Hit-wicket!!

Greetings!

This post is about cricket. No, not the the little green insect that goes chirpy -chirpy- cheep -cheep, but about the game. The Game...

Precautions:

1) Dosage: 1 paragraph at a time. Continuous reading of the post may cause violent behaviour (like wanting to kill the author)
2) Store the web page in a cool, dark, safe place, like err.. the junk mail folder.

3) If irritation and symptoms(like brain numbness) continue even a week after reading, please consult a physician or the local undertaker.

4) Keep out of the sight of children. I don't want little kids to be inspired by my writing and later ask me to author their school text-books.

5) If you like the game of cricket, then this post is recommended anyway. It will drive you so insane, that you may start finding even Duleep and Irani Trophy matches interesting.

6) If you don't like the game of cricket, even then the post is recommended for you. By the end of it, you'd wish that you had rather spent your time watching a game of cricket instead.

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Even if a space alien were to visit the Indian atmosphere, he/she/it would be overwhelmed by the following which the game of cricket gets in India. Visiting India and not recognizing the game of cricket is akin to going to Siberia and wondering if the white thing strewn all over the place is snow or salt. In a country, which presents a myriad, kaleidoscopic offering of people,cultures, religions and languages - cricket happens to be a single, unifying craze.

I was born a few months after Kapil Dev had held aloft the World Cup in 1983 , so unfortunately couldn't get to watch that epic Final match live in the stadium. My cricket crazy Dad was apparently hell-bent on naming me Kapil Dev, but relented only after my Mom dissuaded him from doing so. "What if he grows up to be a smuggler?" Mom is learnt to have asked Dad. "Would that name suit him then?" (I wonder how Parikshith Kumar would be a suitable name for a smuggler either, but then that is a different story.)

I too grew up with dreams of playing cricket for India. As a child, I too dreamt of adorning the Team India colors. Like any average teenaged boy in India, I too dreamt of playing cricket in front of packed-to-capacity crowds in large stadiums. I too dreamt of hitting big, huge sixes that would soar high into the skies, thud against Jupiter and fall back plonk down on the ground. I too dreamt of being a rich, sporting celebrity having endorsement deals worth millions of dollars and canoodling hot, smouldering babes, who were again worth a million dollars.

Unfortunately, many dreams go bust when you wake up and rub your eyes in the morning. My cricketing dream was also a similar one. I came to realize ( in my teens I think) that had it not been for my lack of skills in batting, bowling and fielding , I would have certainly made it to the Indian cricket team.

1) My batting: I had an elegant stance alright, and a stylish backlift to go with it. I used to execute my strokes with an almighty flourish of the bat. However, for all my panache and glory, whenever I hit a cover-drive or a square-cut, the ball never travelled a millimeter beyond silly-point fielder. So much for my ferocious hitting. Never the one to be coyed down, I switched over to bowling.

2) My bowling: I would've classified myself as an orthodox off-spinner. I had a classical high arm action, a decent wrist position, and a run-up to the crease that would have even had a Cheetah nodding its head in approval. Poetry in motion till now. However, there was a slight problem thereafter. Whenever I used to send down my off-spinners, the ball would always pitch two kilometers wide of the batsman. On either sides. And sometimes, my off-spinners would sail right over the batsman's head and land outside the opposite boundary rope. Just a tiddly little problem with my sense of direction, but the ball always spun as intended. I tried to reason with my coach, but he would hear none of it.

3) My fielding: My coach always made me field at the deep mid-wicket position. Not that I had a strong throwing arm or something, but he feared that my apathetic cricketing skills would spread to others like an infection. I still fielded in the deep with great fervor. However, there was one small problem. There was this all-girls school a few metres beyond the deep-midwicket boundary. Often in the middle of a match, when no one was watching, I used to quietly sneak out of the ground and visit the girls school. What do you expect? I was 16 years old, with freshly discovered hormones throbbing up and down inside me like curves of a sinusoidal wave. For all my effort, I did manage to befriend a pretty young girl from the school though. However, one day, my coach learnt about my escapade. When he came to know where the deep mid-wicket fielder had gone, he really blew a fuse. That was it... out of the team I went. I mean, do you believe that? I was debarred from cricket for bowling a maiden over!

I never had an opportunity to play competitive cricket after that. Unfortunately, studies took priority. But I should say that even though I was lacking in cricketing skills, I was never lacking in super- star quality and celebrity endorsements skills. What? You don't believe I have star endorsement power?! Let me dispel all your doubts, dear people. Make no mistake, I have the charm, sex appeal, stardom and celebrity endorsement power which would provide serious competition to the following Bollywood stars:

Tushar Kapoor and K.R.K (next to only S.R.K)..........


