The last time I updated the blog..

Its been so long since I updated this blog. A lot has happened in the last two years. One of the major changes in my life was shifting to Pune. A city I just can't come to terms with. Anyways, I am trying to crib less.

The last time I had updated the blog, nearly all my friends were unmarried. As I write this today, I am one of the few who is still unmarried. In the last two years, the amount of travelling I have done for attending these wedding should make me a privileged customers for all the national airlines. Sometimes, I feel that I might be lost in this transition to the next phase of life as my friends move ahead and I stay back for some more time. Its a fear which is constantly there at the back of my head but I hope it never comes true.

The last time I updated the blog, most Indians thought that roast was a type of chicken dish to be had. But now everyone knows what AIB stands for and what is a roast. The roast video had to be taken down from youtube after an FIR was lodged citing indecency. First of all, it was uploaded on a forum and no one twisted anyone's arm to make them watch it. The new brand of intolerance in this country is quite unsettling where an offense is taken at the drop of a hat. We as a nation are slowly losing our sense of humour and the ability to laugh at ourselves.

The last time I updated the blog, India were still the world champions of the 50 over format. Since then, we have lost the T20 world cup finals against Srilanka. Then when we went to Australia to defend the title, we were greeted with the test series first which we lost quite predictably. Then there was the pointless tri-series with England as the third team in which we got hammered. Finally the world cup started and what a rosy picture it was for the next seven matches in which we took all 10 wickets of the opposition. Then in the semis, we ran into the mighty Aussies and lost. It was an admirable effort by a team which was expected to struggle through the group stages and lose in the quarters. But, the way our beloved electronic media went after our Indian team was plain and simple disgusting. Times Now tried to get #shamedinsydney to trend but the netizens turned around the hash-tag to #shameontimesnow which was a fitting reply to a channel which tries to stir up non-issues at the behest of real issues.

The last time I updated the blog, Game of Thrones, Sherlock and House of Cards were kicking some serious ass. Somethings don't change I suppose.

Its been so long that I have lost the art of writing. It shall come back to me as I start writing more often.

The Journey

I remember nearly two years ago, when I stood outside MET Institute of Management and thinking to myself “Did I make the right decision in joining this college?”

It all started with all my frustration at work. I was bored beyond belief doing the same thing over and over again, day in and day out. I desperately needed a change and with that mentality I gave the CET. For the first time in my life, I went through the whole CET process. From the exam itself to the GD to the PI and I somehow managed to secure a seat in MET. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and put in my papers the very next day and in a month’s time I was back to being a student.

The transition itself from a professional to a student was a very difficult one for me. I had lost all my will to sit in one place and listen to people go on about stuff. The 1^st three days of the induction program were brutal on me. Sitting on those uncomfortable chairs listening to people drone on about how great it is that I am doing an MBA and how bad the economy was doing. Now when I look back, I am glad that some of the speakers didn’t sugarcoat things for me. It was bit of an eye opening moment for me and it actually willed me into working a bit harder in the next four semesters. But during those three days the one thing about which I thought non-stop was - “would it be too drastic if I jumped through the window to escape this?” Anyways after the grueling rite of passage every MET student has to go through, we went on the outbound programs. This is where I made my first friends in MET and I came to realize that this could be fun. My engineering college experience was nothing much to write home about. I had somehow managed to survive my 4 years of rigorous imprisonment. I had made a promise to myself that things would be different this time around. I am not going to survive it but I am going to enjoy it and I swear on everything that I hold dear to me, I did exactly that!

But ladies and gentlemen, it was never that easy. 44 subjects in 4 semesters with a summer internship of 2 months left me with very little time to do anything else. The lectures were 3 hours long an as it is I have a big problem in paying attention to anything for more than 10 minutes. It was difficult to sit there and try to pay attention for the whole 3 hours. Then there were the presentations. So many freaking presentations! It was sometimes really good and sometimes not too good. The most fun I personally had in a presentation was the 1^st semester Law presentation. I don’t think a lot many would agree with me but I never had that much fun while presenting a PPT. The re-scheduling of the time table all the time surely frayed my nerves on more than one occasion. The exams were another nightmare for me. 11 papers on the trot without a break can surely drive anyone crazy! But that was not even the worst part. The worst part was the disappearance of my weekends. With three lectures on both Saturdays and Sundays, the weekend part of my life was cruelly taken from me.

