It's the Hope that Kills You

For years I’d thought that the Indian cricket team lacked the sort of killer instinct you’d often associate with other teams when they’re on a roll. That they didn’t have the sort of ruthless streak that would see them crush the opposition by 200-odd runs, or chase down a 50-over target in less than 20 overs. You’d often hear about the ruthless Aussies thrashing the English, or the Sri Lankans running rings around the hapless Zimbabweans, or the Pakistanis walloping the Kiwis into submission. But with India, that was never the case – our cricket team would never mop the floor with their opponents as if they were a dirty rag cloth, or make mincemeat out of them in an unparalleled lesson in butchery, or take down their pants, press it neatly and return it to them to show them how it’s done, or steamroller them in a manner reminiscent of someone using earth-moving equipment to paste wallpaper, or pulverize them right down to a sub-atomic level, or…well, you get the drift.

Think about it – if we ever scored 300-plus while batting first in an ODI, did you ever feel safe? Or were you biting your nails in fear that Ajit Agarkar and Ashish Nehra might be generous to the extreme, with a regular and timely supply of leg-side half volleys and a dozen wides down the leg side, and contrive to gift the opponents a victory? I remember a match where we scored some 410-odd runs against Sri Lanka, yet somehow managed to end up winning that match by a mere 5 runs!

It was not that we always snatched defeat from the jaws of defeat or anything. Well, we did that sometimes, but more often than that, we would be in this position where we would appear determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and just when the jaws of defeat were about to close in on us we would get right out and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, although the jaws should ideally have been of victory in the first place anyway. If that sounds a little confusing, let’s go back to the Sri Lanka match where we scored 410 or so. Jaws of victory! But instead of ruthlessly crushing the Sri Lankans, we allowed them to canter to 310/1. Jaws of defeat! That’s when we woke up, fought back and finally won the match by about 5 runs or so. See what I mean?

I always wondered why this was the case? Perhaps it was the lack of a killer instinct – Indians have often been accused of that since the time we started playing sports. Or maybe it was just that we were really good sports – we wanted to give the other team a fair chance – let them make a match of it, so that it felt more like sport rather than, say, someone using a machine gun to kill a mosquito.

After our latest test victory over the English, however, I’m convinced that neither of the above is the case. In fact, the Indian team is actually far more devious, cruel and ruthless than we give them credit for. The answer to this lies in the John Cleese quote “I can take the despair, it’s the hope that kills me.”

Imagine this: you’re an average English cricket supporter that’s resigned yourself to a lifetime of mediocre performances from your national cricket team. Every two years your team lines up to have their asses handed back to them by the Aussies in the Ashes, sub-continental visits lead to predictable debacles as your batsmen cannot handle spin and you stumble from one disappointment to the other – crashing out of world cups, suffering spectacular batting collapses, and so on. And then, all of a sudden it all changes – your team has suddenly started winning, you’ve reclaimed the Ashes and you’re now World No.1, having dethroned the Indians from their perch by thrashing them 4-0 and foiling the BCCI’s dastardly plot of world domination. Suddenly, there’s hope – the India tour may not be so bad this time, you think your team has a chance. You’re no longer sullenly watching the match expecting India to score 500 and then bundle your team out for under 200. But wait – that’s precisely what happens. So you give it up – yeah, your team had a good run, but maybe this is a frontier too far to breach. So you get comfortably numb as you watch your team being gently taken apart by the Indian spinners. You know there’s no chance in hell of saving the test, you know that everything’s already assumed the shape of a pear, but you still watch it out of sheer loyalty, even though it’ll probably test your capacity to inflict self-harm.

But…hang on, what’s happening here? The Indians have suddenly stopped taking wickets after enforcing the follow-on, your batsmen seem comfortable at the crease and you still have 5 wickets in hand going into the final day? Could this really be? Your start dreaming, recollecting past instances of dogged rearguard actions and thinking that this might just be another addition to that collection of fond cricket memories. You start hoping…only to see your team bundled out by lunch the next day as the Indians canter to victory. Isn’t this whole roller coaster far tougher to deal with than a match where a crushing defeat seemed a foregone conclusion from Day 1?

And this is what the Indians have specialized in; against all teams – they would never win in a straightforward manner – it’s always about dangling that little carrot called hope before cruelly yanking it away. It was all part of a great, evil master plan, a plan that’s so much more soul-destroying and spirit crushing than a hammering where you never stood a chance. 

Of course, if you’d prefer your aggression to be more upfront, ruthless and carried with a touch of arrogance, there’s always the BCCI to fall back on.

A Text from the Government

“Marry at an early age. Delay first child. Have sufficient gap between first and second child.”

Now, if someone were to tell this to you, who do you think it would be? If I were to take a shot at it, here are some plausible guesses:

1. Your parents.
2. One of those meddlesome relatives that always transpires when there’s talk of marriage in the family.
3. Your newly married acquaintances that are still in that phase of enthusiasm that distinguishes an early convert from a weary veteran.
4. A Karan Johar movie.

