This is a guest blog from Shweta. I tried highlighting your name and attaching your blog's URL to it, but sadly you refuse to keep one! But for you're 25th b'day, this is the least i can do :-)
This one's called Searching within Confined Spaces
For sometime, I knew I had misplaced something. I didn’t exactly know how or when or what exactly I had misplaced. I was sure it wasn’t an old diary or a faded photo album either. All I knew that that it was somewhere waiting to be rediscovered in my room.
Take a quick peek into my room. This room will tell you nothing about me. Usual bare essentials of a table, chair, phone, lights, ceiling fan, an a/c, a clock, bed stacked with pillows, couple of open book racks and a closed wardrobe exists. Yet, everything in this room will tell you about me. I’m a modern day minimalist. I claim to be organized. To tell you the truth, in this tribe of 'minimalist', we are trained to shove all 'unwanted' things into lofts placed close to the ceiling. So, I thought that this confined space high above may get me to the stuff that I had misplaced.
Perched on a ladder and armed with a duster, I decided to examine this mysterious corner of my room. Out came the rightful occupants i.e. some sleepy and annoyed cockroaches. A little further, was a mass of odds and ends either waiting be disposed, sold, scrapped or just waiting for something. Yep… Dog-eared books, accounts ledger notebooks, School and College annual year books were all stacked. I'm sure I had good reason for retaining some question papers, rusted geometry boxes with cracked protractors and Reynolds pens with no refills. My erstwhile favorite 28 inch faded Lee jeans was sitting pretty in between this mess. I seem to have an amazing collection of R.D. Burman cassettes that I had wanted to convert into CDs. Oh, of course… school bags, college t-shirts, ties, belts, bags, cheap jewelry, friendship bands, key chains, study guides, old photo albums, some signed t-shirts, a tennis racquet, a dice…too many things…
My attention soon went toward a Philips music cardboard box. I opened that to find a box full of old greeting cards that I had received and treasured carefully over the last two decades without allowing my parents to throw it. The variety of shapes, sizes, and colors of greeting cards across occasions were amazing.
In that heady jumble, out came cards in no particular order. I found cards received on birthdays gone by, on getting my first period, on wishes for exams to be written, congratulatory cards on surviving exams written, becoming a teen, on completing my teen-hood, on recovery wishes for some sickness or the other. I even found couple of cards that was sent only because some one remembered me! In between card covers bearing foreign stamps, I found the first ever valentine card received by me. Out came a crumpled disjointed heart shaped piece of paper. It had the golden words “If roses are meant to be red, and violets are meant to be blue...' Now, the sad part is, the other part of the heart seems to have disappeared under the weight of time and other cards. I searched hard for the missing piece of paper. It was of no use. I tried hard remembering who the sender was...I'm sorry. I just couldn’t.
Yet, I smiled. I discovered what I was in search of… MEMORIES...amazing ones...In these greeting cards, I found trails of time celebrating some of the best and the worst moments gone by. Over the years, each card had some kind of personal note that acknowledged the trials and tribulations in my life time from various well wishers. In this confined space, did my search end...In these greeting cards, did I find what I craved for…Memories that made me realize that my 25th year of existence on planet Earth has not been all that uneventful… It’s been good…Damn good! Happy Birthday to me!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The biggest landmine in sports
Argentina just squeaked into the last flight leaving to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. Phew, what a relief!
The curse and blessing of the Argentinean team has been its coach, El Diego. A blessing for obvious reasons and a curse because it has now been laid out bare to the world that a good player need not always be a good coach. In fact, some the best coaches in the world in sports were seldom good players. Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger had forgettable football careers as players. Jean Todt peaked as co-driver in his racing days, never really achieving anything significant during his stint as a (co)driver. On the other side of the spectrum are cases of players-par-excellence turned coaches-par-nightmare: Kapil Dev, Alain Prost, and Diego Maradona until recently to name a few.
To succeed as a player requires a different skill set than it does to succeed as a coach. For long, I often wondered that if Sachin was the best batsman in the world, why was Anshuman Gaekwad his coach? I had never even heard of Gaekwad’s batting prowess. Or why did a Tiger Woods or a Roger Federer need a coach? Being a coach means bringing out the best in a player, or a team. That often involves placing belief, trust and transferring motivation and bringing about the discipline to develop the ‘balls’ to go out there and succeed. These things need a third party to be involved even with the best players on earth. The lack of understanding of this concept is probably the biggest landmine in all of sports.
Up on skimming through a couple of books recently, my friend noticed that baseball and basketball coaches in the US were well respected, often quoted and remembered even after their prime years. Similar was the case with European football coaches. Maybe in India, we should start doing the same too. Our coaches (only the deserving ones), in any sport, need to be recognized way beyond what they get in the deal now. And we may just have solved one of the problems in the eternal question: “Why can’t a nation of a billion bring home a few Olympic Golds.”
