Kavya..Letter! Letter..Kavya!

Dear Kavyakutty,

Its been a long time since I wrote something. But today as i was washing up after dinner i thought why dont i give it a shot again? Actually watching Irffan Khan write to Ila in his bombaiyya english in "The Lunchbox" was also an inspiration. But whenever i sit down to write, what usually happens is that i stare at the screen for hours, fingers ready on the keypad waiting for inspiration to strike. It was excruciatingly laborious that - and one could see that in the prose. But today as soon as I wrote those first 2 words, it just started flowing - u see, its only you who is going to read this no? So No pressure at all. No need to be clever or anything. I could be my cooching-cooing embarassingly-loud little self and you will still love it. Just one of the innumerable pleasures of fatherhood, you see. Anyways I am going to try and make this as talky as i can ( atrocious grammar alert!).

So little one, how does the world seem from 2 feet above the ground? Is it scary by any chaing ? Growing 4 additional feet hasnt made it any less scarier for me. Just joking!! I can see already that you are a fearless little cub. You seem to have inherited your mom's confidence and not my self-doubt. It will stand you in good stead. Honestly - if you ask me - i dont believe in all this inheritance and resemblance and stuff. There are far too many Shyams and Indus in this world to annoy everyone.But you, my darling, were born to be different. So, stay that way!

Anyways what i wanted to ask you was what is it that goes in that little brain of yours - yapping away all to yourself for hours and hours. And that drop-dead-gorgeous smile of yours - why does it flash only when someone is sneezing or coughing? And What is that thing that you do with your legs as if you are a horse about to burst off the starting line. And finally, what is with that song ( you know which one)? Of all the lovely little songs in the world, you had to choose that! YOu are a weird little one - arent you?

Anyways..Just thought to record here that Sachin paaji hung up his boots a few days back..From amongst everything that was written about him - especially that much admired act of benediction at the pitch - I was trying to find something to cherish ( a herculean task considering how many people have made careers out of writing about him). But surprisingly, the insight came from Sachin himself. In the post-match conference When a journalist asked him whether he had reconciled to a cricket-less life, he said "Kahin na kahin toh main khel loonga". A lump rose in the throat!! The sheer longing!!. So its always been just that - a kid who just wanted to keep playing and playing until mom came to fetch him home. And come she did!!

Kavyakutty, You know the thing with Sachin is that you will never understand what the fuss was all about - that privilege is for us chosen few who got to share his best years with him. I think thats something special about him - no amount of statistics or you tube vidoes or articles could come close to really explaining what he meant to all of us - one had to be there.

But dont worry, honey! you will find your Sachin soon.

Cheers,
Appa

Very Very Special

A curl of the arm, a flick of the wrist, a twirl of the blade, and we watch through tints of rose. There is no muscle in his art, no malice, no meanness. It is non-confrontational, innocent, lovely. 

Or put it this way: strip away the context, strip away the circumstances, strip away the competition and all the rest of the stuff that really make sport . . . strip it, strip it, strip it down to a man and a stick and nothing more and the art of VVS barely resonates any less. How many like him?

Rahul Bhattacharya on VVS

2 days hence

As one thinks about it more..what stays in mind is not the cup. But what could have been much more..

HIS LAST WORLD CUP FINALS..little more than 30000 watching at his home-ground..little more than 1 billion watching on TV..his 100th 100 just 82 runs away..a world-cup win chasing 276 just a couple of hours of disciplined batting away..an opportunity pregnant with the promise of unparalleled ecstasy and joy..prob the eponymous moment to which all his 21 long years with India had been hurtling towards..the one last act which could give a fitting finale to a bravura one-act play....and what does he do?

He nicks a gentle away-going delivery to the keeper and walks back!!

Why!!

PoV

I was lying in my bed the wrong way forward looking at the image of myself reflected in the shining chrome of the ceiling fan. Its an unusual perspective this - a sort of bird's eye view of oneself and for me atleast, a much more creepier experience than looking at oneself in a mirror. Its probably the bird's eye perspective - of seeing oneself from above - which results in this intial unease. The concavity of the plate ( or the convexity..) gives a psychedelic roundedness to the image - As if the room has been pulled back at its elastic edges to breaking point - so that it resembles a fish bowl. But soon, the unease gives way to a sudden feeling of curiosity which compels us to turn around and examine/explore one's surroundings. Probably after seeing oneself in a different light, one tries to see if one is able to extend this skewdness of perspective to things that surround us so that something new might emerge. But the mirage is destroyed once you take the eyes off it. Everything is back to its mundaneness, every object regaining its respective un-obstrusive familiar old selves in their familiar old corners.

