30 minutes and a friend found.

Every relationship should have more or less friendship in it to survive, they say. I've always been a disloyal, unreliable friend. Be it with anybody. This one is about a newly found friend of mine. Thirty minutes is what he gave his ears to me & I found a comforting listener in him. I know him for 24 years but never as a friend.

I was kicking myself in the mask of self agitation & that is when he came to my rescue. I have been asking people just to listen to me, neither advice me nor suggest me  nor hit back with presumed experience; not even go back and recite their own past. Everybody failed. He didn't.

He just let me cut loose the self imposed barriers of restricting myself. I spoke, spoke & spoke for 30 minutes. Not even a cough from his end did disturb me. He simply listened.

In the end, he smiled and logged off.



He happens to be my father - my newly found friend.

Virender Sehwag. - The destructive genius.

Every Indian cricket lover (of course, every Indian is a cricket lover); especially of the test cricket is now celebrating the latest world record of ton on a debut by Shikhar Dhawan. And also the support from the other end by Murali Vijay is too remarkable to ignore. Well & good.

People with ties to their necks, microphones to their shirts, sitting on single legged stools in the box seem relieved from the anxiousness of discovering the proper replacements for the Fab 4: Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar. The first 3 guys finished first & are enjoying the passive involvement in the game by turning into critics and commentators. The last one still feels that he has a little more cricket left in him. He's known for his sleeplessness until he achieves what he desires. So can we wish Sachin a sound sleep only on the day he hangs up his boots.

Alright. We forgot him who bridged the generation gap between today's heroes like Kohli, Dhawan, Pujara, Raina etc & yesteryear's legends like the Fab 4. A minute into the thought & the name gloriously flashes on your mind. - Virender Sehwag.

I am very happy after knowimng that Shikhar Dhawan has come like he had never come although his entry marked on the ousting of Virender Sehwag.

I didn't start this one to analyze the game of Sehwag as there are at least half a billion on the globe who do that succinctly better than me.

This is a quick tribute I am paying to the star who drew crowds to almost-forgotten test cricket in India; post Gavaskar, K. Dev's era. And now, he is on the verge of being forgotten (may be ignored?)

Innings of Dravid, Laxman, Sachin belonged to educated sections of the country. Here, I am not undermining the crowd pulling charisma of either S. Ganguly or S. Tendulkar neither am I underrating the class of Dravid or Laxman.

When there is a group pf butchers, butlers, pot makers & post masters of a village, if they gather at the richest guy of the village's house to watch a test match, the credit totally belonged to Sehwag.

He was questioned about his mental stability to build up a sustainable test career. He wiped out that question with a classic 195 against Australia. His technique was questioned. He hit back the suspicion in style with a demolishing 309 against Pakistan. He who once was a laughing stock in the commentary box later made the same people in the box yell like 'you can't set fields for a shot like that.' He whose patience levels were suspected to survive in test cricket emerged out to be the only Indian batsman who scored a triple century - TWICE.

Sehwag is a genius in his own league & conveniently humane enough to overlook the fact.


I was told that once there was Gundappa Vishwanath. Now there is (was?) Virender Sehwag.

He sang aloud about tomorrow

He got drunk twice yesterday. He woke up with a sore throat, terrible neck & a full stomach. The last night's beer is still safe and fresh in there.

Rather than letting his parents catch him drunk, he himself told them that he did & for the first time, he hardly was bothered about their reactions. Many things have been running on his mind & so he didn't want to take up the additional cautiousness of pretending sober.

His name is Ashish. He lives with his parents. He is 27, single and working. All he does in a day is he goes to office, tries working, comes back, eats and sleeps; only to wake up to repeat what he did the day before.

Yesterday was marked as an off for him. He spent the first half of the day in helping somebody & the second one in helping himself with few beers; which was long & extended till 11.00 in the night.

He somehow realized he's not being swift in his thoughts, nor words neither movements. The saddest habit he has acquired recently is talking to self. All he does while drinking is to ask the bar tender for a pen & he scribbles his monthly budget over a tissue paper. He runs through the written budget over and over just to feel reassured.

Last night was different though. He made an effort to retrospect & thought what really would make him smile and young again. He couldn't figure out a thing or two. He sighed and gulped down the last drops of beer. He came out slowly from the bar & started driving back home.

He was driving back into reality & it strangely gave him a hope. The hope for life; the hope for a better tomorrow. He now is more convinced that it can't get any worse. He just realized that he had hit the bottom & if there's any motion left in him, that should be only upwards.

He smiled to himself; increased the volume of the song which sang aloud about the hope for a shiny morning by a squeaky voice. He smiled, yet again because of the coincidence.


He slowly drove back home.

Saturday's cynicism.

Its saturday. There's this mid year's weekend euphoria that's slowly picking up its boom. The places of modern day fun like resorts, sports bars, movie malls are slowly filling themselves with fun deprived souls.

There is this guy who works for a firm. He gets down from his car 45 minutes after he's supposed to report at his office. He slowly pulls himself out of his car. He manages to gather himself to one piece, gets to his desk and logs in.

Nearly 5 hours pass by & he palpably feels the suffocation of saturday's work. He walks floundering out of office, picks out a cigarette,, smokes it very leisurely. As the cigarettes breathes its last breath under his shoes, he goes back into office to find his boss. He clearly puts it across to his boss that he's in no mood to work and seeks a mid day off. You are your best judge, say his boss.

He gets down from his car at a nearby bar, which is already filled with people. Beer mugs cling & smoke rings evolve out of their mouths. Everybody looks engaged & happy.

He manages to grab a 4 seater for himself. He orders for a  beer & an ashtray. He observes his surroundings which consumes 5 minutes & the beer is placed on his table.

He slowly opens the beer, pours it down into his mug; starts sipping beer and a cigarette simultaneously.

4 mugs of beer, 2 hours of time & he seems done. Even if he's not, his wallet seems done. He looks around & he fixes his gaze on a guy carrying crates of beer from a container into the bar.

He keeps watching the guy right from the entrance to the refrigerator & this happens for a couple of times. The third time, the guy accidentally drops a beer crate onto the floor which silences the deafening music of the bar.

The guy seems helpless & very sorry for himself. The bar manager approaches the guy & declares that the cost of 12 beers will be deducted from his salary & the guy is pleading  the manager not to do so.

He walks away with a helpless smile past the manager & guy who are in a discussion which would cost the guy - a month of his life.

All he could do is smile wryly. 

He just killed me in style.

For what it has been a painful month, equal number of lessons have been learnt. I start this piece to put down  my version of forgiveness. I have seen that in this friend of mine who hails from old school with little qualities of modern day ego, vengeance and grit.

There's this friend of mine to whom I had been extremely disloyal for over a period of 1 year. Well, I had my set of reasons to justify my lousy behaviour. He just seemed too outgrown for all that within this time & welcomed me with a wide spread smile after initials moments of doubt, uncertainty over my redundant fear of confrontation.

He just did that in style cos of which I was spellbound. Between us, its always been me who did the talking part & he always preferred to listen, nod and smile in return. He did the same yesterday, which put me to shame, guilt and envy. I was rather expecting him to thrash me in my face for what I had been but he just sounded unaffected & assured me everything is perfectly normal as ever.

For what stand I took between me & dirty harry (no offence meant Mr. Dirty Harry, this is in a positive sense), he took mine between us. Silent, smiling & barely affected. By that, he put me to death without really touching me except for that handshake.