How much is too much?

There's only so much you can stretch a string before it breaks. After a point you have got to say enough is enough, or the string will break and the recoil will hurt you bad, real bad. But it's hard, isn't it, to know when.
I mean look at cricket, IPL was a good exciting thing when it started, but it got bigger than first cut calculations and suddenly someone thinks it is an infinite money-making machine. Ad plug-ins in between balls and in every sentence of the commentary, way too much noise and crackers, way too many matches coming up, too much blatant, vulgar money - IPL3 is already an overkill I've little interest left in, and it's bound to get worse. It feels like a bubble, much like sub-prime, waiting to burst, IMHO.

It's just greed, isn't it? This desire to milk a good thing for more and more until it dies in the hope of well..more. Blinding disillusioning greed.
Greed that makes corporate bosses push their people to work harder and longer in less and less time for less and less money, screwing their lives to increase their margins until it starts hitting the breaking point and the brave among the good people begin to leave their jobs. (Sounds familiar?)

It is also greed of some kind that makes us hang on to relationships that aren't working - eternal hope or just desire to get more. I don't know really. It does feel like greed if you don't do anything about a problem just because you know that the other person is somehow living with it, even if with enough difficulty. The string will snap at some point, won't it. Wouldn't/ shouldn't at some point, you hear - enough is enough.
What's the right thing to do - I'm confused (and incoherent, sorry!)

Old is Gold

First up, apologies to anyone who wondered about this huge absence from the blogosphere. No I didn't die, run off, or forget writing. In fact, for the most part, the blame lies with the recent power and internet crisis in the campus. For more than a week, life has been affected by absence of power (no working in the lab :) no net in the campus :( ) in a manner more severe than anything I remember in five years. Newspapers blame it on the ongoing elections (hell, does anything happen these days that cannot be blamed on elections?) because of which all states are apparently overdrawing from the Northern grid causing the grid itself to trip repeatedly. Tch tch.
Moving on though, plenty of interesting things have happened, not all of which can be shared here, primarily in friends lives. The title refers to the concurrent theme in most of these. Old friends suddenly connected, met up, shared a nice evening and rekindled memories. Events at campus continually glorified the past w.r.t the present (Hamare zamaane mein...) IPL-II started with a frenzy nowhere near the first edition, so far, and most of the stars till now have been the older legendary players...Sachin, Hayden, Gilchrist, Kumble, even Gayle and Ganguly, and of course Dravid. :D
And finally as the last few weeks at IIT approach and the weariness of old age (in campus) slows down the drag of the end even further down, the picture, the story, the chapter of college life is almost complete in the head.
:) Will be back, take care.

And happy bday Sachin! :)

Dil, dosti etc

Bole to, everyone talks about love-shove everywhere, and talks and thinks and rants and sings and cries and tries soooo much...and so it's these in every movie, every other teenage dream, every other old-age memory, every home, every other hostel room, every office, every other song.(fir bhi world mein love ki kami hai...boy, the world really has a capacity!) But it's such a liberally misused word, that nobody knows what it really means anymore, what it stands for etc. There exist self-styled rules, abundant funde and all-pervasive confusion. Yet, the warmth, the lure, the bliss lives on. And thankfully so.

And then there's friendship. One of the better things about this world, so pure that friendship even in a bad cause is above everything else. And even if Mani says friends are for free, they're really hard to find, and hurts awfully to lose them.

I have had my share of toote dil and bichhde dost, and now I think while both dil and dosti are awesome, they're like explosive chemicals that come with a "Handle with care" tag. Small mistakes ruin big things. Even more potent and explosive is the combo, dosti ke sath dil free free free types. The margin for error is really low out there and there's just too much heartburn if it doesn't magically fall in right.

