Bhajji Hullabaloo & Tait's one-way ticket to the cleaners

On the Harbhajan issue it ends with a victory to India.. Lack of evidence? check.. Muscle flexing? check.. Pissed off racist Oz players? check.. CA and BCCI laughing all the way to the bank? check... Players feeling like prostitues for being pimped by their boards rather than being taken care of? check..
Apparently Bhajji, the Punjab da Munda (son of the soil), said the words "Maa ki", and Hayders jumped on the wagon going "I'm gonna tell - you are looking at a champ (drunken monkey boxing?)" apparently referring to Symmo. Anyway Bhajji's disclosure of the "Maa ki" sent the Indian contingent into raptures, and left the Ozzies fuming - "If he insulted my white mother, it has to be racism, ban the brown bastard (this is not a racist word in Australia)!!"
In non-contact sports, there are fewer ways of gamesmanship (i.e. another english word for pissing off the opponent mentally). The best way to outdo an opponent is to get to their minds through your game. If that doesn't work, its quite fair to rattle them with a few choice words.. family? country? race? no holy cows here. How many of us do not play the race card - when we complain about outsourcing to the starving East India slave labor capital Bangalore? Or when an MNC supplants the seemingly nice but naive & eager to please Indian manager with his 'white' counterpart, "He is going to take us to task" sighs the chips and cookie face-stuffing softie.
Sledging is an important aspect of the game. Man for man, most teams are pretty equal on ability. The X-factor often lies in getting under the skin of the opponent. I want concrete example of best-loved winners in team sports - The West Indies? Hogwash - who is the dooce who can't remember them bowling at the heads of batsmen with 4 eccentrically tall and equally hostile quickies? Don't remember Michael Holding kick the stumps out of the ground for getting a bad decision in NZ? A few of their charming exploits are available at cricinfo.com.
Meanwhile, in an act of awesome stamping of superiority, the amazing comeback Indian team just sent Shaun Tait to the looney bin. The almost-170kmph-touching almost-quickie who was dragged through the Perth pitch like a nigger in 1700's Alabama, is going AWOL on cricket for a while citing mental and physical exhaustion. The Indians have put their money where their mouth is... The only thing seen dangling from the fat racist mouth of the Ozzies is their own smelly foot.

Sibling Jealousy

Sibling rivalry - both the Thunderbird and the Swifty compete for my attention...

Don't worry I love you both equally! Both of you are key to my independence.. And both of you guzzle fuel like the arabs are our friends!

A 'swift' decision...

Just made the payment for a 'pearl metallic arctic white' 2008 suzuki swift, VXI.

Should take delivery of the baby sometime in the first week of February.

The color choices I had was white and white (just had 2 vehicles in stock, and any other color takes 2 months to come in) - didn't want to lock in money, and stay put without a vehicle for a long time.

Minus ABS, minus stereo system, minus alloys its still a pretty decent package.

Totally love the cute looking gear knob, and its enjoyable clicking gear shifts. Found it a little heavy to handle in stop and go traffic, on a vehicle that had run over 25k kms. I do not like the band-aid sized rear windscreen, its really annoying while parking, even for someone like me who has been driving for over a decade.

Has a raspy feel to the engine (the same one as that on the esteem with slightly different aspiration, and a different tranny), and I must say I want to rev up the engine over 4500 rpm to unleash each and every one of the 87 ponies underneath the hood.

I still don't quite get the fact that the Suzuki sport package, (the two-door box-car) sells for 11.5k Quid in the UK, and has a really well-put together package altogether while we skimp on the interoirs with really cheap looking plastics, and garish upholstery.

The 2008 swift (costs 7k more) has a modified front and rear bumper, with the tail light stop lamps modified a tad on the outside. On the inside, the cloth upholstery gets a minor makeover, and a digital clock moulded into the facia is a small, albiet welcome addition.

I dropped by Pratham Motors, Sarjapura ORR, Bangalore for not more than 10 minutes to buy the vehicle. I am pretty sure its one of the easiest deals the salesperson has ever made in her life.

Accessories, if you can call them that include a car perfume, mats, mudflaps, leather steering wheel cover, sun film (garware) - can be bumped up for a price.

So more updates on the cute brute later next week. Makes for some good weekend running-in in the backroads of Sarjapura where I live.

Dog in the Manger..

I see a lot of the dog in the manger mentality..
Flashback - in case you didn't read your English books/stories as a kid - the dog in the manger mentality refers to the presence of a dog in a manger, a cow-shed if you will, and while a dog doesn't eat grass, it didn't allow the cows to eat it either. Well, any symbiotic relationship involves a bit of give and take, but the fact that a lot of people love to have a say, without being responsible for their inputs actually pisses me off. Give me responsibility, I relish it, and I absolutely stand by whatever I do, no matter what the outcome. I don't care how outcomes reflects on me, because to me, if I make a conscious decision at a point in time, I think there a pretty darn good reason for doing so.
These days the communists are a very good example of the "dog in the manger" mentality. A role in running the destiny of a billion people, the ability to pull a government down, without having to be directly responsible to the people for their behavior.
I have no respect for someone who tries to weasel his way out of something - be a man, stand up for your actions - often a good justification, serves to highlight that even while hindsight is 20-20 we are often blinded by the absence of providence.

Jellycut Ban

Villagers in Tamilnadu banning the age-old masculine (read vicious) sport of Jallikattu plan to defy the Supreme Court ban on the sport. The reason being, they don't want the bulls to be injured (loss of human life, which may be incidental could be second) :
Villagers in effect telling the SC :
"Hey SC, don't have a cow man!" (i.e. lets have a bull!?)

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Dard-e-dil ke syahi mein dubokar,
Likha hain bewafa tere pyaar ka naam,
Dard-e-dil ke syahi mein dubokar,
Likha hain bewafa tere pyaar ka naam,
Milke-bichadna, Bichadke-phir milna
Kaisi hai tere-mere pyaar ki ajab si ye dastaan?

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Us haseena se mohabbat karne ki jurrat
Kuch humne bhi karne ki taan li is tarah
Us haseena se mohabbat karne ki jurrat
Kuch humne bhi karne ki taan li is tarah

Lavs agar na nikle in labon se agar
To kaise karti woh is pyaar ka izhaar?

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Shayari - Dil, Dard, aur Wafai...

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27.9967890 and counting...

Birthdays are strange days!

We celebrate the entry of life into this world. We celebrate our addition to the swarming human population.
I don't understand birthdays a lot. There isn't much to understand per se. But the celebration doesn't make sense. Unless you have a lot of friends to hang out with. You would hang out with them on any other day. Just this day, they ensure they bathe themselves in your esteemed company. Some of them are there, to wish you well even though they don't really mean it, some of them are there for the dinner and open bar concomitant with any birthday celebration. And still others are there to make you feel old about yourself, for they just happen to be a few years younger. The good ones don't care for more than a phone call and a wise-crack.

There are major differences between celebrating a birthday as a kid and one (if you still call it worth celebrating) as an adult.
Kids want to grow older because the world doesn't take mental maturity on face value.
Adults, or atleast I, see it as a good time to take stock of my life, maybe analyze a few things in retrospect, and see the birth day as a good problem solving exercise.
So I should have this short list of things which I think I should have/ should be doing by the time I turn 28. I need to set some good goals for the following year and take up on them in right earnest.
Hmm, lets see what I plan to do the next year - Tomorrow is D-day, so I probably could think up of some good ones to put up on my blog tomorrow.
Keep reading "Randomly Coherent".