Pride without Prejudice

Yesterday, while I was reading the reviews of the fourth day's play, one thing stuck out amongst the rest. It was a mail from an Indian cricket fan, in Australia, written at the time when India had slumped to 150/8 in the first innings at Calcutta. The girl wrote, with despair written all over the mail, that after the rout of the touring Indian team by the hands of the Aussies, she had to face a lot of humiliating remarks from her Aussie co-workers.
She had waited patiently, till the Aussie tour, to give them all a befitting reply.

Needless to say, she got little or no chance after the first test loss and now that India was tottering at Calcutta, there seemed to be none in the offing either. All that she asked from god was a drawn series.
Through all of yesterday, I could feel the pain that she must have undergone, thanks to the shoddy Indian showing. I kept thinking what was it to be an Indian cricket fan.

As it is there are a few things that the odd billion Indian population takes collective pride in. Cricket happens to be one of them, and cricketers, thus, become demigods. Seeing them fall from grace gives immense pain to every single individual. We curse the cricketers when they get involved in match fixing. We swear to never watch the team play again, but when the d-day arrives, we find ourselves glued to whatever gives us information about the match. Because we, as Indians, take pride in the game.

Today, the Aussies have been humiliated. Heck, we have mothered them. Shane Warne and McGrath have been reduced to first class bowlers and the Aussie batting has been exposed to the bone by a twenty year old. This is our moment of glory and for once we will mince no words even if it's at the cost of the Aussie pride. I will take a leaf out of Julia Roberts’s book and say what she said on getting the golden globe. "Oh good golly!" I'm just shamelessly filled with joy.

I can't help, but think of the girl, back in Australia. She must be waltzing away to glory now. True to the characteristic style of the shy protagonist of an Indian film, who after getting battered for the initial two and a half hours walks away with the girl!!!

Oh Eden! the garden of pleasure.

Win! at last or should I say loss.......finally! :-)
If you ask me, both the phrases give me equal amount of pleasure. Not only did we destabilize the throne of the erstwhile mighty Aussies, we did it in great style.
One hundred and seventy one runs win as against a ten wicket loss. We seem to have leveled the series, in all meanings of the word.

The match review column in rediff made an interesting observation, it had to do with the invincibility of a player or team and the myth/mystique that comes as a part of the package. I agree to it fully. Many a times, it so happens, that the teams go on winning almost habitually, till the time someone throws in a spanner in the victory march. Within no time the spell breaks. The invincible air disappears and the same team which boasts of demigods appears to be comprised of mere mortals, who can be beaten.
India, thanks to their unpredictability, does not really inspire enough confidence in me as a team who can perform the task of taming the Aussies (oh! and I would love to eat my words!). However, we have done this 'belittling the goliath' act earlier too! (remember '83 world cup and '85 World Series). So if we go on from here and win almost everything in sight, I wouldn't be much surprised, either.

That is akin to Gopichand winning the all England title. Hey that happened, didn't it?
Whatever happens, I am going to drink to this long awaited win, and drink silly!!!

15th August: New millennium.

It's 15th of August again, and we Indians are basking in the glory of having come 53 long years away from the days of British rule in 1947. A Golden Jubilee plus, in terms of the years our freedom has seen, but sadly that's all that remains to be a high point in the country's road towards progress. The question is, are we aware of all that has transpired in the past 50 odd years, or is it that we couldn't care less even if we were.

Bill Clinton so proudly exclaimed yesterday in the Democratic National Convention that "America, in the past eight years, has seen prosperity by choice and not by chance", and I was left to ask myself, will the largest democracy of this world ever have the luxury to enjoy prosperity, even by chance?

I remember having read somewhere that Winston Churchill once remarked (as an opposition candidate) that "Nothing would remain of this great country India, but a mass of warring tribes". He could see it, inspite of being a rank outsider. Alas, the future makers of our country, the men at helm, lacked his foresight. Today, the 'sovereign democratic republic' remains to be in the constitutional verbiage only. We are too busy with our petty regional identities to be able to rise above it and shine. Perhaps independence has found contorted manifestations, where we identify ourselves with fundamentalists. The secularism that we were so proud of dies a thousand deaths every time a Father Staines is burnt to ashes or a city takes to arms collectively against the shooting of a film.
Have we lost out on our sensibilities, or simply redefined them to suit our needs?

We sure can boast of a significant growth in a lot of areas. Our population has reached a billion, the illiteracy rate is growing, and inflation too is on the upside. Sadly much of the growth is in unwanted areas. Why are we, then, proud of another Independence Day? Do we need a prime minister, shouting from the top of Red fort to tell us what have been our achievements? What is it that we have achieved that we can proudly exhibit on another day of our Independence???

It's not that the achievements are non-existent. Only they are few and far. It's not that I have a personal vendetta against a country that I belong to and have spent my entire life in. It's the very fact that I take a lot of pride in it which makes me so bitter about it's shortcomings.

Success is always flaunted, it's the failures that, more often than naught, get missed out. Till the time we do not recognise these failures and make a sincere and conscious effort to uproot them completely, Independence Day will remain just another day for me.

Momentous but uneventful!

End of a dream

America to me existed in the songs of Paul Simon, architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and films of Steven Spielberg. I wanted to listen to the sounds that silence made here, meet Mrs. Robinson living next door and watch people playing guitar in the streets.
I found none here or you may say that I was a dreamer..
Little did I know that dreams get over when the night passes away and all that's left of them is a set of hazy images!

I have been in America for a week now, my first. There's a lot of silence but no sounds that excite me, I do not know who lives next door, upto the next mile and have heard no one singing 'Yellow Submarine' even on the radio !!
There's no indian food or should I say that there's no food worth eating, unless ofcourse, you can swear by the taste of a mac burger.
Welcome to the most powerful democracy of the world. Grin and bear it, options are few and far.. (do I sound like Agastya in English August ?)

They tell me (I am still catching up, you know) that Detroit is midwest country and thus there are no Meg Ryans here, nor any Tom Cruises. People weigh as much as a family in India and eat almost as much. A mushroom resembles a potato and a potato, a pumpkin. (thank god I haven't seen a pumpkin as yet) and before anyone sings praises of the agricultural advancements of the place, let me tell you, they all taste weird. Nothing close to what they are supposed to taste like !

There are no STD, PCOs (and believe me they are a gift of India to the world), no buses who stop at the wave of your hand (the closest is an 18 wheeler by Diamler Chryshler corp.) and absolutely no disorder. Infact most of the time I feel that I am in a hospital, the order here is so clinical.
Do I see a smile on the faces of those of you who've 'been here and done that' or are you already reaching for the escape button?

Cricket is a dream, soccer non existant and the american version of both of them, not my cup of tea. (that takes care of my professing to be a sports buff)
I'll will take a break as I need to go to the toilet, oops rest room (see I'm already learning :-)

P.S. I wrote this back in 2000 when I was had just arrived in the US. It makes interesting reading 'cause a lot of this stuff sounds puerile now. Some friends even call it the "rants of a FOB!"