I was reminded of all of these because of something I read related to photography. There is this concept in image composition called rule of the thirds.This sort of a thumb rule was created based on the physics ( or biology of ) that studies patterns in the different areas/points of an image that the human eye registers immediately and strongly.The simple version of the rule can be applied by imagining the field of vision divided into 9 equal squares through 2 horizontal and 2 vertical lines and then to place the object ( or the part of the object that one wants to stress) on either of the 4 intersection points. If there are more number of objects in the image, which intersection point or line is used also becomes significant. For instance, if there are two objects in the frame, the one on the right vertical line will be highlighted more than the one in the left vertical line. This sort of thing, it seems, is used in movies i.e. to show the emotional domination of a person over the other in a scene, the former is placed across the right grid line with the other on the left.

Now I am not so sure how, But this digression somehow leads us to the point ( sorry..belief to be precise) that I was trying to make in the first paragraph i.e. the way we currently see ( as in physically see) things and also each other could have been a major contributor to the present psychological state of affairs in this world as in, If our perspective of sight had been any different, our behaviour, our emotions, morality and dont know what else, might have been very different.

Recursion

At 22:00 hrs on 20th Jan 2010

The day, which in all respects had gone to the dogs, was thus salvaged:

For instance, I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think. There are the rushing waves ... mountains of molecules, each stupidly minding its own business ... trillions apart ... yet forming white surf in unison.
Ages on ages ... before any eyes could see ... year after year ... thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? ... on a dead planet, with no life to entertain.
Never at rest ... tortured by energy ... wasted prodigiously by the sun ... poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar.
Deep in the sea, all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves ... and a new dance starts.
Growing in size and complexity ... living things, masses of atoms, DNA, protein ... dancing a pattern ever more intricate.
Out of the cradle onto the dry land ... here it is standing ... atoms with consciousness ... matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea ... wonders at wondering ... I ... a universe of atoms ... an atom in the universe.

Richard Feynman

Random

One has finally realised that one's true purpose behind writing a blog is to take a break from all the self-pitying and self-loathing that one does all by oneself and to dish out the general air of gloom and doom in copious spoonfuls to anybody who dares to venture hither. It comes naturally to one. Well, to be honest, its an easy thing to do. Talking about inane philosophical abstractions , where one couldn't possibly go wrong or where the number of interpretations of the theme is exactly equal to the number of people who read it and where one could quickly hide one's stupidity under utterly ridiculous statements like 'Understanding the futility of everything makes everything worthwhile', is easy. For e.g "Kafka-esque" has come to be used to qualify almost all the actions of men from taking a shit to filling an application form to taking a ride in the PMT bus. Ofcourse who chooses what under this most abused theme varies greatly with ones nationality, marital status, job profile and not least of all, sexual orientation.

Welcome back

Finally got to watch some cricket over the week-end. Some traditional seam bowling from Chris Broad vs some swashbuckling batting from the calypso-est of them all - Ramnaresh Sarwan on a now-cloudy-then-bright good ol' english summers day.

Picture this. Ramnaresh Sarwan batting ( and how!!) on 96. With a short leg and a couple of fielders on the boundary line on the leg side, Chris Broad fires one bouncer after another at him in what was ultimately the day's most fascinating over. The first one, Sarwan ducks . On the second, he unleashes an almighty pull, actually a part-hook part-pull, which bisects with almost surgical precision, the two people on the boundary line and takes him to his much deserved 100. The third gets him on the helmet. The fourth and fifth, he just about manages to play it down under his feet. Predictable he may have been, but Broad bowls a sixth one on the trot, but this time a flat-out unplayable one and Sarwan, far more concerned about saving his neck, baloons it straight to the first slip.

And the whole while, one had Michael Holding talking one through the minutiae of good old seam bowling. He then goes on to tell you that one of the most fascinating aspects of the game is the the slowly but steadily developing contest between a batsman and a bowler who knows his bunny, when he sees one. Both of them are acutely aware of each other's rapidly ticking cricket brain and what follows is a fantastic cat-and-mouse game where each tries to out-think the other. The intensity is maintained for only about 4-5 overs, and may not even feature a single boundary or an appeal.

But what suspense! What drama!

Cricket is dead! Long live cricket!