On the other hand, here is a list of entities that are quite unlikely to ever tell you something like this:

1. Al Qaeda.
2. Your unmarried friends.
3. Deodorant advertisements.
4. A James Bond movie.
5. The government.

So imagine my surprise when the government gave me this matrimonial advice via the admittedly modern (for a government) medium of text messaging. As any single Indian person in my age group would know, once you’re beyond a certain age, you pretty much prepare yourself for everyone around you to be trying to convince you to get married – whether it’s parents, grandparents, random relatives, friends or acquaintances. What you're not prepared for, however, is for the government to also join the “get married” chorus. You pay taxes to the government, the government fines you if you’re drunk while driving, the government takes you through endless layers of red tape whenever you need anything from it, the government randomly digs up certain stretches of the road on your way to office – these are the sort of things you’re primed to expect from the government. Marital advice from the government, however – now that can completely throw you off-balance.

I suppose for the government, this is the perfect sort of reply to a lot of its detractors that have been complaining that the government has not been doing anything much at all ever since it took oath – that policy paralysis has meant that the government has just sat and twiddled its thumbs while the economy went for a lazy stroll downhill, or that the only thing the government was active in was corruption. Well, for all those detractors, I’m pleased to say that the government has been quite active when it comes to texting. It’s not just personal marital advice that the government has been giving me – it has given me helpful tips to avoid dengue, it has asked me to design a mascot for the Income Tax Department so that I’m perfectly fine giving away chunks of my salary as long as there’s a friendly smiling mascot present, and it has also asked me to pay service taxes just in case I’m a food business.

As is customary with a lot of the things that the government does, this whole business of the government sending texts does not make any sense. Think about it – it was the government that came up with the regulation in the first place to ban commercial SMSs so that ordinary consumers were not troubled by pesky texts through the day. And what does the government do once those texts stop – send texts of their own!

At the same time, however, this does raise a lot of interesting questions. Who in the government first came up with the idea of sending text messages to citizens? Is this the government trying to keep up with the times and be ‘with it’ by showing that it can also communicate through texts?

More importantly – is there a centralized government department that just deals with texting? I’m guessing there should be – otherwise if all government departments started sending their own texts willy-nilly, things would really get out of hand and we’d be inundated with 50-odd texts every day. A centralized texting department also fits in well with the government’s fondness for regulation – it would mean that the texting department gets applications for sending texts from all other government departments, which are then duly processed by a committee that decides what messages are approved to be sent, which ones are rejected, if any amendments need to made to the copy, etc. In which case, how does one get into this department? It kind of sounds like a fun job!

And it could be made even more fun if the texting department started using texts as a tool for foreign policy. Instead of wasting time in state-level meetings, it could begin communicating foreign policy in the form of text messages. Here are some possible texts that could be sent:

To: Government of Pakistan

Being best friends with the Taliban is like leaving your child in the custody of a grizzly bear. It could only lead to disaster – ha ha.

Ministry of External Affairs, India.

To: Non-Aligned Movement

Just checking – why are we still in existence? Didn’t the Cold War end like 20 years ago?

MEA, India

To: Government of USA

This is all very confusing. Are we strategic allies, regional allies or key allies? Also, what’s the difference? Oh, and Osama found in Pakistan!!! Lol! Told you not to trust the Pakistanis!

MEA, India.

To: Kingdom of Bhutan

Of course we haven’t forgotten u! What nonsense! Tell you what – how abt we make your king the chief guest for the Republic Day parade? Warm Regards.

MEA, India

To: Government of Mongolia

Fresh spices, high staple-length cotton and the finest iron-ore – these could all be yours, in exchange for some weapons-grade uranium. If interested, please get in touch.

MEA, India

Ok, I think I should stop now, before one of the copywriters for the Idea ads gets a brainwave out of all this and creates a typically daft ad about governments across the world bringing about world peace by sending each other friendly text messages.

Life Isn't Like a Panda - There are Shades of Grey!

They say a picture can speak a thousand words. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. Navjot Sidhu can speak a thousand words. Mamata Banerjee can speak a thousand words. The question is - would you really want those thousand words to be spoken to you? The truth is there are times when you really do not want a picture to speak a thousand words. Take, for example, those ‘friends’ of yours that incessantly put up pictures of themselves or of their innumerable vacations on social networking sites. As soon as the picture tries talking to you, you wish it would just shut up – a thousand words in such cases could lead you to inflict grievous self-harm.


And then there was this curious phenomenon that saw pictures of cute furry animals being the rage in the email forwarding universe. I’ve often wondered if the inventor of the email feels that his achievement has been tarnished by the fact that it directly led to the invention of the forward. What was it that made somebody think “Hey, my friend is having a terrible day at the office. He’s just been looked over for promotion, this girl he was interested in is sleeping with his arch nemesis and he got car-jacked on the way to work. Why don’t I put together some pictures of cute, furry animals and email it across to him? That’s bound to cheer him up!”


