Kapil Dev ki ek nayi league

Not too many cricket fans from the 1980s can forget the sight of a fully charged up ‘Haryana Hurricane’ Kapil Dev charging in through his run up to the popping crease and delivering that beautifully orchestrated outswinger. It could be argued that he was among the best, if not ‘the best’ all-rounder of his era with Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee and a few others making up the rest of the group. One thing is for sure, the passion with which Kapil Dev represented India and the competitive spirit with which he played his sport was second to none.

And therefore, in the Ek Nayi League teaser promo videos (http://www.eknayileague.com) that are doing the rounds nowadays, when he mentions that something new is coming up which will probably involve leading sportspersons and other celebrities competing with something more than just passion, then it really does give food for thought.

Here are my guesses at what the Nayi League might be about.

A celebrity golf league

Given Kapil’s penchant for the sport post his retirement (if I am not mistaken he even played a couple of competitive seasons in the Indian golf circuits), it could very well be possible that he intends to promote a new celebrity golf league. As it is the sport attracts more than its fair share of prize money worldwide and enough blue chip brands already flock to sponsor golf tournaments around the globe, and it would therefore be a no-brainer that a celebrity golf league would surely attract more than its fair share of eyeballs in the country.

And the fact that Kapil keeps mentioning agar dil se kheloge toh hit wicket ho jaaoge makes me doubly sure that he is indeed talking about the sport of golf, where each competitor basically plays against himself and his own best scores rather than competing with each other.

A celebrity quiz competition

I have been a quizzer during my school and college days and know for a fact that quizzing as a competitive sport is anything but dil se. It is purely a dimaag only type of endeavor and requires competitors to be at their sharpest bit throughout the competition. Kapil’s frequent dil se mat khelo makes me suspect that his new league might even be something of this sort.

All said and done, the fact remains that Kapil Dev’s open invitation to MSD, Yuvi, Sania Mirza, Kapil Sharma (of Comedy Nights fame) to wait and watch as to what his nayi league is all about surely builds up enough and more anticipation for all sports fans across the country. And given that it is Kapil Dev who is promoting the same means that much more to all of us who have respected the passion and competitive spirit with which he represented the country.

So here’s wishing for a dhuaan dhaar nayi league from Kapil Paaji.

Rekindling my love for photography

Call it bragging, boasting or blowing my own horn, but the fact is that right from a very young age I have had a knack of looking at things very differently. While the rest of the folks around me would see the fallen branches of trees and the clogged drains after a good thunderstorm, I would probably be the only one who would notice the rainbow in the horizon; I was the only one who saw the ‘silver lining’ in the clouds, so to speak. It therefore goes without saying that I was thrilled to bits when I bought my first digital camera, all the way back in 2004.

It helped that I was on the picturesque hill-top campus of IIM Indore back in those days where everyday life offered more than a vista of the surrounding areas as well as the wonderfully and aesthetically designed campus itself. Suffice to say that I had quite a ball back in those days clicking a crazy amount of photographs. For someone who enjoyed photography so much even with the regular point and shoot analog cameras as a teenager, a digital camera was a blessing in disguise in that it allowed me to indulge in a lot of experimental photography.

However, as is the norm with all of us corporate slaves, life and professional commitments got in the way and the digital camera got relegated to a dusty corner of my cupboard. Over the last eight odd years now, I haven’t even bothered to pull it out of its cover, let alone take photographs. However, all this changed when two important things happened in my life in 2011.

First, I bought my first smartphone with a 13 MP camera which rekindled my love for photography. What with the fact that the phone was always with me and also supported a whopping SD Card which could store more than quite a few pictures. Second, the birth of my angelic cherubic daughter in late 2011 meant that I had more than enough reasons to indulge in photography. Both the availability of a good camera and an ever enthusiastic subject meant that photography made a comeback in my life.

