Peter Roebuck compares Lara and Border in this article written for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Lara recently went past Border’s record for maximum runs in test cricket.
I have always admired Peter Roebuck for his writing ability.
Here are few comparisons from the article:

Where Border played and lived in straight lines, his successor is all wrist and
angle. Where Border provoked admiration and affection, the West Indian inspires
awe.

And he[Border]was right. He was great because he did not try
to be great. He was effective. He scored runs because he did not get
out.

Border did not bother about the gallery or appearances. He
just wanted to win. Every Lara innings is a performance.

Border’s
battle was with the game. Lara’s has been with himself.

I, personally, believe that Lara is a genius. I admire him more than Border (even though the latter has a better winning record).

Today’s editorial in the TOI has an article written by a former professor of IIM-A.
He mentions that in the admission interviews he would ask the candidates about what they would do if they were late for the interview and had jumped a red signal and subsequently caught by the cop.
Those candidates who answered that they would slip in a Rs. 50 note to the constable were immediately rejected by the professor.

He goes on to say that little did he know that being honest could lead to a person’s death.
This was in reference to the death of Manjunathan of Indian Oil.

I think many people lose their lives not only due to being honest, but also for no apparent fault of theirs.
Victims of riots, victims of natural disasters, victims of genocides, victims of malnourishment, victims of diseases, victims of bombarding by super-powers.
A majority of these people had always done the right things in life, had stood by their morals and ethics, and had spoken the truth where relevant.
Yet, they find themselves cut off from life.
Why?
And how come that is not discussed?

Is there a connection between such people and Manjunath?
Or is it that since Manjunath had an option of life in front of him, we shouldn’t compare him with the others?

For the others, it was “fate” but for Manjunath it was the “system-dealing-a-bad-blow”.
Why?

Not clear about it as of now.
The haze between life and death has always been a killer.

Parkinson’s law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

(Sourced from Wikipedia)

It is Monday and I am already waiting for the weekend.

Work looks like a distant proposition.
I can afford to be lackadaisical and lethargic.
I can afford to let work pile up.
My past performance has provided me with a certain length of cushion on which I am currently sitting.

But this cushion is wearing out fast.

A hollow white stick full of chemicals and tobacco is best burnt.
And after burning, its butt should be kicked in public.
But then, such violence has been prohibited – by friends (one of whom always has his cell phone ready with messages stored in the drafts folder!) and by my sinus problem.

An HR lady (I shall spare the term “babes” which might cause resentment and indignation amongst HR babes) called me and asked if I could judge a “skit” competition.
I was grateful that I had a telecon this evening.
Well okay, I didn’t have a telecon, but now I do.

I am not the type to get engaged in cultural activities of an organisation. Just not the type.
I can do theatre outside, in fact I yearn to do so, but when it comes to doing it for the organisation, I develop cold feet. And hands.

Whatever might be the reason, I am sure that the white stick would let me know.
If only I could burn it.
If only I could kick its butt.
If only he didn’t enforce the law with his cell phone.

But then again, I am glad he does.

Life begins and life ends.
And then we rest.

U2′s Elevation is an “adrenalin nourisher”

High, higher than the sun
You shoot me from a gun
I need you to elevate me here
At the corner of your lips
At the orbit of your hips
Eclipse, you elevate my soul
—————–
A mole, living in a hole
Digging up my soul
Going down, excavation
I and I in the sky
You make me feel like I can fly
So high, elevation

The lyrics don’t make much sense to me, but I still like the song.

Maybe you could educate my mind
Explain all these controls
I can’t sing but I’ve got soul
The goal is elevation

I have reached the last few pages of Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas.

The book is, as the synopsis on its last page says, “One of the most thought-provoking and powerful novels written about the Partition”.

I love this book. It brings out details so clearly that you can almost visualise the communal terror that grips the towns and villages.

The story starts off when a labourer is tricked into killing a pig and the pig’s carcass is thrown at the entrance of a mosque.
That was the trigger needed to spark off one of the worst communal riots that were seen during the time of the partition.

Hindus and Muslims, who earlier engaged with each other in trade and bonhomie, start hating each other to the extent of wanting to wipe out entire communities.

The story is based on a true incident that Bhisham Sahni was an eyewitness to.
The characters and events are described so intricately that you can almost feel the helplessness of the victims and can’t help but shed a tear for those who died; especially an old blind Muslim who is killed just because he was walking alongside and explaining the importance of fragrances to a young Hindu boy.

The Muslim League, the Congress party and the RSS are portrayed very well and each of these parties had their own issues that they wanted to be addressed before sitting down for negotiation.

The riots erupt, the Muslim League screams for an independent Pakistan where the Muslims would be safe.
It ridicules the Congress and calls it a party of the Hindus.

The Congress, even then, was a flag-bearer of secularism and refused to accept that it was a party of the Hindus.
The RSS continued to ridicule both the Congress and the Muslim League.

Out of all the parties, the one that stood out was the Communist Party which based its ideologies on those of Marx.
This was the only party that thought logically and sought the co-operation of all parties in curbing the riots.
They did a lot of work in the by lanes of the village to ensure that the riots do not spread and went around explaining to everyone that the British were behind all this and that we should not be fighting with each other.
I developed a new sense of respect for this party which I have been ridiculing ever since I understood (partially) contemporary India’s political stage.

