read somewhere; next we are going to see him in a Bollywood movie too. This doesn’t complete the picture; we also have two dummies posing. One is the boy friend of Shilpa , Raj Kundra and the other the companion of Prieity, Nes Wadia. What a pretty family picture they make.

So what happened to all the discussions of who is in which team, what will be the strategies’, how are they going to fit in only 4 foreign players (though this year it should be corrected to 4 non-Indian players, even Indian are foreigners in SA) and the hoards of cricketing question we discuss and debate?

I understand why they decided to move the venue, elections is much bigger and going by what we have seen in the first phase (18 people including 5 polling officers killed by Maoist), Chidambaram was right; we do not have enough security personnel to provide security. But, how can you ignore cricket in a cricket tournament. Why has it become a platform for Shahrukh Khan to make a fool of himself? IPL was supposed to rival EPL; it was supposed to be EPL of cricket. I have never heard any team owner speak so much in EPL, in the last 20 years of its existence.

Please stop this tomfoolery and get down to cricketing. I want more of, “I feel BRC made a mistake by making Pieterson the captain, because he is very temperamental and hasn’t proved his worth as a captain”- Geff Boycott before the match, “Sachin Tendulkar dancing down the wicket and has lofted the ball in the air and it goes for a six, what a player what a man”- Tony Grieg during the match and a good panel discussion involving Ravi Shastri, Harsha Bhogle and Ian Chapple discussing why KKR lost the match, at the end.

IPL Zindabad, Bad press Murdabad !!!

Mindless Interview Part I

Disclaimer: Many people have asked me whether this is a real interview. Sorry to disappoint you, its fictitious and a segment of my imagination. It's my sarcastic take on what might happen in such an interview.

My friend recently met up with Pramod Muthalik, for an interview. She is a journalist for a national daily and Mr. Muthalik was very candid in his views. Without much horsing around, let’s get down to the details of the interview.

Women Journalist (WJ): It is no pleasure of mine that I have to talk to you. But anyway welcome to the interview.

Pramod Muthalik (PM): How can a woman have pleasure without a man’s permission anyway? I am very happy to be here. I haven’t been in NEWS for quite sometime.

WJ: So on a lighter note, what did you do with ‘pink chaddies’?

PM: It didn’t fit me well, so I gave it to my brother’s son. The color is fading, cheap quality.

WJ: It was for you so… on hindsight do you think what you did was correct?

PM: No, I don’t think so. I had instructed my people not to hit any boys in the party. But, my people got carried away and hit some boys too. You see those boys in the party had a right to be there, if we had left them alone, this wouldn’t have been an issue. So definitely it wasn’t right. ‘Sene – Ram Sene’

WJ: Is it right to hit girls? Isn’t it against our culture?

PM: Even ‘Vedas’ says, respect and worship woman in a saree, go check it if you want to. Women wearing anything other then a saree are demons in disguise. This is in ‘Upanisheds’, check it if you want to.

WJ: So you believe that we should go back in time, revive customs like ‘Sati’?

PM: Definitely, Sati is a wonderful practice. Some person called Raja Ram Mohan Roy fought against it; he just wanted to be in social science text books for years to come. Our customs have a meaning, scientific in nature. You see first of all, what will a widow do? She is a burden on the society. You complain about population explosion, this is how we used to control it. You tell me, what will a woman do without a man? Its better she dies. But, there is an exception, if she is fit enough, she can do house work and be a mid-wife and things like that, then we will shave her head and keep her. We are very considerate.

WJ: How wonderful. Why don’t you become the prime-minister of the country?

PM: I will, only if they change the name of the country to ‘Bharat’ or ‘Ram Rajya’. ‘Sene – Ram Sene.’

WJ: There is a section of people who say, you are doing this only because you or your boys couldn’t get good looking girls/girlfriends. Just out of jealousy you are attacking them.

PM: That isn’t true. Even if it is true, what is wrong with it? See India is a socialist country. The resources of the country should be distributed equally. Good looking girls are one such resource. Before, these girls used to walk or go in buses, where our boys could meet them; nowadays they have vehicles and go to pubs, where will my boys meet them? This isn’t fair. If we can’t have them they can’t have them too.

WJ: So you have alleged that these girls are being led astray by boys from other religions? Are these girls easily gullible? Why do you think they are doing this?

PM: No no, women by themselves have no brains. They always follow what men say. So when a boy from other religion comes and talks; they just follow him, so we should always have women tied in the house. See if you let your cattle free in the forest, won’t the wolf come and eat it. So the first step is, securing out cattle, then we will hunt the wolf. ‘Sene-Ram Sene’.

WJ: So you feel women by themselves shouldn’t have a choice? You don’t respect their choice?

PM: They do, definitely. I respect women and I worship women. I respect their choice. In my house the women never asks whether they should make rice or ‘chappati’ for dinner, it’s entirely their choice. I really respect women.

WJ: How very encouraging. Do you think women should be given equal share in property?

PM: They should be given equal share. Infact in our culture they are always given equal share. Just that we give it to our sons-in-law. Women can never handle money, so we give it to the son-in-law, this people call 'dowry.' The media simple make an issue out of it and campaigns against it. Actually it’s a Pakistani propaganda to tarnish Indian culture. Now you know 'dowry' is a good thing. Look daughter, not everything old is bad.