At this point, you might want to tell me “So some people like to spend all their time putting together pictures of cute furry animals and sending it to everyone on their mailing list in the hope that it gets circulated again and again. What’s the big deal? It’s not like they’re harming anyone, or that it makes any difference to grave matters of world affairs. So why are you ranting about this?” That’s where I’d beg to differ – the equivalent of sending forwards of cute furry animals has actually taken place at the pinnacle of global politics, and has had a significant outcome on the course of geopolitical events over the last few decades.


Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you…(drumrolls)….Panda Diplomacy!


To begin with, let’s look at the background - 
1945 - The Second World War is over, and to keep themselves occupied most major world powers are engaged in this cat-and-mouse game that’s called the Cold War. China joins the ranks of the communists and is an ally of the Russians – hence making the US antagonistic towards China. This goes on throughout the 1950s and the 1960s – there are no diplomatic ties at all between the US and China.


By early 1970s, though, the situation began to change. The US and China decided they couldn’t ignore each other any longer, and Richard Nixon announced a visit to China in 1972. The Chinese, methodical as always, thought long and hard about what steps could be taken to improve ties between the two countries. There were all the usual measures – removal of trade barriers, opening of diplomatic channels, paradigm shift in foreign policy…that sort of stuff. But this was all regular stuff that often happened at summit-level talks – there was nothing new or remarkable about this, nothing that would really get the people excited, nothing that would yank them out of their state of apathy and jolt them like a cold-water shower on a rainy winter day.


And that’s when the eureka moment struck – pandas! Why not gift Nixon a pair of pandas? When the Americans saw the Chinese gifting Nixon a pair of pandas, it was sure to melt the hearts of even the most cynical commentators. And it did – the pandas were donated to the Washington zoo amidst great fanfare and were a wild success. Over a million Americans visited the pandas in the first year alone – and the US-Chinese relationship has not looked back since then, going from strength to strength. Well, at least until the day the Chinese wake up and ask the US to return all their money!


For those of you wondering what Nixon’s return gift was, it was a pair of musk oxen – but this did not receive as much publicity, possibly on account of the Chinese not being too pleased about the fact that the musk oxen did not arrive with cooking instructions. 


While this was the most famous example of Panda Diplomacy, it wasn’t the first or the last – until the 1980s China had donated about 2 dozen pandas to various countries as a sort of ultimate gesture of grand goodwill towards that country (no prizes for guessing how many India got – none). So there have been a few other instances when that last option was ticked in response to the second question in the Panda Requisition Form. For those curious, this is what the Panda Requisition Form looks like.

In the 1980s, though, things got even more interesting. China decided that rather than gifting the pandas, it would loan them to countries for the price of 1 million dollars a year! A panda loan - that would surely be far more interesting than getting one of the usual calls for a personal loan that most of us keep getting. Imagine this – you’re a high ranking official in, say, the British government, and your phone rings one fine morning:


You: Hello?
Chinese-sounding voice at the other end of the line: Good morning, Sir! I’m calling from the Chinese government. You want panda loan?
You: No thanks, old chap. I'm afraid I'm not interested.
Panda loan salesman: Only 1 million dollars a year, Sir. And pandas…they are very cute and cuddly. You’ll like, Sir.
You: That's all jolly well, old fellow...but I really don’t need a panda right now.
Panda loan salesman: We give you one month’s supply of shoots and leaves. For free! And we give you import waiver document. And we no charge for shipping and…
(Disconnect phone)


Perhaps India could take a leaf out of China’s book and use cute, furry animals during summit-level talks with Pakistan – what have we got to lose? Rather than the usual abrupt end to the talks when both parties go back sulking and blaming each other, it could turn out something like this:


Zardari: Listen, Manmohan. You know the drill; we’ve been through this before. There isn’t any major breakthrough going to happen as that would mean either you or me losing face politically and consequently the next election. So we need to come up with something that’ll make it look like we’ve made progress and this hasn’t been a massive waste of time.


Manmohan: You’re right, people are tired of these Confidence Building Measures – it’s starting to wear a little thin. We need some fresh ideas that’ll make it look like real progress is being made. So I hired a creative agency to do some brainstorming and come up with something new. I think you’ll like what you hear – they’re very persuasive and use a lot of big words and analogies.


The head of the creative agency – a crisp, suited Don Draper-type character confidently strides into the room with a nonchalantly arrogant air about him.


Crisp, suited Don Draper-type character: Confidence Building Measures. Let’s begin with the name, gentlemen, because the name is what sets the tone. Confidence Building – you know what that says? That there’s currently zero confidence between India and Pakistan! That may be the reality – but do the people want reality? NO! People want hope, people want dreams, and people want to go to bed dreaming of a brighter future. That’s how all the big brands are built – Coke, Intel, GE – they all promise a better tomorrow. That’s why blockbuster movies with happy endings far outsell gritty realist movies – people want an escape! So let’s not call it Confidence Building – let’s call it Confidence Enhancing. This suggests that there’s already confidence between India and Pakistan – it just needs enhancement. 
And measures – why use such a dry word? Do you think people connect to measures in an emotional way? NO! Measures are seen as mathematical and functional – people don’t want that! Your marks are a measure, your weight is a measure, your targets are a measure – would anyone want to be reminded of that? NO! People remember milestones, not measures! Your first kiss, the day you graduated, your first paycheck, your wedding date – people live their lives from one milestone to the next. Milestones are what you measure your life by; milestones are what you’re left with when you look back at your life. So let’s call it milestones instead of measures. So what we have then, are Confidence Enhancing Milestones as opposed to Confidence Building Measures. Confidence Enhancing Milestones – doesn’t the mere sound of that fill your heart with hope? In fact…


At this point a kitten walks into the room across Zardari’s chair.


