An open letter to Lalit Modi

Mr. Lalit Modi

Hope you are doing well. Congratulations on the grand success of IPL, your "brainchild”. You have made a great deal of money for the BCCI, sold cricket commercially and won a lot of new fans. You are a great manager and an excellent businessman. You have managed to monopolise cricket and become "the most powerful man in world cricket today" (quoting Chris Cairns). And I definitely should mention that you are very good at the press conferences. Of course you always have Shilpa Shetty, Preity Zinta or some other pretty lady for your support. A good job nevertheless. You have received enough accolades for your effort I am sure.

I however, have a few questions for you. I could not help looking up the word "brainchild" in the dictionary. It means "a product of one's creative work or thought." May I ask you what was so creative about the IPL? You just changed "English" in EPL to "Indian" to make it IPL. Very convenient. Not even the idea of providing opportunities to youngsters was yours. It belonged to Mr. Kapil Dev and crew. You could not even come up with innovative franchise names for crying out loud! All you had to do was go online and browse for the names of baseball and football leagues in USA. Kansas City Royals became Rajasthan Royals, San Diego Chargers became Deccan Chargers and Outer Banks Daredevils became Delhi Daredevils. So Mr. Modi, it is very clear that no part of your work is creative. Please refrain from using the word "brainchild" henceforth.

I forgot to congratulate you on the moving of IPL to South Africa on such a short notice last year. Great job on that. And on your donation to the schools in South Africa, over $890000 if I am not wrong. Very generous indeed. Where were you when our own hockey team needed financial help? A man of your stature and position could have done a lot for a fellow sporting body in the country. It’s after all our national game. Please do something to popularise hockey in India. Only you can do it. You can probably copy the format of NFL and call it NHL(National Hockey League). Go for it Mr. Modi!!

I grew up watching Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Glenn Mcgrath, Shane Warne, Brian Lara and Ricky Ponting, among many others, battling it out for their countries for five days, bowling till the last sinew in their body cracked up and taking blows on their bodies just to survive. That was cricket. They might not have been paid a lot but they sure did give all of theirs for their respective countries. Times may have changed now, but if test cricket has to survive in India, leave alone flourish, IPL is definitely not the way to go. If you are going to offer such large amounts of money even for rookies, no one is ever going to venture close to Test cricket. As the legendary Gary Sobers noted, you can pay the guys such huge sums of money for winning but not for just participating. You are just spoiling the upcoming cricketers.

I was proud when India said it won’t play the inaugural T20 world cup. I was proud that we stood up for something. But now we are just another hypocritical cricketing nation. It’s not very surprising now that we are the only country against the Test Championship Tournament. At this rate, I am sure we won’t produce another Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Tendulkar or Dravid. We already have players like Flintoff, Lee, Tait and Nannes retiring from the longer format of the game to play the shorter one. Very soon Test cricket is going to have overly aggressive and technically weak batsmen playing against mediocre bowlers with shortened boundaries. Is that what you want? Test cricket is marching towards a decline and you, Mr. Modi, are leading the march. You have the power to stop it. Like Peter Roebuck says, Test matches are like classic movies and T20s are not anything more than sitcoms, each has to be treated with different amounts of respect. Please don’t lure away the cricketers from the glory of test matches by showing them the wealth of IPL. As I said earlier, you have won a lot of new fans for cricket, but please do not take away what we old diehard fans adore - Test Cricket. Please stop the madness

Snakes and Ladders

I have never been a big fan of public displays of affection. It happens quite a lot here you know. And most of the time its more than just affection, if you know what I mean. The other day I was looking to cross the road and was waiting for the signal. There was this couple on the the other side of the road, kissing away to glory. The signal eventually fell and I started crossing the road. This couple was still standing there, making out. Now there was very little time left and I had almost crossed the road. When there were just 3 seconds left, those love birds held hands, ran across the road and continued their act of "love". I just wished someone would walk up to them and tell them, "Please go get a room!" But yeah, that's never gonna happen!!!

