When Country Comes First

Days like August 15 and January 26 are stock taking days for journalists. You take stock of the Indian polity. Depending on your take on things, you can celebrate the diversity and plurality of India, write about India's double-digit growth rate. Or lament about an infant mortality rate that is as high as that of sub-Saharan Africa, or reflect upon a nation bedeviled by a hundred insurgencies.

For me August 15 has always been about doffing my cap to the men in olive greens, men who lead very unsafe lives to keep my country safe.

It was the summer of 1969 -- I must have been five years old -- when I decided to join the Indian armed forces. Indian Navy, to be precise.

I was born and brought up in Port Blair in the picturesque Andaman and Nicobar islands, off the eastern coast of India. Port Blair was an important naval base, where INS Vikrant, for many years India's only aircraft carrier, would often berth. My father was posted there as a bureaucrat and a lot of his close friends were in the Navy.

Traveling on a ship from Port Blair to Calcutta, I remember INS Vikrant for the first time from the porthole of my cabin. I rushed to the deck as my father called me to catch a glimpse of what was at that point of time in my life the most magnificent sight I had ever seen.

As Vikrant swept past us regally, and I watched smartly dressed Navy men go about their tasks, I was absolutely sure that I wanted to join the Indian Navy.

I don't know if it was the sight of those big guns (more cannons than guns really) on the deck of INS Vikrant, or the starched white uniforms of the naval officers or simply the snap with which the men in the Indian Navy carried themselves or if it was a combination of all those reasons, that made me want to join the Navy.

Ironically, it was a man from the Indian Navy, a family friend who unwittingly turned me into an Army man. He plied me with issues of Commando comics, which carried stories of World War Two battles. Soon, I turned into a Commando addict. In my mind's eye I saw myself as a crack Infantry man, deftly dodging enemy bullets even as I inflicted heavy casualties upon the enemy.

In 1971, as war clouds loomed over the Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) crisis, I ditched the Army in favour of the Air Force. When I visited Calcutta for Durga Puja holidays in September 1971, every day I could time when the IAF fighters would exactly take off from the nearby Dundum airport. You could hear the screaming sound of the jets before you saw them overhead, sometimes coming out of the clouds against the backdrop of an azure blue sky, passing by altogether too quickly.

The idea of becoming an Air Force pilot took hold of me like something fierce. I could close my eyes and picture myself in the cockpit of a Gnat, the pride of the IAF in the India-Pakistan war in 1971. It was a vision that would enthrall me well into my adolescence.

However, when I was in my early teens, And already a veteran of many air battles in my mind, reality kicked in with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. A serious discussion among fellow adolescents about career choices resulted in a friend pointing out rather gleefully that since I had a squint in my left eye and also had flatfoot, there was absolutely no chance, not even the slimmest of chances, of my joining the armed forces.

The news made me feel physically sick. The life I had envisioned for myself was now being cruelly denied to me. I felt depressed, saw myself as a victim of a grand conspiracy, and the deliverer of bad news, that boy with the gleeful smile, as an enemy agent. Even though I tried to put up a brave face (after all, a war veteran, an ace pilot, couldn't cry in front of others, could he?), deep inside me I knew there was little point in leading a life where I couldn't be part of the armed forces.

I can't quite remember exactly how long I remained depressed like that. My school friends insist it was after my first visit to the imposing Eden Gardens clubhouse, where I had gone to watch India play England, that I rather reluctantly agreed to swap my military fatigues for the starched whites of a cricketer. Suddenly a weight seemed to have been lifted from my young shoulders. Of course it had been replaced by another weight of expectations -- after all, representing India in cricket was going to be no easy task!

Now at the ripe old age of 46, pot-bellied and bald-headed, when I look back upon all those years, I can't help but wonder how different life would have been had it not been for the squint or the darned flatfoot.

I wonder if the armed forces have the same appeal among today's youth that it had for me and for my generation. I read somewhere that currently there are 11,000 vacancies at the officer level in the Indian army. I am told the Army is not only struggling to find young men who are ready to serve as officers, but is also finding it difficult to keep those officers in its fold who have done their short service commission and are now keen to move on to the private sector for better career options.

A retired army colonel, a friend of my Dad's, puts the whole issue in perspective. "You can't look at the army, or for that matter the navy or air force, as simply a career option as banking or teaching or a job at a call centre," says Colonel Kapoor. "For, no other job profile requires you may have to lay down your life as part of the job."

