This happened to me today!!!

It was an unusually cool morning here in Hyderabad, cos for the past few days there had been no respite, with the mercury touching 43 degrees with ease and the sun beating down with all its might as early as 8 AM. Everything went the usual; coffee, hindu, breakfast and since I was on leave yesterday, I thought it would be better to be a bit early to office and started around 9.50 AM. I live around 14 KM from my office,at the BHEL township, since the road to office is a smooth highway, it barely takes 20 minutes to reach my office.

10:07 AM : Barely half a kilometre from the Raheja Mindspace entrance, I felt something slipping out of my right trouser pocket. OMG, It was my cell phone!!! Oh no not again. I had earlier lost my Nokia 1100 in the same fashion, while riding my scooty from ashok pillar to K K Nagar in Chennai. But this was Samsung U600, worth 13k bucks when I bought it about 2 years back. Well, frantically traced back the route in the "wrong side" of the road ( well riding wrong side is quite common here, and you don't feel its an offence). Once twice thrice the search went on, since its a highway I could not get any public phone to check if the phone is still alive. I found a traffic constable, went to him and asked "Sir, do you have a cell phone, my phone slipped from my pocket and I want to see if it is working still", blank stare was what I got as a reply. I repeated again, still no reply, I went the third time, he mouthed "meeku telugu ochindha?" (Can you speak telugu?). Kadavule kapathuda, and blabbered something in telugu I knew and he called my number and informed its ringing.

Mind relaxed a bit, and a picture of what all I did in the morning went before my eyes.

9.35 AM : Had a good shower and was getting myself ready to office, when my phone started singing the Chennai Super Kings theme song, it was Ramesh, my school friend, working ( rather in traiiiinnnnning) with Infosys, in Mysore. Just to remind about the train ticket which I need to book for his friend. Kept the phone on the top of the fridge, had water, prayed, dressed up and was all set to leave.

10:30 AM : A sudden flash occurred!! Hey, did I really take the phone at all!! I prayed that I should not have, but again I never leave to office, without ID, phone and purse. "Oh god, please I should have forgotten it at home, I will offer a coconut, if so". Prayers, thoughts, tension and finally I decided to turn back and check if its there at home. Heart beats were heavy, cos this is not the first time I am losing a phone, its going to be the third time, will I be third time lucky???

The speedo touched 85 KMPH, the Honda stunner was really stunning, with its stability in that speed for a 125 CC bike, really amazing.

10:45 AM : Reached my house and ran to the door, unlocked it, didn't bother to remove my shoes. My mind, body, soul all went towards the kitchen, took a glance at the top of the fridge.

Thank god, the black shiny, slim( unlike me :-) ) U600 was there, smiling at me!!!

What a start to the day.. I did almost 50 km in one hour and reached office at about my usual time of 11.15 AM

Well, what can you call this, the height of forgetfulness... a great experience that I will savor for life :-)

ME : I can't understand Hindi, I dont know Telugu.. X : Are you from Tamil Nadu?

Well, many of us, who are outside Tamil Nadu would have encountered this dialogue on a daily basis, is it not? Why? Because we are the only set of people (in India) who have not cared about learning Hindi. Almost in all other states, Hindi is a compulsory language, whereas we in Tamil Nadu are planning to re-introduce German into our school curriculum.

Now, this can be attributed to the anti-Hindi agitations of the DMK in the 1950's and 60's which saw the emergence of Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu and end of the congress era. This prompted Annadurai to proclaim a famous law called as "Irumozhi Sattam" ( Dual Language Law), in which Tamil was considered as the official language of the state, and permitted English to co-exist with Tamil, as the medium of instruction in schools, colleges and technical institutions.

The infrangible grip of dravidian politics on Tamil Nadu ensured that its people remained ignorant of Hindi, except for the few who took pains to learn it. While the "imposition of Hindi" started as early as 1937, after Independence, it all was started by Pandit Nehru, who proclaimed that Hindi will be the "official language" and "link language" as it was easy to learn and that "popularizing Hindi" does not mean "imposing it" on non-Hindi speaking people. Well this seems out of place as the states of India have been re-organized on linguistic basis. Hence, the agitations considering the situations that existed at that stage seems to be justified. (The fact of the matter is anti-Hindi sentiments also evolved cos of the anti-brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu, I will discuss about this may be in a separate post. But Tamil Nadu is not the only state to protest Hindi imposition, karnataka, Bengal, Assam and host of other states also protested against it. But, it was so vociferous in Tamil Nadu, that it was given a lion's share in the history)

