Plight of the Indian Moon

On 27^th August, whole Cricketing world celebrated centenary of THE Don, Sir Donald George Bradman, the man who ended his career 60 years ago but even now each and every person who has even a rudimentary knowledge of Cricket knows name of the person.

Ponting, said on the occasion that he is much greater than Phelps, he could only manage one more gold than the second person but Bradman’s almost double the second person, but what about the person who was exceptional by even his standards, doesn’t he  deserve some mention anywhere ,any time?

I am talking about Dhyan Chand, THE HOCKEY MAGICIAN, he has been the only Numero Uno, India has ever produced. Even though I am a devotee of the God, Sachin but he isn’t no Numero Uno, he and Lara were always considered the best batsman in 90s, in 2000s came Ponting, then even Dravid but 60 years after Dhyan Chand’s career finished, nobody has seen any anything which comes even close to him, he was , is and will always remain exceptional. He is the magician of Hockey.

While growing up, I listened to some stories that many times during matches; his Hockey sticks were replaced by Opposition teams believing he had some glue on his stick. He gave India 3 Gold Medals, numerous records and uncountable moments to cherish which I don’t think any other person must have managed since then, in return what India gave him was, a death in anonymity and neglect. The authorities couldn’t care less about the person who shone like a “Chand” in the sky and a nationalist who rejected Hitler’s proposal of a much higher post in German Army because he had to play for India and no other country.

200 runs on a tour is an average for some Indian Cricket players these days, what do you call a person who scored more than 200 goals on a tour? I don’t think you can think of any other adjective than The Dhyan Chand.

I saw many images of the celebrations which happened in Australia on the centenary of the Don but I don’t seem to recall any images of any such celebration happening 3 years back in 2005, on the centenary of Dhyan Chand.

All this can be defended by people saying that Hockey has no market these days and since this is a money hungry world so nobody would care about him. I was shocked at seeing he didn’t get Bharat Ratna, I was almost sure that this guy would have got a Bharat Ratna, Lata Mangeshkar got it. What has she done to make our country proud on the international scene?  Agreed  she has provided entertainment to generations of people in India, easing their lives in some way but isn’t there anything as National Honour, National Glory? Are all these things seriously an issue of past, how can you not recognize this person’s achievements? He got Padma Vibhushan which many people have got

Even after all this has happened, we still ask questions, Why doesn’t India win in Olympics? Why do we even question? Isnt the answer quite obvious? We just don’t know how to respect our sports person. We are just a county of lazy brainy sleuths who can sit in chairs, type all this rubbish, talk all day long, give our opinion on each and every thing (which I am doing right now), fight with people on petty issues but don’t dare to take action when it comes upon our country. After all this we blame China for acquiring our land, Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism while we ourselves forget about all such things as soon as possible and are ready to be fu**ed again. This is getting diverted from the topic, so lets finish this.

Once again, I hope that not on 100^th Birthday but may be on some other occasion Indian Govt decided to honour the man posthumously. Agreed, his birthday is celebrated as Sports Day but what has been done to publicise this day. Atleast Educational Institutes should celebrate their Sports Day on this date and try to remember the great man but I am very curious about knowing whether people even know the existence of a day known as Sports Day, while you will never forget V-Day, Friendship Day and even obnoxious days like Rose Day, Chocolate Day and what not!

Btw, I am not sure many people know why he is Dhyan “Chand”. So I thought of sharing this, This was a name given by his first Coach who was so impressed by his play that he said “Tu  Chand ki tarah Chamkega” and hence we had the name Dhyan Chand.

One of the most memorable dedication to the guy was given by the people of Vienna where there is a statue of the man with a hockey stick and having 4 hands, to specify the extra ordinary skills of the man. While in India, in my 21 years of existence, having visited almost all the major cities, I have never ever saw a statue of Dhyan Chand.

And still we dare to ask Questions!!