Zardari (excitedly looking at kitten – until now he had a particularly stiff demeanor – suddenly it is replaced by unbridled joy): Oh my God, Manmohan! Is that kitten yours? It’s like the cutest thing ever! Can I please have it? I’ll give you anything in return – take all of Kashmir. In fact, take NWFP as well while you’re at it – I have no idea what the hell to do with that region. I’m sure you could make it into a tourist destination or something – it has mountains. We’ll also hand over Hafeez Saeed to you; stop helping Dawood – anything at all, as long as you let me have the kitten. Pleeeeease???


65 years of bitterness ended by one cute kitten. No wonder those forwards are so popular.

Somewhat Historical

If there’s one subject from school that no one seemed indifferent about, it was history. In a way, history was the chicken liver of academic streams – you either loved it or you hated it, and most people hated it. And although I hate chicken liver, history had always been a fascinating subject for me - full of intriguing stories made boring by the fact that you had to memorize them. 


What was rather baffling, though, was why history had to be the same every year. At the beginning of each year, history started with the ancient civilizations – the Indus Valley, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians (also known as the Sumerians just to confuse you) and the Chinese. After then briefly touching upon the Greeks, the rest of the world would be forgotten about and the focus would shift to India, with the chapters on South Indian kingdoms being skipped if you were in a North Indian school. Finally, every year, history would end with India gaining independence. 


It wasn’t the same with other subjects – you learnt something new each year. For all the other subjects, people seem to have put some level of thought and planning – presumably breaking up the year-by-year syllabus on level of difficulty, how much a child of a certain age could absorb and other such criteria. But for some curious reason, the person who devised the history syllabus thought “You know what? Instead of children learning something new each year, why not force them to study the same goddamn stuff every single year?” If this were a cartoon, at this point there would be diabolical, crazed-scientist type laughter from the history syllabus guy accompanied by ominous lightning and thunder in the background. Ordinarily, you would expect a person with such thoughts to either be sentenced to death by firing squad, or if that’s too extreme for your liking, be quietly asked to go tend to his gardens and leave the whole syllabus business to someone more capable. But instead, the fellow was hailed as a revolutionary in educational circles “Teach the same thing every year? What a mind-bogglingly brilliant notion that is! Why didn’t we think of this before? Just to silence our detractors, we can have something different for the 10th Standard, but until then, it can be EXACTLY the same. I bet no one would even notice.” 


In spite of all this, though, I still loved history – and history was one of the first things I noticed while walking about Kolkata. Maybe it had more to do with the part of Kolkata I was staying in, but the city just seemed to ooze history. Of course, this isn’t the centuries-old sort of history that envelops you on visiting an actual historical town like Hampi. It’s not the sort of history where if you picked out a building and told me “Chandragupta Vikramaditya used to drink here with Kautilya on Friday evenings” or “This is the park where Sher Shah Suri was relaxing in when he got the idea to build the Grand Trunk Road” I’d believe you. It’s a very recent sort of history, but one that still adds a lot of character as far as a city is concerned. It’s the sort of history where if you told me “India’s first telegraph message was sent from this building” or “This building was inaugurated by Queen Victoria to commemorate cotton trade between India and England”, I’d find that perfectly acceptable. Every second building seemed to have some sort of stately, heritage air to it, as if to tell you “This may look like a dusty, stained and dilapidated building now, but important financial transactions used to take place here – this is where the first business houses started their businesses.” You might think that all this isn’t that big a deal, but it’s utterly fascinating for someone from Bangalore where most buildings tend to be all glass and no character.


And given how deserted the roads tend to get after 10 in the night in Bangalore (or Delhi, for that matter), it was a pleasant surprise to see the amount of people on the streets even at 11. And unlike Mumbai, it didn’t have the feel of “Oh, I work super hard and party super-duper hard so I just have to get from point A to point B and am therefore on the road” – it had more of a “Oh, I just feel like hanging around and killing some time and am therefore on the road” sort of feel to it. People were just milling about – standing and chatting around the pavements, under trees, playing cricket on the streets, etc – no one seemed to be in any sort of rush. And you just felt safe – I know this sounds utterly illogical and has no basis in reason, but think of it this way. Which of these scenarios seem the least likely to occur to you if you’re walking alone late at night?
1. Delhi - A burly Jat driving by screeches to a halt near you; brandishes a shiny pistol and threatens to beat you to pulp, shoot you and then discard your body in some hinterland-type area if you don’t hand him all your money.
2. Mumbai - You’re caught in the middle of some underworld crossfire and are now being chased by them as you’ve witnessed too much to be allowed to live.
3. Chennai - You’re lost and no one is willing to speak to you in a non-Tamil language, leaving you with no choice but to keep walking on the road until you drop dead.
4. A menacing-looking Bengali…See! I cannot even continue with this sentence because the mere mention of a menacing-looking Bengali sounds oxymoronic and has therefore already made this the least likely scenario!


