World Cup - 2011

Its time to eat, drink, sleep (and ofcourse play) cricket. Greatest event in world cricket is starting in couple of days and my memory goes back to 1983 & every world cup there after. Some of the moments I cannot forget from the world cups:

1983: Best ever
That was the first world cup I followed and Wowa, what an achievement by Indians then. I remember how we used to listen to the commentary in radio back then and Kapil's magnanimous innings of 175* is etched deep inside my mind (or heart?). Binny, Madan Lal, Amarnath, Sandeep Patil, Shrikanth.. wow, what a team that was...

1987: First World cup outside England
"If he hits, it stays hit" -- Sidhu became an overnight hero among our friends back then. Impeccable shots, sixer after sixer, he was better known as "Sixer Sidhu". Who can forget Chetan Sharma's hat-trick in that world cup? Amazing moments.

1992 - Bang bang cricket
It is always always special to watch the Cricket action from Australia. The kind of atmosphere it provides and an early telecast of matches in India make it an all together a different experience. 1992 world cup belonged to Mark Greatbatch and Inzamam-ul-Haq. Wow, Newzealand were on fire from the first match itself, thanks to aggressive Greatbatch and redefining the way Cricket played in initial 15 overs. But ultimately Inzi single handedly steered Pakis to many victories in that tournament.

1996 - Mixed Emotions
Can any Cricket fan in India ever forget the quarter final victory for India over Pakistan at Bangalore? India scored 280+ runs and we knew, that was it. We had a celebration run with Indian flags fluttering during the innings break itself - although there were huge drama to follow in second half of the match. That wicket of Amir Sohail which Venkatesh Prasad took still gives me goosebumps.

None of us can forget the semi-finals in Kolkotta and crying Kambli :-(

1999 - South African Safari
Not much to remember from this world cup, dominance of Aussies began with this world cup. Lance Klusner was the man to watch out for in this tournament.

2003 - Bees saal baad
Astrologers predicted an Indian victory, media created hype of "Bees saal baad" - to get world cup after 20 years. India lived upto all the hype through out the tournament - thanks to Ganguly and Sachin. But alas, the team crumbled in the match it mattered the most - finals :-( Anyway, this was the 2nd best world cup result for India.

2007 - A killer
RIP - Bob Woolmer, RIP - Pakistan, RIP - India. This was the story at the end of first round of tournament. Does it matter anymore who won the world cup? I must say the interest in 50 over cricket started to die down from this point onwards. India won 20-20 world cup and then IPL completely redefined the way Cricket has to be played.

2011 - Great expectation
Well, as with every tournament, expectations are rising on India now :-) But people are more cautious now not to get carried away with any hype - considering the debacle in 2007. Its a new team, tournament is happening in India and India are doing well in recent past. So, no one can easily write-off India. Srilanka, South Africa, India and Australia - my bet for semifinalists. All four are very very capable of winning this tournament. Let the game begin !!!

Skipping Christmas

Hurray, hurrya, its a holiday, holi-holiday... Christmas is around the corner and with that comes a well deserved holiday season for many.

Last year, we had gone to Puri-Bhubhaneshwar for christmas, but this year, we have just decided to skip the Christmas vacation with any big plans of trip (having already finished our quota in October).

We have been hearing about 10's of thousands of people stranded in different airports in Europe, mad rush of travellers everywhere, atleast no regrets to skip this christmas vacation.

Will be visiting my home town of childhood days - Bhadravathi - after almost 12 years. All excited and looking forward to spending christmas in this little town, am sure there will not be any other soul to disturb our peace there. Hope Veena and Poorvi also relish this off-beat place as much as I always did (and still do).