But times were never always dark. I shifted to Bandra and got three incredible room-mates Lovenish, Niraj and Patil Sahib. We had some crazy times in that stupid wash basin leaking flat. We also made the GMB Inc. Don’t ask!

And then there was the division in which I was in. The best damn division in the whole of MET. B division! I had a lot of fun in the class, no matter what. What made everything feel even better was that people genuinely helped each other without an agenda. There were a few trips also thrown in for good measure. Be it the Outbound, Silvassa IV, Lonavala b’day party, or the Goa IV. I had a really good time on each and every trip.

I got along with nearly everyone (some might say in the contrary) but I still hadn’t found my so called friends niche. I am lucky that I eventually did and thus was born “The Wolfpack”. If you think that this is a very presumptuous name, I would ask you to take it up with the guy who came up with the name, Mr. Rahul Noronha, king of Bandra, Patron-in-chief of Janta’s, etc etc. Then there was Janhavi, the nerd of the group (what? It’s true! Ask anyone), Devanshi the first girl I spoke to in MET, Motwani according to whom “No Entry” is the best hindi comedy made, Rucha the one soon to be married, Dhwanil the blackberry boy (you ditched blackberry now but it’s fine), Yogi fellow RAITian, and the ever absent Shivani. The whole MBA experience was better because I went through it with you guys!

So coming back to the question, “did I make the right decision?” The right answer to that is a resounding “YES”. Leave aside the curriculum, the abysmal placement scene, the professors; the answer is yes because I was able to share the journey with some of the best people I know in my life.

So it is the end or the beginning? Everybody will answer it differently. For me personally, it’s just the beginning of the rest of my life. I hope I keep running into “my friends from MBA” all the time.

And lastly, I am really sorry from the bottom of my heart to anyone whom I hurt during these two years. I wish the whole MET MMS class of 2013 all the very best in their lives and may you all fulfill all your dreams. It was both a pleasure and an honor to have shared such an important phase of my life with you guys. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Picture courtesy Aditya Phatak

Being 26

I am 26 and a half. It is a really difficult age to be. I mean your wild years are behind you. Now all you can look forward to is maturity. All your friends are getting married or engaged. Your facebook timeline looks like a Wedding album and Engagement proclamation combined.

Everywhere you look, you will find people just waiting to get married. All your exes are getting married and driving into the sunset with their knight in shining armour.  You are working real hard because you want to be worthwhile. There’s no time to be wasted. You lose touch with your close friends with whom you thought you would always be in touch. You come to know about their marriages via status updates and photo updates. You can’t drink as much alcohol as you used to. Now it takes a whole day just to recover from the hangover. You start getting a tummy. All the girls you see are too young for you. All the girls your age are in a steady relationship. God forbid if you are single at the age of 26, you will find a single girl when hell freezes over.

These symptoms were not even the worse ones. The worst side effect of being a 26 year old guy in India is your family relatives asking you the dreaded question: “When are you getting married?” Why the hell is everyone all of a sudden interested in me getting married! Do I think I am ready? Let me tell you the answer to that one “NO!!” Every family function or get together you attend this topic raises its ugly head! I feel as if I should stick a note on my head saying “Not ready”. Everyone is curious if you are seeing someone. Even if you are not, there are a lot of nosey people who would try to dig out information about it. You really can’t run away from all this. How long can you say no to attending family functions?!

Ahh well.. what can one do? I guess as we go towards the later half of the 20s, this all is expected. But, why god why? I thought we had a deal. I wouldn’t age more than 25!! Whatever happened to that one??

