Quo Vadis?

This post is about something that polarizes people coming from Tamilnadu. This is the famous pongal. I am not talking about the festival, there are no doubts about it, Pongal is the most important Tamil festival. This post is about the breakfast staple “ven pongal” or kara pongal that is loved and hated equally.  I am on the side that loves it with a caveat. I prefer to eat pongal with sambar and at least coconut chutney, a vadai is a bonus. After all how can you eat just a gooey, almost tasteless mash? So if it is breakfast in a restaurant I go for a pongal vadai combination. This does not seem unusual to many unless I am driving on a road trip. I have seen eyebrows raised when I opt for this combination during a breakfast halt. The infamous after effect of feeling drowsy after a plate somehow does not work for me. I love pongal and I enjoy it on road trips. At home knowing my preferences sambar & chutney are usual with pongal. Pongal is an essential carb loading ...

(Disclaimer: After a long break I have used a style of some random incidents tied by a thin thread in a post again.  If you do not find any thread, then it is an unconnected random post.) Irom Sharmila or the Iron Woman of Manipur is homeless and friendless now that she has decided to give up her fast of 16 years. Apparently the government which was force feeding her through that nasal tube is also no longer interested in looking after her.  For a lady who was deemed as an international icon it is shocking that she is now unwanted. Why did public opinion change so fast? Why can a lady who was selfless not choose to focus on herself? If she has conceded defeat in her fight is this the way losers are treated? This constant focus on winning and disparaging the losers is now becoming the favourite armchair sport of the day especially since the Olympics is into its 5 th day today. After all the expectations when we see India losing people are now trolling, abusing, moc...

The story of my second race. I completed my second half marathon yesterday. This was part of the Chennai Trail Marathon 2014 held near the Chembarambakkam lake. This event is different from other marathons because it is a trail marathon and by trail it means you run where there may be no road just a trail. Having signed up for this run, I was determined to train for it and I managed to complete a 21 two weeks before the event. As it was a LSD I was not looking at the time;  I did a strong first half and took it easy on the return, however I felt that I was in good form for CTM despite never running on the trail before. Few of the others in my team had done a practice run on the route earlier but I missed it for various reasons. Work and travel ensured that my training took a backseat and then when I least expected it I got a viral infection that forced me to rest just before the run. So on the eve of the run I was out of practice and the illness had left me drained. ...

I have started walking daily after so many broken resolutions. Actually I have completed the 21 days of habit forming schedule and so walking has become routine. Living in Anna Nagar with so many parks can be a blessing and with a park very close to home I have made it my morning haunt these days. A worrying BMI, a family history of diabetes were some of the reasons for this walk routine but among them is my desire to complete a 10KM run in the next Chennai marathon. I remember completing the 5 KM run many years ago and never got around to it again since and each year I resolve to do it next year and this year it seems I will do it. I always enjoyed running and mix my walk with short runs aiming to build up stamina before I go for the longer runs. Sadly I have not been able to find newbies like me in the neighbourhood as yet to train together. I realized among the many benefits of exercise is time with myself. The early morning cool breeze and just you pushing yourself to th...

A post by Hemalatha while being undeniably good, intentionally or otherwise caused some very interesting people to comment on it. The comments were funny but they also make me worry at the kind of people my daughter will be exposed to one day. It came down to clothes that women wear which somehow became the root cause of all evil in the world. One interesting conclusion was that Indian men are horrible. But what about all the decent men who are there? Yes, there are decent men who respect women and support them in their endeavours. So we can rephrase to some Indian men are horrible because they do not understand themselves and so they cannot understand women. Cut to the Wimbledon finals, both were depressingly one sided and the winners caused one nation to go into ecstasy when their adopted son brought back the glory after 77 years and the other winner received scorn. Marion Bartoli did not look graceful on court as her movement was ungainly but she promptly dispatched the cha...

