La Copa De La Vida-a Nation's Dream

The cup of life, this is the one

Now is the time, don't ever stop

Push it along, gotta be strong.

Push it along, right to the top...........

And when you feel the heat. The world is at your feet

No one can hold you down. If you really want it

Just steal your destiny. Right from the hands of fate

Reach for the cup of life. 'Cause your name is on it

Do you really want it...(YEAH)

Do you really want it...(YEAH)..........

Go, go ,go! Ale, Ale, Ale

Tonight's the night, we're gonna celebrate

The cup of life!!! Ale, Ale, Ale.

Thus goes the famous lines of a song written by the Franco-Spaniard Ricky Martin which was the FIFA 98' anthem that went on to inspire Zizou(Zinedine Zidane) and Les Bleus to lift the cup for the 1st time in history of football.4 years down the line,they were kicked out in the very 1st round and in 2006,they resurrected from the grave to reach the finals under the inspired leadership of Zizou only to lose ignominiously to Italy....thanks to Buffon's famous save of Zizou's header!!!

Do not think that I am a fool to write about football when the cricket world cup is just a month away...I am in fact drawing comparisons between the two famous Les Bleus in different sporting arenas-France in Football and India in Cricket.

To me,it appears that we shall be doing a sort of Les Bleus world cup campaigns but in the reverse order.In 2003,we lost ignominiously to Australia at The Wanderers(with Sachin getting out to a McGrath bouncer in the 1st over being the equivalent of Buffon's save and Sachin just like Zidane in 2006 getting the Man of the Tournament Award) and in 2007,our Caribbean honeymoon ended prematurely in the 1st round(Sachin just like Zizou in 2002 was totally out of form) and in 2011...hope it is 1998:France and 2011:India,we shall win the Cup of Life at home and Sachin is the main reason behind it mirroring Zidane's 1998 victorious campaign.Let us pray and hope that we become the 1st team apart from the Baggy Green to win the world cup in the new millennium.

If one man deserves to win the world cup,it must be Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar more than any one else.Recently I came across an advertisement by Star Network (Sachin being the official event ambassador for this world cup) where a bunch of kids(the size of 2-litre Coke bottles) cutely with dedication prepare Sachin's cricket kit and prepare him for the match by wishing him 'Best Of Luck,Sachin'.

I am posting here what the TIME magazine wrote on Sachin:-

When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam.

When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy.

It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will.

But what the TIME magazine does not say is that I was just 101 days old when Sachin made his debut and today I am 21 years young(thanks for Sachin still playing the game as we feel younger)....everything about me has changed and the environment that surrounds me has changed too but watching Sachin play connects me to the sweet childhood memories that lay etched in the hearts but has faded slightly.But Sachin,TIME has embraced him and ironically TIME itself has told the fact out in the open!!!

This time...when the world cup has come to our country where Cricket legends are worshipped like GODS,I hope and pray that TEAM INDIA wins,if not for us,atleast for HIM.....Boost may be the secret behind Sachin's energy but Sachin is the secret behind Team India's energy,this Nation's energy and the millions of lovers' (of this game) energy!!!

Hope on April 2nd,2011 the dream of this nation will be realised and with it I think THE SUN WILL EVANESCE AWAY INTO THE HORIZON.....SACHIN,may the sweet touch of your willow bring joy to us for one last world cup while we pray that you shall return home with a SMILE on your lips and a TWINKLE in your eyes as we just like the bunch of kids wish you in one voice 'BEST OF LUCK,SACHIN'!!!

The Curious Case of Kamal Haasan

On December 29,2010 a tragedy struck in my life...dear friends,do not think that a loved one of mine decided to meet me in Heaven,no,fortunately not but unfortunately I happened to see a tamil movie called Manmadhan Ambu(translated in English,it is Cupid's Arrow) starring none other than Kamal Haasan-one of my favorite actors of all time (certainly whether the North Indian people agree or not,the most talented cine artist in India...no BIG B/Amir Khan are not as versatile as him though they are very good actors!!!), Madhavan and Trisha in the lead roles.

Any person who has followed Kamal Haasan can immediately tell you a number of stories as to how he was moved to tears/laughed heartily when he saw how Kamal had so effortlessly drawn him emotionally to the FICTIONAL CHARACTERS!!!