Memoirs of an Engineer

I graduated in engineering way back in 2008. This is just a look back on those 4 years of, how do I put it delicately “suffering”. Well, I started attending an engineering college in 2004 (nearly 10 years ago, time does fly by!!) and for the next 4 years I went through all the ups and downs an engineer is supposed to go through especially if that engineer is doing his engineering from Mumbai University.

The fight is to get to the magical figure of 40. Everyone apart from the really bright, genious ones looked at 40 as a milestone. An engineer knows the true power of the number 40. It can make or break your semester depending which side of 40 you fall on. 40 for me was the begin all and end all of exams. During each and every paper of my engineering life, I counted my marks till I was sure I would somehow get to the magical number. After that, whatever I got was just a bonus for me! I was a reluctant engineer, just doing engineering because I couldn’t think of doing anything else and also, all my school friends were on their way to becoming one. So for me, getting 40 was all that mattered.

Another interesting aspect of doiing engineering from Mumbai University was the “Vivas”. That was always fun. Sample this: 3 guys sitting facing an unknown face in most cases.

Unknown face: What do you mean by blah blah?

Guy 1: (with an really intense look on his face) Sir, I have not read that chapter.

Guy 2: (with a look that says he is trying to remember) Blah blah I think sir is ahhh..uhhhh..mmmm..

The Unknown face looks at the 3^rd guy

Guy 3: I don’t know sir!

Unknown face: You guys have not prepared anything at all. Anyways what is the equation for a circle?

Guy 1: (draws a circle and trying to deduce the equation)

Guy 2: It’s x2/a2 + y2/b2 = r2

The unknown face looks impressed and turns to guy 3.

Guy 3: Sir, as guy 2 said!

I was nearly always guy 3 in the vivas. And it was always fun. The crowding of people who just came out after giving their vivas, asking them questions as the paparazzi would have asked them. “what questions did he ask you?” “which chapter is this shit from?” “is the external strict?” “what the fuck?!” etc etc. And God forbid, if the profs go for their lunch break before taking your viva. The choicest of words were then used to describe the situation! It was always fun these vivas!! The amounting tension. The what if question about what if the external tells us to go, study and come back to give the vivas. That was always dreaded.

Moving on to the practicals! Ahhhh…praticals! 2 hours wasted standing in some lab or other with faulty machinary to give you company. The most productive work of the viva happened in the last 10 mins where readings were smartly copied from the one group of geniouses who actually managed to get the reading somehow. Praticals were the time when people caught up with each other. Tales were exchanged. Gossip was circulated etc etc.

Then there were the assignents! I mean I still don’t understand the use of assignments in egineering. Same questions were given to the whole class on the pretext that the students will not copy from each other. Everyone used to wait till someone finished the assignment and then it was a mad scramble to get the photocopy (xerox in popular lingo) of that elusive solution set. People spent days trying to copy and decipher what the other person has written. That mad rush was really special!

I admit I could never bring myself to love engineering but there were these moments which made it nearly worth it. I got my first job just because I was an engineer and I could talk properly. I am ever grateful to my college for getting me a job at the height of the 2008 recession.  The friends I made, the hostel life, becoming an independent person, falling in and out of love, and many other things! It’s true I am not very proud of being an engineer but as I look back now, it was the best thing that could have happened to me at that point of time to me. It played a big role in making me what I am today! So thank you Engineering for teaching me so many valuable lessons.

P.S: The most important thing which engineering taught me was to procastinate till the very last moment and still get the work done at the very last moment!

The Joy of West Indian Cricket

Sometime back I had the pleasure of watching “Fire in Babylon”. It is a documentary which showcases the rise of the West Indian cricket team to the pinnacle of the sport. Led by a fearless leader, Clive Lloyd, the West Indian cricket team adopted the motto “one for all, all for one”. The West Indian team consists of players from all the Caribbean islands. All islands come under the same banner only for the West Indian cricket team. When people from so many cultures share the same dressing room, there’s bound to be conflict. Still, the West Indian players came together against the common enemy, Australia and England. West Indian cricket team ruled international cricket from the mid 70s to late 80s. They never lost a test series at home, in fact, till the mid 90s.