Old People

Old people are a funny lot, they are supposed to be unreasonable, close minded, frustrating to talk to and out of our league but they are wonderful, they have stories innumerable, they have seen things so different. They were here when there was no electricity, no telephones. They have lived the life close to the soil while we are just getting further and further away with each passing year and each growing generation.

The incidents of their life which they recount don’t seem like real happenings, rather they seem to be the stuff of stories. It makes you think as if you are sitting in front of Premchand who is telling you some new story which he has constructed just now about the rural India or as if you are seeing the life shown in Do Beegha Zameen , or as if you are being told the story by some person who rode with Kishore Kumar in Chalti Ka Naam Gadi.

There are many common stories which all the grannies tell children, like the value of one paisa at that time, how they could buy so much stuff in something as ridiculously small as 1 paisa and now even 10 Rs seems like just another note to us. There are stories about the games they used to play, how they used to run around in farms, eating fruits from here and there.

I just wanted to share some of the interesting things I have heard.

The first one is about my Nanaji (maternal Grand Father), supposedly once when Gandhiji came to Agra, Gandhiji touched his feet, now my nanaji was 61 years younger than the man but actually what hapepened was, in the excitement of seeing The Man, he somehow climbed the train and was dangling in a very odd position seeing which Gandhiji , himself an old and frail man, caught him by his legs and with the help of others pulled him down. Now that is One Huge Achievement!! 😛

I have my nani, telling me tales about the father of her Grandfather(which would mean 6th generation from me 😛 ), who was a judge, which must have been a huge thing at that point of time for an Indian, it feels so great, you feel as if you yourself are travelling back into time and meeting those people and seeing them live their life.

Then there is a series of tales which my mausaji tells me, he is also quite old, he is retired so he can comfortably come in the category of old people. He tells me about the times when electricity was not so common in houses and only a rich person got a connection from the electricity pole to his people and other people just waited for such a rich person to come and be their Messiah because bringing the wiring from pole to homes was a very costly affair which only a few could afford. He also told me about his studies and how till his 10^th class, the measurements used to be in FPS and not in MKS system which seems such a odd thing to us in this age.

Another interesting thing which he told me was about the share of Brahmins in education at that point, now you can find Brahmins all over and I was really shocked to hear from him that during his childhood most of the Brahmins were poor and couldn’t afford such education and most of the places you could see the children of rich Baniyas.

It always feels as if you are browsing through a book of history just that the book is giving you the comfort of listening to it, rather than reading it, thereby making it less boring than usual. I always hope that I continue to have such experiences in future with these old people, so that I can learn more and more about how India and life in India was in those days.

In same sense, it is always a pleasure to talk to alumni, knowing about their version of IIIT, the state of IIIT in the days when I was a young kid in school. The people who made IIIT,  people who have been instrumental in shaping IIIT. I feel, the older a college starts growing, the less influence people have on the  culture and name of an institute.

Bloggers’ Day is here!!

Ya, finally the day is here, the day for which I have sent so many mails. The day of celebration of Blogging in IIIT.

I have been preparing for this day since the last few days, haven’t written any posts even though I had my ideas clinging to my mind but I wanted to do a BLOGATHOM today and I am all set to go.

Well let’s hope I can do this BLOGATHOM today.

For the first time, I am not writing posts for comments or hits, it is for a purpose, atleast I have to do something for the initiative I have taken. I know it would have meant more hits and comments (which has historically been one of my prima focus) had I written these posts over a period of time but sometimes the importance of things change.

Update: Written 3 posts as of yet, lets see how many more I can write.

Update2: Net in unbelievably bad in my room, havnt been able to see the Create New Post since yesterday night 😦 Of all days this had to happen today… Why God?? Why??

FInally net is working, I will start posting now.. 🙂

IIIT Bloggers’ Meet

Finally we had the Bloggers’ Meet on 25^th August, that is Yesterday. After all those repeated mails and so many reminders, we were expecting quite a decent crowd in the meeting. I had expected that we would have atleast 10-15 people from every UG batch coming to the meet, atleast wondering about what the buzz is all about. But, to the chagrin of all of us organizers, the response was not enthusiastic enough.

