दिलचस्प, बेहद दिलचस्प!

"जे तो घनो ही अच्छो हो गयो रे ताऊ! इब तू हिंदी में भी ब्लॉगर को युज्ज कर सके है।"

हाँ भाई, हाँ. पता है कि पुरानी न्यूज़ है, पूरी दुनिया को पता है। मैंने भी देखा था कभी तो, पर आज मेरे घनिष्ट मित्र स्वामी हग्नेश दास कि ये पोस्ट देख के दिल जिगर गुर्दे फेफड़े मचल उठे। तमन्ना जाग उठी कि मैं भी हिंदी में लिखूं। एक ज़माना था, मैंने भी हिंदी ब्लोग शुरू किया था। अब अलग ब्लोग तो चलने से रहा, यहीं पर हिंदी शुरू कर रहा हूँ। वैसे हिंदी ब्लोग्गिंग इस गूगल टूल की मोहताज नहीं, इसके आने से काफी समय पहले से ही हिंदी ब्लोग्गिंग का परचम पुरजोर लहरा रहा है। अक्षरग्राम पर सक्रीय नारद आपको बहुतेरे हिंदी ब्लोग्स की लिंक्स देगा जो की content में अंग्रेजी ब्लोग्स से कम नहीं हैं।

पर एक बात तो है, हिंदी ब्लोग्गेर्स अक्सर क्लिष्ट हिंदी का प्रयोग करते हैं, जो कि आम बोल-चाल वाली हिंदुस्तानी भाषा से थोडा हट के है। मानो या ना मानो, उर्दू, अरबी की ही तरह अंग्रेजी और कई पश्चिमी भाषाओं के भी काफी अलफ़ाज़ हिंदी में इस क़दर मिल चुके हैं की उन्हें अलग करना सही नहीं होगा। जैसे, बस, ट्रेन, सिगरेट आदि। अब बचपन में सबने इनके हिंदी शब्द सुनें होंगे और हँसे होंगे, पर कोई ये नही कहता होगा कि "सवेरे लौह पथ गामिनी, छुक-छुक वाहिनी से चले जायेंगे!" खैर।

अब एक unrelated बात, सबने देखा होगा, हर बिल्डिंग में FIRE लिखे लाल अलार्म बटन. सबमें शीशा लगा होता है। आग लगे तो शीशा तोड़ो, घंटी बजाओ। अब शीशा क्यों? यहाँ तक की शीशा तोड़ने को हथोडा भी साथ में लगा देते हैं। तो फिर, शीशा क्यों? जैसे की कईयों ने सोचा लिया होगा, मैं भी सोचता हूँ कि ऐसा इसलिये कि कोई बिना किसी urgency के घंटी ना बजा दे। थोडी गूग्लगिरी करके देखा मैंने, पर इस रहस्य पर से पर्दा ना उठ सका। (Q. लिफ्ट्स में "Stop" और "Alarm" buttons पर शीशा क्यों नही है?) Main कारण यही है कि - Prevention is better that cure. अमेरिकी इस राय से कतई इत्तेफाक नही रखते। हाल ही Virginia Tech में हुआ shootout ऐसा सबसे बड़ा हादसा था, पर ऐसा पहला हादसा नहीं था। हर दफा ऎसी किसी घटना के बाद US में एक lobby जाग उठती है। ये वो लोग हैं जो चाहते हैं कि आम जनता से घातक हथियार रखने का हक वापस ले लिया जाये। ऎसी ही सोच वाला एक शख्श है Michael Moore। फिल्म Bowling for Coulmbine में उन्होने Coulmbine High School में हुये बेहद similar हादसे से जुडे तथ्य दिखाए हैं और कई सवाल उठाये हैं। पर नतीजा कुछ ना निकला, और फिर जो हुआ वो शायद रोका जा सकता था।

***

मेरा time यहाँ अच्छे से ही कट रहा है. हफ्ते भर तो घर से ऑफिस और ऑफिस से bed ही चलता है, weekends का इंतज़ार है.

यही कहानी है, इतना ही फ़साना है,
8 बजे जाना है, 9:30 पे आना है :-(

Namaste London

First weekend in the city. Glorious day; bright, warm, sunny. Will go and check out the various summer sales going on in the city. Only hitch - short on cash before the first stipend payment. But hey, window shopping doesn't cost a penny! And since I've got the monthly travel card made, travel is also free. So, wait there London city, me cometh.