After 70 years of protesting against hindi, what have we gained? and what have we lost? ( Certainly we prevented a Raj Thakre from rising all of a sudden from no where :-P )

One certain gain is the knowledge of English. This is where we have gained while the other states ( esp Hindi heartland) have lost. We are seeing more (international) investments, landing up in lucrative jobs, and one of the main factor is the knowledge of English. If you compare man-to-man across various sectors from a sweeper to a General Manager, Tamils speak and understand English better than their counterparts anywhere else in India. Where we have lost out is again on (domestic) investments from NRI's of other states, and also the settling down time in the other states is quite longer for us,the lost job opportunities in sales and marketing in other states.

Coming to the flip side of the coin. If people of Tamil Nadu protested ( should i say protesting? ) against Hindi, the Hindi heartland is protesting against English. This certainly is a step backward in the present scenario of "global village" concept. ( Well this is a vicious circle isn't it?, people around the world protest on imposition of English :-), and even developed an alternative language called Esperanto, as the common link language of the world. But it did not become popular).

What we (OK, I ) generally dislike is the attitude of the Hindi-speaking people. While we try to learn the local language of a state ( plus Hindi) when we ( should I say I here naa, WE) are in a non-Tamil speaking state, the same cannot be said about them, where I see people in sowcarpet( area in Chennai which has lot of Hindi speaking population), still struggling to speak few sentences in Tamil even after being here for generations ( well this is my personal opinion, based on what I have read and observed, it might be wrong, kindly apologize if so)

Hey, did you people think I am against learning Hindi? Certainly not. Learning new languages always helps ( cos they don't know English :-) ) and is quite fun too, by the way I am trying to learn Telugu and Hindi. But my sincere request to the "babus, nethas and thalapathis" is that don't try to impose your ideologies on people.

Had Nehru, recognized this sentiment of people and promoted Hindi as an additional ( and optional) link language along with English ( his proclamation that he is actually doing this came after much damage had been done), there might not been a necessity for this dialogue ( and this post :-) )

One final request to Hindi speaking people, Hindi is not the "National Language" as you perceive, it is just one of the official languages in India, and try to learn the local language if you are planning to settle there. My request to all Tamils, start learning Hindi (ek gaon mein ek kissan, raghu thatha :-) ), but ensure that you don't lose your identity ( thereby necessitating an organization like MNS or Kannada Rakshana Vedike), because Tamil's pride is not in its antiquity but in its continuity!!!

Vaazhga Tamil !! Valarga Hindi !!!

Disclaimer : This post is certainly not written just because I failed in madhima :-)

The ideal wicket for test cricket ??

Last week, there had been a lot of discussion about test wickets around the world and the “lost” art of preparing wickets. These are days when the popularity of test cricket, for that matter even One-day cricket, is eroding at the hands of T20, and the spectator counts are dwindling, even in cricket crazy India, except for some ardent test venues like Chennai.

Well I for one, am not against a sporting wicket for test cricket, which would produce results and extend to the full five days, should the weather permit. But I am certainly against the pitches losing the “home flavor”.

In the pre-1980’s test cricket was played on “uncovered” pitches. True to its literal meaning, no covers were used to protect the pitch from the weather conditions; hence the pitches were soaked in rain and baked in sun. Hence, naturally it favored the bowlers, where the ball off the pitch caused nightmares to batsmen and the ‘keeper alike. Hence, sticky wickets (wet wickets) and green wickets (full of grass) were quite common.

But once the law of covering a pitch was introduced, the wickets behaved akin to the nature of the soil and the prevailing climatic conditions. But now, due to “entertainment quotient of cricket” and changing climatic conditions around the world, the pitches are slowing down. Even the WACA (Perth), the nightmare for batsmen, has lost its bite considerably. This has made cricket a batsman’s game, rather than a game of balance between bat and ball.

The ideal test wicket according to experts is: Assist seamers for session and a half, ease out in the next two days and take turn in days 4 (later part) and 5. While this seems “ideal”, the question of local flavor to the pitches and home advantage disappears, making test cricket all the more uninteresting.

The answer needs to be found out quickly if we want test cricket to survive and thrive in these days of T20. Nothing can be more exhilarating, than seeing cricket when there is equality between bat and ball, 100 odd for 3 at lunch, 250-300 odd at the end of the day.

