Sachin Tendulkar : the true batting legend

Sachin Tendulkar did the impossible the day before yesterday. Scoring 200 in a one day international shows the amazing extent of talent the man has.

Two months before he celebrates his 37th birthday, he has played the longest innings in the 39 year history of one day internationals. If anything he seems to be getting fitter by the day. 3 of his four highest scores have come in the past two years, even after many years of speculation that maybe its time for the master to retire from competitive cricket.

In the recent series against australia when he scored 175 while chasing a mammoth 360, he had required a runner and was barely able to move while nearing the end of his innings but not this time around.

This inning, i believe has cemented his place as the best player in the history of cricket so far, bettering even Don Bredman. The only thing that stood in his way till now was the fact that he didn't have the record for highest scores in any format of the game which he has now achieved. He has become the only person in the world to score a double century in a one day international.

We are seeing perhaps the best patch of this master in his long 20 year career and that shows how committed he is to playing cricket. Getting his and the world's highest score at an age when most contemplate retirement is the sign of a true genius and there may never be another mortal like him to walk this planet.

So i bow down to this master of cricket and hope that on 24th April on his birthday he gets a 21 gun salute from our government.

Generation Gap

A few days ago, there was an interesting news in the newspaper. It said, "Generation Gap in India widening" or something like that. Now, everywhere i see everyone seems to be talking about this. Atleast to me everyone is.

As always, the younger generation is to blame. "They don't trust their elders , They think only they know everything , They don't listen to anybody's advice , They always suppose they have taken the right decision . . . . . blah blah . . . . .".

I don't beleive in their criticism of our capability to take our decisions ourselves. But, even if they are right - if we do need to consult our parents on all matters , it is no reason that there should be a 'Generation Gap'.

The problem does not lie in the fact that we prefer not to consult our parents in our decisions. It is in fact a product of the apparent curfew imposed in our homes since we enter teenage.

Though not formally spoken so, but it is understood that talking about friends of the opposite sex at home is not allowed. Its just an axiom. No one thinks about it anymore than that. To us, it doesn't matter if we are or aren't taking about things such as sex, relationships etc. at home. But, it does affect our parents big time. Frankly, i don't recall ever talking about sex to either parent.

You don't have to be an einstein to figure out that we do need to take advice about a lot of matters from our parents. They are the people who have guided us all our lives and we would love it if they continue doing so. But it is difficult talking to them about teenage matters, primarily because it is embarrassing initially. So, what we need is that parents themselves approach us to talk about sex. But that approach rarely comes.

So, the person searches for information from other sources - older friends, the internet, even teachers sometimes. As a result, this topic becomes a taboo at home and so do all topics gradually.

Then comes the time when our parents start blaming us for not talking to them, not sharing anything etc. This gives birth to the Generation Gap. The funny thing is that there always has been a generation gap but it was defined differently earlier. It used to be only about ideas about liberty, older generation not being good with technology etc. But only now has it taken on a meaning of lack of communication between parents and their children.

Even if a brave soul crosses the frontier and starts a conversation about some friend of the opposite sex, he or she will be met with such apparent hostility that he or she won't try to start a conversation regarding the matter ever again. The typical response from the parent would be something like "don't put your mind on these matters , just concentrate on studies". What the Hell ? Aren't students human ? Don't we feel the same way as grown ups do ? So how come we sacrifice our human instincts and take on those of machines ? A possible response will also be " we don't mind if you have friends of the opposite sex, but what will our neighbours say. . . .blah blah. . . . .". Well, if it doesn't matter to you then why should it matter what others think ? Excuses to stay in the old school of thought and imagine that everything is perfect.

In this it is not our parents' fault. Their only mistake is that they are bound by the shackles of the society. And the social inertia is such that our society is still stuck on the levels of liberty as they were fifty years ago in most matters. Its root cause might even be in our long born tradition of listening to our elders. Elders are most likely to have a more conservative view of life. Among all this, people like Muthalik and Thackeray reign and succeed unfortunately in taking our thought back to the stone ages in the name of culture and tradition.

So, we are seeing an increase in "Generation Gap". This supposed gap will keep on widening unless our viewpoint towards life changes and we stop criticising "Western Culture" and embrace its liberties. It might even provide a cure to many of our social problems like rapes, teenage pregnancies, eve-teasing etc.

