Chak de India!

So Team India wins their inaugural match at the World Cup!

Great start to the tournament. Hope this continues, and who knows - we might have a good shot at winning it all. Of course we were the mighty champs a few decades ago till the Aussies and the Dutch came over and told Pillai n Pargat to go fly a kite. The last time we won the World Cup was in 1975, and since then most laurels, including Olympics (last was in 1980) have eluded us Indians.

Many folks have reason to believe that Kapil Dev and his underdog triumphants in 1983 were responsible for taking away the limelight and shifting the national obsession to Cricket. Not that we are complaining - how else would we find another God called Sachin. But the point is - slowly and steadily, since the 80s, hockey didnt even matter any more. It was just a piece of general knowledge that kids mugged up in school - regarding Hockey being the national sport of India. That was it ! Seriously, guys - how many of us know about Dhyanchand any more? Not the new generation born in the 90's surely.

But I digress. This first win is what counts, and is a great performance by the team. Specially after all the disputes between the team and the federation that happened all these weeks earlier.

But today, I couldn't help but remember this incident a few months back when I was in Pune. The Indian team was at the Balewadi Sports Complex at the city-outskirts, and training under the Spanish coach Brasa. Barely 4-5 kms away from our place, it felt nice reading about them in the papers - Balewadi has surely great facilities. But here's the thing - the team were served Chivda for breakfast!! I'll say this again, lest you missed it - yes, they were served Chivda! And it was a small piece of dispute covered in the local papers.

Now I personally have nothing against the humble Chivda. In fact as a self-respecting (and expanding) Gujju foodie, I place it highly on my light snacking lists. Laxminarayan chivda from Pune is one of the great delicacies that go divinely with ginger tea. But chivda for hockey players? Really? I mean imagine our team fed on a 'healthy' diet of chivdas locking horns with a big, muscular group of 11 Aussies stuffed with Eggs, bacon, milk, sausages and fruits. Sorry, but the match was lost at the dining breakfast table itself!
A piece of the story here.

This gives an idea about how a national team is treated if they happen to be playing any sport other than Cricket.

But well, the 1st win is great, especially against Pak, so its time to rejoice! Bring on the chivda,.. err Champagne (German Sekt, if you please) and pray that this great form continues for few more weeks for the boys. In absence of live-TV, I shall try to remain connected through youtube highlights, if I can find them.

PS: Overheard from a twitter feed, this: 4-1 win to India confirmed! Unless Pak government denies that these 11 players are Pak citizens. Lol. (via @rameshsrivats)

If (with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

Really really bad joke of the day...

Question: What did Jackie Chan's father say to him when he was small?

If you can keep your head when all the east asian baddies around you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can dream - of surviving 3 thousand assorted bruises and cuts
And yet perform the next stunt, no ifs no buts

If you can cope with Hongkong and Hollywood alike
And treat those two imposters just the same

Yours is (every stunt on) the Earth, the legacy of Bruce Lee mixed with Oriental humor and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be Jackie Chan, my son!

* An uncanny flash of PJ struck when coming across an old Jackie Chan flick while browsing channels at my bored apartment in Brussels, missing home and the missus badly.
* Note to self - Must.... have.... Chinese food today...

* Image courtesy: dimsum.co.uk

Of 'guilt at the stoppages' and megapixel rains

Imagine....
Its a nice sunday afternoon and you are just done with a family lunch. Then you get to your fav place in the drawing room and get glued to the television. It hasnt been a few minutes of visual joy, when the screen goes abruptly still! (much like the blue screen of death in Windows) And then there is a flash with the very familiar words:

'Rukawat ke liye khed hai'.....

Rings a bell?

And the 'Guilt at the Stoppage' doesn't stop there. Its very smoothly followed by a black-and-white mesh of haywire pixels, juxtaposed with a sound which is oddly similar to heavy rain falling on a metal sheet.
No other channels to jump to, the disappointed yet hopeful spectator had nothing else to do but to wait till the black-and-white rain subsided.

Circa early 80s: Television had arrived!


Its difficult to forget the eerie DD signature tune that reminded of graveyards and the ugly-looking DD logo that looked more like a top-view of a Mexican hat gone slightly awry. See that and you will agree >>

And what characters! The kid called Swami in small town South-India, the carrot-eating investigator, the forgetful day-dreamer, the Sherlock-Holmes-styled white-clad bengali detective, the huge bunch of myriad characters at a roadside corner (nukkad), white-haired ghosts taking a ride on the shoulders of unnerved Kings, bunch of youth hanging out on campus, a prime-minister telling us stories of India's glorious past, families with a member-count higher than the population of Australia, and badly-done special-effects of mythological characters throwing at each other, weapons of every possible dimension.... just to name a few. They were the ones who made the evenings and Sundays enjoyable for every middle-class home in India.

So starved were we of motion pictures or anything remotely similar, that on lazy Sunday afternoons, we ended up watching regional-language movies (forget about understanding a word of it), and even news bulletins for the deaf-and-dumb!! Now thats desperation.

These were just a few lines about the hey-days of old-time idiot-box, fully garnished with doses of nostalgia and memorabilia.... but hey, don't pull out your tissues or mom's pickles just yet.

On a philosophical note, the memories remain at their pedestal, as long as they are those faint memories. The moment you take them out of the grandma's closet and wham - there goes the charm! It hits you right there in the face that something which you always cherished from the past, actually tips precariously towards mediocrity, and towards a big disconnect with the immediate present.

But more about that later...

(Next post - a few of the favorite old-time shows...)

Unity in Diverse-cities

Finally found it!
Had been looking for this video for quite some time now.... And there it was - the very tv-show filler that I'd seen ages back on our very own National channel.

Remember the video - 'Ek-Anek'?
Does 'Ek chidiya, anek chidiya' ring a bell?




This is one of those few tv-shows that I practically grew up on!
One of the simplest lessons that explained grammer - how plurals worked, simplified mathematics - how counting should be done, and put this damn simple thought in the little children's heads that 'Unity is the way to go!'
Ah, those were the simple days of Doordarshan....
(and I shall continue this discussion in the subsequent post...)