The curse and blessing of the Argentinean team has been its coach, El Diego. A blessing for obvious reasons and a curse because it has now been laid out bare to the world that a good player need not always be a good coach. In fact, some the best coaches in the world in sports were seldom good players. Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger had forgettable football careers as players. Jean Todt peaked as co-driver in his racing days, never really achieving anything significant during his stint as a (co)driver. On the other side of the spectrum are cases of players-par-excellence turned coaches-par-nightmare: Kapil Dev, Alain Prost, and Diego Maradona until recently to name a few.
To succeed as a player requires a different skill set than it does to succeed as a coach. For long, I often wondered that if Sachin was the best batsman in the world, why was Anshuman Gaekwad his coach? I had never even heard of Gaekwad’s batting prowess. Or why did a Tiger Woods or a Roger Federer need a coach? Being a coach means bringing out the best in a player, or a team. That often involves placing belief, trust and transferring motivation and bringing about the discipline to develop the ‘balls’ to go out there and succeed. These things need a third party to be involved even with the best players on earth. The lack of understanding of this concept is probably the biggest landmine in all of sports.
Up on skimming through a couple of books recently, my friend noticed that baseball and basketball coaches in the US were well respected, often quoted and remembered even after their prime years. Similar was the case with European football coaches. Maybe in India, we should start doing the same too. Our coaches (only the deserving ones), in any sport, need to be recognized way beyond what they get in the deal now. And we may just have solved one of the problems in the eternal question: “Why can’t a nation of a billion bring home a few Olympic Golds.”
Sunday, October 4, 2009
And then, you have these…
Here are two tales that I think you ought to know :-
How do you bring down the roof of a pub?
My friend was out with 5 other guys one evening in a pub in Mumbai. The evening was great with the music, the drinks and the crowd, until this lady walked in. She was extremely gorgeous, and carried the air around her that made many heads turn around. As she settled down on a stool at the bar, my friend and his pals couldn’t hold back from remarking to each other about the beautiful thing that had just walked in. One of them came up with the idea to pen some lines on a paper napkin and have it handed to this lady through the waiter.
The lines were well thought out and written out on a tissue. The waiter was called. The guys handed him the paper napkin, and along with a tip of Rs 30 asked the waiter to hand the message to the girl on the stool.
The waiter walked up to the girl. The guys held their breath eagerly at the table watching while the waiter approached the girl. He handed the paper to her while pointing that it came from the table ‘over there’. And then, he handed her the 30 rupees. He didn’t know it was his tip. He had assumed that the money was a part of the package.
I was told by my friend that the girl stormed to their table and yelled at them. It must have been loud, I guess.
How to make your way to the front of a concert crowd?
I think this idea, which comes from another friend, is pretty cool. This guy finds himself at the back of the crowd at an Iron Maiden concert. So how does he go to the front? He taught me a two step process that is worth sharing.
Firstly, as you start making your way through the initial rows from the back, there’s bound to be resistance from the people from letting you go forward. So, you say to them – “My girlfriend’s in the front”; and they let you move. But after a certain distance of advancing, the crowds become less forgiving and that line doesn’t work any longer. So here’s where step two comes in. You say to them - “My boyfriend’s in the front”; and they let you move.
He tells me they always oblige. Try it and tell me how it goes.
How do you bring down the roof of a pub?
My friend was out with 5 other guys one evening in a pub in Mumbai. The evening was great with the music, the drinks and the crowd, until this lady walked in. She was extremely gorgeous, and carried the air around her that made many heads turn around. As she settled down on a stool at the bar, my friend and his pals couldn’t hold back from remarking to each other about the beautiful thing that had just walked in. One of them came up with the idea to pen some lines on a paper napkin and have it handed to this lady through the waiter.
The lines were well thought out and written out on a tissue. The waiter was called. The guys handed him the paper napkin, and along with a tip of Rs 30 asked the waiter to hand the message to the girl on the stool.
The waiter walked up to the girl. The guys held their breath eagerly at the table watching while the waiter approached the girl. He handed the paper to her while pointing that it came from the table ‘over there’. And then, he handed her the 30 rupees. He didn’t know it was his tip. He had assumed that the money was a part of the package.
I was told by my friend that the girl stormed to their table and yelled at them. It must have been loud, I guess.
How to make your way to the front of a concert crowd?
I think this idea, which comes from another friend, is pretty cool. This guy finds himself at the back of the crowd at an Iron Maiden concert. So how does he go to the front? He taught me a two step process that is worth sharing.
Firstly, as you start making your way through the initial rows from the back, there’s bound to be resistance from the people from letting you go forward. So, you say to them – “My girlfriend’s in the front”; and they let you move. But after a certain distance of advancing, the crowds become less forgiving and that line doesn’t work any longer. So here’s where step two comes in. You say to them - “My boyfriend’s in the front”; and they let you move.
He tells me they always oblige. Try it and tell me how it goes.
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