Wise people have always said, Be satisfied with what you get, that’s what we are doing. I wouldn’t say that the no was good but I would say it was ok, considering the blogging situation in IIIT. There were about 5-6 UG2 guys and a similar number of UG1 ad 3 M. Tech people, so all in all 15 new people.  Not to my surprise, there was a dismal attendance from UG3, 2 people who stayed through the meet while 2-3 people had come for some technical meet, they also attended the meet for some time. Though I am not much disappointed by this, even we are more interested in UG2 and UG1 people taking up blogging, coz guys in 3^rd and 4^th year have been here long enough to be inspired or made to start something new. Again, as expected the maximum attendance was from our batch. There was only one alumnus, Devansh Sir. Btw Abbulu, this is bad!!!

So coming to the meet, it was a nice affair in all. I don’t know about others but I sure enjoyed it. The meeting started about 30-45 minutes according to Indian timing. We started the meeting with me blabbering something about Blogging in IIIT, telling guys about Blogroll (Thanks a lot SMR!! You are a God send for us Bloggers), easily the best thing ever to happen to IIIT Bloggers,IIITBuzz, the next best thing, which is succeeded by the controversial IIIT Post. Also telling people about some of the successful bloggers of IIIT and showing them a list of all the bloggers from diff batch.

It was followed by Maroo, talking about things like Why Blog?? Qualities of a good blog!! And also spoke about Blogging Etiquettes. Got to agree, it was quite good and people were listening with rapt attention to all the points he had prepared.

Then we had Kulbir talking about his Blog and all the financial benefits he had as a result of writing the blog. Never knew he was this rich. Come on Kulbir you owe us a party for earning sooooo much.

After this we had Sashidhar, speaking about his blog, reasons for him taking up blogging. His speech had all the people reeling in laughter. Best part was when he forgot a point and took out a paper in which he had written all this, and after reading it, once he started speaking, Again forgot what he was speaking.

Then we had the “60 Seconds TO Fame”, ala Indi Bloggers meet Hyderabad chapter.

After all this we had the best part of the meet, when we opened each others blogs and started marofying each other’s. It was quite fun and again in this part Sashidhar took the cake, with his awesome poetry, and Jimmi’s comment on the post was added to the fun, you could feel his frustration in his comment. 😛 This post of him was also liked a lot, specially the first and third pics 😛

After having this fun for some time, finally it started raining and we had to leave 😦

Finally, I don’t know about others, but I sure enjoyed a lot in the meet. We have also taken the email ids of interested people and we will be holding the Bloggers’ Club meeting some time sure, just waiting for some blogging activity to start in IIIT.

Desperately waiting for 30^th August, I hope the “Seniors” ( !Alumni) don’t betray us on that day, sun rahe hain na Pati Sir??? 😉

Song of The Day: – The 59^th Street Bridge Song by Simon & Garfunkel

PS1:- Simon & Garfunkel are totally awesome.
PS2:- Got a new External HDD, 360 GB. Now “delete” button will be a thing of past.
PS3:- Why is it so hot these days??
PS4:- India’s most successful Olympics come to an end with China pwning rest of the world.
PS5:- Waiting for this weekend, Wanna see Rock On!! Has rock culture finally arrived in India?? Let’s see
PS6:- Btw what the hell happened to Blogroll :((

Blog on IIIT

Bloggers Day

Disappointed by the complete absence of junior students of college from the blogosphere, be it reading or writing. We the bloggers of UG2K5 , the “Blogging Batch” of IIIT today held a meeting to discuss ways to increase the awareness among people and encourage atleast a few non-bloggers to turn into bloggers. Almost all the active bloggers of our batch were present and it was quite a fruitful session with a horde of ideas being churned out in the meet. Lets hope that the efforts we take are transformed into activity and we can see more and more bloggers keeping the flag of blogging flying up and high once we leave the college.

