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.

April Fool's Pranks

Dilbert creator Scott Adams has mentioned some of his favorite April Fool's Pranks in his recent blog. Pretty neat, I say. Reminded me of some of my own pranks. Now, I'm someone who'd go to quite some lengths to play pranks on friends and may I add I have quite some reputation as a prankster. So, here I present my favorite one. It's the biggest prank I pulled off and an act of total brilliance, I say with all the modesty.

I was working as a software engineer with a name big enough to provide me with an SMS gateway, although an US one, but using it I could send SMS to Indian numbers. So one fine day, I sent an SMS to couple of my friends saying - "Congratulations! You are our customer of the month. You winning number is XXXXXXX. Please wait as we'll contact you again to tell you more about your prize. In case of any clarification, please feel free to contact us at ZZZZZZ." The contact number given was my office desk's number. Within minutes, Thakur called in. In fact his call caught me off guard as I hadn't planned it all by then. However, to make it look genuine, I asked his confirmation number & phone number and in my most call-centerish voice I exclaimed - "Oh! You must be Mr. Thakur, our customer of the month!" Thinking on my feet, I gave him two options to choose from, 1) A Laxmi Juicer-mixer-grinder & 2) Rs. 2000/- worth of talktime. He told he'll confirm later. After this call, I dropped emails to his roomies, explaining the situation to them. They chipped in, asking Thakur to go for the mixer.

Next day, I sent him another SMS saying - "As per your instructions, we're giving you the Laxmi Juicer-mixer-grinder. Please collect the same from our office on coming Sunday. Please do not forget to get you previous month's bill." As expected, I received another call from him on the "call-center" number. This time I made one female friend of mine to attend the call, to make it look more genuine. Clearly, Thakur was distressed about the choice forced on him. We asked him to come to the office to sort it out.

The fateful Sunday, I was present at their house. Since the Airtel office was towards my side of the town, I offered to accompany Thakur to the office. Pankaj also came with us. By now Thakur had got the printout of the last month's bill and the congratulatory SMS ready to flash. We reached the office. Pankaj and me stayed out, Thakur went in. The attendant present couldn't comprehend what Thakur was saying and took his mobile to show the SMS to her superiors. Now, I went inside to burst Thakur's bubble.

Priceless! The look on his face said it all!

Withdrawal Symptoms

Ever tried getting down a running bus? Yup, the inertia funda. Physics, class XI, CBSE.

My prolonged stay at home, after the months spent at IIMC, has put me in that kind of situation. When I was always chasing deadlines at IIMC, I would have laughed at someone had he suggested that nothingness can bore you. And yet here I am, toppled into the abyss of deep boredom. Despite the long sleeping hours, longer hours spent in front of the TV, the days just don't get over.

And the mercury is rising too! Its tough to imagine that the day I arrived here I slept in a rajayi. Now its almost imbearable to be out in the sun. The ceiling fan is no longer adequate to beat the heat. Glad that I won't be here to face the worst.

All's not lost tho', all the cricket happening about half the globe away keeps me company. The idleness compels me to listen to the pre-match chat show too, not that it makes me any wiser or happier. Tut-tut, India's out; but still the arena is wide open! My predictions: Semifinalists - Aus, SA, SL and NZ & Dream Final - Aus vs SA with SA claiming the cup. Long way to that though.

And I'm reading again. A lot, by my own standards. Some recommendations -

• A Corner of a Foreign Field - Amazing work about mostly pre-independence history of cricket in India. Even if the WC debacle left a bitter taste in mouth, don't miss this masterpiece, for the love of the game. Hat's off to Guha for doing all the hard work in researching the anecdotes and stories to present in such lucid form! (and if cricket still fancies you, pick Pundits from Pakistan also!)
  
• Above Average - Doesn't dwell too much on the IIT connection. Very interesting, very piquant. Very nostalgic for any IITian, more so for IITD junta (I guess). Its characters reminded me of many lost faces from my IIT days.
• Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan - The story is definitely very thrilling & impressive, though the narration lacks punch. It's told just like a chronological record of facts. Bit drab in parts, still quite enjoyable as a whole.
• Being John Mcenroe - Rather than being just descriptive, this book tries to analyze the reasons behind & effects of John Mcenroe on Tennis. Great insights about the genius and his times.
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything - Masterpiece! Absolute masterpiece! Would appeal to anyone with slightest bend of mind towards Science & tiniest tinge of curiosity towards Nature. Simply unputdownable.
  
• The IITians - Just started this one. Starts on perhaps a bit too laudatory note, but is building up nicely. Should be a good read.
  