Johnny Lever................................... A.K Hangal

..... and these stars from the South Indian movie industry:

(T. Rajender, Jaggesh and Balakrishna )

.... and the following movie stars from the world of monkeys:

(James and Bond)

Well... what? You think there are no cinematic icons in the world of monkeys? Really? Then where do you think this one came from?

Sorry sorry.... I am digressing... This was a cricket post. So as I was saying, I couldn't make it to the Indian cricket team. But that hasn't stopped me from being one of the most fanatic followers of Indian and World cricket. I am not alone, there are millions of cricket fanatics spread across the length and breadth of the country.

I am sure many of you must have witnessed this craze first-hand. You may have also been a part of the craze. I am sure hundreds of marriages have broken down because the husband decided to stay at home and watch Bangladesh play Nicaragua rather than take wifey dear shopping. Also, millions of engineering students have flunked their University exams because they chose to watch a high-octane cricket series a week prior to their exams. You will meet people who wont remember what they had for breakfast, but would rattle off Sachin Tendulkar's statistics from an obscure series from the 1990's.

I am proud to be part of the cricket craze. The emotions it gives me and all other cricket fanatics can't be explained. I mean, I would have loved to explain, but India is playing SriLanka today. The match's about to commence and I gotta run to the television.

Will see you all later....

Until then,

With Love, Regards, Fours, and Sixes,

Parry.

Energy & Natural Resources Conservation Tips for Bachelors.

The story so far:

A brilliant, charismatic high school student with oodles of passion towards Science, finds his customized enthusiasm towards 'Energy & Natural Resource Conservation' sniggered at and scorned by teachers, scholars, ducks and dinosaurs alike. Undeterred, he returns years later, to broadcast his unsolicited opinion on his pet topic to innocent people. The abstruse story now continues... (To read the complete & interesting background from my previous post, click here )

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Greetings, Dear Earthlings

I am back. As promised in my previous post, I am here to present to you the spellbinding , Nobel deserving article called ' Energy and Natural Resource Conservation Tips for Bachelors' . Many eyebrows were raised when I chose bachelors as a target audience for this mundane scientific topic. Why bachelors? Well why not. Bachelors (being one myself) , are arguably one of the finest specimens of homo-sapiens ever created. With their hearts at the right place and hands scratching the wrong places and with their simple, minimalistic but amazingly functional lifestyle... bachelors would make one hell of a case study. Bachelors are an endangered species... they are endangered because they become extinct when they get married. Therefore, without losing much time, they are in need of a messiah like me to enlighten them on the importance of Energy and Natural resources conservation. Ok, without any more ado, here are the much coveted tips for the bachelor brethren all over the world. I hope this will bring an increased degree of efficiency in their day-to-day chores :

1) Conserve Water

a) Efficient use of shirts and trousers: Do not hesitate to wear the same shirt/trouser thrice or four times before the next round of wash. If a colleague at work points out a stain on your garment due to its repeated use, you can easily get away by blaming the Government!!. Here's how:

Your friend: " Hi, dude... you've got a stain on your shirt"

You : " Huh? A stain? Where? "

Your friend: " Right there, at the back of the shirt, just below the collar. Yeah, there"

You (feign surprise) : " Oh no... Man, I had just freshly washed and ironed this shirt only today. Damn, this stain! Now how did it happen? I think it happened while travelling to office this morning...

Your friend : " Oh....... "

You: " I think it happened while coming up the elevator. Or, I guess this must have happened while travelling in the crowded bus today morning. Don't know how. You see this bloody morning crowd and rush........

That's it... The tone for your rhetoric has been set. Go on and blame the crowd, blame the traffic , blame the system, blame the Government. By the end of it , your friend would have forgotten that he had pointed out a stain in the first place!

b) Efficient use of socks: The same pair of socks can be used for two days consecutively without any fear or worry of causing plague at your workplace. Then, you turn them inside out, strategically spray deodorant on them and wear it on two more occasions. To be more efficient, consider wearing only one sock at a time. People, as they claim themselves, are so busy running the rat race these days, that they don't even have the time to look up at your faces and utter a word of Hello. Heck, they don't have the time to even smile at you. Then, why do you think would they care to look at your feet and bother to count the number of socks you are wearing? In the rare case that someone does count and point out, calmly tell them it is the fashion trend of the season - the latest haute couture straight out of the Milan Fashion Week.

c) Efficient usage of bed sheets: After six months, turn your bedsheets inside out and continue using for the rest of the year. What’s the point of washing them regularly anyway? You’ll always be fast asleep on your sheet and wont be in your senses to decide if its clean or unclean.

d) Always buy jeans that are black or dark blue. You can play Kabaddi in them during weekends and still wear them to work next day. Wash them only during the monsoon. ( Wear your jeans, lay face down on the road during heavy rainfall and stick your bum out. That should take care of the wash)

e) The natural ground-water levels have been receding with alarming pace and would continue to diminish further unless we have a remedial action implemented in place. So when thirsty, drink beer. Three cheers for water conservation. Hic! Hic! Huray.