But, as the 90s rolled by, the decline had started. Players like Sir Vivian Richards, Malcolm Marshall and company retired one after the other. There was no successive planning in place to blood in the youngsters. And hence, the West Indian cricket team started their journey towards the wrong end of the world rankings. The nadir was when West Indies lost the home test series to Bangladesh. A lot of factors had played a part. The internal politics of the cricket board, the player’s strike, cricket been replaced by basketball as the most popular game in the Caribbean were some of the reasons which led to the downfall of West Indian cricket.

But, finally in 2012, the tide seems to be changing. The West Indies cricket team is the newly crowned World T20 Champions. In today’s West Indian team, they have no dearth of impact players like Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo, Marlon Samuels and they have the best mystery spinner in Suniel Narine.

But, the unsung hero of the whole campaign was their captain, Darren Sammy. Experts have cast their apprehensions even on his place in the side but he has given everything he had to get the team to gel together and to top it, he has led from the front. He has managed all the egos in the dressing room to form a band of merry men who gave us such joy with their way of playing cricket and celebrating their win. If for nothing else, just for their inhibited celebrations, they deserved to win the T20 World Cup.

There are a lot of management lessons one can pick up from the story of the journey of West Indian cricket team. How to build a team , what not to do to destroy the legacy, how a leader should mould and lead their team, how to out-think your opponent, and most of all, how to beat the odds and emerge victorious.

The joy which West Indies cricket brings is really required at this time in international cricket. Whenever West Indies cricket is going well, world cricket is more interesting to watch.

Let the celebrations go on Gangnam Style!

Avengers - Reviewed by a Fan (Not A Critic)

CAUTION: The review contains spoilers. So read it only if you have already seen the movie or plan not seeing it at all!!

So, apparently Avengers took 6 odd years to complete. So, was all the money, time and sweat of people that went into making Avengers worth it? Does the movie stand up to the hype and hoopla surrounding it? And does the movie justify - me spending so much money to it in the theatres..?? The answer to all these questions is a resounding "YES"!!

First and foremost, Avengers gives you Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Hulk, Black Widow and that guy who is really good with the bow and the arrow, Clint Barton. There's also Nick Fury and his merry band of SHIELD agents. And then there's the super villain Loki! So many superheroes and others just for the price of one!! The effects are mind blowing and the story doesn't suck either!!

Let's start with the script. It is well scripted. Every Super-hero has been given equal screen time. The villain looks notorious enough. The scenes are well shot. The dialogues are comical. There's the customary tension between the super heroes when they first meet each other.

Moving on to the actors, Robert Downey Jr., I salute thee for the rendition of the Iron Man and even more for Tony Stark, the smart talking, playboy billionaire when the armour suit is taken away!! Infact he's more funny when he's not inside the armour suit. One of the most iconic lines in the movie comes from Robert Downey Jr. when he says "We got Hulk"!  He's funny throughout the movie and he's the one who holds it together!!

Chris Evans as Captain America is for me very vanilla. A lot of scope was there to make him more entertaining, after all he has woken up after 70 odd years. How was he coping up trying to adapt to this new world? He just does the strategizing and keep saying Soilder and Ma'am.

Chris Hemsworth as Thor sounds Australian throughout the movie. He does what he is supposed to do as the super villain is a brother he is trying to take home. The fight sequence between him, Iron Man and Captain America is really good. Also same is the case of his fight against Hulk.

Scarlett Johansson does what she does best - Looks HOT!!

Jeremy Renner tries really hard to cement his place in the starting line-up of super heroes and he does fairly well too. But falling to the super villain in the very beginning and then getting beat up by a girl doesn't really add up to a super hero.

And then there's Mark Ruffalo as the HULK!! And for me, he or let's say the computer generated green version of him was the surprise package of the movie. The Hulk was funny every time he was on-screen. The biggest cheers in the theatre were for him. The scenes in which he punches Thor, just for fun and the way he manhandles Loki were really really funny.