Now that the IPL trophy has moved to Kolkota and last heard is in the hands of Didi, I thought I might skip this post, however considering the antics that followed the win I must write about the final. Actually CSK has done itself and the rest of us fans and non fans alike a great dis-service by losing the final. I thought only Navjot Sidhu and maybe Danny Morrison are permitted tomfoolery in the vicinity of a cricket match but now we have SRK. So captivated by the match was SRK that he forgot to dye his stubble and he forgot that there is some decorum expected of him each time. Makes you wonder why folks go and see his movies after this. And now maybe Didi will paint Kolkota purple to celebrate this momentous event. Damn you CSK.Why did you not do the little things right that could have left us savouring an expected win and celebrating it well just the usual way? Let me see a few things could have changed the match:   Over no. 20 of the CSK innings was a major anticlimax...

The most talked about bat in town will be the Mongoose though it has broken many hearts after the Delhi sojourn. The CSK self combustion is worth a separate post but I’m not interested in debating something that has been done to death. But I cant resist offering some scraps of opinion to the CSK management: - Murali Vijay is an opener and if you want an anchor or someone to face hostile bowling it is he, if he is not doing that don’t let him do anything else or he will drop catches and then the match a la Gibbs - Parthiv and Raina should expand their strokes to more straight bat hits, horizontal swipes when they click look nice otherwise look terrible Anyway I digress this post is not entirely about the IPL. You can’t ignore a gorilla that commands prices of 3200 crores for just the rights to two teams. I predict that the phenomenon may implode soon in its excesses as already I am stifling a few yawns during the matches. Also Lalith Modi is getting too big and I am surprised that there...

As promised, I will start with the IPL. This season looks to be more balanced and matches will be more evenly contested making for interesting viewing. The sore points that stick out and make the viewing painful in no particular order and my suggestions to improve viewer delight: • The time outs that border on insanity just to accommodate ads fool no one, if it is tactical then here is my option, offer both captains a time out of 5 minutes max that they may take at their convenience like few other sports. Then it will become tactical as a captain may use it to change or break the opponents’ momentum and will add a new twist to the bikini version of cricket. • We don’t want Ms Zinta mouthing shit every time a wicket falls, for variety she can maybe try some other profanity that cannot be lip read by the viewers • The extraaa long discussions before, in between and after the match with a bunch of old wise men in Hindi bore you to death despite all their words of wisdom. Frankly these peo...

SMS laughs Knock! Knock! Who is it? Misbah… Misbah who? Mis bah 5 runs! Misbah thought he was sending the ball into no man’s land. Little did he know that there is a Mallu in every corner of the world. PS: Misbah played very well and thanks to him we won both matches.

I'm still celebrating a famous victory of the Indian cricket team at the oval. After a superb team effort built on a fabulous opening partnership from the superb partnership firm Tendulkar and Ganguly, the icing on the cake was laid by one young spark. Take a bow Robin Uthappa!!!! You deserve all the applause.

If you have seen my earlier posts, you would have seen the playing area and the rules that held fort back then. This post is about my contribution to street cricket. If you have read Part 1 carefully, you would have realized that I was the ball boy, being the youngest and also because of my comparatively limited cricketing skills. All that changed one eventful day when something dramatic happened. My Chithappa (uncle, more specifically husband of my mum’s younger sister) who was then in Bombay sent me an amazing gift by courier appreciating my good performance in school. Let me take a detour from this to tell you till that fateful day, the cricket bats used were generally the flat painted ones made of country wood, which surprisingly could be bought off a kitchen vessels store where they would be stored in an oversized bucket. For those who could afford them good cricket bats from sports shops made of ordinary wood and passed of as oil bats. These bats often had no balance and the ones...

This is the landmark for our area, the Housing Board Arch. It is not called Sunnambu whatever, but the place is called Pattinampakkam or ForeShore Estate. Yet another landmark of the area, Our Lady of Guidance Church also popularly called Lazarus Church (which is a misnomer). The car festival of this church reminds you of a village fest. Not 10, Downing Street but 10, Malaiappan Street. ; ) Taken from my car, this is about the spot where the stumps were drawn on the ground near the manhole. This house in the foreground was the boundary, you get 4 if the ball travels to it on the ground, a 6 if it reaches through the air and you get OUT if it goes over the house. Also it is the end of the game, if you did not have a spare ball.