Nayagan,Apoorva Sagothararkal,Indian,Avvai Shanmuki,....the list goes on but then suddenly comes this movie after Superstar Rajnikant comes out with the BIG THROTTLE,RECORD BREAKING,HOLLYWOOD-LIKE ENTHIRAN/ROBO.

What was so disappointing about this movie was not the story(which was bearable but not tolerable) but the man who had won so many accolades and at 56 years can do some good roles like the BIG B in BLACK/PAA or like the SUPERSTAR in ENTHIRAN putting in a performance like...YEAH,I HAVE STILL GOT THE STUFF!!!

What did you have in mind Mr.Kamal when you scripted the story,cast the perfect people,put amazing scenic places...I am really confused,I would have been really happy if you had played Madhavan's role.Did you just want to remind us that you are still capable enough of acting,that you are still young to romance a pretty lass who is half your age (sorry for copying that wonderful Hollywood title but suits this blog),that you can SING(have to bear that cos I reminded myself of the quote-"if none but the best birds sang....the woods would be too silent to keep us hooked"),that you can write a comedy script without CRAZY MOHAN(but it ended TRAGICALLY!!!)....Mr.Kamal,please,we have come to see you ACT and not how you can still REMIND us that you can ACT!!!

I hope and pray that Kamal Haasan sir thinks atleast for an nth time before he makes such a movie that makes us to only squirm and scream at ourselves for wasting a precious time that did everything except entertaining us!!!

Movie is made in the world because of love for the audience but unfortunately the Cupid's Arrow

(Manmadhan Ambu) missed the beloved one's(audiences) heart completely!!!

When THE WALL fades away into the horizon!!!

Rahul Dravid is on 199....here comes Stuart Macgill,bowls a wide halfvolley that kisses the HERO HONDA willow and the next moment,it is beyond the boundary line and Dravid lifts his bat high in the air with an expression that says "This is good but not that good enough,still a lot of work needs to be done".Dravid gets out on 233,the last man out,then the highest score by an Indian in Australia and a few sessions later hits the winning runs and kisses the cap as his 72* in the second innings along with Ajit Agarkar's brilliant outburst in the 2nd innings and Laxman's brilliant 148&32 wins the match at Adelaide for India and takes the lead in the series down under 1-0. That knock would prove to be the defining knock in that series and his consistency would rightly earn him the coveted Man of the Series award.Steve Waugh,one of the greatest captains of all time would retire at the end of the series and would pick Rahul Dravid to write the foreword for his best-selling autobiography "Out of my Comfort Zone".

7 years have passed since then,a lot has changed.Dada and Kumble have retired,India has become the No.1 Test side,Sehwag and Gambhir have replaced Hayden and Langer as the most explosive opening combination in the world;Australia has just been thrashed 3-1 by England in their own den and thus ultimately crushing every hope of an Australian resurgence and most importantly people's failing hope on THE WALL or I should rather say failing interest.

For a moment,let us imagine a situation like this:-India is yet to be blessed with Sachin Tendulkar and therefore no records,Sehwag is not yet born,Laxman has never played a magical innnings in the 2nd innings,Ganguly did not steal our hearts away with his grit and sweet sixes, T20 is yet to show its entertaining face which means that India's star batsman is the one and only Rahul Dravid but unfortunately for him,he was present when all of this happened/were happening.

This only meant that no matter whether he scored a century in the 2nd innings to save India from a demoralising defeat,the crowd always cherished the century by a Sehwag/Sachin in the 1st innings and if Dravid happened to score a brilliant 1st innings century on a devilish green patch,the crowd would love to forget his and always remember Laxman's innings in the 2nd.

Poor man he is,how I wish he played in the Gavaskar era,he would have certainly been remembered as India's most prolific batsman in the middle order(even now he is but then the Gavaskar era was very different)...

times have really changed in India and with it its beloved people too who are praying to GOD devoutly so that they can take a second to breathe(for that is how every Indian lives his life).