I’m sure I’m wrong on this – there must be heaps of crime statistics out there that prove that Kolkata isn’t any safer than most big cities in India – but it just didn’t feel that way. Even the cops looked friendly – as if they would offer you a cup of tea and a roshogulla before arresting you if you ever did do something that warranted arrest.


Now, a lot of you might protest at this point “What do you mean a Bengali cannot be a dangerous, cold-blooded criminal? I have two words for you – Bob Biswas!” That may be the case, but the feeling I got was more along the lines of what Robert Clive may have felt before deciding to go ahead with the Battle of Plassey. Here was a chap without much of a track record at colonizing – but when he started trading in Bengal, the thought probably struck him “Hmm…the whole trade philosophy of give and take is fine, but I think I prefer just the take part of it. Why don’t I just conquer Bengal? The Bengali may be ferocious in debate, but he’s unlikely to engage in prolonged armed conflict, particularly if I attacked in the afternoon.” Of course, being possessed of a character that’s devoid of imperialistic or dictatorial tendencies, invading Bengal did not cross my mind – but it probably would have if I was predisposed towards such militaristic activities. 


Of course, Kolkata is renowned for its street food – and unlike Tom Cruise, the hype is perfectly justified. But apart from mastering the art of making delicious rolls, the roll shop populace has also achieved mastery over the mathematics of permutations and combinations to create an elaborate menu out of 3-4 basic ingredients. Every roll shop would have 3-4 basic ingredients – chicken, mutton, egg and maybe veg/paneer. The menu, though, would stretch to an entire page, or be painted on an entire wall, thanks to the various combinations of single and double that you could choose for each. Chicken roll, therefore, would form an entire section in the menu, with items in that section coming in the following forms: Chicken Roll, Double Chicken Roll, Egg Chicken Roll, Double Egg Single Chicken Roll, Double Egg Double Chicken Roll, and so on.


Come to think of it, it’s a bit like this post – I’d started thinking there isn’t a whole lot to say and so this would be a short post, but its ended up being about as long as most other posts!

64 Squares

Detractors.

I don’t know what the deal is with detractors, but suddenly they seem to be everywhere. Of course, everyone’s entitled to their opinion, so there’s nothing wrong with some good old fashioned detracting. Take, for example, the government – now that’s an entity that’s worthy of a whole lot of detractors – in fact being a detractor for the government could be a full-time job in itself. Come to think of it, such a job already exists – the opposition. Or for that matter, the BCCI or Akshay Kumar – again prime candidates fully deserving of all the detraction that comes their way – and some more.

When it comes to sports, though, it seems that the matter of detractors has gone one step too far. Take for example, the time when Ben Hilfenhaus took four wickets in an IPL match. Suddenly the media was crowing about how Hilfenhaus had silenced his detractors with his performance. Seriously? Here is a bowler who’d made a splendid comeback to the Australian team by bullying the Indian batting line up in a manner I’d last encountered back in the childhood days watching that bulldog from Tom & Jerry who’d made it a habit to screw Tom’s happiness every episode he featured in. Since then he’s cemented his position in an Australian team that’s teeming with fast bowlers. Who are these detractors? And then there was the time when David Warner scored a century in his second IPL match this season – again the media smugly told everyone that he’d now silenced his detractors. This for a man who’s not only an established force in T20 cricket, but had of late started carrying that destructive ability into ODIs and Test cricket as well? Again – who are these detractors?

What really took the cake (along with the icing and the candles!), though, was when Viswanathan Anand held his world championship crown in the recent title battle. Yes – you guessed it right – even the defending world chess champion has his share of detractors! And it isn’t that he merely has detractors – according to the papers he’s been trash-talked, ridiculed and written off (yes, chess is more dramatic than you thought – more on that later)! Never mind that he’d already defended his crown a couple of times already, and was still in the top bracket of chess players. What was even more puzzling for me, though, was the mention of a chess mafia – it seems that Anand had given a fitting reply to the chess mafia with this victory of his.

Chess Mafia.

What on earth could a chess mafia possibly be?

