Sreesanth: The rise and fall of a Malayalee

The biggest news in the Indian sports scene last week (unless you’re a die-hard fan of the Kabaddi league and care only about the Bhatinda MudWrestlers) was the spot fixing scandal in the IPL. Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, the Tiger of Kerala, the Pride of Mallu-land, the shiny hero from down below, fell from his throne in the skies, and hit the ground, face first. Or so, the reactions of most Malayalees would lead you to think. Well, atleast reactions of Mallu aunties.

Kerala’s contribution to Indian cricket is not something to boast about. Tinu Yohannan came, and went. His career wound up in a hurry (as if it had the runs, was touching cloth and badly needed to use the restroom) having played only 6 matches in total. (Let’s not even mention the Kochi Tuskers as a contribution from Kerala. Hmm, but they were a team based in Kerala and did have a slot in the points table in IPL ’11, which wasn’t at the bottom, so maybe they do count). Then, along came Sreesanth. To Malayalees, it was like the warmth you get when you hold a baby to your bosom. Soon they realised the warmth came from the baby’s wee. On further investigation, they discovered that the baby had pooped. Seeing his antics on the field, most of Kerala had the kind of apologetic look on their face that people have when their pet dog starts licking its privates in polite company.

Nonetheless, he was all we had, and grudgingly or willingly (in case of the aunty-folk), we took him to be ours. There were small moments of glory when we could genuinely be proud of him, like the time when he didn’t drop Misbah-ul-Haq’s catch in the T20 finals. Or when he bowled a dot ball. But when he took a wicket, Mama Mia, were we proud!

The spot fixing absolutely destroyed any respect he had from anybody in the country, and Kerala, particularly. To us, he was always the kid who decided to choose dancing for a career instead of engineering or medicine. Never someone we were out-rightly proud of, but someone who in his own way, did manage to bring smiles to our faces, and occasionally, do us proud. He was then a Malayalee first and an Indian later. He was never the answer to a state’s cricketing dreams or prayers, but he was what we were given. Now, while the whole country mocks and jeers at him, (and rightly so) should we do so as well?

Happy? Birthday

As todays sun rises upon thee

A year older thou turnst

A year wiser, a year smarter

Forever Young may thou be!

I pray, the Gods to thee be kind

Grant thee good health and peace of mind

For if not for their Grace and Love

That they shower on thee from above

Thou would have no life to call thy own

Like dust in the wind thou wouldst be blown

Snuffed shall be thy mortal Soul

As like fire, when water meets burning coal

Like smoke rising up to the sky

Thou will crumble, wither and die

Thy bones and flesh one day shall be dust

If not today, some tomorrow it must!

Poetry!!

A week or so after my birthday this year, I felt poetic all of a sudden. After much deliberation I decided to have a go and unleash the poet within me, and somehow managed to write a few lines. The whiplash left me intact and unhurt, and I sincerely hope you remain so as well.

If there are no random, sudden deaths of people I know; who knows, I might even continue!

Too old to die young

Now this might come as a shock to some of you, but I'm not particularly well known for my planning skills. Planning for anything further away than dinner today, and even deciding what is going to get me drunk best at the lowest cost (although it always is that Aged Priest) gets my head spinning. Leaves me bewildered, be-fuddled, confused - much like a baby at a huge lesbian orgy would be. Although that's the nice sort of confused; mine isn't so very nice.

Recent encounters I've had with (for lack of a better, more politically correct way of saying this) an old fart, have changed things a bit though. Senile, moody and easy to anger, this old bugger put the fear of God back into me. Well, not God; but that did seem like a nice thing to say. Fear of growing old and turning into a cranky fart with mood swings so wild that would make a pregnant Mamata Banerjee seem docile is what I actually wanted to say. Turning a year older didn't help either.

I've sat and wondered what life would be like when I'm older. No, not older, old. Being in the final year of college gets you some benefits, and having people around me who've aged more in the span of four years than my granny has all her life has left me with little work, as far as wondering is concerned. If there ever was a sports meet for people aged over 70, my friends and I could probably get a few bronze medals, we really are that old. Baldness, arthritis, back aches, permanently-half-dislocated joints, haemorrhoids, you name it, we've got it.