India as it stands today has governed respect in all fields today...thanks to the leadership of the late P.V.Narasimha Rao and his group of friends who embraced change enthusiastically and the world in turn was ready to serve India well....poverty still remains but then today more than any other day in the past,a middle class Indian living in one of those famous urban areas can get all his needs satisfied and desires fulfilled with the money he has.On the other side,India looked for something to fall in love with apart from its love for cinema which could have been nothing else than cricket!!!

To fulfill this desire of the Indians,GOD incarnated in human form in the form of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar on the day if we ironically put it,the day after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's 100th birthday(observed as Children's Day).This boy looked like he had just been fed milk with a feeding bottle and looked too small to hold a cricket bat that was half his size.Very soon after his arrival,every Indian had a TV and soon the magic weaved from his willow mesmerized every Indian.

By the time Dravid,Laxman and Ganguly made their debuts in 1996,the Indian loyalties rested with Sachin and deservedly so.1998 became the year when Sachin reached his status ultimatum-THE GOD OF CRICKET!!!Everyone in India loved him dearly and most of the elders whether they were Hindus/Muslims considered him as part of their families.

Slowly,the god given talents of the 1996 trio were also respected and admired.After 2001 home series against Australia,they too atleast got into the lips of every Indian's prayers but that was the most they could aspire for.

After the match fixing scandals took Indian cricket to its nadir,we started to pursue the zenith of achievements under the leadership of Dada.One man revolutionised himself and came to be the backbone of Team India.....it was during this period did Dravid earn the nicknames Mr.Consistency/THE WALL and obviously the latter was more famous.

Somehow Dravid's nickname suited him perfectly for he epitomised the perfection that Englishmen always sought to achieve in their invented sport but only a few could and just like them(the likes of Hobbs/Hutton/Boycott),Dravid got a nickname that sounded dour but was effective to the kind of temperament and character that he showed on the field.At last we have found a man who played the game in exactly the same manner in which the inventors of the game had envisioned.His textbook shots took everyone by surprise.His grit and determination shown to the game he loved so endearingly was effective in making India one of the superpowers of the game.

Match after match,knock after knock....he only bettered himself with an unwavering mind focused on a single thought as to how he could play an effective part in India's rise and the beckoning of a new era.There were not 1,not 2 but innumerable knocks that made India a strong side.

Everything was alright till 2007 when India welcomed entertainment to ruin the gentleman's game...something that suited the elementary tastes of the masses.The Indian youth were no longer going to movies because they had stories but had become perverted to see a few item numbers by some obscurely famous ladies who became rich when their clothes became poor and the same got carried over to T20 matches too.

We had lost the patience to see Test Cricket,lost the eagerness to be patient and see Dravid wear away the bowling attacks,take the precious little ones and twos as the opposing captains ran out of ideas.Dravid's form too had run parallel to the downfall in the youth's interest in India and almost everyone in India does not want to see him make runs in Test cricket even though we realise how desperately Team India needs him.

He does not complain,does not raise his voice to make our gullible mouths shut...but when he gets out after one of those beautiful knocks that you will ever get to see in test cricket by attempting to go for a six and then being caught just yards away from the boundary line at 191,he mumbles to himself in anger as to why he had not stayed for one more session and see India make a better total.....wow,WHAT A MAN!!!

Tomorrow,in some corner of the world,Rahul Dravid will be greeted/called by his present/former team mates on his 38th birthday and he will be praying to the ALMIGHTY above as to how he wishes to see INDIA lift the CUP OF GLORY for the 2nd time even though he is not even there in the list of probables...how he wishes to see himself playing some crucial knocks to make India sustain it's ranking in the TESTS.I am sure he would pray at least for the former fervently from the bottom of his heart and we Indians will not care to remember him on his birthday even if we happen to remember some cricketer's birthday like Virat Kohli even though Kohli is yet to make his debut in tests and has scored just 1/10th of what Dravid has scored in the one-dayers,shame on all of us!!!

Let me remind all of you people,we may get a talent like Sachin/Sehwag/Laxman but we shall certainly not get another man as determined as DRAVID which I think will be recognised only after he retires and that may be anytime soon!!!THE WALL had already crumbled down in our hearts but make sure that THE WALL does not fade away from our memories-

dedicated by a hardcore SACHIN fan who realises the fact that if my idol were not present THE WALL would have certainly earned the tag as INDIA's MOST PROLIFIC BATSMAN EVER!!!