***

First day in office, day filled with form-filling and other stuff. The highlight of the day was the walking tour we had around the office with an official walking tour guide. As the gentleman said - "Every stone has some history in London." Starting with the Roman era, to the great fire of 1666, to the Victorian times - the city is filled with relics and monuments. Of course, we Indians do have lot deeper historical roots, but one has to appreciate the way the Western World preserves its past. Makes me sad to think about all the history spread all over India, ruining & dying slow death.

By the way, death does have some part to play in the history of London. All big monuments are either churches, with big grave yards (tombstones are still there, though all the bodies were exhumed and taken out of the city sometime in 1800's) or have someone important murdered there, after elaborate torture, of course. We saw a square where William Wallace, aka Braveheart, was executed.

[..]On 22 August 1305, following the trial, Wallace was taken from the hall, stripped naked and dragged through the city at the heels of a horse to Smithfield Market. He was hanged, drawn and quartered — strangled by hanging but released while still alive, emasculated, eviscerated and his bowels burnt before him, beheaded, then cut into four parts — at the Elms in Smithfield. His preserved head was placed on a pike atop London Bridge. It was later joined by the heads of his brother, John, and Simon Fraser. His limbs were displayed, separately, in Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Aberdeen.

Who the hell used to come up with all that. Yikes! And yeah, the guide told us the executions there were still carried out even after London got the tube in 1860s. So you could actually come using the tube to see an execution. Beat that!

***

First day at the desk - mostly easy. Some stuff to be read and understood. Met almost the entire team. Had lunch at Subway with the two analysts from IIT Delhi. Left early. My manager was not in. London accounts for almost 50% of credit derivatives volume in the world and the volume runs in billion $; sitting on the floor where millions are made and lost was some thrill. Still don't understand many things, but surely this stuff ain't no rocket science!

Eventually got to meet my manager on the next day. Pretty busy and pretty aggressive guy. Heard he joined here after working in Chicago for quite some time. No wonder he is all full of the typical american aggression. Check out the meeting we had recently (all in good humor, mind you. Not really menacing)

Manager: We seriously are f**king around here. What happened to the slide I asked you to do?
Subordinate: Oh yeah. I know I was supposed to do it, but I guess it got lost in the process.
Manager: Yeah. In your world its "lost in process", in my world its called "f**king around!" See basically you f**k around because I am basically a nice guy.

Only if I could get a penny everytime he says f**k, my cash crunch will be solved for a very long time. Almost the entire desk works pretty hard and leaving before 7-8 is kind of stuff hallucinations are made of. Around me, I keep hearing lots of different languages, seeing lots of different colored people. The office is quite cosmopolitan and location wise its in the downtown London, sitting pretty just opposite the London Stock Exchange.

***

The place we (six of us: 3 from IIMC, 2 from A and 1 from B) are staying in is pretty cool too! Full of interesting restaurants (Indian, Chinese, Lebanese, Malaysian, blah blah) and shops, its considered among the better residential areas in London. We of course are staying in the company provided service apartments. The room, although a bit on the smaller side, is sufficient and quite comfortable. Usually I take a 15 minute ride in the tube to reach the office. The morning rush is nothing compared to the rush in Mumbai locals or even Kolkata metro.

So there, the routine is almost set and life is good.

Lasting impressions

My wing at IITB - The Outlaws. The name painted on the wall and the Name-room no.s on left are no longer there.
L-to-R: Me, Dasa, Jha saab, Mamu, Rizvi & Saras

This year it'll be four years since I graduated from IIT Bombay. Time flies. I realized this when I visited the campus back, couple of days back when I was visiting Mumbai to board the flight to London. It was great to have old friends, Nandu & DRS, with me. Torrents of memories rushed back, overwhelming me. Things have changed there, but not much, thankfully.

Bikes are obviously banned inside the campus now and I'm sure people aren't missing them much. I spent my entire 4 years without a bike (I once bought an old bicycle from an auction, but I used that very sparsly during her brief stay of about 2 months in my company) and if anything, it makes you enjoy the long walks. My department's (Comp. Sc & Engg.) old building is now abandoned, due to bad design. It was definitely "different", it boasted of design such that no two walls in the entire building were parallel. I'm sure not what exactly was the problem, but even during our times it had developed couple of cracks. Anyway, the department has now moved to the soulless KReSIT building. They have improved the tennis court; new ones look very sleek and posh, quite an improvement over the old ones. I saw some new shops in the Gulmohar building too.