Apart from all this, I've also started reading blogs again. But my BSNL dial-up doesn't allow me to surf much. By the way, till very recent I wasn't aware that you can just put the BSNL phone cable in your laptop, do simple registration once and can start surfing @ ~40 kbps on totally on-use-basis rates! Check out Account free Internet dial up access based on CLI.

All my bags are not yet packed and I'm not yet ready to go, still another week left. But most of my shopping is done, barring some last minute items. Not yet thinking much about the upcoming internship, but I hope it would be interesting time. Reminds me of an ancient Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times." Hmm, we'll see that.

Couple of things I have to do in London -

1. Watch a cricket match, county-shounty, anything!
2. Watch a soccer match. Some decent clubs whose names I know, hopefully.
3. Visit some typical Irish pubs (just to check out the atmo, Mom!)
4. Buy long-pending lenses for my camera and click loads of pictures.
5. Travel a bit. Bath, Oxford, some coastal towns, perhaps.

Time to hit the bed.

Film Review: Just Married

It seems a whole lot of Bollywood directors discovered Love Actually recently. The funda of having multiple parallel love-stories, capturing various shades and emotions, is literally beaten to death in last couple of months.

No "action" for Fardeen
No action for audience

In the race of duplicating ideas, its the laggards who lose worst. Thats why after Salaam-e-Ishq & Honeymoon Travels, its just impossible to digest Just Married.

And that's just first of the many MANY problems with the movie! The pace of the movie is another. The movie just drags and drones, without any point in sight. The story has loopholes of the size of India Gate where from Siddhu can pass with his tractor! I don't think there are still homes in uber-urban Delhi where US-return Marketing Heads would agree to marry some girl without even talking to her. And someone please tell me what actually was the issue in the film? Why was Isha Deol screaming - "Kya sex hi sab kuch hai aapke liye?" Because Fardeen touched his shoulder or because the cockroach touch her legs (eh.. talking to Fardeen or Cockroach)? Oh, and there were other couples too. Mostly artificial and boring. Faces from the TV serials, bringing the typical rude onslaught of emotions from the small screen. Waaaay over the top! See, the issue with the movie is - there is no story!!

Which is saddening, given the fact that it the debut movie of Meghna Gulzar, daughter of famous poet & lyricist Sampooran Singh aka Gulzar. Coming to that, the music of the film was another flop show. Only one song - "Gudgudee" - is worth noting.

Now the acting, Fardeen Khan gave yet another Man-Behind-The-Iron-Mask performance. He definitely beat Isha Deol in Look-I'm-So-Expressionless contest, but by a very narrow margin. I can imagine both set of celebarents (new term coined by me - celeb+parents!) scratching their heads (Firoz very delicately) about where to fit in their wards. Action didn't work, neither did emotion. No chance in romance and too young for bhabhi-bhaiya roles. Well, tough luck. But please move over and spare the poor audience.

And if you've read till here, you must be rewarded with my own PJ. The mention of cockroach brought it forth in my memory. So,

Q. What did the nephew roach call his uncle?
A. Kaka-roach! :-P

One year at Jokaland

The terms are done, exams taken & projects submitted. No matter how far it looked when I started, the end of the first year at IIM Calcutta came a little too soon. The year was more or less kind to me. Along with the usual stuff, I did many unusual things too. The campus band, JBS Baro-C, composed a song about the early days of students in IIMC ( http://music.cooltoad.com/music/song.php?id=296339 ). Song contains swearing/explicit lyrics! I made a video on the song along with some friends. Here it is -

The response to the video has been very encouraging. In the first 4 days at youtube, it gathered around 1200 hits! This encouragement has motivated us to make more videos under the banner of "Between the Lines" production.

However, the movie-making would have to wait, for the summers are here and all of us are to leave and join our respective organizations for the summer internships. I'm leaving for London on 9th April and would be back on 2nd June, good one week before the next term start.

One regret after the first year - I virtually abandoned this blog and my photography. Since this was something I really enjoyed, I'll try my best to revive my interests and devote more time to them.

That we'll see, for the time being, please check out the video and some feedback, may be?

A Rage For Perfection

McEnroe

John McEnroe
"Needed to lose head to play good"

named his autobiography "A Rage For Perfection." As Harsha Bhogle recently quipped in an informal talk here, perhaps he was the only player who needed to lose his head to play better. I'm on hunt for the book, if you find one, don't think twice before dispatching it to me :-)

Anyway, the title got me thinking. Quite recently I've realised something about myself - I don't have the "rage for perfection." This is not to say mediocrity doesn't bother me, but competition surely doesn't. I'm not someone motivated by the vision of the accolades reserved for the highest achiever. Even from the very start, in school, I was never pushed for the first place, by me or by my folks. I was among the toppers, but rarely "the" topper. During my preparation days for JEE, I didn't use to think in "top 10, top 50" terms. Till the results came out, I thought anything in top 500 would be cool. Then in IIT, I let it go loose. Even afterwards, in my job, I never aspired to be the best or whatever. I wasn't bad, mind you :-), just not the best!