A sense of awe transpires through us, not only when Sachin plays a back-foot cover drive, but also when a in-swinging Yorker clips the bottom of leg stump, when a ball jumping from good-length clipping batsman’s gloves and falling just short of the 1st slip, we all have our heart on mouth, don’t we?
The following are some useful links for further reading on pitch preparation and how the pitches around the world play
Wikipedia
Cricinfo

This now leads to another topic spinners vs seamers. Because of the fact that pitches in sub-continent assist spinners while those in the rest of the world aid (to an extent) seamers.To essentially maintain the local flavor, the pitches should continue to do so, with an “AND” operator of being “sporty”. While rank (bad) turners are considered not to be sporty, the same is not being said about “green tops”. So this leads to another debate “turning pitches” vs “green tops”.

Well, this has a scope for a separate post, where we can in detail discuss about them!!

The current crop of youngsters(those who are in school), need to be taught the importance of test cricket, they should not be carried away by the glitz and glamour of 20-20. Otherwise, the game of cricket will be nothing more than a business venture.

Why Mouli said "I am not interested" and how a "dead hen gave birth to two dead chicks!!"

Well, lot of things happened in the last fortnight (dated till 31st March lol ) and one of the good things was the visit of mouli and Inigo ( read : body and the soul :-), just that this body and soul always go in the opposite direction) to Hyderabad.

It was an unexpected call from mouli on a lazy weekend morning (all mornings are lazy for that matter ) sometime in January, when he announced their arrival to Hyderabad during ugadi weekend (now that's some planning, hats off mouli !!!) .

The day arrived, 27th march 2009, and i was found waiting in the kachiguda railway station for 50 minutes from 5.30 am to 6.20 am as the train was late by quite a few ticks of the clock ( the minute hand of course !!). Mouli as usual had slept over his phone and it got switched off when i was frantically calling him, seeing that it is waste of time i called Inigo and told him that i was waiting in the station, as usual mouli offered dummy explanations saying there was "no tower" and so i got the reply as "Switched Off", well that was one "technologically sound reply"

Finally reached home and had breakfast, got ready and took Inigo to my office to pick up veerakumar's shine that i had borrowed. Showed Inigo my workplace, to my amazement he was impressed with my office ( just thinkin hw his wud be !!). We picked up balaji near hyderabad central and en-route i showed inigo the "strict traffic discipline followed by the hyderabadis".

Three became four when balaji joined us and we started roaming all over Hyderabad ( read : malls and other places of interest :) ) . We were in hussain sagar lake and mouli was talking about "birdies" and how to differentiate them from the "rest", as usual we were mocking him. Balaji and I then went to get a drink ( cool drink of course), then we heard mouli say "I am not interested (??!! :-) !!! ) ". U must have guessed for why and for what!!!

Nothing much we did on saturday except for watching match ( India Vs NZ) and yeah i almost forgot, i prepared lunch for them !! ( they are still alive, that stands testimonial to the preparation, expecting true comments abt it from you guys!!) and in the evening we visited the hyderabad central and prasadz imax and dined at the McD, night was the time for some serious discussions about politics, sports blah blah. Mouli streamed the episodes of "enge brahmanan" by "cho" this was one serial my grandmother asked me to see and i was unable to because of the time, thanks mouli for that!!!

The next day we started early in the morning at around 6 am( tooooooo early for a sunday ) to the new Hyderabad airport for a bike ride. Read more about that here . ( Inigo's blog)
One fine sunday it was, but we ended up paying Rs.400 as "kappam" ( fine) to the police because the shine didn have an RC book ( this was the bad thing, i should ve checked for it) .

Balaji and mouli then went to meet their school friend ( 100 out of the 400 was paid during this time !!) , while inigo and i went to anjappar for lunch. Inigo ordered "naatukozhi biryani" (Country chicken biryani). I being a vegetarian, asked him the difference between the ordinary hen and the country hen, he said the country hen would be smaller but a lot tastier. Just then his order came and true to his explanation the chicken piece was smaller (than he expected !! probably it was killed wen it was a chick). We complained about this to the supervisor, he knew tamil, so it was not so difficult to convey our displeasure. And lo!! ten minutes later the dead hen had given birth to two little dead chicks, that too fried in masala!! To top the things, Inigo kept one of them as leftover ( probably paying homage !! )

They left in the evening garib rath to Bangalore. Nice little weekend with friends, vetti aratai, roaming in bike. We mocked mouli many times, as we wud always do, and dei mouli sorry if anything has hurt you and my sincere apologies and we wud ensure that we will always repeat this in the future !!
Thanks Inigo and Mouli Waiting for u guys to come over here some time again in the near future !!