Quite a few interesting ideas come up, the two most important ones being, all the IIITians must have got a mail from me regarding this.

a)  Bloggers Day – Starting from this year we will be celebrating 30^th august as the Bloggers’ day in IIIT. For this we need the help of all the bloggers of IIIT, we urge all the bloggers (active & the dormant ones too) to atleast write a post on this day to mark the revival (hopefully)of blogging culture in IIIT. We can make it a IIIT blogathon, everybody doing their bit to promote this day. For this we also need the help of all the alumni and I hope that you guys would also appreciate our effort and try to make this a successful event.

b)  Bloggers Meet – On 25^th August, we are planning to hold a bloggers meet where we will try and encourage the people to come out of their shells and blog and blog and blog. We would like to introduce atleast a few people to this wonderful world of blogosphere. The point is not only about blog writing, the people these days are not even reading blogs. There used to be many people who though didn’t write posts but were always active readers and commentors but nowadays this is not to be seen. Even a blog like IIITPost is getting comments only from the alumni and 4^th years that’s it. I haven’t seen any guy from 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd year commenting on it. Coming to the writing part, I can only see one active bloggers from a combined population of more than 500 people in 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd years which is an indication of the sorry state of affairs in IIIT.
The meeting also saw the formation of Bloggers Club in IIIT with the following people as its founding members.
Aniket
Anupama
Bhargav
Chand
Gaurav
Himank
Karan
Kulbir
Maruti
Mathur (Start blogging now)
Namrata
Sashidhar
Srirang
And we hope this no to increase multi folds as time passes by.
Some of the other ideas which came up are which can be implemented later
Blog of the Week (recognising the best blog in a week) – For this we might need few changes to be done to the blogroll.
Blogging Week (A week on the lines of Bloggers Day)
Hoping for a fruitful blogging year for IIITians.

Indian Muslims

Few days ago, I read an interview by Shabana Azmi in which she had criticized Indian politicians and said that “Indian Politics is unfair to Muslims”, had it been some extremist Islamic leader, some leader of any political outfit I wouldn’t have cared much but this is coming from the mouth of an educated lady who has been quite successful and has received adulation from all strata of society. This coupled with a remark a relative of mine made once about the status of Muslims in India wondering whether Muslims also need reservations made me think on the issue of Indian Muslims.

There have always been demands of giving special status and reservations to muslims and looking at the present situation, you can’t help thinking that something needs to be done to bring them out of the depths in which general muslim is living. If you look through the student list of any good institution in India, you will find only a handful of muslim names if by chance you find any. If we look at the 20%(unofficial figure)and 13%(census) population which is muslim there must be maximum 2% in good institute.

Even if you look at the stats then if the literacy is 65.1% for Hindus then it is 59.1% for muslims, only a difference of 6% but generally we tend to see muslims in the lower strata of society.  This question definitely puzzles me as to why Indian Muslims couldn’t progress much in life and there are not many of them who are there in academic field (ofcourse there are a few exceptions but they are one in a thousands if not lakhs).

One of the reason which SCs, STs give for their backwardness is that they were suppressed for centuries by the upper classes of society but this is certainly not the case with muslims, there have been quite a few muslim rulers in India and if we consider the fact that not all of them were quite secular and even if some were completely unbiased about religion then even they wouldn’t have made any policies which would have hurt the muslim junta.

People might want to point that there are points in Muslim religion which oppose things like family planning and also the point that some of them are still ignorant enough to make their children study in Madarsas, but then you can look at the example of the gulf nations and they would also be following these philosophies and still they are rich and about family planning. We can leave these examples as India as these countries are quite different but if you look at Hindus also, then a generation back (that is of our Grand Parents), they also didn’t give a shit about family planning, then how come Hindus are far far ahead in term of education, richness or overall lifestyle.

There has always been a discrimination and hatred amongst the two religions and people might want to say that this can be one of the reason as Hindus are already powerful and they don’t let muslims rise up the pedestal but even to this point there are counter points, first of all not all Hindus are like that and the second thing is if Hindus can progress under Muslim rulers, why can’t it be vice-versa?