However, the smartphone itself was not quite good and was made by a particular Korean company whose credo was that their products would work really well for a year or so by when they would have launched a new flagship with better features and latest software which would render the old phones redundant. This meant that although I was enjoying my photography I was not quite able to keep up with the latest in hardware and software updates as far as my mobile phone was concerned.

This issue will now be addressed squarely in the face with the launch of the new Moto E. The second generation phone in its series, this phone packs a powerful punch with its quad core processor, all day battery, Android Lollipop OS and customization options in the form of Motorola Bands and Grip Shells. As if these weren’t enough reasons to buy the phone immediately, the fact that it comes with two cameras – a rear facing one as well as a front facing one means that I can indulge in my love for clicking pictures with great gusto with the new Moto E.

What is better is the fact that clicking pictures with this phone is as easy as flicking my wrist twice to activate the rear facing camera and twist my wrist again to take selfies with the front facing one. Taking pictures has never been easier. I guess it is time for me to start taking photos by the dozen.

If you need more details regarding the new Moto E, visit their site at http://www.startwithmotoe.com/ to enjoy the experience itself.

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This post has been written for the #choose your smartphone journey with the all new Moto E blogging contest being conducted by Motorola in collaboration with Indiblogger, India’s largest community of bloggers.

Real Happiness

In this day and age where people have no time to acknowledge the role that family members play in their lives, it is quite rare to find good friends and relatives who not only play important roles in our lives, but also acknowledge the contributions that we make to their lives as well.

I remember the stories that my dad used to tell me about growing up as a joint family with six brothers, two sisters and countless cousins in small town Kerala in the 50s and 60s. Almost all these stories had at least one brother or a cousin or an elderly uncle who had helped out with something or the other that has had a lasting impact on my father’s life; it could be something as simple as developing the habit of cleanliness or something as complicated as helping out in learning and mastering the discipline of Financial Accounting. However, one thing that stood out in all these stories was the unadulterated gratitude that my father has for all the contributions that all these people have had in his life.

As for me and my generation, given that almost all my friends and me have to endure terrible commutes to office on a daily basis and have to face extreme work pressure in extremely competitive workplaces, means that we probably don’t recognize or thank all the people who have had a positive impact on our lives. And on the rare ocassions that we do, those days turn out to be celebrations, no less.

And these days are celebrations of the happiness of the good times in life that are probably a direct or an indirect result of the wonderful contributions of these people. All the contentment, laughter and banter that are part of these days end up creating memories and form the topics of conversations for future get-togethers and gatherings. And the best part is that these celebrations don’t necessarily have to be large scale parties in posh hotels or pubs. They could be something as simple as a bunch of four or five friends getting together at a common friend’s place, having some good food coupled with some awesome conversations. And add the omnipresent Coca Cola to the mix, and lo and behold, you have some memories which last for a lifetime.

I am blessed enough to have at least three good friends who have been with me through thick and thin for the last three decades of my life. And to double these blessings, the family that I married into brought some wonderful relationships in the form of my in-laws and a wonderful co-brother as well into my life. This small group of people make up my small relationship circle, and whenever I am spending any time with these people, either in groups or individually, means that I am having a really good time. In fact, this post itself is being typed out at the fag end of one such weekend where my wife and me have driven down to Hosur, just to spend some time with my sister in law and her husband. Although there was no fixed agenda to the day trip, the fact remains that we are having quite a bit of fun, and that, to me, is what true happiness is about; spending quality time in the company of people who don’t judge you, don’t make fun of you, don’t expect anything in return, and who only have unconditional love and companionship to share with you.

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This post is part of the Coca Cola campaign to celebrate the International Day of Happiness. Check out their awesome TVC below

My Day

The date is 10^th of January, it is The Supreme Ruler’s Day today.

As is the norm, my faithful minions would have worked around the clock to ensure that all children below the age of 15 yrs have been delivered with books appropriate to their age and reading habits. After all, it is critical that future generations of this wonderful universe are equipped with a broad enough point of view on things which only a wide variety of reading can give them. Of all the good things done on this day, the book distribution remained my favorite one.

