For the love of the game - CHAK DE INDIA

I am a big time movie buff and I have always enjoyed movies on sports or games. When I watch ed wonderful movies like "Remember the Titans", "Coach Carter", "The Mighty Ducks", "Rocky", "Million Dollar Baby", "Seabiscuit"; I used to wonder that why can't we make such movies in Hindi?

Recently "Lagaan" and "Iqbal" wandered in this area but no one seemed to be interested in it more. Moreover, both the games were based on cricket, the only game where we have some respectable stand. And just then someone dares to come up with a movie on hockey! Women's hockey!! (Hockey is our national sport is a detail remembered only in GK quizzes.)

Chak De is a wonderful movie with some similarities to the story of Ex-Indian goal keeper Meer Ranjan Negi. After conceding 7 goals to Pakistan Negi faced a lot of public humiliation and was made to leave Professional Hockey. He returned as a defense coach to Indian women's hockey team which won 2002 commonwealth games.

I believe we have more than enough stories to tell even in Sports arena. There are wonderful games and legendary heroes who need to be remembered and immortalized in the memory of public.

For Example -
Legends
Dhyaanchand, Gavaskar, Kapil Dev(Lot of drama to go along in his life), Paes and Bhupati, Dinco Singh (Now who is he?), Darasingh, P T Usha, Richard James Allen (Hockey Goal Keeper - Conceded only 3 goals in 3 Hockey Olympics) etc.

Events
- India won three consecutive Olympic Golds for hockey - 1928, 1932, 1936
- Olympic Final 1948 - when Independent India faced their past rulers England for the first time in Olympic hockey games. Britain confident of winning the game. India wins the match 4-0.
- India won 8 Olympics gold in all. 6 of them consecutively between 1928 - 1956. These 6 olympics, India played 24 matches, won all of them, scored 178 goals (avg. = 7.43 goals/match) and conceded only 7 goals.
- India's rise in 1983 Cricket world-cup starting from oh-we-had-it game with Zimbabwe to the I-don't-believe-it final against almost invincible West Indies team of Clive Loyd.

These films might not make players out of sloths like me but they might give a boost to a lot of young players who are disillusioned about our record in games and sports in general.

We desperately need heroes (the ones are not interested only in endorsing soaps and toothpastes but also love the game they play) in sports and these might be the ones.

FORESIGHT

http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=295138&leftnm=3&subLeft=0&chkFlg=

Even without thinking at personal level this seems ridiculous. One set of experts already implemented their feeling that students are earning too much by increasing tution fees with apparently no change in facilities provided.

Now this!

Will government be able to put the money to a better use or will it be spent on knee surgery of another PM? These people deserve license raj.

Do they even consider contributions of people like Sam Pitroda and Vinod Khosla? Don't they understand that India gets a lot of attention because of overseas Indians?

What is the use of discouraging companies as well as students from foreign placements? What does government wants to achieve? It is not able to take care of citizens who remain in India. Why retain some more? To get killed like Manjunath and Satyendra Dubey?

I don't have an agenda against journalists but somehow I keep running in to fourth estate time and again. This time it is Ms Sagarika Ghosh from IBN.

http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/author/223/2220/sagarikaghose.html

This lady is surprised by the fact that most of the people convicted in Bombay Blast case are Muslims. I would request you to check records of cases registered in Gujarat Riots. Surprisingly, you will find only Hindu names there. Would you say that Gujarat is discriminating against Hindus??!!!

How ridiculous is your logic?

Police did not do a random survey and come up with those names in either cases and the fact that both record books have names from one community only doesn't mean there is ill will against either of them.

Same logic about delay of justice. For delay in cases in Gujarat, this same lot screams that the delay will benefit the culprits. Now all of a sudden in case of Muslims delay of justice will cause harm to the accused.

In either cases delay is not to cause harm or for benefit of culprits / accused, it is just the lacunae of our judicial system. So please don't see ill-will where there is none.

On the question about having terrorists in your houses and not knowing about that, go find children and tell them this fairy tale. Women, Muslim or otherwise, would know what is happening in their homes. Even the uneducated ones.

Muslims are as much citizens of this country as anyone else. No party or organization can alter that fact. If there is injustice being done to them, or for that matter to any community, it is prerogative of media to come forward and support them.

But finding faults where there are none and portraying sheer incompetence of the system in to evil planning against any community is despicable. A responsible media should stay away from such sensationalization of issues.

Rita Skeeter in our world

Article in reference:

http://youthcurry.blogspot.com/2007/07/iim-bangalore-and-order-of-admissions.html

Shiv Khera narrates a story of a bird hunter in his book “You can win”. This hunter buys a bird dog that can walk on water. When he shows this amazing feat of a dog walking on water and asks if his friend noticed something unusual about this dog. His friend says “Yes, in fact I did notice something unusual. Your dog can’t swim.”

I was reminded of this when I read article on IIMB’s admission procedure by Ms. Rashmi Bansal (I'm the Editor and Publisher of a popular youth magazine called JAM - Just Another Magazine). What disturbs me most about the article is not that it is somewhat antagonistic to my alma mater but that Ms. Bansal provides an opinion not because she has one, but because she thinks that she has to have one. Hence, she ends up filling her page with what IIMB has announced for most of the part and through rest of it she keeps jumping on conclusions.