Think about it – could you EVER have thought that chess was the sort of occupation that could have a mafia? Don’t get me wrong – increasingly the mafia has been infiltrating new territory where they may not have earlier been – but even then, you’d think there’s only so much they could infiltrate. Here’s a list of industries/professions that lend themselves to the creation of a mafia – where you wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow if a mafia was mentioned in connection to them:

1. Real Estate / Construction
2. Drugs
3. Weapons
4. Showbiz
5. Gambling
6. Human trafficking
7. Anything involving Lalit Modi

Here, on the other hand is another list of industries / professions that do not lend themselves to the creation of a mafia – where you cannot, in your wildest dreams, imagine the presence of a mafia:

1. Astrophysics
2. Chess
3. Market Research
4. Paramedics
5. Photographers
6. Florists
7. Anything involving Mother Teresa

If you’re not convinced, try this exercise - take a sentence you would regularly use in connection with the mafia – “3 people were killed and 5 injured in a deadly shoot-out involving the X mafia and the Y mafia. All the casualties belonged to the X mafia as the Y mafia delivered a brutal retaliation to the earlier kidnapping of one of their key members by the X mafia” Try replacing X and Y with any of the words from the first list and you’ll see that it makes for a perfectly plausible newspaper piece – while using any words from the second list just sounds plain ridiculous.

So what could the chess mafia be? This is a question that raises interesting possibilities – here are some classified ads with possible explanations on what the chess mafia actually does:

If you’re now thinking “Maybe chess isn’t all that boring these days after all – what with all the off-board drama that surrounds the game” – you’re in for a surprise – it used to be even more interesting during the Cold War era. At first it was the Americans and the Russians. Yes, it wasn’t just space exploration and the arms race that they were trying to outdo each other in – they were also devoting considerable energy to go one up over each other at Chess. Which is why Bobby Fischer was hailed as a hero when he beat the Russians at chess. Unfortunately for the Americans, he then simply vanished and they pretty much gave up on chess after that – leaving it all to the Russians. This brings us to Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, and their rather insane world championship match of 1984-85.

At that point, Karpov was the reigning world champion and the darling of the Soviet establishment – Kasparov, 12 years his junior, was seen as the rebellious upstart – someone who wanted the established order to change in favour of a new Russia. Thus, the match had huge political ramifications – it wasn’t just about the chess – it was billed as the ultimate clash that could well decide which Russia emerges stronger. The chess, though, did not live up to its titanic billing at first – within 9 matches, Karpov was up 4-0 – and well on the way to an easy victory, given that the first person to 6 wins (with no points for a draw) would be declared the winner. That’s when things got exciting. Or tediously boring, depending on the way you look at it.

It’s a bit like the Popeye cartoon – at first Bluto kicks the living shit out of Popeye – thrashing him left, right and centre. And then suddenly Popeye gets hold of his spinach can and the tables are turned – now he’s flinging Bluto from one side to the other and beating him black and blue. Except that this whole thing happened in extreme, ultra-slow motion – over a 5 month period. After getting thrashed, Kasparov decided that he was in no position to beat Karpov the way he was playing. So he figured – let me just keep drawing matches until it bores everyone and life becomes a living nightmare for Karpov. For five months this went on – they played about 40-odd matches – Kasparov accidentally winning one at some point, Karpov winning one at another point – and the rest were all draws.

By now, Karpov didn’t know how on earth he would deal with this – he’d lost 10 kgs due to stress – how much longer would this go on? Questions pertaining to existential angst had started gnawing away at his very core. Kasparov may be a madman who’s perfectly happy to play chess for the rest of his life – but is this what Karpov really wanted from life? Wasn’t there so much more he could’ve done in life the last 5 months instead of playing chess? Especially now that it was almost summer? Was he trapped in the middle of a dystopian movie about hell, where he would be forced to spend the rest of eternity playing chess matches against Kasparov?

This was it – the spinach intake had finally been completed – and Kasparov was ready to strike. The next three games – all won by Kasparov! Karpov was like Bluto – utterly defeated and on the verge of collapse – when the Soviet authorities called off the match citing health concerns for the players. Of course, the matches themselves may have been boring, but for sheer overall drama, chess can be right up there with the other sports.

And the best part – it has detractors too!

Celestial Magic

A full-moon night. 

An ordinary-looking chap goes about his night business – brushing his teeth, changing into his night clothes, about to retire to bed – that sort of stuff. It all seems very run-of-the-mill, but you know from the background music that it really isn’t. This is a scene cocooned with possibilities just waiting to burst forth. Then the clock strikes twelve. Suddenly – his night clothes start to get stretched to breaking point, hair sprouts all over his body, his nails morph into outrageous claws and his face transforms into that of a wolf-like beast completely unrecognizable from the ordinary guy that had just brushed his teeth. The clothes are now just a ragged shred hanging from his waist. He howls into the night – that shrieking primal howl that tells you in an instant that something terrible is about to happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, the first celestial phenomenon (albeit fictional) I’d encountered as a child – the werewolf. 

A boarding school childhood meant that there were enough horror stories doing the rounds (if you ever go to the bathroom late at night...) so a werewolf was really not needed to spice things up, but kids always lap up anything to do with horror stories, don’t they? Sadly though, while there seems to have been a huge revival of interest in vampires and zombies of late, the werewolf is still waiting for its modern-day upgrade. I always thought that the werewolf was the more interesting of the lot – there was a Jekyll-Hyde duality to the werewolf that was missing in others. He was the Batman of the evil creatures set – all conflicted in life sorts.  And unlike a vampire or a superhero, a werewolf had no control over when he could turn into one – it wasn’t a nightly affair, or a matter of simply walking into a phone booth and changing your outfit when trouble was afoot – he had to wait patiently for the full moon night to come along.