What made me most happy was the visit to my old room. Hostel 9, room 224. I spent about two and a half years in that room. And it hadn't changed much.

H9-224. Home.
The murals are still preserved by the current resident

The hostel was almost the same too, barring the mess which was Hafeez-Contractor-ized after renovation; but I'm sure even Hafeez can't do much about the "mess" they serve in there! There was a swanky billboard outside the hostel, welcoming people to "Hostel Nine - Pluto." Neat.

Coming back to room, I gathered my guts and knocked the door. The room now belongs to a PhD candidate; I was shocked when he commented - "Oh! So you came to check out the old room. May be the old graffiti." And there it was! My wall. THE wall. Amazing sight! During my days in the room, I had made couple of figures on the wall. I was totally touched watching them still there. The same Popeye & Flintstone smiling back. The present resident told me that he loved them there and made sure that when they paint the walls they don't paint over them. Thank you my friend! Though they painted over the wing's name (Outlaws), but atleast the room still has my impressions.

Biz-cket

Subhash Chandra, of Zee fame, has announced the formation of new cricket series, the Indian Cricket League. Apparently Chandra was miffed by the poor performance at the World Cup and wants to develop "a reserve pool of cricketers who could play for the country." No one minds making millions in the process, of course. "We are not shying away to tell that this is also a business proposition but at the macro level, this is a passion of the group to promote cricket," Chandra said.

Whatever be the intention behind it, this can make difference. Check out Chandra's plans -

Format: Six teams will participate in this year`s league, which would start any time between July and August. The number of teams would be extended to 16 in the coming three years. Each team would comprise of two national, four international and eight budding players, who would be selected by the talent scouts. The matches will be played both in the ODI and Twenty20 formats with teams playing on a home and away basis.

Ball's in BCCI's court now.

Infrastructure Support: The league will be supported by cricketing academies across the country having state-of-the-art facilities headed by international and domestic coaches. Talent scouts would pick talents from across the country and groom them in academies to provide a pipeline of reserve players.

Chandra did mention Kerry Packer - "No, that was a coup. All the players of Australia were signed and he also chose not to get the telecast rights of the Australian board," he reasoned. Chandra has seeked support from BCCI & state cricket associations and said, "If BCCI wants to draw from the talent pool, they are welcome to do so." BCCI is yet to respond, but I guess they won't be happy to lose the monopoly control they have over Indian cricket.

This thing looks good. The point about searching talent at the grass-root and grooming them at state-of-the-art academies and giving them chance to rub shoulders with international players, all this sounds too good to be true! This should definitely bring forth some quality competition in the domestic circuit. Chandra is basically offering to do the work BCCI should be doing, and taking the bounty in the process, sounds fair to me! However, we presently have a mechanism in place to find players from the member states of BCCI. All players representing the teams in domestic tournies are basically held by contracts. If BCCI puts its foot down and outlaws it to play in the ICL, the league might get reduced to all fizz and no fun. Some players might get lured by the money, but I doubt if it'll be a big number. Then we'll have probably retired or forgotten players; Vinod Kambli might just get another chance there :-).

"At present there are only 20 players contracted with the board and there is a restriction that they cannot play for anybody else. From each state only 25 players can come up as registered players. What about the millions of boys playing cricket in schools and colleges? Do they get a chance?" Chandra said. Not another reality show, I hope! But if Chandra's league doesn't get the top 20-25 players from the states, I doubt if their talent scouts can hunt plenty of good ones. Hence, the ball essentially lies in BCCI's court. As per the good of Indian cricket, Chandra's plans definitely have my thumbs up. It's essentially an open market vs monopoly situation and I would always go for open market.