Does that mean achievements don't matter to me? My proudest achievement in recent times has been my success (however miniscule) in photography. I started with absolutely no credentials and did reasonably well. Many, many people have looked at my flickr account and praised my work. Nothing makes me more proud! Same for my blog; I started as another anonymous blogger. Now after some 1.5 years, I've got more than 50,000 hits. No mean feat :-) And mostly I have written whatever fancied me. Not for the readers, just for me.

So the way I've explained it to myself is that may be competition doesn't push me, but once I set my eye on some job and if I really enjoy doing it, then I do it well. And so well that, often I would emerge decently placed in the competition!

Just wanted to tell someone.

An Appeal

Couple of days back, one student at IIMC met with an road accident and after about 1 week in the ICU, succumbed to the injuries. It was shocking, disturbing, but more than anything else, it was unfortunate. I personally didn't know the guy, but it disturbed me. "Could've-been-me" feeling! The guy was riding a motorcycle, without a helmet and possibly under the influence of alcohol. He crashed with a bus and hit his head on the road. Pity. Foolishness? Waste!

Kolkata road accidents data.

Couple of years back, I would've put the entire blame on the foolhardiness of that guy, but somehow it doesn't seem right anymore. Most of us aren't aware how easy it is to lose our lives. Just a little misfortune and there's no tomorrow! Most of the time, most of us don't give any thoughts to such possibilities and the consequences. I had my own little face-off with it once, about an year back. And it sets you thinking. One of our professor, whose tongue can sting at times, said,"This is perhaps the most mindless way of dying." And I couldn't agree more.

More fortunately than unfortunately, early in my biking days, when I was still a noob, I had a little accident. I was learning biking and it skidded. I landed safely and absolutely no harm was done. But that incident never left me, it's always there at the back of my mind. Result: I developed as an extra cautious biker. Of course, I've had my moments of madness. Fortunately, I survived all of them.

There isn't much to say. The sad incident can end up being just a statistical data point, unless we take a lesson from it. Sincere appeal to all bikers - please get a helmet!

Skeptic Youth vs Confident Veterans

The panel discussion I mentioned in my last post turned out to be quite an interesting one. The topic of discussion was - "100 Indian MNCs by 2020." The panelists were -

• Mr Sandipan Deb : Chief Editor, Financial Express
• Mr Hemant Kanoria, Managing Director, Srei Finance
• Mr D K Chaudhuri CEO , Skytech
• Mr Barun Das, Exide, Company Secretary

Sandipan started with his views, which unfortunately didn't look very well prepared. However, he was lucid; talked much without saying much. Rest three had solid experience in industry, extending the operations at the world stage. They talked with more authority and shared their experiences. All of them were very sure that the dream of 100 Indian MNCs by 2020 is well within the reach and sort of underrated. It was quite inspiring hearing their first hand experiences.

Like all good panel discussions, this one too ended with a Q&A round by audience. Like all good audience, lots of questions came out after a little prodding. What was most interesting to note was that the crowd - comprising the leaders of tomorrow, yada yada yada - was quite skeptic about achieving the goal! There were questions about the government and its ineffectiveness, about sustaining the current wave of growth, about population & literacy, about infrastructure & investment - all of them showing how improbable this goal seems to be. On the contrary, the panel maintained its stand that India will have to do too bad to miss this one!

Their settling argument was that India has reached this stage even with the kind of government & stifling regulations we've had, so there is every chance that now that the condition have improved a lot, India will bloom even more. The post-lib generation hasn't seen those days, when Infosys almost died as an infant after frustrating experiences trying to work for global client, mainly due to the policies in 1989!

What will happen remains to be seen, but this skeptism in the youth of the nation, crème de la crème, worries me. Not like OMG-India-is-screwed-now worry, just a little concern.

PS: Just a small note, reply to Jeet's comment on my last post where he said, "I don't agree with Sandipan's only one answer theory.. I don't know about comp. sci and engg. but Civil Engineering was all about evaluating multiple correct answers and 'choosing' one of them." Still, you'll find the management education a whole lot different than engineering. CS is mainly about optimizing; space, speed, transfer, safety.. So in a way, you are confined in your pursuit of the answer. You can say that A is better than B and like that. Civil, as I understand, does have an element of subjectivity to it. In the managerial world, I'm told, there are many situation where nothing's universally better or worse. It all depends on what you decide.