I ask him why he joined the Army. "I came from a farming family in Punjab. It was 1963. The whole country was smarting from the defeat against China in 1962. When I told my folks that I wanted to join the army, my father was so happy that he invited all his friends and family for dinner. Practically the whole village came to see me off at the railway station when I went off for my training."

"Those days, we had a certain jasba, a certain josh. Now a days things have changed. People don't even rise from their seats when the national anthem is played. These days the national anthem isn't played at all, " laments Colonel Kapoor.

Surely the country has changed, and over the years, with it its army too has changed. A journalist friend of mine, who is married to an army officer, says the Army has become more inclusive over the years. "Earlier you had certain pockets in the country where almost every family had at least one member in the army. Now they are coming from all over, making the Army more representative of the entire nation."

After two decades in journalism (oh yes, cricket's loss proved to be journalism's gain!) after watching more than my share of violence and gore, after watching man kill man for the flimsiest of reasons, and more often than not for no reason at all, I am an unequivocal pacifist today.

Yet, I am completely convinced every country needs a strong armed force to protect itself from the threat of external aggression. There are only a handful of countries in the world which have fought three wars, and came perilously close to a fourth one, over the past sixty years. India happens to be one of them.

Not far from where I live, a retired Colonel, Colonel VN Thapar, runs a gas station. The colonel is a man of few words, always has a smile for his customers, and stays mainly inside his office, Often you can catch him looking out of the glass window of his office at the picture of his son, Captain Vijayant Thapar, whose large poster adorns one side of the gas station.

Young Vijayant Thapar, all of twenty two years old, laid down his life at Kargil in June 1999 after leading his platoon to victory at the critical battle of Tololing.

Shortly before embarking on what proved to be his last mission, Captain Thapar had written a letter to his family."By the time you get this letter I will be observing you all from the skies enjoying the hospitality of the apsaras. I have no regret; in fact if I am reborn as a human again, I will join the Army and fight for the nation," he wrote.

As I read the letter, I felt so moved, and yes rather re-assured. I wanted to call Colonel Kapoor and tell him that there are still men in this country who have that jasba, that josh, that junoon.

Fact is, we sleep at night peacefully, because some young men, unafraid to die and put their life on the line for us every single day, men like Captain Vijayant Thapar, choose to keep a vigil at our borders, and choose to join the army, instead of joining a call centre!

An Imperfect End...

I wanted a perfect ending.

Now I've learned,

the hard way,

that some poems don't rhyme,

and some stories don't

have a clear beginning,

middle and end.

My Rajesh Khanna Moment

This blog post is a birthday gift for a very special person, who many many moons ago was swept up by the Rajesh Khanna hysteria. Mala Di, this one is for you.

My Rajesh Khanna moment, this. In 1991 when he contested Lok Sabha elections, Rajesh Khanna came to Delhi and stayed in Hotel Holiday Inn, whch was owned by Lalit Suri, who also happened to own the paper I was working for at that time, the Delhi Mid Day.

I was asked to interview Mr. Khanna who was contesting on a Congress party ticket. I had a clear mandate -- to make the man look good in the story. The cameraman had gone on another assignment, so I was wielding the camera as well.

He looked nice in spotless white khadi churidaar and kurta and black glasses. The interview was uneventful, if not downright boring. The man gave monosyllabic answers to the easiest questions. He was evidently clueless about Delhi politics. I was already worried -- how was I going to turn this into an interesting story.

The Rajesh Khanna moment, of course, happened after the interview was over. I picked up the camera after the interview was over and told him that I would take a few pictures of him , to go with the story And this is where it happened. My priceless Rajesh Khanna moment.

The moment I mentioned the word "picture", the man suddenly jumped up and stood in front of me, with a sideways pose, one hand in his waist, another over his head, the head tilted oddly, the famous Rajesh Khanna grin on his face. And then he said : "Ab click kar lo."

I was trying to suppress a laugh that was starting from deep within my belly. Among other things, I knew I could possibly lose my job if things didn't go right. My instinct for self preservation came a poor second that day, and I laughed out loud and laughed for long.

As I finally controlled my laughter, the man still stood in that pose in the middle of the room, and looked genuinely surprised, rather than offended. He asked me very sincerely: "Ye pose theek nahi hai kya?"

As far as I was concerned, that was it, the last straw. I realized another bout of laughter would surely cost me my job, if this one hadn't already. I politely told Mr. Khanna that the pose was fine, but I was a terrible photographer (and there is some truth in that too) and that I would shortly send over a professional photographer. Fortunately, by the time I returned to my office, our photographer had come back.