It seems the 2% figure I stated could be an understatement but as this table which is a report by Sachar Committee shows that the number is about 5% which is still dismally low, in contrast Sikhs constitute only 2% of the population but generally you can see more Sikhs than muslims having influential positions.

Area	Muslim %
Total	4.9
PSUs	7.2
IAS,IFS & IPS	3.2
Railways	4.5
Judiciary	7.8
Health	4.4
Transport	6.5
Home Affairs	7.3
Education	6.5

All said and done about the situation, I still wouldn’t ever support any special treatment to them just because they didn’t have to suffer any atrocities or problems like for say SCs & STs for whom reservation is justified to an extent though the way it is implemented needs to be looked into. I personally feel that Indian Muslims themselves have been digging a hole while not being pressurized or anything so why should govt do anything special for them.

I am sorry if this post seems disturbing to some but just to assure you that I have no personal bias against any Muslim and I certainly respect the religion but there are some things which need to be pondered upon by somebody.

Song of the Day:- She came in through the Bathroom Window by Beatles

PS1:- Saw Bachna Ae Haseenon… first half was ok but second was just pure pathetic… though we enjoyed a lot.. BC zindabad!!
PS2:- Quite a lot of people got their papers published.. Congrats to Skp,Orb, Raman, Maruti & Deepti!! GG guys!!
PS3:- Two people (Ojasvi & Vivek Prakash)from our batch got PPOs in Microsoft and one(Somani) in Google… Congrats to you guys too…
PS4:- All my school friends are getting placed these days, but placement session in our college is ages away.. Why?? Why?? Why?? Btw Congrats to Mansi, Sushant, Preety, Bhatti & Piyush!!
PS5:- India once again humbled by Sri Lanka and Akhil Kumar lost in Quarter Finals.. Sad day!! : (
PS6:- What the hell is with China.. They are whipping American ass.. a margin of 17 gold medals, there seems to be no chance of USA reaching even close now.
PS7:- The awesome thing about China is that they are winning all golds… even after getting 17 golds more, their medal count is 5 less than US… Some strange place.
PS8:- And whats the deal with Swimmers this time?? Everybody seems to be making here.. WTH man!!
Ps9:- Read about two >100 storied buildings coming up in Hyderabad!! What is happening man.. Lanco Hills Signature Tower(proposed)(640 m) & APIIC Tower(under construction)(450 m).

DHONI the Great

I had promised my friends that I wouldn’t be writing any of the rather ordinary posts which I have been writing in the recent times, but I couldn’t stop myself from writing about this joyous event. This is one of the greatest moments in the history of Indian Cricket and no stone should be left unturned in the celebration of this momentous occasion. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the greatest player India has produced in the recent times has been given the highest award for any sport person. He has been conferred with Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award.

I can see people complaining from different quarters that how can senior players like Ganguly, Dravid and Kumble be ignored and this young chap be given the award but they don’t know the greatness of this guy. Even the GOD, Sachin Tendulkar had to wait for 10 years before getting this award but our young lad, the hero of the generation, heartthrob of a million girls reached the mark in just a mere 4 years making the better player than even the GOD, unfortunately we don’t have anything greater than God, so now on we have another adjective “Dhoni” for someone even the Gods should worship.

People keep complaining about his test performances and such useless crap like, he decided to sit out of a important test series, but those people, my dear friends are just jealous of this 8th wonder of the world.  After all who in this fucking world cares about the boring shit called test match, which is all just a piece of crap after all who is willing to spend 5 days just to see all those people running after the ball. What we need now is a player who can walk the ramp so naturally just as if he is doing his morning routine. What will we do with players like Sachin who are never ever seen with Bollywood actress. Now we need a new hero of the new generation who dates lasses like Deepika Padukone.Even THE  Bradman would have bowed down before this GOD of Gods and would have loved to serve him for life, if he were alive today. Alas the old chap is dead now and couldn’t benefit with the golden oppurtinity.