But coming back to celestial phenomenon – if an occurrence as commonplace as a full moon could lead to the creation of werewolves, what would people come up with when something more big-ticket happened, like a solar eclipse, or the Halley’s comet, or better still, the Venus transit? In the olden days, when science hadn’t explained so much, I suppose it was more exciting – some people would see it as God being angry, some would think this was the day Satan would snatch your soul if you ventured out while the more crafty ones would take this as an opportunity to sacrifice their in-laws. Today, apart from the media hype, nothing much really happens, does it? And the media hype has also taken on a bit of a “we’re trying so hard to make it sound special that it actually isn’t that special” sort of quality to it. In the sense that yes, it is a big deal that the transit of Venus is happening, but while you know that the next Venus transit may not happen for a 100 years, something else would come along – a solar eclipse, Halley’s comet, Hale-Bopp comet, Shoemaker Levy’s comet or worst case, at least an asteroid or a planetoid from the Kuiper belt.

It’s a bit like those special calendar days that keep coming along ever so often – “Today’s date is 06.06.12. If you notice carefully and follow a complex set of calculations involving quadratic parabolic equations and the like, you’ll arrive at the conclusion that the month and day add up to the year on the date. This is a HUGE thing – it’ll next happen only in 07.07.14 – so savour this day like no other! In China, hundreds of couples are getting married in a mass wedding ceremony in Guangzhou to mark this special date”. Next thing you know it, the next special date comes along “Today is 12.12.12 – all three numbers in the calendar date are the same today. This isn’t just HUGE, it’s positively GIGANTIC – and if you do not realize it, you’ll never amount to anything in life – you’ll never be a Bournville one day! The next such date would only come along in the next millennium – 01.01.01 – that’s 89 years away. In China, hundreds of couples are getting married in a mass wedding ceremony in Guangzhou to mark this special date.”

In the olden days, though, the Venus transit used to be a lot more exciting than people turning up at planetariums and wearing odd-looking glasses. I don’t know if any of you have read “The Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson - read it if you haven’t! It has this hilarious account of a French scientist/astronomer who was keen on the Venus transit. For those not aware, the deal with the Venus transit is that, well…it’s a little psycho. It happens once and then it happens again 8 years later – so that you start getting complacent and think “Hey, what’s the big deal with this whole Venus transit business - once every 8 years – that’s just twice the amount of time it takes for a world cup to come along!” And then it happens next more than 100 years later – not in your lifetime! And then again it’ll happen in 8 years and then again over 100 years later. And so on till the end of time (or till the end of the Sun). So anyway – this French fellow was so keen he thought it would be a good idea to observe it from India – for some inexplicable reason. So he duly sets out for India on a ship – only to encounter rough seas that delayed his journey. Finally on the day of the Venus transit he was still at sea and could do sweet f**k-all in terms of taking observations or anything due to all the turbulence / whatever the equivalent aquatic term for turbulence is. Not to be deterred, he thought he’d anyway proceed to India – after all the next Venus transit was just 8 years away - no point going back, is there? So he lands in India – has all those usual troubles with food, ill-health, natives and all that (this was the 1800s, mind you) – but eventually is all set with his little observatory – waiting to take down observations – only for it to be cloudy on the Venus-transit day – which meant that once again he could do...absolutely nothing!

If you think that’s where his misfortune ended, think again. After 8 years of fruitlessness, he packs up his bags and decides to head back to France – only to discover on landing that he had been declared dead, his estate was divided among his well-wishers and his wife had married someone else! 

So the next time you curse your life for being tough, think of that poor French scientist and thank your lucky stars.

The Avengers: A (Sort of) Movie Review

A little knowledge, a thermonuclear device, a sibling rivalry – these are all dangerous things. Sibling rivalries could lead to intense jealousy, family crises and in extreme cases, the Battle of Kurukshetra. Actually, scratch that last one – in extreme cases, a sibling rivalry could lead to the world getting destroyed. For all its plethora of superheroes coming together for a common cause, The Avengers is, at its core, a story of sibling rivalry. Now, you might wonder who the siblings in question are – does Iron Man have a long-lost brother called Inert-Gas Man that you didn’t know about? Does Captain America have a forgotten twin who’s now Captain Iraq that you didn’t know about? Or is Shrek actually a brother of The Hulk, something that you always suspected but didn’t voice out loud in fear of being called crazy? The answer, dear reader, is that it’s Thor (the Norse God of Thunder) that has a brother that you didn’t know about – and he’s called Loki.

On hearing that name, you might wonder – what the hell kind of a name is Loki? Why would anyone name their kid Loki? I suspect that’s where the problems start, as far as Loki is concerned. His older brother has the sort of name that positively reeks of the grandeur you would typically associate with a God’s name – Thor. Thor, the God of Thunder, ruler of the dominions over the seven seas, protector of heaven and earth, President of Alcoholics’ Anonymous Sweden – none of these titles sound out of place. But replace Thor with Loki, and it just doesn’t cut it – the name doesn’t fit in any longer, does it? In short, Loki’s name itself means that he cannot aspire to any leadership position of any sort – which is bound to piss you off if you’re a God and expect certain privileges as a birthright.