This was my pin code for over a decade during my schooling days. And this is also a tribute to the street cricket (SC) that was wonderfully picturized in the movie by the same name. My fond memories of SC are as follows: The playing area: My earliest memories of SC in Chennai 28 were in front of my then residence No. 10, Malaiappan Street. Our playing area was the narrow street that would be around 30 feet approximately. As the street was narrow the game could be either playing along the length of the street or the breadth of the street depending on the number of players available. As the youngest of the street then I would eventually be the ball boy, so the following is my spectator view of the sport The kit: The playing kit included two bats (whenever available) and a constant supply of rubber balls or if we had enough money tennis balls. As the street was of asphalt we had to avoid stumps so as to not hammer the stumps into the road and breaking them, however on those odd occasion...

Rain rain don’t go away Come again every day India playing overseas test today Rain rain don’t go away. After sneaking away with a test draw gifted by the rain Gods probably yielding to the prayers of the millions (the blue billion was just hype, like the team), who after yet another disappointing performance realized that a miracle was in order to save us from more embarrassment. So with an amazingly resolute effort by Dhoni, the 11th man Sreeshanth (no dancing this time) and the 13th man the rain God, India got a honourable draw. So what about the 12th man? He with the other team members was busy singing the song mentioned above!!

This Sunday there was an overdose of good sporting action on the sports channels, notably the ESPN Star Sports duo. After several hours of mind numbing re-runs of the precious few India victories on the cricket field it was a real pleasure to watch three good matches of three different sporting disciplines. 1) The Afro Asian Cup match three : For a tournament that was held with the grandiose promise of “Cricket for Unity” to raise funds for the development of Africa cricket, I wonder how much money was actually raised judging by the sparse crowd that turned up for all the matches and near absence of advertisements that indicated acute apathy to a “showpiece event”. The fact that many of the “superstars” were absent did not rob the final match (in fact the entire tournament) of some thrilling moments. After Shaun Pollock came so agonizingly close to winning one match single handed, the third match was played purely for African pride having already lost the series. The African skipp...

It is finally over. We are neither buying a DTH system or a set top box at home. The dilemma was haunting dad and me for a while now. Both these systems had their own sets of pros and cons going for them however in the end the need for them has evaporated into thin air. The day is 26th of March 2007 and all those who had woken upto the shocking for some, expected for many news that the “men in blue” have crashed out of the World Cup 2007 in the first round. Carrying the hopes of a billion might be stretching it toooooooooooooooo far but it was inspired copyrighting of some bright spark handling the Pepsi ad account. But these men did have the hopes and aspirations of many at least a few millions. Starved of quality sporting achievements except a few like Vishwanathan Anand the current Numero Uno of the chess world and the over hyped Sania Mirza we have very few to actually delight in. The new stars in the horizon from the golfing and other less glamorous sports are slowly making their ...

At a recent office party a couple of days ago, an outgoing senior of the bank in his farewell speech said the above mentioned. It was probably one of the highlights of the evening. The usual meet, drink, dance, eat, talk kind of office party that I generally avoid as I don’t drink and so free booze never excited me and the fact that I abhor cigarette smoke. Anyway the fun event of the evening apart from the DJ and his brand of Hindi music was a catwalk that made most of us including me to split up into teams and strut on stage to the tunes of the DJ with a 10 minute preparation. My team had 2 women (very unremarkable looking types, even though one was attempting to look sexy and generally failing) and a huge bunch of the typical non model type guys you can think of. The sex appeal was generally well distributed among the other 3 teams. So to suit our image we went on stage with a tapori style, you know the rolled up sleeves and kerchiefs around arms, necks and everywhere, messed up hai...