Last things first. When she contends that past performance cant predict future achievements of a person, I couldn’t agree more. We can easily solve that if IIMs leave CAT-GD-PI path and instead start Crystal Gazing futures of all prospective candidates? I am sure at least her favorite Shri Harry Potter wouldn’t like it!

What does IIMB do when it chooses students based on consistency in past academics? It just looks for commitment levels of candidates in whatever they had done. Is it too much to ask for? IIMB gives weightage to work experience. All B-schools worth their salt around world do that. Work experience helps in gaining a perspective for B-school education. Too bad that Ms. Bansal can’t appreciate it just because a particular B-school doesn’t do it (or is at least not open about it).

IIMB gives importance to various factors like 10^th score, 12^th score, Bachelor’s level acad performance, work-experience and hence is likely to end up with well-rounded geeks. Surely, considering only CAT scores is a much better way to end up with less-rounded geeks and there are campuses full of such people too.

Numbers involved in the decision processes astound her, but these numbers try to instill as much objectivity as possible in the selection process. No one can take out subjectivity from any selection process, but at least one institute is trying. Just because general public can’t understand it (in her opinion), is it worth to question the integrity of the process? Or does she hate this transparency in the process because she can’t boast about similar transparency from another B-school?

On her suggested study about success rates of students etc. is she somewhere suggesting that IIMB is choosing all the wrong people? Does she have a right to comment on institute’s every individual alumnus and student’s progress? Does the article spring from some complex about status of a particular B-school’s relative status in her mind?

In the end, Does IIMB or for that matter any institute needs to justify it’s selection procedure to each and every person with free time on her / his hand?

IIMB might not produce the “well-rounded” persons achieving the success levels of Madam Bansal’s liking, IIMB still provides us with a good chance at corporate world and we will take it.

IIMB doesn’t stand in the way of people who want to shed baggage of past and make a future. Actually, no one can. The people with dreams and people with passion grow irrespective of any IIM or any B-school takes them or not. Regardless of what Rita Skeeters of the world might say!!

Rights of a nOBODY


Every now and then, I keep running into these discussions on God, his existence and his illustrative line of followers.

At the fall of a hat, theists come with examples of faithful scientists and mathematicians "If THEY believed in God, who are you to deny His existence?"
Answer "Nobody" looming large in the air.

I could almost see angels swooshing past in air doing cheer-leading dance singing "Quod Erat Demonstrandum"

Well, Not so sure about this one. That's where the critical difference between Logic and faith comes in.

Logic, I believe, means No person, No concept, No theory is too sacrosanct to be questioned. Whereas faith keeps drawing lines(lakshman-rekhas, are they?) everywhere. The fear that what will happen if the old structure of explanations collapses, does not endanger logic. Actually, the zeal to question norms is what logic thrives on.

I was thinking that maybe logic follows a meritocracy, but no. It's not about concept of merit decided based on past performance data. Maybe a democracy then. But no again. More people supporting a theory does not make it a correct theory, unless it can be proven.

The truth is, logic hardly worries about hierarchy. Tallest of the seats are open to question by smallest of the people. "Nobody" has a right to question anything and everything. Take the inverted commas out, and that's exactly what faith says. Irony, is it?

Who are these Einsteins, Newtons, Gallelios, but nobodies of their youth?If these nobodies were afraid to ask questions about what Archimedes thought to be the laws of physics?

Guess, we would still be amazed why apples fell down and would be celebrating Eureka days running around the streets wearing but waterdrops.

It's 02.50 am in the morning or night and I am dizzy but in a mood to blabber.

This heady half-asleep condition feels like being drunk. (Arthur: "what's wrong about being drunk?" Ford: "Ask a glass of water.")


Alright, so almost 12 months to write second entry on Blog and I start by being delirious. I feel some confessions lurking behind my loquaciousness. Let's have it out if someone is going to read this at all he(and yes... she) has a right to know about this humble but magnanimous, simple but intelligent, innocent but wicked, stingy but large hearted, lazy AND lazy and then some more lazy author.

I have always loved two basic entities - Words and Numbers. Number theory and literature has the effect on me that light has on moth. But when it came to critical decisions of my life, I sold my soul to devil (Read engineering and then MBA) in anticipated return of green pieces matter made out of local vegetation. Number theory got angry and left me. But language could not leave me like that. We have long lasting relations you see.

Gujarati is like mother. Always there. Whenever I am short of words, she brings a mouthful of them and rescues me out of situation. By virtue of this relation, Hindi is like a sweet maternal aunt who pampers me with mumbaiya flavour. Urdu is daughter of Hindi from her outside caste marriage with Farsi. So Urdu is like a distant cousin. I am fond of her, but I don't know her much. English is a language that grew up with you from Ba ba blackship to the girl singing in valley. She was so so attractive during college and later became a part of your life. English is like my wife. "I love her a lot, but I don't have command over her."

Well, that does it. Not much remains to be said. (Well, there are things, but you better not ask me. ;P)

Statutory Warning:

Now that I plan to be a regular blogger, come to this page at your own peril. I will be and will not be contradictory. I will use wrong places at wrong words. I shall not cares to know the rules for the grammar. But ye thinketh twice before you shall open your tongue trap because this is MY BLOG... And I rule here....


Buhhuahuhauhuhuahahahahaha....


And of course... welcome etc. etc.