My message to our elders : "Wake Up and open up your minds"

a new beginning........

So, i finally started studying today. Hmmm...it feels good not to be fighting against myself anymore. I have only one regret, this feeling should have come earlier. But, as they say, better late than never.
When i sat down to study today, i felt a certain feeling that today nothing can stop of of from studying. My phone was on the table alongside the books but i was'nt online. Instead, i was really studying for once. I made a plan as to how to tackle my course in the limited time that i've got.
I know that its not gonna be easy to score well after all the 'hardwork' that i've done over the year. So, i'm just keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that all goes well and i don't have to live in agony anymore...............
This might be a last post for a long time. Well, i hope it will be coz that would mean that i am studyin.........................

The Jack West Jr. series by Matthew Reilly

In spite of board exams round the corner, i just can't seen to make myself study. My mind is constantly looking for new things to do. In all this, I found myself reading a book yesterday, again. And as i am, i can't stop myself from completing a book when i start reading one. The same happened this time around.

Well, the book was "Six Sacred Stones" by Matthew Reilly. It's the second book in the Jack West Jr. series, the first one being "Seven Ancient Wonders". As it happens to be 6SS was'nt the complete story. The rest of the story is in "Five Greatest Warriors". So, to know the full story i read 5GW too.

The novels are about celestial events, that threaten life on the Earth. Yeah, much like 2012, that everyone has seen. A sun spot in the first book and a super powerful ball of anti matter the size of our sun in the final two books which are an extension to confucius' theory of duality.

In 7AW , we see earth bearing the brunt of a horrific sun spot Tartarus, the hottest place on sun's surface. To counter its effect our protagonist, Jack has to find all the seven ancient wonders of the world and recover from them the seven parts of the mysteriously missing capstone of the great pyramid of Giza. Then they perform an ancient rite performed last by Alexander the Great. Sounds easy ? Well, there is a catch. All the major powers of the world are after the capstone as performing the rite will give a nation the power to rule over the world for a millenium. These include the US, the EV and a small team representing some small countries of which the leader is Australia's Jack West Jr. So he and his team fight through various traps protecting the ancient wonders and fighting against their enemies to finally perform the rite and give the power to rule the world to Australia.



In 6SS however this rite is undone by a Japanese doomsday group. Then there is the discovery of a dark twin of our sun (not by scientists but by one of Jack's researcher friends in old cave inscriptions). This dark sun is actually something called a zero point field which emits radiations in a spectrum unknown to humans which have the capability of destroying the earth as we know it. It has an effect pretty much like the neutrinos have in 2012. But it seems that an ancient civilisation, long before the present human civilisation has built a machine that can neutralise the effect of this dark sun. To do this, again a rite has to be performed which involves the smallest part of the capstone of the previous book, pillars which are basically bricks of diamond with helium 3 inside them in an ellipsoid container. These pillars have to be charged using the capstone piece, the philosopher's stone, basin of Ramses (an egyptian pharoah) amd water from the spring of black poplar. So our team embarks upon another adventure to save the world. During the course of this adventure, it becomes clear that this time the enemies are far evil than the last time and it will be really tough to emerge the winner. Each pillar has to be placed at a certain 'vertex' and the holder of the pillar will be rewarded with some extraordinary gift. So naturally, everyone wants them and will in to any ends to stop Jack, who just wants to save the world and wants nothing to do with the rewards. Eventually he succeeds and the world is a happy place again.


Matthew Reilly is known for his break neck speed thrillers, a reputation he clearly upholds in this series. This is an amazing story, mixing immense action, mythology, history and conspiracy theories. A must read book for anyone who likes over the top stories.


It was an amazing experience reading these books and really revitalized my mind. Woefully, however, it makes it more difficult to study for the exams and has awakened a fire within me to read more novels. Hopefully, it will stay dormant till may when i will be able to restart my reading frenzy.

Afterlife

Logo of a nu-metal group that me and a couple of friends formed when we were 15. Its in a hiatus now but hopefully we will make something of it when we pass out of school.

do we need plans ?