Jokes aside, I've thought about how old-life's going to be. This is what i came up with - Pissing in your pants, smelling of it all the time, dentures, a few stents to keep them blood vessels from choking the life out of your poor heart, a walker perhaps, glasses that can stop bullets, beige trousers; you get the idea. I hope I'm rich by then. I'll be paying off people around me to tell me the second my trousers turn darker around my Gentleman's area; let me know when my mumbling and talking to myself gives the neighbours' kids nightmares and stop me when I yell at kids playing in the yard.

There are some old-things I can't wait for though. I'm really looking forward to the day I get my Fart-when-you-bloody-well-feel-like-it card. I'm paying a little extra to get the Burp-when-you-bloody-well-feel-like-it add-on though, and I recommend you do the same as well.

But God help you if you're in India, because when you're 90 and waiting in a queue to renew the bloody thing, there probably will be some blithering rascal who'll ask you for your 10th std. certificate, your Mum's left thumb print and your father to be present in person.

Awesome Fat Guys

Ever since I can remember, I've loathed long-distance bus journeys with all my heart. They invariably happen to be overnight as well, and all I do is thrash around in my seat like a fish out of the water trying my best to find a comfortable sleeping position and being no more successful than India are at world football. Last night's journey didn't get off to a good start, after I found out that a whale had 'beached' on the seat next to mine. I've never had anything against fat people, but this guy's waist size probably went into three digits and his IQ into single digits, for thinking that a single seat would do just fine for him.

As we all know, as soon as you sit down in a bus, there's the customary arm-rest joust that we all have, and after some years of practice, I've grown quite good at this. I slyly slide in when the guy next to me lifts his hand off to answer his phone, pick his nose, or scratch his privates. "Ha! Loser!", I almost say aloud, and proudly look around showing off my new conquest. We've all got our techniques. But the less said about my attempt to conquer the 'neutral' arm-rest this time was thwarted ferociously. The fat guy was like Hitler invading Poland. Living Space, he said. He conveniently ignored the presence of my hand and put his on top of mine, my poor hand. To save what little pride remained, I gracefully pulled my hand out and pretended to adjust my bag in the overhead luggage bin. The only thing I had to be thankful for was the comforting thought that I had the aisle seat. God knows, that had i been in the window seat, i would've been swatted like you do a fly.

I knew I’d hit rock-bottom, and that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, and they didn’t actually. The last thing I remember was listening to Pink Floyd’s ‘One of these Days’, and then what do you know, its morning already! I’d slept like a baby. Maybe more figuratively then you possibly thought. I probably found the much sought after perfect sleeping position, almost certainly involving the fat guy in some way. (Nope, I trust not in the way you just pictured it now). His much padded shoulder, perhaps. That was without any shadow of doubt, one of the best feelings I’ve had waking up in a long time (grow up, for heaven’s sake). Hereafter, I shall refer to the fat guy as ‘Awesome Fat Guy’, I guess I owe him that much.

So the next time you find yourself next to an Awesome Fat Guy in a bus, don’t start cursing your stars just yet. Surrender the armrest without a fight, it’d be futile. But make sure that when you feel you’re about to doze off, you do lean your head in the direction of the Awesome Fat Guy. It might just not be the stupidest thing you’ve done. And just to be courteous, make sure you do give the guy a smile when you get off (seriously, grow up) the bus. If you’re really cheerful and in a very good mood, even a wink perhaps? Ha!

You wash my hand, I’ll wash yours

Out of the many forms of torture I've heard of, read about and can think of when I picture Fernando Alonso as its victim; there is nothing that works like making someone read what they've written, for me atleast. I'd easily admit being the assassinator of JFK, Lincoln, Gandhi and Pope Gregory the fifth within a few seconds into the session. Ever since I had to write essays in school about The Cow or the very first 'Myself' composition, I don't remember reading them after I'd finished.

Oh, and if you were to spot lyrics of some Dire Straits song floating about in my posts, forgive me, I really can't get myself an editor, you see.

There, now I’ve made an excuse for any error, grammatical or otherwise, that might have crept into any of my posts.

