The Best Cricketers I Have Seen

Well this list is my own personal one. If you have anything against this, kindly go stuff yourself.

The cricketers I have seen not a large one thanks to no Cable TV at home and CAS after I got Cable TV at home.

1) Sachin Tendulkar: 

This man has been my hero from the day I started watching cricket. He was, is and will always be the greatest player in the world for me. I still remember crying as India folded in the 1996 World Cup Semifinals. I had thought India cannot be defeated because it had Sachin and couldn't understand how this had happened. 

What should I speak about this guy. His records? Everyone knows that. His humility, the world speaks about. His greatness? Well I acknowledged that in 1996 so there is nothing left to debate there. So, let me talk about my passion for him.

He is the sole reason I started watching cricket and am continuing to do so. Everytime he gets to bat I am tensed about his performance as if I am sitting for an examination, and as the shots start flowing I go into trance watching the master at work. His cover drive. Ooh! His straight drive. Aah! His elegance. Oh my God! His innovativeness. Oh my! Divinity in Motion. A professor of mine once spoke about mental masturbation. Maybe he was referring to Sachin batting. 

His passion for India. His unsatiable desire for excellence, his incorruptible nature, everything about him is ideal. He is a living Superman sans the cape and a jetti over the pant. An image that will never go out of my mind is him shaking hands with all the groundmen and women after winning the epic match against England at Chennai. 

No sportsperson in the world can claim to have the love, affection and goodwill of as many people as Sachin. I am lucky I was born in the Sachin era but I still feel sad that I missed the first 7 years of his epic journey towards immortality.  May his legend grow forever.

One gone !!! How many more to go ?

Yeah!!! I am done with my first quarter at Stanford. I did reasonably well, though I would have liked to have done my midterm in EE 278 better. Anyway everything is done. I have learnt loads and am looking forward to learning loads. PhD Quals are staring at me, from just over the horizon. Lets see how this one goes...

A New Beginning..

Its a long time since I posted for myself here and a lot has happened in that time. I have joined Stanford University (Yes, THE Stanford University), I have started cooking (and it is very good :) ), classes are going on in full swing and by the way I am in the US of A. I just wanted to write about whatever is in my heart right now about this whole long period.

As the D-Day approached I was very nervous; How was I going to fit into Stanford? Am I good enough? What about the money? These questions ran through my brain incessantly. I had other things in my mind as well, which I would prefer never to talk about in my life. The days were filled with advices from various well-wishers, hasty cooking classes and last minute shopping. I was always thinking about how it is going to be such a long time before I come back home. D-Day arrived and the whole day was a huge rush. My sister had come from her college to bid me farewell. My Grandmother had come from Kanchipuram and everyone were a wee bit emotional when the time actually came or me to leave. I felt very sad on my whole journey to the airport but once I got into the aircraft excitement overrode other emotions, it was my first time on a flight.

The 5 hours flight to Hong Kong was a pleasant one. I could not sleep much but I whiled away my time browsing through the channels and staring at the guy , guzzling beers incessantly sitting next to me. Sadly this was the good part of the journey. The journey from Hong Kong to San Francisco was horrible to say the least. I hated the food, could not sleep a wink and had to spend my time watching movies when I desparately wanted to sleep. After landing in SFO everything was a breeze. It did not take me more than half an hour to get through customs and collect my luggage.

It has now been more than a month since I arrived here. During this time I have wondered how the Americans have the patience to wait at stop lines when there is no one else on the road, how they manage with toilet papers (:P) and have been impressed by their courtesy and their willingness to accept foreigners so easily.

This was also the time I spent searching for financial aid and getting depressed on not managing to find one. Now I have come past that and have learnt the need to learn as much as I can. Classes have started and the professors are the best I have seen. Their command over their subjects is at complete odds to the vast majority of professors in India. I have overcome the self doubt that I suffered from and I am confident that Stanford is going to be a home away from home for me.

Cheers.

I love reading books and since the Harry Potter phenomena I have been pulled towards the Fantasy Genre.

Harry Potter made me get back to the Big Daddy of Fantasy 'Lord of the Rings'. It was a huge and a daunting read with the first few chapters being some of the most laborious chapters I have ever read. After the thrill a minute Harry Potter it was drab and boring with all its poetry and dances. But, somehow I forced myself to read through till the end and after finishing it I was like 'Yeah..It was good'. I went to the 'Silmarillion' a prequel to the LOTR and it was an extended version of the first few chapters of the LOTR.

After a small hiatus I came back to this genre by reading 'The Bartimaeus Trilogy'. This is one series I would recommend to anyone interested in fantasy. It has a brilliant protogonist, Bartimaeus, a witty demon full of wise cracks. One thing that impressed me about this series was its innovative theme and setup. The setup is early 20th century England. It is ruled by cold hearted magicians who get their power by calling upon demons like Bartimaeus to do their bidding. The commoner, the people who lack this ability are ruled with an iron hand by these people. The story begins with a young magician Nathaniel who calls down Bartimaeus to help him take revenge on a magician who insulted him. The story moves along with Nathaniel as he grows into one of the cold hearted magicians and finally realizes his follies. It is a brilliant humorous book that I will remember fondly.