Will certainly miss your presence....am just praying that you play for one more YEAR, which I am certain from the bottom of my heart that YOU WILL!!!

Yavarum Nalam

Yavarum Nalam(Tamil)/13 B(Hindi) directed by Vikram Kumar starring R.Madhavan and Neetu Chandra in the lead roles and produced by Suresh Balaji and George Bayas is a horror movie that does not chill your bones/makes your spine dance/makes your heart do a crazy somersault but it does create an impression in your mind as to how a weird set of related events can actually take your breath away. Such a horror movie at least in India comes once in a Pink Moon(by that I mean improbable) .

For an horror movie to succeed, you need not have to put a ghost that will certainly do anything but does NOT SCARE YOU. You just have to weave a story that is original in its make with a haunting piano/orchestration at the background which is well supported by amazing photography and an amazing cast who can give HUMAN EXPRESSIONS!!!In short, an horror movie more than any other genre requires the co-ordination from all the departments to make it succeed.

Why most of the directors have not succeeded in India in creating a good horror movie is because they perceived that the Indian audience believes in anything that is not real.....but actually the converse is verily true,

TRUTH IS MORE STRANGER THAN EVEN FICTION!!!

I have seen FRIDAY THE 13th SERIES,HALLOWEEN,THE EXORCIST.....and when I compare Indian horror movies with these,they fail miserably. Even among the HOLLYWOOD horror movies....the ones that actually haunted(if I can say it that way) me were not the ones I mentioned above but the movies made by the MASTER FILM MAKER-ALFRED HITCHCOCK namely PSYCHO and THE BIRDS,they really scared the shit out of me. Because I have never seen a ghost but more than the ghosts what haunts me is the weirdness of the reality,the eerieness that surrounds a place...the stranger things that happen in reality that are somehow related to create HELL for you!!!

Coming back to this movie.....the movie hooks you from the 1st scene. Imagine yourself as Manohar (Madhavan naturally fit into this role) who is an upwardly mobile middleclass man who has just bought a house from a bank loan and becomes a witness to the weird happenings around the place like the milk getting spoiled each and every time,the lift not operating for him alone,how the serial Yavarum Nalam consists of characters that mirrors his own family's story and can be seen only in his house and not anywhere else,....etc.

However what attracted me most to the movie was how the subtleties were captured like in one scene,Manohar comes late in the night and is about to take the lift and a bat flies away at the same time signalling a perfect stage for a bad omen, the scene where the neighbour's dog is not enetering Manohar's house and the camera shows the hall in a black and white image(the reason behind being that dogs sees everything black/white and never in colours...this is actually why they can see spirits clearly) and the climax scene where Dr.Balu(played with elan by the Marathi actor Sachin Khedekar) happens to see the ghost of the murdered,Chitra reading out the news of the family's death in the year 1977 on the DOORDARSHAN channel when there is no power in the apartment.These are just few in number and with the haunting piano/orchestration as the background...ENTERTAINMENT is guaranteed!!!

Though there are people who did not like this movie....please watch it!!!It is really good and for those of you who did not like the movie,tell me which movie you got scared for and I shall tell you what sort of an audience do you belong to?

Dead Poet's Society

John Keating(Robin Williams), the English teacher in one of his classes delivers the famous lines:- "We don't read or write poetry because it is cute, we read or write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. Medicine,law,business,engineering:-these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life but Poetry,Beauty,Romance,Love:-these are what we stay alive for........that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."

Last year I happened to see 3 idiots for the 1st time since I never got the time to see during my graduate days but after having seen it once I saw that movie on 7 other occasions,that was the impact of the movie.

Yesterday,I happened to see this and I must say that I really loved each and every moment of it.This movie was made in the year that I was born,1989 and in an ironic way since I too am an aspiring poet/writer this movie really took my heart on a roller coaster ride where each and every human expression and emotion was tested.

If anyone wants to remember one/few lovely teachers who had made wonderful changes to our lives and wants to travel back in time to cherish those long lost memories must certainly watch this movie and if at the end of this movie, you do not feel like crying or at the least feel your heart wrenched.....then you do not belong to the human race!!!

See it and definitely you can visualise your heart somersault at the end!!!LOVELY:-)