Next morning, I got phone calls from a few friends. "Nice story, Rajan, and nice pictures too."

Please Forgive Us, We Are The No. 1 Test Team

It has been three days since India won the Mumbai Test against Sri Lanka and climbed atop the Test team rankings. Since then much has been written on the subject. Lot of eminent Indian cricket writers have argued why much should not be read in this success. Others have predicted, this success may be short-lived, and still some others have questioned the validity of a rankings system that puts India at the top of Test playing nations.

You can argue till cows come home which is the best Test side right now. Fact is, no side is dominating the game like the West Indians did for over a decade beginning in the mid-seventies, or the Australians did for a long spell under the leadership of Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and the first part of Ricky Ponting's reign until Warne and Co. decided to hang up their boots.

India's climb to the top of ICC Test team rankings has been preceded by a qualitative improvement in India's results not just in the Test arena, but in the shorter versions of the game as well.

The number one ranked team is not necessarily the best side, but it is perhaps the most consistent side for the period the rankings take into account. And consistent India has been, of late.

This consistency is reflected in the fact that Indian batsmen, for the first time, occupy the number one position in ICC rankings for Tests as well as one-dayers. Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been the top ranked batsman in ODI's for almost a year now, and Gautam Gambhir, who has scored seven Test centuries in last nine Tests, heads the rankings for Test batsmen. Two of the five top ranked Test players, and three among the top ten in one-dayers are Indians.

If over the past decade, India's win-loss ratio in Tests has gone up considerably, it has improved even more over the past couple of years, following the 2007 World Cup. During MS Dhoni's captaincy, stretching over 10 Tests and four series, India has quite comprehensively beaten Australia, England, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, without losing a single match. During the same period, the Australians won a contentious series at home against India (remember Sydneygate?), were then soundly beaten by India in India, lost the Ashes in England and were beaten 2-0 at home by South Africa. Their only series win in this period, a victory against the complacent South Africans.

The current failures of the Australian side are defended on the grounds that they have lost a clutch of world class performers in recent times as Warne, McGrath, Hayden and Gilchrist. Indians have also lost Sourav Ganguly, their most successful Test skipper, and Anil Kumble, who arguably won more matches for India than any other player.

Others like Sehwag, Gambhir, and India's leading fast bowler, Zaheer Khan have been unavailable or absent at crucial times, because of some reason or the other. Every time the seniors have been injured or absent, the new incumbents have put up their hands, and stood to be counted.

Last year against Australia, and more recently in the last Test against Sri Lanka, Murali Vijay, made light of Gambhir's absence and gave the side excellent starts in the company of Sehwag. India went on to win both the matches. Again, last year when Kumble was out due to a hand injury Amit Mishra made his debut in Mohali and promptly took seven wickets against Australia (another match that India won), indicating India's burgeoning bench strength.

Indian selectors too must be credited for India's improved performance. After an insipid performance in the first Test against Sri Lanka, they decided to drop Ishant Sharma and Amit Mishra, two key performers last year. The replacements, Sreesanth and off spinner Pragyan Ojha delivered the goods in the next two Tests.

Cricket commentators agree India has a powerful batting line up. But it is more than just powerful, it is one of the best ever line ups to have played the game, comparable to Don Bradman's 1948-mark Invincibles or the West Indians of the late 70's, which had Gordon Grenidge and Des Haynes opening, followed by Viv Richards, Alvin Kalicharan and Clive Lloyd. Jeff Dujon was the wicket keeper-batsman, and the weakest link in that line up was the otherwise-prolific Larry Gomes.

The current Indian line up is just as good, if not better.. Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir are two of the three best opening batsmen India has ever produced. At number three and four, you have two batsmen, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, who would walk into most world elevens, followed by the silken VVS Laxman at number five. Dhoni has been prolific at number seven ever since he took over as skipper -- like Sehwag at the top, he scores heavily and he scores quickly.

Much has been written about the Australian way of batting, how under Mark Taylor, Australian batsmen came up with the strategy of scoring at four runs an over, allowing their bowlers lot of time to pick up 20 wiickets. Well, Sehwag has now introduced an Indian scoring rate. Indians now score at a furious pace. Till the time he was at the crease in both Kanpur and Mumbai, Indians were scoring at a scorching 5.5 per runs per over.

It augurs well for India that the weakest link in this side is the hugely talented Yurvaj Singh. The day Yuvraj finds his grove as a Test batsman, God save the bowlers for he can match Sehwag and Dhoni, stroke for scintillating stroke.