I sometimes wonder how the perception of love will change if we take out the physical intimacy from it. Just imagine, a relationship where you don't kiss, make out, etc etc. Just two people who hang out, talk over the phone for a long time, keep texting throughout the day and share everything. But wait. There's already a word for it- "We're just friends." So there is a thin line somewhere which differentiates between friends and lovers. The line is no longer gender as we all know. So clearly, the physical intimacy is the line here. It may seem outrageous and some people may not accept it. But if we just give it a serious thought, it makes a lot of sense. People of our generation just want instant gratification. Yes, there maybe exceptions. But as we all know, exceptions are not examples. People just go in search of emotional closeness and are filled with this misconstrued opinion that physical intimacy leads to emotional intimacy which brings about mental harmony and peace. Yes, the path to the "divine harmony" may seem absolutely right, but somewhere down the road something goes wrong. Loving couples end up as two self-centered people looking for satisfaction which is no longer available-boredom. End result - break up.

So why this pathetic charade? We know there is pain involved in every relationship. Every relationship comes with an expiry date. No wonder the western part of the world has drifted towards one-night stands and meaningless flings. No emotional attachment, no sentiments, no pain. Many people want their life to be like beautiful music. Well, beautiful music can only be created with ups and downs. Life is just like that. Its just a game of snakes and ladders.

BLUE

This is my fourth day now, sitting alone in my room, nobody to talk to, nothing to do or look forward to. Meaningless flings with beautiful movies, sitcoms which dont even tickle you, guitar exercises which yield in more of pain than music, microwaved food, a laptop which has more mood swings than a girl in her periods- 'nuff said!! Loneliness can make you go crazy, you tend to look at all the negative things around you through a magnifying glass. And in a strange way, your past comes up in front of you and dances to the slow tunes of your sad life. Memories!! A beautiful creation. In a way they add more meaning to your life, gives you something from your past which makes you look forward to your future. Sort of keeps you going. And the most beautiful part is, happier memories overpower the bitter ones. Have you noticed it? When you sit and think about your past, the times you have been happy and had fun come first. Human psychology!! The divine pursuit of happiness! Whatever we do, we want to be happy. If we are not happy, we try to go into a comfort zone which tends to make us happy. The same reason why we get into relationships. Relationships!! Love!! Humans have this incessant need to be pampered, cared about, appreciated and satisfied. And being the masters of our own creations, we come up with this all fancy and chaste word, LOVE! TRUE LOVE! Feels real good to be in one. Accepted. Its like dope, a constant state of inebriation. And when I see a couple "truly in love", I do envy them. They are in their own state of "happiness". Two people appreciating each others' flaws, pampering each other away to glory, showering expensive gifts and calling it "selfless love" - a falsely conjured oxymoronic term. Yes I believed in it! And I still want to believe in it. But I guess when you are in love you think with your heart and when you are out of it your brain takes over. A chemical reaction nonetheless. Pursuit of happiness!!!

Yes. Thats how your brain works when it has nothing to do. It is depressing when you have believed in something throughout your life and your brain starts questioning it and proves it completely wrong. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop!" Right!! I decide to stop thinking. I walk out of the house into the street. The lovely portland street. Trust me, my depressing thoughts are way better. City of angels, my ass! The underdeveloped, crowded, pothole-filled streets of Chennai are way better! You can live life there. Here you merely exist. Rules, rules, rules. And then more rules. Even driving in this country is boring. Perfect roads, automatic gears, neatly chalked out rules. Tell me, what is the fun in driving? I wonder what an american guy would do if he had to drive on Indian roads. I am sure he will die of a heart attack. The poor guy cant even call 911. Oh in India I heard its 108. Like someone is gonna use that and succeed in getting timely help!! But yeah, that's India for you. Mera bharath mahaan.

Am back in my house now. The uncleaned vessels, non-vacuumed carpet floor, the lonely fooseball table, my red vaio( I still wonder how my mom convinced me into buying that color). Hmphhh!! I guess am back to where I started. Staring into the abyss. More and more thoughts flood my tiny brain now. And trust me, its all sooooo blueee!!!!