People always keep saying that Ganguly was such a great captain, but what did that idiot do?? Nothing!! All he could do was win a test against the all beating Australian team in Australia and guided the team to the final of a World Cup but look at our hero. He won the biggest tournament of all, he won the T20 WORLD CUP for India. I must say again, who cares about Test Cricket, we are fast people of the fast generation following the fast DHONI.

Look at Kumble the idiot and you will realize that why he couldn’t ever be the cult hero like Dhoni. What he did in Sabina Park in 2002, that foolish guy came with a broken jaw to bowl in a test match and even got the wicket. Now somebody should have told him that these are the times to gain some sympathy from people and become famous but that ass would come out like a lion to bowl a spell and make people think that all this jaw trouble is nothing.

Our great Dhoni, decided to rest himself from the Test Series as he is obviously tired of playing so much of one day and T20 cricket and one more thing which BCCI have failed to see is that, the time has come when the young guy should be given the lead of the team, after all how can such players keep playing under such fools as Kumble. Just pure pathetic thinking on the part of BCCI, how can you dare disrespect the Great Dhoni by not making him the captain.

So what if he is left wanting against the superior pace bowling on friendly wickets like Australia, who cares. After all why should we go to play in the backyards of those pomies, they are just a bunch of giants with a guy who spits on his own hand. Now the time has come that we started playing only on sub continent pitches because this is what real cricket is, the cricket our dear Dhoni likes, with scores above 300 for the taking in every one day match. With matches where he can murder the poor helpless bowlers on the flat wickets, after all shouldn’t we as Indians be proud of all things Indian, including those flat wickets which only we produce. One or two spinning tracks can pose a problem but we can surely manage them by making him rest on such venues so that we don’t make a dent into the great batting average of the great Dhoni.

If you want to consider Dravid, we can also do that. Tell me frankly who has got time to see his exquisite cover drives, who has got the eyes for the stylish and sweet follow through of his bat. What we want is the dhobhi pachhad cricket where you should hit the ball in most awkward you can. In my opinion, Dravid is the worst thing to happen to Indian Cricket since a certain Sunil Gavaskar. Its time people realize technique and patience are passé. We just want fatafat cricket in the most desi and Indian way.

The most important thing which Dhoni has done is taught us ugly Indians how to live in style, how to have those well set hair. We are a nation who never understood the value of style (or Tashan) and always tended to concentrate on the talent and sublimity of ordinary mortals like Sachin, Dravid. Its time we took notice of our sex appeal and do our best to become ishmaaart like apne Dhoni bhaia, see yahan bhi ganwarpan, he is Dhoni the stud, not Dhoni Bhaia!!

Infact I suggest that Sachin’s Khel Ratna be also taken back and not given back to him until he takes coaching from Dhoni and dates a few of the Bollywood starlet and for God’s sake he should do something of his hair,look at Dhoni’s flowing silky locks and look at Sachin seems as if someone has pasted some black thing on his head.. He  looks so ruddy uncool man!! How can you expect such a person to represent the country? He always paints a bad picture of the country in front of whole world. The most embarassing thing he does is biting his own nails all the time, comeon man how unhygenic!! Tch tch tch!!

HAIL THE GREAT DHONI!!
&
Congrats to him on winning the award

Song of the Day:- Yeh Jo des Hai tera  by A.R.Rehman from Swades
PS1:- One thing is for sure, I am gonna be royally fucked in  the first one-half months of this sem. BTP, Classes, Internship and ofcourse worshipping DHONI THE GREAT
PS2:- Its been drizzling for past so many days, irritating like hell .Ek baar achhi tarah barish ho jaye n then ruk jaye.
PS3:- Have our BTP viva on the day of Raksha Bandhan!! 😦 Bull shit
PS4:- Eric Clapton rocks, am cursing myself for not listening to him till date… 😦