Bhashan apart, the point that I wanted to make in the story in the last post was just that love and logic is a bad bad combo. And that would include friendship wala love. Too much mind in matters of heart serves to complicate, and often lose and kill love, like it happened in that story. The book Narcissus and Goldmund has this line, "All was mind to him, even love; he was unable to give in to an attraction without thinking about it first."
The person who taught me this line taught me the philosophy of letting go the shoulds and bounds, and ever since this one truth is crystal clear...there are some things in life what feels right, is right. (Actually, most things would be like that for me, but bottomline is that there are things where mind does not and should not work). Sure, you make mistakes sometime. Sure, there is some pain, and sure as hell, love makes a fool out of everyone.
But it's worth it.

Thinking of someone first thought in the morning and feeling bright, thinking of someone last wink in the night and feeling secure...it's worth it.
And the other fact is this, love does not come with preconditions. So what if you love her and she doesn't? So what if your relationship with him didn't work out? So what if that person you still desire every second left you eons ago for something/someone else they were happier with? If that diminishes your love, it never was love.

To all my friends, thanks for your friendship. For everything you gave me. Even though you may have long left my behind in the mazes of your life and memory, you'd always be dear.
Once a friend, always a friend.

And to end with a cliche this very mushy post (yuck!)...why mourn that it is over, let's celebrate it happened. For all the love that ever came my way, yeyyy!


P.S. Oh and while on love shove etc, somebody tell me how can someone be as cute as this guy? I mean I would have adored him alright for playing so well, in fact have liked him ever since he's been playing for Australia, and would have still marveled in admiration at his IPL show no matter who he was, but I swear he's so cute and the way he talks is so endearing! :P
Just look at those eyes, I mean, he has to be the first cricketer I ever like apart from the game...Love you Shane!

P.P.S. Disclaimer: I don't eye taken men, so no, I'm not running from home to go and marry him.

P.P.P.S. Please pray for this friend of mine so she gets married to her guy. She's promised me a treat in Taj for that! :P :D Howzzat for dil se dosti ;)

P.P.P.P.S. And if blogosphere is where your heart beats hard, or you just wanna make a dedication to someone special, this post is definitely definitely worth a look!

IPL :: Bad move??

IPL is great entertainment, an addictive timepass despite its long duration and vociferous publicity and support by BCCI, Bollywood, India Inc et al have translated in a success dazzling enough that nobody probably remembers the older poorer cousin, ICL, now. Yet, with its gripping power over the masses, it looks like its doing some serious damage with its regional philosophies.

I'm sure some marketing strategist would've advocated it, and maybe it pumps up the moolah by some skewed complicated equation too, but IMHO it's a bad move in the greater scheme of things to have regionally identified teams...we might as well have had SuperKings playing Royal Challengers, but instead it's a Chennai vs Bangalore clash, and unfortunately not just on the field but also in the stadium and on the streets. And hence a crucial Delhi DareDevils vs Mumbai Indians clash brings Dilliwallahs at odds with Mumbaikars, and the regional pride and self-esteem of parts of our country dips and rises with the IPL point tally. It couldn't have been incidental either, since the first promos of IPL itself focussed on bitter rivalry between supporters of different teams, identifiably natives of those regions.

There is definitely a section of people, me included, who care for the team, the players and cricket only to decide their loyalties (damn Mumbai the chokers, they're a better team than people to throw away 3 on 3 matches in the last over) but then, I love test matches as much as T20, perhaps more, and the glamour and glitz was never targetted at me in the first place(for the record the Lahore XI in ICL is an awesome team). It does make a difference, however, for the masses who burn effigies at world cup losses, celebrate Diwali at Dada centuries and pray for Sachin's back to heal faster. They count, I don't, and it is them who're being manipulated in a dirty way. What surprise then that the Mumbai crowd chooses to boo the Mohali players defeating "their" team, even if it means cursing their favorite Yuvraj Singh.

Encashing on feverish patriotism was a bad enough exercise when India played an ODI with Pakistan and gunshells boomed on the LOC depending on who won, but taking the rifts deeper inside home seems like a very bad move at a broader level for a country already struggling to hold up despite differences (and mindless Gujjar agitations).