Not just the mighty Indian batting, even the much-maligned bowling has delivered too at crucial times. In the absence of Kumble, Zaheer Khan has been a revelation with the old ball, and right now is possibly the best exponent of reverse swing in international cricket. Ishant Sharma has often bowled quicker than any other Indian bowler you can think of. Considering he is just 20, the future is bright for him as well as Indian cricket. Sreesanth, India's hero at Kanpur against Sri Lanka, holds the seam so perfectly than Allan Donald shows videos of Sreesanth's bowling to aspiring fast bowlers.

I can't think of too many sides in world cricket who would prepare greentops if Zaheer, Ishant and Sreesanth were in the Indian side. Sreesanth in Johannesburg and Ishant Sharma in Perth have already exposed the folly of such a move.

Since 2000, India more than any other Test playing nation has slugged it out toe-to-toe with Australia, making India-Australia series the marquee contest in Test cricket in recent times. True, this Indian side hasn't won a series in Australia. In 2004, they came pretty close, almost spoiling Steve Waugh's farewell party. On the last day of the last Test at Sydney India was in with a chance, but a typical rearguard action from Steve Waugh saved the day for Australia, and the home side was lucky to have ended the series 1-1. The last series was even closer, and most neutral observers agree that India would have prevailed in Sydney, had some unusually poor umpiring bloomers, aided and abetted by boorish pressure tactics employed by the Australians, not denied India a deserved victory.

If evidence is required, more can be provided to prove why India is the most consistent, if not the best Test side in international cricket. What bothers me, saddens me, is the muted celebration of this achievement by the Indian cricket writing fraternity.

It is a malaise of Indian writers that they launch into lengthy post mortems of India’s losses and are singularly reluctant to celebrate India’s victories.

For as long as I have watched cricket we have judged Indian batsmen’s performance on quicker wickets as the benchmark of their success. Yet we don’t subject visiting South African, English or Australian batsmen to similar scrutiny. A Tendulkar or Dravid or a Laxman has a far better record on faster, bouncier wickets at Perth and Brisbane, than Ricky Ponting has on the turning dustbowls in India. But just try questioning Ponting’s class to someone like Peter Roebuck or Ian Chappell.

Most of Shane Warne’s victims were from South Africa, England and New Zealand, countries not known to produce batsmen who are quality players of spin. Warne’s record against India is rather ordinary. I can’t remember reading anywhere in the Australian media that Warne is perhaps not such a great bowler, because he has not done too well against Indian batsmen, traditionally known to be the best players of spin.

I am not blaming the Australians. In fact, I think there is a lesson -- an important one, at that -- to be learnt here for us.

Until we learn to celebrate our successes, warts and all, no one else will.

And this achievement, that of becoming the number one Test playing nation, is not an insignificant one. After all, India is only the third Test playing nation which has achieved this distinction, since the rankings system was first introduced.

Beautiful Lines That Mirror My Life's Philosophy

There's them as plan, and them as chance

And them as rather walk, than dance

There's them as never leaves the shore

But me, I've always seized an oar

A mate or two on either side

To set our backs against the tide

Not knowing where our prow might touch

Not turning round, not caring much

FELIX DENNIS

A Toast To Friends

Here's a toast for all my buddies who have fallen victims to the usual tragedies: careers, marriage, mortgages and children. May your fun to life ration always be neon-lit!!

- borrowed from a NYT blog

A Valentine's Day Rant

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

Excuse my French, but that’s such BS!

Methinks, this whole concept of Martian men and Venus women was dreamt up to make it easy for the six-billion-odd gullible Earthlings to swallow the differences between the two genders and live unhappily everafter.

While Hollywood has made the odd movie delving into the life of Martian men, contemporary sci-fi has been singularly silent about women from Venus. Unless one takes Rahul Pandey's words that on the sidewalks of Delhi streets, peddlers of porn have over the years sold books which have had a scantily-clad Venus on cover. Pandey vouches for the quality of writing in these books and a wistful smile creases his expressive face every time you mention the women from Venus.

Lets not digress, though. Fact is, on current evidence, we have little information on, or evidence of, women from Venus. Which, of course, frees us to imagine how the Venus women would have been, if they had been -- so to say.

They, the women from Venus, would be bright and intelligent and witty. They would be tall and sinuous, and would move around with a certain languorous grace. They would be white and some dark skinned too. None of them would be from the Indian sub-continent. Oh well, may be a few from Sri Lanka, Sinhalese women, that is, not Tamils.