While watching "Dan in Real Life" today and i came across a dialog that made me think. It was : "We ask our children what plans do you have in life ? Instead we should tell them to plan to get surprised".
The meaning is simple. No matter how much you plan for no matter how many contingencies, there will always be something that will go wrong. That is perhaps the only rule in life that never fails. This simply implies that we should follow the path that life throws at us, because planning can only help us in giving a goal. It can never achieve it for us.

Plans are like shotguns, you point them in roughly the right direction they will give you returns. That is as far as it goes. After that its your own skill, determination and of course luck that will help you attain your dreams. Now some of you will say that i am leaving my life in the hands of fate. While partly true that is not the truth. Each one of us has a predefined personality trait. So, we are destined to do something in life that is unique to us. We can deviate from that something in two ways : inaction and too much action.

By inaction i mean completely leaving your life in fate's hands. Never taking a decision and considering every problem you face God's decision and thereby declining to fight. This way we will never achieve our destiny after all "God helps those who helps themselves."

Too much action refers to planning overly. This is perhaps the most widespread reason of failure. A lot of us spend a lot of time in planning. We try to make sure that we do not fail. But still we do. Why ? We fail because we lay so much emphasis on our plans that we forget who and what we are. We tend to make those plans inflexible so that later on we trust in them blindly and fail to take heed of our instincts and intellect.

We can form a committee and make plans for our future, or in the case of a team, the organisation's future. You may spend an hour, a month or even a year in planning but you cannot achieve your goal unless you have the skill and determination to succeed. For an individual these skills may be technical, conversational or intellectual. For a team the most important skills would be teamwork. In a team, the skills of individuals also matter and so does the chemistry between the various members of a team. It is well documented that if there are differences among the members of a team, the performance of the whole team goes down.

What i mean is that rather than waste time on planning, we should take action. Sure, planning is necessary but only upto a certain level. After that level, it becomes a liability instead of an advantage and the advantages of our skills become superficial as we tend to depend too much on the plans to solve our problems rather than our skills. We become so dependent on following the plans that we forget that it was us who made the plans and so we have the power to change them as well to suit our current needs.

are we really living our lives ?

March 3 : Seems to me like the judgement day that we all fear. So much depends on 5 days that they emanate a feeling of divinity. Stress finally seems to be getting to me. All of my days are spent fighting myself over whether i should do what i like or do what is apparently important for me. This uptight mind forces me to raise questions that i otherwise would not. This state of affairs forces me to think if its really worth it all. Frankly, i think that this whole idea of education is ridiculous in India. I mean what are we gainin by getting educated in a system that is more dependent on our learning skills than our intelligence or IQ ? Anyone can get through this schooling system by remembering some text. But is he learning anything ? Human tendency to condense every knowledge into books is the culprit here. Sure, books help the survival of knowledge, but a lot of things, almost everything, is better learned by experience. After all what is the use of knowledge if you don't know where to apply it. A student who is stupid enough to think about what he is doing comes out of school disillusioned and paranoid. It seems that the best way to be able to earn a living here is to follow the system blindly. 'Choosing' your career is virtually non-existent in this country, as is 'following your dreams'. The rule is simple : if you want to live a calm life, just live by the rules of the society, if you try to follow your own path you will be ridiculed, accused of insanity and even blamed for having a bad effect on the children who look up to you. But are'nt you showing them the right path ? Should'nt experimentation be the right path ? Should'nt you decide what is good for you and what is not ? Should'nt we explore our possibilities and improvise on what we had thought out for ourselves ? Should'nt we learn from our mistakes and make a life out of our experience rather than live a life deemed perfect based on somebody else's experiences, dreams, mistakes and overall lives ? Politicians mark literacy as mark of human progress. But that is what it really is 'literacy'. It is not a mark of education. Ask half of these literate people any basic question about a topic they must have studied at school, not even half would remember what that topic was about. Of the ones who would remember would remember it vaguely, and half of those who would remember to your satisfaction would be teachers. So can you call these people educated ? I certainly won't . And i think that this problem is not limited to only India, it is the same in every country. What we need is a system that teaches by application. We want that the people should learn something every moment we live and put whatever we have learnt into use. Sure we would know more about what we do, but even in what we do we would understand what we are doing instead of just following some algorithm on what and how a thing should be done. For us the chance to learn this way has gone but let us not keep our children from really educating themselves.. . . . .