Now a word for Tom Hiddleston. The british actor plays an awesome super villain who is a match for all the 6 super heroes combined.

Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury is solid. But what disappointed me the most was Cobie Smulders in a very insignificant role as Fury's sidekick! She has been wasted!!

Joss Whedon who is the director surely knew how to make an epic!

Hope who ever watched the movie stayed till the very end. There's  an extra scene after the credits. There's definitely going to be Avengers - 2. And I will be waiting for it!!!!!!!!

But before that The Dark Knight Rises....

The Great Wall of India

The year was 1996. Indian cricket team was on a tour of the British Isles. As usual the Indians were getting beaten left, right and centre. Navjot Singh Sidhu had flown home after a tiff with Mohd. Azharuddin. So, on 20th June 1996, two Indians made their debut for the Indian side at the home of cricket, Lord’s in London. Both the young men left an imprint that day. One made a century on debut and the other fell for 95. I am going to talk about the gentleman who made 95 on debut and was overshadowed by a century on debut, the perennial unsung hero of Indian Cricket, Rahul Sharad Dravid.

I don’t exactly remember when I became a fan of Rahul Dravid. It was right after he made his debut in England, I suppose. I was amazed by his calm demeanour, the seriousness in which he played the game. He was not brash in any way. Very down to earth. He has had ups and downs in his career like any other sportsperson. He had an amazing 1st year of International cricket. Then, he was dropped from the ODI side. The reason given was that his strike rate was not up to the mark. Also, he was predominantly a legside player. Dravid was still playing test cricket. He scored his first test century against South Africa in South Africa, an innings of 148 against the likes of the Allan Donald. He was recalled to the ODI side for the series against Bangladesh and Kenya. I had to sit and watch him struggle against Kenya I think where he scored 1 from 30-odd deliveries. It was very difficult to watch to see such a class act struggle. But he battled it out. He went back to the drawing board, worked hard on his game, and came back to the Indian side for the 1999 World Cup. Dravid was the highest run-getter of the tournament where India was knocked out in the Super Six stage. He then went on to score centuries in both the innings of a test match against the kiwis in New Zealand. Then Sourav Ganguly took over the captaincy and India started a journey towards redemption. I still get Goosebumps when I think of the Kolkata test against Australia in which India won after following-on. People will remember the heroics of VVS Laxman. But Dravid also played one of his most important innings. He contributed 180 to the score and batted a whole day alongside VVS to deny Australia even a single wicket on the 4th day. As the 2003 world cup rolled by, he was asked to keep wickets for the ODI team. He did it without saying anything. The Headingly test where Dravid again scored a century in very demanding conditions. The Adelaide test where he scored 233 and 72* in the second innings and helped India to a famous win on Australian soil after 22 years. Then he was appointed the captain of the side. India under his captaincy won the test series in England. But then came another low point. India got knocked out of the World Cup 2007 in the 1st round itself after embarrassing losses to Bangladesh and Srilanka. No one had asked for his resignation as the captain of the side but he stepped aside himself. And then he struggled, struggled a lot. Finally last year, he had an amazing year where he scored 6 centuries. And then the disaster called the Australian tour came and the rest as they say is history!

I think Dravid has made the decision to retire at the right time. India doesn’t have an overseas tour for the next year. Youngsters can be blooded in the Indian side in home conditions. The coveted No.3 spot is up for grabs.
Rahul Dravid has always handled himself in a very dignified manner, a perfect gentleman in a gentlemen’s game. He is a role model for all youngsters. You don’t have to abuse or show the middle finger to get a point across. Let your performances do the talking.

Rahul, you will be sorely missed. Best of luck for your future ventures. Hope you became a commentator. Atleast, it would give me an incentive to watch the game again. I don’t know if I will watch test cricket again! Thanks a lot for all the memories!

In the end, there is only one Rahul “The Wall” Dravid. There never will be another one!!