Bye Bye India!

Right now, the most common topic of discussion for an average Indian would be the performance of the Indian cricket team at the Carribean world cup. An endless list of adjectives will easily ooze out on the slightest provocation. A country of close to a billion cannot find the right combination of eleven to succeed in the most passionate sport in the country. Truly disgusting! Where are we getting it wrong? Is the selection committee not able to find the right eleven to represent the country? We do not care about how we fare in the other sports, but when it comes to cricket, the common man is ready with his views.

India has been knocked out of the first round, thanks to the ignonimy of losing to the minnows of world cricket Bangladesh, and to Sri Lanka, who have improved leaps and bounds in the last few years. The lack of pride was so evident in the way the Indians played on the field. There was no sense of passion or commitment to enforce their way to winning positions. One felt that they were there on the field not due to their own will, but due to some myriad circumstances that have propelled them to play cricket for God knows what reason. It was pathetic, outrageous and shameful. It is easy to argue that it is a game, but it is the manner in which they lost that irks the fans. The media has to be definitely blamed for what is happening out there. One win and the Indian players are raised on the pedestal, with heavy adjectives that can give a complex even to the Australian team. We elevate them to Godly status as if they have achieved the impossible. The way they played in the league games, it certainly did not beckon a place in the super eights. Thankfully! I had the pleasure of watching the Australia-South Africa encounter, and it gave me all the more reasons to convince myself that India was lucky to miss out in the super eights stage. The professionalism and the athleticsm in the two sides just astounded me. They have taken the level of cricket to new heights. We do not even have the right to compete with such wonderful sides in the competition. People like Gavaskar should stop criticizing the way the Australians play their cricket. As Ricky Ponting rightly pointed out, we should concentrate on how we play the game rather than accusing the Australians of playing it hard. After all, one is representing the country and so should take pride of the fact. So, Gavaskar better concentrate on the way Indian cricket should by played rather than telling the Australians how not to play cricket. He surely has a tough task on his hands!

India really has to get its basics right to find the right solutions. Are we so incapable of finding eleven players to play world class cricket. Sachin Tendulkar is a pale shadow of his former self. But on a serious note, where has Tendulkar won matches for India from crunch situations? Where has he won when the chips are really down? You can handpick very few matches to help his cause. What is the point in scoring 30000 international runs when you cannot win matches for your team? The Indian selectors should take a tough stance and show him the door. It is high team we drop players who rely on past performances to be in the team. Rahul Dravid is a great player, but as a captain he gets into doubtful shoes. Ajit Agarkar is one player whom nobody can fathom. He is trying his level best to be out of the team, but it looks like nobody wants to drop him. Harbhajan Singh was bowling as if his only option in life was to contain the batsmen and not to take wickets. Totally outrageous!!!! Chappell may be good at making power point presentations, but that is not sufficient to win matches for India. He should have worked from within the system to extract the best out of the players.

The bottom line is simple. Indians at this point of time should be thankful that they haven't qualified for the super eights. Imagine the results. India would have lost six games in a row including to Ireland. The schoolgoers should send a big thank you note to the Indian team for its abysmal performance as it would not affect their performance in exams! The fans should also keep their composure as it is not a do or die situation in life. There are other pressing problems for all of us, and cricket is after all a game. We should learn to keep our emotions in check and continue with our lives.

Emotion(less)!

Last week, we had a discussion about the different facets of emotion in human beings. The movie field is a fascinating field just because it is such an important source of entertainment for the common man. Of course, it has its share of controversies and other big issues, but over a period of time, it has emerged as an important industry in terms of revenue. Movie business is really big money.

Getting back on track about emotions and movies, where is the relation? We have our special actors and actresses who gladden our hearts during those two hours, and we are taken to an ethereal world, where imagination takes over everything in an atmosphere filled with pure gloss. This is when we felt how difficult it is for newcomers to cope up with this profession. Any actor has to display various emotions in those two hours, which actually would have taken months of filming involving different artists, and at the end of the day, he has to come out unscathed from the reel life experience. That is too professional to believe. The actors have to say those hushy-mushy dialogues, embrace each other, articulate as if the whole life is dependent on the other, get into deep love figuring out ways to live, and almost magically after those two hours(rather after months) come out of it, and get into another movie, enact the same things with totally different set of actors (m)uttering the same set of dialogues. That is totally complicated for a normal being not to fall for the opposite sex after so much of cajoling and coaxing. Obviously, the actors get used to it over a period of time, but what about the initial phase of your career. It is unthinkable that two people would not fall in love after what happens on the movie sets.

We conjure different kinds of emotions with different kinds of people. According to me, it is too difficult to visualise the impact that it would have on the other person when one is undergoing this bizarre transformation from one movie to the other. The same analogy can be applied to real life too. It is too difficult to get close to a person and then abruptly get away without an impact. Applying this thought to the real life process, it is no wonder that we are bigger artists in the real world than the reel world. This bizzare discussion on the movie industry quickly led to various intricate complications in real life, and we decided that emotional turmoil is just not confined to a single industry. It is inherent in life as a whole. At the end of the day, it is good to be emotionless and treat any impact on life to be meaningless and unnecessary. Life just goes on and so do the movies!