WJ: But, there have been instances where people have burnt their daughters-in-law for 'dowry'?

PM: Once again, media propaganda, Pakistani conspiracy. You see when a man is in doubt about his wife’s fidelity, what must he do? Remember Ramayana, when Lord Rama wanted to test Sita ‘Mata’, what did he do? He set her on fire. Now did the fire harm her? No. So, even now to test your wife’s fidelity you have to set ther on fire. You can’t go to court and police station for this. It’s a matter of shame. Now by the number of deaths; you have an estimate how many women have gone astray? This is exactly what we are fighting. ‘Sene – Ram Sene’

WJ: I have never been more disgusted in my life. I am a woman journalist. What do you have to say to that?

PM: That’s what I was thinking, whether to slap you before or after the interview. I decided it will be a good parting gift.

Part II coming soon…..

If Catching Could Tell!

Last day of exams! Not any ordinary exam, this was the life deciding II PUC (Pre University College) or for people not from Karnataka the 12th standard. This exam decides if you become an engineer, doctor or fall down and disgrace yourself by doing basic sciences. Did anyone say, isn’t it the choice of the student? Well where were you for the last 20 years? Everyone knows that your marks in PUC decide what you become in life, like the students choice ever mattered.

So as it happened, the last exam was English, and everyone had English (it was compulsory), so here we are Mallikarjun (Malla), Tejas (Mickey), Jeevan (Bhogle), Krishna (Bandu), Ananya (Pilli), Yashashwi (Pashu) and me going to Mickey’s place after the exams. We had huge plans, we were going to play cricket first, then go eat ice cream and then probably go watch a movie. No one wanted to ask the questions on everyone’s mind, how did the exams go? How much marks we will get? Where will we end up? What will happen? With these questions weighing upon us, we went to Mickey’s place.

So on the way (we are walking), you ask why we walk? The vehicle stand guy charges a rupee per day to park the vehicle. A rupee is a huge amount; I mean it is 30 bucks a month, 365 rupees a year. So Mickey’s place is like a kilometer from college and it was our parking place. At anytime there would be at least 10-15 vehicles parked in their house. Coming back to the story, as we walked we talked this and that. We talked about girls, argued who was the most beautiful girl in college, talked about buying new vehicles for Degree College, the latest bikes and everything boys usually talk about. But this day the zest was missing. As the exams were over it was now time to contemplate and review how you had fared for the last one month.

At this junction, I got an idea (my ideas generally cause trouble almost always) to cheer up the mood, so that we could enjoy the moment. When we reached home, I said ‘we will do one thing, we shall throw the ball really high and who ever catches it first will get the highest marks in the exam. Pilli said, ‘I don’t catch and play cricket well, so the odds are against me, so I don’t agree’. Mickey said ‘whatever I don’t care, but I don’t mind trying it.’ The rest of the guys were OK with it and there was a lot of arguing about the rules of the competition. But, whatever said and done Pilli didn’t agree to the rules, he still maintained that he was at a disadvantage. So I gave him a big disclosure about fate and here are some excerpts from it,
Me: ‘this is pure fate, if fate is on your side you will be the guy to catch it. It’s the ultimate test.’
Malla: ‘I completely agree, see what will happen will happen, this is just an indication of what is going to come.
Mickey gave his expert comment, ‘anyway, we can always play best of three catches and see what happens, then it will be real test’
I gave the concluding remark that if Pilli doesn’t agree then it means he is chickening out, no guts and he is a chicken heart. Totally irrelevant, but when you want a guy to do something, just hurt his ego and he will be ready.
Finally, Pashu added, ‘we will let Pilli, throw the ball high and let him decide where he wants to throw, that way it will be fairer. Which everyone agreed and for once even Pilli was game for it.

So the scene was set, we were standing on the footpath, it was a pretty big footpath and we worked out where each one should stand and last minute rules that hitting isn’t allowed but pushing is allowed and things like that. With baited breadth we anticipated his throw, where he would throw? What height it will go to? How much time I will have to run there? By now it wasn’t just marks at stake but a reputation too. This will go down in the annuls of history. So Pilli had his back to the road and then, he put in his effort and threw the ball up, there was a sudden rush, everyone tried to follow the ball and tried to run towards it. But, fate had meant otherwise, the very fate I had mentioned sometime back made its decision, the ball went not only up, but due to the lack of physical abilities on Pilli's part, it travelled towards the road and on the road a open top lorry was travelling and the ball went and fell into the lorry and before anyone could realize the lorry was at the end of the road. Fate had made its choice.

We all looked at each other and kept staring at Pilli, this fellow had single handedly jinxed out results. He might have done it on purpose as he had no chance of catching it, but knowing his abilities at cricket everyone doubted that. Then suddenly all of us started laughing and that broke the ice. We laughed till our tummy started to ache and there were tears in the eyes. All of a sudden the exam was a distant thing and all that mattered was the long holidays ahead.

By the way the laughter didn’t last long; the results came a month later.