Domestic cricket in India

The recent World Cup performance by the talented Indian team has stirred the hornet's nest. Heads are rolling in Pakistan and the blame game is just about to start in India. However, I doubt if anything meaningful would come out of it. Ramachandra Guha describes cricket as a "special game" in India in his outstanding book on Indian Cricket - A corner of a foreign field, and one has to agree. More than just another sport, it's now another icon of national pride. When tension mounted between India & Pakistan, Indian government was quick to snap all cricketing ties, however, the Pakistani hockey & TT teams were touring India, that too without a whimper from Thakre and likes. Every year the broadcasting rights for cricket in India are fought over intensely with the amounts going up astronomically. Every cricket match in any corner of India, featuring the Indian team, sometimes even without them, meets full-house with thousands turned down!

If such is the love for the game, how come no one cares a damn about the domestic cricket in India? Before delving deeper, let's see if it is really the "love" of the game or just fanatic following of the home team. The Indian crowd has given diametrically opposing impressions over time. Compare the standing ovation received by the Paki team in the Chennai test and the unruly crowd of Calcutta in the '96 WC Semifinal. So, do people want to see good cricket or they just care for their team's win? The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. I think, people have some idea (almost fair) about the team's calibre and when they perform below there capability, they face the fan's ire. Indian team's ouster in the first round was definitely below their capabilities. It's not that the fans expected them to win the cup; they were hailed as heroes in the last WC when they played out of their skins to reach the finals, only to get hammered!

Coming back to domestic cricket, one most common argument is that the Ranji Trophy has too many teams, thus diluting the quality of cricket. I quote from the wikipedia page -

Up until the 2002-03 season, the teams were grouped into five zones - North, West, East, Central and South - and initial matches were played within the zones on a league basis. The top teams (two until 1991-92, three after that) from each zone played in a national knock-out competition, leading to a final which decided the winner of the tournament.

Kids playing cricket near Payakara Falls, Ooty

Starting with the 2002-03 season, the zonal system was abandoned and a two-division structure was adopted: the Elite Group and the Plate Group. For the 2006-07 season, the divisions were re-labelled the Super League and Plate League respectively.

The Super League is divided into two groups of eight and seven teams, while the Plate League is divided into two groups of six teams each. In both divisions, the top two teams from each group advance to the knock-out phase. The finalists from the Plate League are promoted to the Super League the next year while the two teams at the bottom of the Super League are relegated.

If this seems too many, we've got Duleep Trophy, with just 5 zonal teams. I quote -

Five Indian zonal teams regularly take part in the Duleep Trophy - North Zone, South Zone, East Zone, West Zone and Central Zone.

The original format was that the five teams played each other on a knock-out basis. From the 1993-94 season, the competition converted to a league format.

From the 2003-04 season onwards, the five original zonal teams competed along with a sixth guest team which was a touring foreign team. The first guest team was England A in 2003-04.

If you say the slow test cricket is the deterring factor, we've got Deodhar Trophy, 50-over one-day competition played on a league basis among the 5 zonal teams since 1973!

So there, we've got all flavors of cricket in the domestic competitions, yet it's not able to pull the apparently cricket crazy crowd of India. It has to do something with the quality of cricket played. The difference of quality between international fixtures & these domestic ones has to be huge, thus not attracting the attention of people. This again is a mind-boggler! Cricket is played almost everywhere in India and yet we can't produce ample number of quality competitors for the domestic cricket? This points towards the callous attitude of cricket governing body in India. We should do more to train & prepare cricketers from their younger days. There is another anamoly here, our under-19 team was among the strongest & in the final of last two U-19 World Cups! How do you explain this decline of form of the same players when they graduate to the big league? It's as if they stop adding value to their cricket while their peers from other countries move on.

There is another deterrent, parents skepticism towards career in professional sports. I don't know if we can tackle this problem in the short run in a third-world developing country like India. May be BCCI can announce some comprehensive scholarships, may be they have these even now. But the fact remains that the parents are scared to let their kids chase their cricketing dreams at the cost of sound academic background, thus increased probability of a decent career.

Another face of the problem is the media coverage of these games. I do get to read about them in the newspaper, however no channel is ready to air these games. We do get to see the NKP Salve Challenger Trophy, but not other games. This again depends on the fact that there aren't many buyers for these games, because these are low quality matches. Some vicious cycle we've got here! We can't relate with these matches, because we can't see them. They can't broadcast the matches, because no one sees them!

These definitely aren't the only problems with the Indian cricket. Still, I feel if we can address these one fast, the Indian cricket will be benefitted a lot and fast. Depleted bench strength & mediocre domestic cricket are holding back Indian cricket big time.