And I’m pretty sure that’s not all that pissed off Loki – as any kid who’s been the younger sibling would understand, Loki probably never got the leg piece because Thor had first right over it being the elder one; Loki never got his own clothes because he would always be handed Thor’s old clothes (even the Iron Man made fun of Thor’s sartorial sense, so you could imagine how bad it would’ve been for someone like Loki who had to work extra hard to step out of Thor’s shadow and be seen as cool); Thor got hold of the cool toys like the hammer that can level an entire mountain while Loki was left with broken GI Joe figures and an out-of-tune harmonica. In short, Loki had enough justification for a simmering desire to kill all humanity and take over the Earth.

It does, however, make you wonder where Thor and Loki’s parents were in the middle of all this? Couldn’t the father have just called his sons and told them “Listen, whatever it is these issues are, I’m sure we can resolve it over the dinner table – why drag the whole world into this mess? It’s a family dispute after all, so let’s keep it within the family.” Clearly, this didn’t happen, and so a combination of lax parenting and sibling rivalry brings us to the beginning of the movie, where a pissed-off Loki steals the Tessaract. The Tessaract is The Avengers’ equivalent of the object that’s there in every superhero/action movie, the one that’s the “critical and cool-looking artifact of possibly extraterrestrial origin with tremendous power that, if fallen into the wrong hands, could destroy the world and is therefore the object that the good guys and the bad guys fight over during the course of the movie”. In fact, the Tessaract is so important that it is under the direct protection of Samuel L Jackson, now a specialist in playing brave, grave, somber characters who stand for truth and righteousness and could anytime break into inspirational speech mode when the chips are down.

Officially, Samuel L Jackson is answerable to a higher authority imaginatively named “The Council”. But we all know that “The Council” is full of stuffy people who play by the book and are not averse to making heartless decisions such as destroying an entire city if it means saving the world. Of course, this is unacceptable to Samuel L Jackson, and when something is unacceptable to Samuel L Jackson, he does not hesitate to say “Fuck You”. So Samuel revives this long-forgotten operation called The Avengers, that brings together four superheroes – Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America and Thor (who is technically a God), who join up with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) who was anyway working for him. Their mission, of course, being to retrieve the Tessaract, foil Loki’s evil plan and thereby save the world.

If, like me, you’re a little illiterate about the world of comic-book superheroes and are wondering “How could they come up with a team of superheroes and not include Superman, Spiderman and Batman?” the answer is not because they have a selection policy as muddled as that of the Indian cricket team. The boring truth is that Superman and Batman are DC Comics’ characters while the rest are Marvel Comics’ characters. It does raise interesting comedic possibilities, however “Oh, we tried calling you but I think there’s no signal in the bat cave, Batman!”; “We thought that with the advent of cellular technology there weren’t any phone booths left where you could change, Superman!” and so on. The exclusion of Spiderman, however, remains a mystery.

But coming back to the movie, it follows an arc similar to most action movies:
1. Starts off with a breathless action sequence with enormous explosions, long-drawn out chase sequences and the like, where you don’t really know who’s killed whom and why.
2. The slower middle-section, where some time is devoted to allow the characters to showcase themselves while the action takes a backseat – Iron Man as the wise guy, Captain America as the uptight one, Hulk as the conflicted one and so on. This is also the section where you start understanding what’s happening and why as the plot is explained in greater detail.
3. The final section, where the great, big, ultimate battle to save the Earth takes place with non-stop action sequences and a prominent US city such as NY or LA being subject to widespread destruction on a previously unimaginable scale.

So in answer to some of the big questions one would typically ask about movies – Is the Avengers predictable? Yes. Is there anything new about the Avengers? No. So why should one watch it? One should watch it because, in answer to some of the questions that are more relevant to action movies – Is the Avengers packed with edge-of-the-seat action? Yes. Are the action sequences well-executed? Yes. Does it have great special effects? Yes. Does all that action get you so involved that you almost find yourself cheering for the good guys? Yes. Is it grand and on a massive scale like a superhero movie should be? Yes. In short, you should watch the Avengers if you’re looking for a big-budget, full-blown Hollywood superhero movie. And the other plus point is that it follows in the Iron Man footsteps of “so what if I’m a big-time superhero good guy that has to save the world from evil? I can still have a sense of humor” – so you see a lot of superheroes trying to be wise guys and come up with witty lines, which is sort of fun.

The only disappointment, I guess, would be Captain America. Now I’m not a comic book geek so I don’t know what Captain America’s deal in life is, but apart from bickering, he does precious little in this movie. He’s like one of those bad bosses who delegates work not because he wants to empower you, but rather so that he doesn’t have to do anything himself. He even manages to get overshadowed by the other members of the team who don’t have superpowers – in fact there’s an archer fellow who’s evil for half the movie but still manages to do more to save the Earth than Captain America!