Terror in my mind,fear in my heart,yes i am a 21st century Indian !

Terror has reinvented itself in a new way,one that has roused the common man to question the very echelons of social and political structure. 4100 terror incidents in the past 30 years and people have finally decided to wake up. 24x7 coverage by all media hungry outlets has made the Mumbai massacre firmly etched on every indian's mind and heart.

We can all blame the politicians and government agencies who have seemingly failed in all ways to protect us. This blame game is nothing new except for the fact that we have a new voice which has entered the fray,the voice of the common man. It took a 100 years for the common man to get India independent and a further 60 years to raise a voice against the inept policies and administrative junta. Even R.K Narayans common man has seen it all, floods,famine,elections,riots and still after all these years  it was nothing more than a morning teaser for all of us.

Where were the voices and candles when ATS chief Hemant Karkare was being targetted by petty politicians. Is one issue really bigger than all the others which have been plaguing this country for the past two decades ? 213 people were gunned down,how many foreigners were there about 27. FBI sends in a team, Israel sends in paramedics, scotland yard comes in. The US,UK and Israeli governments didn't have to think twice before taking such a step. Yet when countless indians are systematically slaughtered in the name of religon, cast, creed, societal norms our common man steps aside and watches the tamasha.

Too many candles have been lit and too many slogans have been raised. This is not going to repay our brave police officers and commandoes. We are in all effect a country within a country, a state within a state with countless divisive lines which only serve to sway us one way or another. 

Its been almost a week since the attacks started and except a few diplomatic parleys, nothing has been done yet. After a couple of weeks nothing will have changed except some new agreements and doctrines. My simple ideology is to say a simple prayer every morning before you leave your house and ask the almighty to keep you safe wherever you venture. We are living on a prayer of hope for a better future.

Farewell Richard Wright...

Hearing the news today makes one feel that a final reunion bid by Pink Floyd will just be a pipe dream now. Its so surreal that the once sidelined co-founder of Pink Floyd was so lonely during the past decade whilst the popularity of the band reached an iconic status.

Tributes keep pouring in and none might be enough to fully comprehend the passing away of a musical collussus. Richard Wright's keyboard was the soul of Pink Floyd. Who can ever forget the Dark side of the moon circa 1973.....

Even decades later it still arouses the same psychedelic passion, Atom heart mother,Echoes and Shine on you Crazy diamond...

Roger Waters still arouses the same passion these days in one off tours and special concerts.

David Gilmour, Roger Waters,Nick Mason ,Syd Barret and Richard Wright made wonderful music and redefined conventional rock music. 

The world of music can never scale those heights again.....

Pink Floyd has truly entered the stage set for legends......

Incredible Double Rainbow effect!

On Saturday evening,Bangkok witnessed heavy thundershowers. This led to one of nature's most unique phenomenons, the rainbow. But what was so special was that we had two rainbows. Attached are some of the pictures i took ...

My Article on Cricinfo.com

Here is the piece i submitted to cricinfo.com's new venture for readers "Inbox"

Batting for Bowlers

Cricket must really have been tough for batsmen when the trend was for uncovered pitches and zero protective equipment. Add to that no limit on the number of bouncers allowed in an over. Over the years it has evolved to be more of a batsman's game but in retrospect, its not changed a lot atleast when it comes to Test Cricket.

The pitch for the second test of the India v Sri Lanka series at Galle has different characteristics at both ends. Now I do understand that Galle had been ravaged by the Tsunami and the ground was rebuilt from scratch. But a pitch like this on the first day and the way the batsmen tackled the variable bounce reminds me of the days when uncovered pitches were the norm.

Here in Bangkok we play using taped tennis balls and we play on a surface which resembles a hard court and clay court put together.The games were quite predictable where bowlers had to suffer a lot. One day someone suggested that we add two extra layers of tape representing the seam. Now who's heard of that. We decided to try it out and voila! The batsmen started having a torrid time. Seam movement, swing,plays n misses, all seemed so surreal. Now our weekend games have become much more interesting with bowlers being more in command.

Summing up a torrid month!

For the past few years the joy of celebrating my birthday has been on the wane. It used to be such a wonderful day and looking forward to the day was an experience to be cherished.All the planning,expectations, surprises used to hang on almost a month before the D-Day. I can't help but contemplate do things really change when we grow older that one's birthday does not evoke the kind of unabashed joy it used to generate when we turned into our teen years.

And of course there can be other reasons too. We feel that garish birthday celebrations are not the dominion of the mature and so we tone down our celebrations and moods to match up to our mature mindset. What a bore ? Yeah some friends who are still in their golden years might beg to differ.

A month before my 27th birthday, and i had a terrible ear infection which seemed to be getting worse. Just as i was recovering from my ear tragedy,another one was waiting to happen.Having had to no serious infections for the past decade makes one oblivious to the hazards we face today. I contracted Chicken Pox and was out in the cold for the better part of 3 weeks. No oily food,using an assortment of creams over my body and face and yes drink lots of fruit juice and cold water as well as stay indoors and have a lot of rest. Yes rest i did but not without its perils. Work at office seemed to pile on and i had my hands full when i emerged from my illness. But of course my birthday was spent on the bed lying down the entire day and watching the same recycled lot of movies on HBO,Starmovies and Cinemax with occasional doses of NGC and Discovery.

It all seemed to surreal,me an Chicken Pox...i was all so lucky it was not very severe and i was up and running within 3 weeks. I did my own CSI analysis and it came back to me my initial diagnosis was that of a skin rash for which i was to take antibiotics. Having non-vegetarian food the next day aggravated the rash to chicken pox. By Monday the 14th of July it was too late but atleast i had the correct diagnosis and medicine this time round.

First thing after my steady recovery was to gorge on sumptuos mutton biriyani, humus and kebabs at Al Hussein. Well it did me some good, i have stopped having non-veg food every day and limit myself to 2 or 3 days a week. Thats not me but i have managed to do it after my illness has been attributed to too much of eating out and feasting on tender morsels of meat,fish and seafood.