Advertising blunders

I have been commuting in car these days to office and back. So, needless to say, am hooked on to FM radio atleast for 2 hours/day. Recently an Ad on one of the FM radio station caught my attention. It was to do with online coaching/tuitions/tests/homework guidance for children from KG to PG. Nice concept, all the facilities were explained properly, but... I could hardly make out the website . Well, I could make out www & com and that word inbetween these two were very elusive. It sounded like "letsgo.com" or "learnsgo.com", followed by a tag line "Learn on time". Thanks to my 2 hours/day loyalty to FM stations, I could listen to this ad many number of times over and I paid special attention to their website name, everytime. Alas, I can never get it. Determined, I started Googling for "Learns go", "Lets go learn" etc and landed in some education related websites, but was not sure if that's the one which was advertised on air.

I finally gave up on this website, untill yesterday when I saw an ad in the newspaper. "KG to PG" phrase caught my attention and I felt a bit happy to have found the proper website name this time around. Umm, not so lucky, even the way they have written the name in the ad, it was really tricky to understand it in the first read. Finally I could make out that I was always listening to the ad from www.lampsglow.com (check their website and their Lampsglow logo) !!! Uh, so much for the advertisement. It is like writing an exam with full confidence of scoring 90+, but forgot to mention your registration number on the answer sheet.

Missing someone special...

Well, our friendship goes back to 1998. It was sometime in summer of 98 that I met him. Eversince then, its been a fantastic journey together. We were close friends for last 12 years. We used to go together to play cricket, go for swimming, go to anywhere and everywhere. It was an inseparable bond and unfortunately this came to an end today.

Although from last few years, we have not been so much together as we used to be 10 years back, we had that special feeling for each other. He never said NO to go anywhere at anytime together. I was really amazed by his enthusiasm and energy, which never seem to be low at anytime. Its really hard feeling to miss such best friend of mine today. I still cannot believe that he does not exist for me anymore. I am really going to miss you my dear old Kinetic Honda. Do take care.

M-A-N-O-H-S-I-P-C-I-G

Poorvi's experiment with words are on. She tries to read the words on the sign boards, words in the movie subtitles etc. She also tries to guess the word most of the times either looking at the associated picture or from the context. Well, most of the times she gets it right.

With such reading confidence behind her, she has also started etching some real good literature on her room doors, on the board etc.


One fine day, there was a mysterious word written on her door - M-A-N-O-H-S-I-P-C-I-G. I did not give much attention to this word. I presumed it was just a random set of alphabets Poorvi has written. Later that day, Poorvi asked me to guess that word. Oh, is that a word, well, I started guessing all possible words starting with M. Is it "Manmohan Singh", or "Manohar" ? No was the answer. Something to do with "Man"? No. Finally she gave a clue - something to do with phone. Oh yes, I could see "May I know who's speaking" written all over there now !! Wow, thanks Poorvi for such nice literature. I really enjoyed it.

Parallel ringing...

All of us get innumerable tele-marketing calls, offering loans, insurances and what not. I say "No" to most of these requests, but occasionally have fallen for this trap. One of these marketing calls I entertained was from Airtel when they offered the "Parallel ringing services". I thought this is one convenient service as most of the time our home is locked and if I get a parallel call alert on my mobile (whenever someone calls our landline), it is better. The marketing guy mentioned how I will be able to distinguish the parallel ringing on my mobile and I immediately registered for this service.

Well, not a bad decision. I do have the luxury of picking the calls to my home number from anywhere in the town/state (never tested in roaming conditions), however, this also puts me into embarrassing situations many a time. First time it happened with one of the relatives who called our home. I was away somewhere and picked the call (obviously I did not notice that small bar indicating the parallel ringing). I generally mentioned to them that I am out somewhere. There was 2 minute silence from the other end. Then the conversation continued at a hurried pace in a suspicious manner. 

Many a times I also get calls from our security in the apartment to let some visitor come to our home or not. I find it hard to explain to them that no one is at home. I do not know what those visitors would be thinking about us though, turning down the entry to our home after talking with the security.

Until some technology and service become popular, there needs some explanation to do - and am getting used to explaining this service to all those people who called our landline ! Tring, Tring...