2) Conserve Fuel

a) Conserve LPG: Avoid using LPG to cook your Maggi Noodles. Instead, use boiled water from your geyser to cook noodles. You pay an extra 200 rupees every month as electricity charges to your useless landlord anyway, so why not make full use of it? Make no mistake, it is important to conserve electricity also ( I will come to this in a minute) . However, using boiled water from your geyser to cook noodles should provide you with ample motivation to take a bath everyday. Therein lies the advantage. Remember: No bath for the day = No boiling hot water for the day = No cooking noodles and you go hungry for the day. Marvellous, isn't it? :-)

b) Conserve Petrol: The next time your girlfriend asks you to take her shopping, tell her that you’ve watched Aamir Khan's Ghajini (or Christopher Nolan's 'Memento') and the contagious short-term memory loss has been passed on to you through the movie screen. Tell her that you've now forgotten how the gear shift pattern of your bike works and so she will have to ride the bike herself thru rush-hour traffic if she wants to. (even if it is a Pulsar 250 CC) . If she says no, yell out ‘ Hurray’ and go walking hand-in-hand with her. Fuel conserved. Romance observed.

d) Use the word ‘bullshit’ with respect. Please remember that it can be a useful source of renewable energy ( As in gobar gas plants/bio gas plants) . Of course, if you feel that my blog is bullshit, then it is a different case altogether.

e) Consider the option of car-pooling while traveling to and from work. If your meager salary doesn’t allow you to buy a car, then don’t be disheartened – use a bullock cart as your transport. The advantages of traveling to office by a bullock cart are two pronged.- 1) It saves petrol 2) Since the bull is now your chauffeur, all the bullshit accrued from the length of the journey can be used as a renewable source of energy.

3) Conserve Power:
It is important to be abstemious in our consumption of electricity. The following tips, are thus in order:

a) Turn off the lights: Switching off lights when not in use is an important must-do item on any energy conserver's list. Remember to draw inspiration from pop-star Nelly Furtado's hit song 'Turn off the light'. The lyrics go something like:

"They say that girl ya know she act too tough tough tough

Well it's till' I turn off the light, turn off the light

They say that girl you know she act so rough rough rough

Well it's till' I turn off the light, turn off the light"....

Do you think the pop-star was highlighting foreplay, seduction or any other related naughty activity in her song? Heck no, she was hinting at energy conservation!

b) Fans & AC's: If you think you are naturally cool, then you don't need to use fans or AC's.

c) Turn off monitors: At work, turn off your PC monitors while not in use. Preferably, keep them turned off all day. If your manager or supervisor points out that you are doing no work, then plainly tell him/her that you are doing a service to the planet by conserving energy. Then go to your manager’s desk , and switch off his/her monitor too. Spread awareness.

The benefits of energy conservation doesn't end here, my dear bachelors. In fact, gigabytes after gigabytes can be written and documented about this noble cause. For example, you can save paper by bringing home all your useless project documents from work and using them as tissue papers. You can plant trees to ensure that romantic couples from your next generation could steal private, intimate moments hiding behind them.

Therefore, my dear men, arise! , awake! , save! , conserve! . The time to start is n*o*w.

My Best Wishes are always with you. You will certainly need it :-)

Parry.

My Love for Science, Energy conservation and other hocus-pocus.