Few snapshots from the book that stand out in my mind:
******************
Dev Datt, a communist, explaining that we, the middle class, are the ones who will get most affected by the riots. The labourers are too busy earning their daily wages to bother about religion. The upper class is safe in their havens and are educated enough to know the aims of the British government.
******************
Ranvir, a member of the Youth Wing of the RSS, killing a hen and by doing so, passing the test and getting initiated into the party of the “warriors” who then go about killing innocents.
The act of killing the hen instills so much of bravado and pride within Ranvir that he starts believing in “Killing is easy”.
******************
Harnam Singh and his wife Banto, the only Sikh couple in the village, escape to the nearest town and seek refuge in a Muslim household.
The old Muslim lady opens the door and lets them in.
The Sikh couple are grateful.
When the Muslim lady offers them a cup of buttermilk, Banto hesitates and thinks to herself – “How can we drink from a cup of a Muslim?”
A thought like that occurs to her even though the old Muslim lady has given them shelter!
The Muslim lady guesses this and asks them if they have a utensil of their own.
At this, Harnam Singh and Banto both break into tears.
******************
The conversations between Liza, the wife of the deputy commissioner and her husband Richard.
Liza asks Richard as to how he was able to know whether a person was a Hindu or a Muslim.
Richard explains to her the names of Hindus and Muslims and Liza fails miserably at identifying the religion of the servants in her British outhouse. This served to drive home the point that both Hindus and Muslims were same in all aspects except their religious beliefs.
******************
The indifference of the British government – claiming that they did not want to interfere with the religious affairs of the citizens.
******************

About Bhisham Sahni, he was the brother of Balraj Sahni – the cycle-rickshaw puller in Do Bheegha Zamin.
I doubt we will ever have an actor with the calibre of Balraj Sahni.
Bhisham Sahni had recently acted in Mr. and Mrs. Iyer. He was the old man in the bus who is singled out and killed by the fundamentalists.

Tamas was made into a TV film by Govind Nihalani. Its cast included Om Puri, Deepa Sahi, Saeed Jaffrey, Deena Pathak and Bhisham Sahni himself.

The book, in addition to the emotions that it powerfully conveys, gives one an insight into the power of religion, both negative and positive.

I met a person who was a quality engineer at Mercedes-Benz.
He was telling me about the high focus that Mercedes sets on the aspect of quality and safety.

Every month, atleast 2 cars are lifted by a crane to the height of a three storey building and then dropped onto the floor.
The car obviously collapses and goes out of shape.
However, the impact of this crash is studied on the human dummies that are placed inside the car before dropping it.

These dummies are fitted with sensors on their surface and these sensors are responsible for indicating the amount of impact that each body part suffered due to the fall.

I found that amazing indeed.
He also went on to say that Mercedes strives to ensure that during any car crash, the injury to the passengers is minimal.
This, he claims, makes the Mercedes the safest car in the world.
To make the point more relevant, he stated the number of car-crash casualties which was quite huge.

I probably shot off my mouth too early.

I told him, “Yeah, in fact even Diana died in a car crash”.
He said, “Yeah, we know”. He paused and then added, “She was in a Mercedes by the way”.
I said, “Oh! I didn’t know that”.

Further conversation on this topic became awkward especially considering the amount of time he had spent explaining to me how safe a person was in a Mercedes.

In a training session for the next couple of days.

The training is boring.
However, what was of interest to me was the fact that this trainer has translated Orwell’s Animal Farm into Marathi.
The translation has been a hit ever since it was published by him.
He also went on to say that most of the Marathi-educated people wouldn’t obviously pick up English books.
Hence, his work has done an amazing job of bringing Orwell’s work to these people who are very keen on reading.

Translating English books into vernacular languages has been my long pending desire.
I believe that there is a lot of progress that has occurred in the world.
Additionally, all this progress has been documented primarily in English.

Which implies that English has raced away in time with respect to all contemporary developments in almost all fields.

If all this progress can be made available to people who speak regional languages, I believe it can do wonders to our society.

I do plan to get atleast one English book translated into Gujrati.
And I think it would be great if everyone of us can target to translate one book into our native languages.

Any ideas on how an undertaking can be brought in place to translate all major works?

The US Cassini spacecraft has captured a striking image of Saturn’s moons Dione and Tethys passing each other across the planet’s ring system.

Courtesy: BBC News

I would imagine that to view such a sight would be one of the most universal experiences one can ever get.

Going a little beyond Saturn, in this post that is, one would want to know why the entire universe was created in the first place.
Stephen Hawking, in the preface of his book Blackholes and Baby Universes, says that one day we might figure out how the whole thing began, how things work in the universe, how light behaves the way it does, how time changes the way it does and so on.
However, one thing that we shall never be able to answer is why the universe exists.

It is probably unwise to believe that the entire universe (with its motley set of stars and planets and what not) was created specifically by God for the advent of life.
But then, if it wasn’t created for life, then what on earth (that phrase seems so trivially harmful in this context) was the universe created for?
The Anthropic Principle seems to alleviate this problem. However, when you look at it, this principle doesn’t really answer anything specific.
It simply states that one cannot ask the question “Why is there life on Earth?”.
This is because, if life was on any other planet, we would ask a similar question then and hence it isn’t really a valid question.
(! Got me confused yes, but then this is a crutch for many theories in quantum physics)

We tend to believe that life is the central entity of everything.
It is life that is of utmost importance, not any of the other million chemicals that also exist.
Is that belief right?
What if God’s (this post assumes that God exists) only aim was to create a million odd chemicals?
What if life was just a by-product of all those chemicals being piled up?

In one damp corner of the stock-pile, a couple of chemicals ended up mixing with each other and lo – something got created which called itself “life”.
Probably God doesn’t even know about this as he is still on the other side of the universe inspecting his stock of chemicals there.

Ironically, “life” then starts worshipping God who probably didn’t intend to create it in the first place.

I, for one, am a firm believer in God.

Whatever might have been his reason for creating me, I respect it.