I still remember the first Supreme Ruler’s Day and how it was conceived all of a decade and a half ago. On that fateful night of 9^th January, the clouds finally parted way to let in a bright beam of light (funnily enough looking just like that light before the massive explosion scene in the movie The Independence Day from sometime in the 1990s, all those years ago). And then all of a sudden a voice which funnily enough everybody in the world understood informed them that going forward me, mahabore, of all the people would be their Supreme Ruler and that from the next day, the 10^th of January when I turned 19 yrs old, they would have to abide by my rules.

I was as surprised as everybody else was, but who was I to question the powers that be. And in honor of this joyous occasion, my first order of duties was to declare 10^th of January as The Supreme Ruler’s Day.

This would be a day where the administration took it upon itself to cook and serve food to the entire kingdom at official expense, provide all citizens with one fresh new pair of clothes based on their occupations, provide at least one book to all children below 15 yrs of age based on the specifications mentioned in the first paragraph, and overall a day of great celebration.

On this national holiday, the citizens of this great kingdom would take a day off from their regular occupations and celebrate the joy of being alive, active and thank The Supreme Ruler and the powers that be for their bountiful existence. Between what nature had provided them with, their own hard work and prudent exercise of authority by The Supreme Ruler, the citizens had everything they required for a comfortable life and were never found to be lacking in anything that was required to keep them happy.

On this day, the citizens therefore thank me, The Supreme Ruler and the powers that be for all the good things in their lives and hoped and prayed that they wouldn’t have to return to the dark days of yore where institutionalized religion and dirty politics played in the guise of democracy had effectively ensured that mankind had reached the brink of extinction.

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This post has been written for Project 365: A post a day where the intention is to publish at least one post a day based on the prompts provided. Today’s prompt was that I had been declared the Supreme Ruler of the universe and I had to describe a holiday or festival I had created in my honor in great detail.

Writing – An exercise in continuous improvement

I remember back in high school and my under-graduation days (when I last ‘studied’ English as a language) I used to wonder what the point of actually ‘understanding’ the various layers of interpretation of the various classic tales such as Macbeth and various other Shakespearean plays was. Back then, none of these stories made for interesting reading and I was more into mainstream young adult fiction such as the staple fare of Enid Blyton, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, The Three Investigators and later on Alistair MacLean and the like.

But despite having this aversion to the classics, I still managed to retain a decent vocabulary and managed to write decent essays and longish answers using my quick wit and more than decent ‘command’ on the written word. In fact, I can safely say that I am sure that my answers and writing in general was in the top 5 percentile of my school. But back then I didn’t quite realize that they were the stepping stones to something bigger and very dear to my heart, writing.

I don’t distinctly remember when but I guess it had to do with the fact that my initial few blog posts when I started the blog garnered quite a few comments and regular readers. Funnily enough the audience was not necessarily the intended one, but nevertheless the more I wrote in those days, the more I gathered confidence in my words. As the post count kept increasing, so did my confidence in its stature.

Despite the fact that I suffer from a reasonably severe case of low self-esteem, more so when it comes to putting up my writing in the public domain such as this blog, I have realized that the only way I can get better at this is by doing exactly that. By publishing blog posts on as many topics under the sun I can and soliciting feedback from people who know what they are talking about, I can safely say that my ability to present my ideas with more clarity, brevity, panache and the occasional flourish has improved by leaps and bounds in 2014. Thanks to three of my close friends who read almost all my blog posts. Am not mentioning them here, but they know who they are.

That being said, I will be the first person to say that I have miles to go before I can confidently say that I am a ‘good writer’ in every sense of the term. And until such a point, I solemnly promise myself to keep trying to improve with each and every post of mine.

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This post has been written for Project 365: A post a day where the intention is to publish at least one post a day based on the prompts provided. Today’s prompt was to answer the question as to whether I was good at what I do and what I would like to be better at. I chose my writing as the topic to write a post for this prompt.