Really, although I put in some effort into writing, negligible as it is, standing back, looking at it and admiring it is the last thing that comes to my mind. As a matter of fact, reading something that I’d written comes so low down on my book of things to do, that being hung by my toenails, electrocution by my testes and watching Karan Johar’s next movie would seem like the foreword. I’m honestly not kidding.

And I’m quite sure I’m not the only one facing this problem. But happily, for me, I atleast admit as much. If you have a Facebook account, you’ve probably come across posts by people elaborating the benefits of eating grass, or about their latest failed attempt at converting water into wine. People like these are hell bent on making your life that little bit worse, making sure you know about all the movie they’ve watched, writing a half-page review on it, as if you or anybody else cares about their opinion. And all of it will be in one sentence, something like this one, with so many commas that your mind really runs out of breath trying to read it, all the time thinking of how the feeling of running a knife through their intestines would feel. These people sure as hell don’t read what they write.

Should someone tell them? I’m not going to, I’ve too many people out to kill me as it is, and this guy, under the delusion of friendship, might take a bullet for me, while I run away.

All I can hope is that I’m not as bad as them. If I am, then this won’t be the last time I’ve shot myself in the foot. But, please, don’t tell me that, if I am. And I won’t make fun of that really stupid t-shirt you’re wearing now, and your name, and the way you walk, and your Facebook posts, and your movie reviews, and your critical appreciation of Les Miserables.

Ignorance is bliss, yeah?

How my boredom will kill you…

Its been two almost two months since the vacations started and since then, I've been waging war. Against Boredom. Although I've had a few victories in some minor, irrelevant battles, it is with great sadness that I wish to say that I've now lost and been taken prisoner. Life in a PoW camp isn't easy, and especially when you have such a formidable captor, escape is impossible, and eventually I will die.

College students like me are the most susceptible people to boredom, and the story of the guy bringing along an assault rifle in his lunch box and gunning down his mates in some American University after an argument whether Portugal is in Australia, or an eye infection; is proof. We're an easily confused bunch, with the attention span of a goldfish, and I'm no different.

What an average person would do during a vacation is catch up on lost sleep, watch a few movies and read some books. But since this is what I do anyway, I'm really lost and have no idea what to do with so much time on my hands. (I must confess, that is partly the reason why I'm doing this - blogging). Reading newspapers is fun - for a minute, until you're done with the comics, there's never anything worth watching on TV, and when you've exhausted the other options of watching some sitcoms, standing on your head, juggling eggs, scooping up broken eggs, making an omelette, and then throwing up; which took me half an hour to do, it dawned on me that this was going to be a Long vacation.

The next thing I could think of doing was, doing all that over again, properly, this time. So I sit myself with a cup of coffee, bring out the newspaper, and then my neighbour's, after having nicked it; and spent an hour reading and re-reading adverts and catalogues for dining tables, crockery sets and hair growth clinics; recipies for scrambled eggs; and a whole bunch of other things that in no way would affect me, you, or anybody else I know. On TV, I watched Nigella Lawson making cookies (YUM!), convinced myself that the Nicer-Dicer from TeleBrands was humanity’s greatest achievement since inventing the wheel and making a fire, and then watched a Music Television channel that showed no music, but did make a great deal about some guys driving a car. I could then stand on my head for a whole minute longer than I could earlier and didn't throw up the scrambled eggs I made.

Boredom then led me to the phone- I called up friends I hadn't talked to for years, and then went on to listen to their stories of how they've ended up in some Siberian labour camp of a college and how their professors were descendants of Nazis who escaped the Nuremberg trials. I gave them my sympathy, and said goodbye, until the same time next year, when I will call them up again, either forgetting this time's experience, or fully willing to go through it again.

Happily though, now things look a bit brighter. Two more weeks to go and I do think I'll make it to the end. I cannot wait to get back to college, and then, a week in, start yearning for the vacations again. Seriously speaking though, I'd stay away from public places if I were you, because the last week is the hardest, and with so many like me on the loose, you'd never know when one of us might lose it and decide to make a shopping mall our very own private shooting range.