Dirt Ball Anyone??

He shivered and muttered as the icy water went into the gap between his neck and his shirt. It slid down his neck mixing with sweat and grime. It felt horrible, all slimy and cold and sticky and wet. And he was too tightly bundled up to take off any of his many layers. Thick and heavy and slow he was. That was why he had been hit by the ball. Too big and too slow.

He wanted to cry. His nose was running and his eyes were wet from the cold anyway. Instead he bent down and scooped the ball from the stagnant water. Cupping it close he packed it with dirt to face his punishers. His shirt was sodden from previous attempts, hands wet and wrinkling, growing number. He breathed hot air onto them and tried to blow out some of the wetness.

He looked around for a target. Everyone was running and screaming and skidding and falling. Most had formed into gangs, temporary alliances in the heat of battle. But he had only been at school a few days. He didn’t know anyone and so he didn’t know who he should throw the dirt ball at. Not a girl obviously.

Most of them had stayed inside anyway. Not anyone much bigger than him either, or much smaller. He stood dumbly with his hand growing wetter and colder in steadily pouring rain, wondering what to do.

Smack! This time a lump hit him on the ear that was poking through his closely held raincoat. It burned cold pain into him. He burned too, angry and furious red. He saw who threw it, a big kid with a stupid grin. I hated you I hate you I hate you. He threw his missile with all the strength the cold cold day hadn’t sapped from him. It sailed towards the big stupid kid and his big stupid face.

But the kid was fast. He ducked, still grinning and laughing. The ball sailed past and smacked someone else right in the face. They fell to the ground in a heap and let up a wail. It was a little girl, small and pretty and crying. She was so loud that the playground monitor quickly ran over and scooped her up. She shot him a disgusted look as the monitor carried her inside.

That day he got hit by a lot more dirt balls.

Slow...

The Ricky Ponting over-rate controversy has been one of the more baffling episodes of recent times, but is something of a breakthrough for those who see slow play as one of the most inexcusable and avoidable blights on the game, a tedious tactic indulged for too long by the authorities.

Cricket has found some spectacular means of worsening its own product in recent times – the current craze for building stadiums which are inaccessible to those unable to paraglide, for example, or pitches as dead as WG Grace, or the rebranding of Bad Light to Mild Murk. Slow over-rates are proud members of this hall of shame, and it is curious that the fitter and more athletic players have become, the less able they have been to average one delivery every 40 seconds.

In my next blog, I will suggest some means of ensuring that over rates are crisp enough to prevent Gubby Allen spinning too dizzyingly in his grave. In the meantime, is it too much to ask for umpires to start setting a brisker example?

No slower human movement has ever been officially recorded than that of two umpires sludging towards each other to confer over the light, like a pair of amorous teenage tortoises unsure of whether to make the first move, or two unhappy commuters trying to miss the same train.

This is sometimes equalled by the funereal dawdle to co-examine the roundness of an allegedly-misshapen ball, as if this responsibility is a holy, god-given ritual as old as time itself, and the ball is a precious relic whose molecules must not be woken.

Such sloth might have been understandable in the olden days of cricket, when umpires were only allowed to stand when they had attained a sufficient age to guarantee that their eyesight had failed. Now, however, the game is officiated by primed, thrusting super athletes (or at least by fit and mostly youngish men who probably have gym memberships). And yet, at stages of matches when they might be expected to scurry urgently in the hope of providing an expectant crowd with maximum value for their considerable money, they seem to move as if they are adjusting tentatively to a brand new spinal cord.

A Delicate Tear in the fabric of...Life?? You Wish...:(

My heart plummets with my eyes as I spy a glimmer of white on a thing that should be nothing but blue. Confusion, shock, horror, desolation. Emotions ran wildly through my face, manipulating the muscles to convey the car wreck of thoughts I was experiencing. Cotton strands sprouted from the tear in the denims and I fingered it gently to see how bad the damage was. I wish I could say i got it by defending some poor old lady from a gang of knife wielding youths, or even grabbing someone out of the way of a speeding car and pulling them away in the process, but no; i snagged it on the nail that I have been promising myself to fix for the last three weeks. And so I held my pair of jeans, my prized possession of a six year and a half, and sobbed.

On the bright side of things, I am finding new uses for electrical tape.

Peeping Tom

I've been noticing a lot of little things lately. Like the way I sleep. I sleep on my left side, all curled up. Always. I tried other positions when I first realized this habit, and found out that none worked for me and I was completely uncomfortable. I take a bit of the top edge of the blanket and scrunch it up into a roll and hold it with a clenched fist. I put some of the blanket and sheet between my legs, because for some reason I can't stand my upper inner thighs touching each other. I have to make sure that my bare feet don't stick out from under the blankets. And with good reasons too... there are things underneath the bed that bite your toes off if they are sticking out.

Kidding, i just hate having cold feet. And when I sleep the room temperature is always around 18-20 C .

I found out that I move a lot in my sleep. Wanna know how I came by this fact. I videotaped me.

Seriously. I took my camcorder, adjusted the settings so that it can keep taping for at least 6 hours(adjusted the quality) and switched on super night vision. Viola.