Then came the 'Inheritance Trilogy' written by a so-called 'child prodigy', Christopher Paolini. This is a wholesale copy of various fantasy novels like LOTR to movies like Starwars. It is a very poor read and i finished the two books that are available as of now only because I had nothing better to do. Its now a couple of years since I read these book and one stupid thing I remember from this book is the hero conveniently falls unconscious everytime there is a duel.

This experience made me decide that from now on I am going to read books only after reading a review. That is how I got to The Wheel of Time, which was rated in many sites as one of the all time best Fantasy series. Well, what is this series about? This series is about our hero, the legendary 'Dragon Reborn' and his fight to save the world from the Dark One. This sounds pretty much similar to Harry Potter, LOTR and any other fantasy novel but the premise is what makes this series different. Here time is a cycle what is now present is just the past, which occured ages ago, replaying itself with minor changes. The creator creates the world, creates a Wheel of Time which turns and time gets repeated for ever. Human lives are threads that are woven by the wheel as and when it turns. The creator has imprisoned the Dark One in a prison so that he cannot affect the lives of people. The whole story is like every time the Dark One makes an attempt to escape from his prison, the Dragon is born who fights the dark one and puts him back in the prison. This plays out again and again.

The Magic in this series is called 'One Power'. It consists of a male half called Saidin and a female half called Saidar. The people who can use this power are called Aes Sedai. The females use the female half and the males the male half (Channeling) . In one particular age, one particular Aes Sedai bored a hole into the Dark One's prison during an experiment gone awry. This opens the world to the influence of the Dark One. A set of male Aes Sedai led by the legendary 'Dragon', Lews Therin Telamon, make a daring attempt to seal the hole by using Saidin and succeed in their plan. The Dark One in a last ditch effort taints Saidin. This makes every male Aes Sedai, including the Dragon, mad and they set about destroying the world before dying themselves. The female Aes Sedai somehow save the world from the rampaging males and conclude that no male with the ability to use saidin should be allowed to do so. They go about 'Gentling' every male who can channel.

Now cut to the present. The seals of the Dark One's prison are weakening and his influence is being felt in the world again. The Dragon is Reborn but there is the risk of Madness on Channeling and also that the Female Aes Sedai are against men channeling. The Dragon Reborn battles madness and various enemies as he attempts to save the world from the Dark One.

That's a clumsy attempt at summarising the series. It has its drawbacks, poor female characters who make the story as boring as possible when the story moves in their point of view and also a rabid desire to make this a mammoth series for obvious revenue reasons. The Wheel of Time series currently has 11 books, a prequel and a 12th and final one scheduled for release. I am currently in the 6th book and I find the book interesting. Its plot is a huge complex weave and makes other novels including LOTR look simple and plain by comparison. But I will recommend this book only to people who can read through the boring parts, which get on your nerves, while holding to the belief that it will get better. The parts in Rand Al Thor's (The Dragon Reborn) point of view make very interesting reading, this I can promise.

Well I have rambled on and on for about one hour or more now. That's it for today. :)

Ramblings about what is going on..

The last one week has been all about bombs that burst and bombs that would have. Coming after a Trust Vote, which made a mockery of Democracy, this only shows to us the poor state of our beloved country.

We are ruled by opportunists, whose concern for the nation doesn't extend beyond his pocket and his seat; pseudo-secularists, for whom secularism is all about minority appeasement to the point where they are afraid of executing a terrorist convicted by the Supreme Court of India; and the quintessential politician intoning 'We should stay united during these dark times". India deserves better. The trust vote brought out (or should I be saying bought out) the worst out of the politicians. We had wads of currency displayed at the parliament, criminals brought out to save their party, religion being used to decide the vote and every other shady thing. At a time when the government was rejoicing in its glorious victory these blasts have brought them back to reality.

These terrorists are the worst of cowards and they deserve no compassion. Afzal Guru should be hanged for killing 7 innocent people if not for attacking at the heart of India's democracy. How else do you deal with people who send in e-mails glorifying themselves before killing innocent people least expecting it. Stern steps are necessary to deal with the spectre of terrorism. One day the NSA comes up with a sensational statement saying that he has proof showing the ISI's hand in the Kabul attack, but we hear nothing about it later until yet another attack happens. POTA will surely strengthen the defences of our country but Congress cannot say 'No' to its allies and its pseudo-secularists who can not bear lose the votes of minorities.

One small example of the levels to which our politicians go in appeasing minorities. In Tamilnadu we have 3.5% reservation for Chritians and another 3.5% reservation for Muslims. Think of the adauciousness of the Christian leaders who came with a petition to the Chief Minister asking him to remove the 3.5% reservation because Christians got better admissions when they were being considered under OBC reservation. Think about picking and choosing what reservation you want.

Well reading back on what I have written I am sure I have fulfilled what I wrote in my first post. I have rambled on about different issues without giving anything solid. Anyway that is how i like it!! :)

A Sincere Apology..

Hi Buddies (or is that just me :) ). Well, I don't know why I opened this blog. I was just reading through my friend's blog when without realizing what I was doing I clicked on 'Create a new Blog'. Anyway now that I have a blog I have to do something with it. So, kindly bear with me and my ramblings.