Twelve years ago, I was a high-school student. Ta da!!! This is not meant to be the day's breaking news, so let us proceed with the story. As a student, Science used to be a pet subject for me. I always used to score the second- highest in Science tests in my class. Yes... consistently. However, every single time I had to contend being the second highest scorer because I always used to end up making genuine, inadvertent and humane errors while copying answers from the class topper who used to sit next to me. I would have loved to top someday, but simply couldn't bring myself to stop making those errors - so resigned myself to being the second best in Science. Of course this spectacular achievement of mine was limited to class tests , unit tests , surprise tests, and other tiddly little farts of examinations only. For the bigger fiascos like the Mid-terms and the Final Examinations, our topper used to sit far away from me ( courtesy roll-number wise seating ) . So my scores in the bigger exams used to be second-best alright, but second from the bottom! Tragic - these roll number wise seating I must say. As a derived decision, I have decided that when I become a father in the years to come, I will never name my child with the starting letter 'A' . These A's ( the Abhijits, the Abhisheks, the Aditis for example) always end up being roll number 1 or roll number 2 in their classes, and always have to face the irony of beating seated in the front bench during exams. Poor souls! They cant even copy comfortably during their exams... neither from chits nor from classmates. I do not want my child to curse me in the examination hall for naming him/her with 'A'. Maybe I'll name him/her as Yuvaraj/Yuvika/Uday etc. to be safe. Anyways lets come back to the point ( remember there was one? )... the point about Science.


Even during my mass Ctrl+C - Ctrl+V scientific days from high school, there used to be an area of study in Science which used to raptly interest me. " Energy & Natural Resources conservation and Environment protection". For some untold, unexplained reason, my unbridled passion for this area of science would come alive when I went about answering related questions in my exam paper ( without Mr. Topper's help) . For example:


Question: Explain how Gobar Gas ( cow dung) can be a useful natural source of fuel/energy?
My answer: Oh what a bullshit question!

Of course my teachers never understood my passion for this wonderful topic. Time and again, red-inked exclamations, huge zeroes in the margin, summons from the Principal and complaint letters to my Mom were the usual courses of action that followed. Understandably (and I know you dear people may have understood by now) , this meant that a feeling of angst remained confined in me throughout my formative years of learning Science.

I have now grown up to become a software engineer. But my passion towards my old pet area of science still burns away quietly in a remote corner of my heart- like an old flame of a bunsen burner ( similar to the way it burns all day in a chemical lab when the lab assistant forgets to turn it off) . Through the revered forum of 'Nonsense Aplenty' , I now have the opportunity to rekindle my old flame and dish out unsolicited , personalized opinion on 'Energy and Natural Resources conservation' to anyone who's willing to listen without making loud yawning noises.

All through the years I have been an avid follower of white papers and research documents on Energy conservation and Environment. I am grateful to the authors of these papers because they've cured me of my insomnia ( to such an extent that I now find it impossible to wade through a paragraph without falling asleep) . But we cant blame the authors really. I am sure these papers are all written by well-learned and highly intelligent scholars with a Ph.D and no less. Whilst I am no one to contest the profound knowledge and good intentions of these scholars, I am willing to bet my monthly salary of 1 rupee 50 paisa on the fact that these scholars are among the most boring human beings who've walked the planet. I am sure that an overwhelming majority of these scholars must have been those typical poker faced, bespectacled University super-toppers who, without fail , warmed the first benches of their Science class every day. You know, the kind of super-studious types who used to jot down every single word that the Professor uttered in class. ( I am sure even when the Professor sneezed, these people probably noted it down too as 'Haackshooo!!' ) . Anyway the point is, their boring personalities reflect in their super boring research papers. And their super-boring research papers drives super passionate people like me to coma.

Lets take these scholars' research paper on 'Global Warming' as a random example. Before falling asleep, I read their take on the causes of global warming - the regulars - emission of carbon dioxide and other anthropogenic gases, deforestation, and a woeful tale on human pollution. But they dont know the real cause of Global Warming. I know. According to me, the real reason for global warming is the increase in the number of sexy and hot girls around the world. Yes you have read it right! Sexy, hot, smouldering babes are the real reason for global warming. Rising hemlines, plunging necklines, shrinking bikinis and disappearing thongs have all collectively contributed to 'global warming'. And add to the list of causes a decrease in gym membership fees leading to more toned, hot bodies world over. Will the University scholars agree to this basic cause? No sir! They continue to write boring research papers. And what do passionate science students do with the research papers? They take print-outs and use them to wrap vada-pav's. Sad!

Its time to do it my way. The time has come to lay out my old high-school passion for "Energy and Natural Resource Conservation" in electronic text. In my next post, I will be publishing a ground-breaking, path-finding, eye-opening and a Nobel-prize deserving article called "Energy & Natural Resources Conservation Tips for Bachelors" Now what the heck has this to do with Bachelors? And why choose them as a target audience? I will explain.

I hope I have enlightened you to some degree. I can visualize you people running to the medic to buy strips of Saridon and Aspirin by now. But that's OK. My Good Wishes, as always are with you.

Love you all,
Parry.