I taped it yesterday night, watched it today while having lunch, and was amused. First off, people are right. I do look a whole lot innocent when I am asleep. I kinda did not like that. Felt vulnerable. Then after a few minutes of lying still I got bored and fast forwarded to the part where i saw a change.

I was smiling in my sleep. God knows what I could have been thinking, either my girlfriend or pizza, by the way i was grinning..maybe it was both..maybe it was my girlfriend HOLDING the pizza.
But I doubt I would snuggle against my blanket in that manner if it was a pizza, so it has to be the former.

Then after I began to move around, and to my embarrassment it partly looked like i was having a dirty dream. Fortunately the movement stopped quickly and the normal smiling continued, shortly after, that stopped too.

The rest of the video was totally normal, with the occasional caressing of the pillow coming into play.

People should try videotaping themselves...its funny.

Plagiarism with a difference

This was a mail i received and i found it irresistible to put it in my blog. Kudos to who ever has composed it
PS: First time I am posting something thats not mine :( But this was too good

However harsh it would be, it remains a fact and we need to take it with a pinch of salt

OLD VERSION 

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away

Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

Modern Version 

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.The Grasshopper thinks the Ant 's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant ' s house .

Medha Patkar and Tan Shyamoli goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticizes the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.

CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers..

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ' Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act ' [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes 'Special Reservation' for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services.

The Ant; fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes; its home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it ' A Triumph of Justice ' .

Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice' .

CPM calls it the 'Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden'

Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.


NEW VERSION :

Many years later

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley .

100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ....
because of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the Grasshoppers, India is still a developing country!!!

I AM Indeed The Devil Incarnate

It has been 26 days since my holidays have commenced and I am most happy to announce that I have made exactly 0% progress with my studying for the vast mulititude of entrance examinations. It is most difficult, and I have reason to believe that my books have been spooked with a spell of some sort because everytime I open my books, I have this incredible urge to fall asleep, which I do, invariably, hence the progress. Or the lack of it.
I don't believe its my fault. Its just that there are so many distractions. Take for instance, yesterday night. My mother had caught me sleeping on my desk that very evening. She suggested that instead of studying in my room, I could study in the balcony, where I'd get some fresh air as well.
Clearly, this was one of my mother's very intelligent plans. The balcony would be airy no doubt, but it would also be home to mutant mosquitoes.
[weird trivia alert] Hey dont jump to a concclusion here...mutant does not refer to the X-Men thingy...I say mutant because they are much like the locusts who had mutated in order to accomodate DDT in their DNA, hence making them immune to it, these mutant mosquitoes have mosquito spray/repellant accomodated in their DNA(Darwin's Theory of Evolution...sigh..) [weird trivia alert]
This meant that spraying HIT (now kills cockraches!) would pretty much be in vain, and I had to be extra alert in order to ward them off and thus the chances of me sleeping on my "Thousand MCQs to Success" (sigh...these textbooks DO have funny names) textbook would be pretty neglible.


So I went.

The balcony gives a straight view of the road, which meant I could people watch while I swatted mosquitoes. Right across my house, there is Krishna's Iron Vandi [cart], painted in a royal shade of blue. Krishna usually leaves at around 7.30 in the evening, so I didn't expect any kind of movement there at 8.30, which was the time I went to squat, I mean study there.


But I was wrong.


While I was flipping the pages, trying to figure out the head and tail of a realli complicated question, I saw a leg, right outside the little iron van. I cocked my head a bit and my instincts were right. There was a body attached the leg. I got up in the pretext of reading my textbook and then casually glanced that way again. Male, 20ish. He had one hand to his cheek and a rather wide grin on his face. Probably on a call with his girlfriend, I thought. But what I didn't understand was why he kept moving behind the van and coming out. I moved to the corner for a closer look and behold, hidden behind the van was a girl. A girl, with a grin on her face. And half her saree missing.
They were, as the immortal Bappi-da put it, louwers. Night Louwers.


Clearly, the spot behind the van was most convenient for their louwings. It was at a good distance from the streetlight and not easily notice-able unless ofcourse you were blessed with my observation skills.


"AMMA!" I hollered.


The effect was almost immediate. The guy almost jumped away and the girl was trying to adjust her clothes and jump out at the same time. Then they looked around in a most amusingly frantic manner before walking (almost running) away from the iron vandi.
My mother came in to the balcony.
"Enna aachu?" [What happened?]
"Nothing ma. Ennakku coffee venum" [Nothing ma. I want a coffee]

Ah, the simple joys in life.

I Am Back...

Dear Blog,

                Ive been so mean and cruel to you... didn't write up even a single post after ma hols started. I know ur real angry wid me... but wat can i do...??? Loads of stuff going on. Entrance exams... organizing a get together... roaming around the city... playing basket ball... watching every damn movie possible... making new friends... I should have posted as soon as my damn 12th standard was over... but I didn't. To say I had no time will be a damn lame excuse... i did have all the time in the world... Became aware I had a blog after a good friend of mine reminded me that I had a real good blog. I can almost see you sitting with ur hands crossed... back turned and with a real sorrowful face. The point of this post is will you forgive me??

                                                                      

   Yours

 The Devil Incarnate