V-Day is as good a day as any to remember all the lovely women one has ever met. A friend few years ago listed his favourite top ten women. in a rather public forum. In what was a most honest, and uncharacteristically brave, exercise, he had listed his wife at number nine. His mother and a couple of ex girlfriends, even a colleague found places at the top of the list. Needless to say, by the end of the year he was divorced.

My friend insists that it was his wife who prompted him to prepare the list. It took him and us a while to figure out she had been looking for a reason to get a divorce. We all have a list, I guess, and keep it handy for a rainy day.

That friend's wife and some other women one has met are quite, quite manipulative. Women have been manipulative since Eve first conned Adam to bite into that forbidden apple. But what about men?

Sighhhh….

To be honest the less said about them, the better. They are patheic.

Young men who grew up fantasizing about voluptuous “boudis” (if you thought boudibaaji was just a Bengali phenomenon, then you clearly haven’t heard of Mrs. Robinson or haven’t seen The Graduate) are now middle-aged and lusting over younger girls. Life has come a full, sad, circle for them. Ahem, err, us.

For a generation that grew up on love and fresh air, I have to confess that both -- love as well as fresh air -- have become well nigh unrecognizable from our initial encounters with them a lifetime ago.

I can put a date on when fresh air became unavailable. It was when I left my zero-pollution habitat of Andaman and Nicobar islands and moved to Delhi, ironically, in search of a better quality life.

It is more difficult to remember the exact date when one gave up on love. It was the day one gave up passion and settled for an arrangement. Or let practicality sodomize true feelings. Remember the day they said, "This is the time to concentrate on your career, son. If she really loves you she would wait for you.”

But she didn’t, right? She possibly couldn’t have, for she had another set of loving people telling her : “Time you settled down, girl. Look at that guy you are waiting for. If he truly loved you, he would be here, asking for your hand, but he is busy making a career.”

You would think the two sets of parents had rehearsed the whole thing. The bitch of it is, they were naturals. “Ye shaadi hargeez nahi hogi, Madanlal” is not something you have seen or heard just in Bollywood movies. Lot of us have lived through different versions of that one line.

Today fresh air is available in neatly marked cylinders and boxes, for a price, of course. Love too is offered in equally neat packages. Marriage bureaus to new-age gurus offer , nay guarantee, love -- and such incidentals as sex and compatibility -- on a platter.

Looking back at love (more prudent, I am told, than looking forward to it), from its purest teenage form -- when a casual sidewards glance, or an unexpected glimpse of a pair of lovely legs, or on your lucky day the sight of a gorgeous cleavage sent the heart on a tailspin that only the Sensex manages these days – it has come a long way.

College years were the best years of loving and being loved. One agreed with Karen Carpenter and mostly felt on top of the world. You fell in love every Monday morning on the Youth Special to Delhi University. Sometimes she was nameless, other times her face partially, rather tantalisingly, covered by a chunni, on other occasions she smiled at you from the movie screen, but every single time she took your breath away. Now, when that happens, you usually call for an ambulance.

At some point of time the business of love overtook love itself. You couldn’t convey love through those three magical words anymore. Love had to be expressed through an Archies card, enhanced by a treat at the Nirula’s, and best accompanied by the gift of an oversized bear ,called Fluffy. And you would spend disconsolate evenings wondering if you would ever get as close to her as the bear has.

I don't know about others, but Archies combined with Nirula's to deal a body blow to my romantic aspirations. The economics of love transcended, even overpowered the act, the feeling, the phenomenon of LOVE -- that mother of all four-letter words. As love became hostage to the wallet, somehow the fun, and a bit of the good, old fashioned romance went out of the window.

Two decades on, love is being held hostage again, this time by some cultural goons. And I find myself in the unlikely role of the defender of Fluffy. These days men in khaki nikkars and women in pink chaddis are ready to offer their rather varied takes on love. As someone who doesn't wear either (that is, khaki nikkers or pink chaddis), it becomes difficult to take sides sartorially, though politically I have always been opposed to the nikkardharis.

I am an optimist, though. A steadfast believer of love, a believer in love. A keeper of the faith, notwithstanding the prepositions.

I don’t believe the cynics when they say love is dead or that no one bothers about love anymore.

Every time I read about a 17-year-old boy stabbing a classmate for the affections of his 16-year-old neighbour, I know love is alive and stabbing, err, kicking.

Every time a jilted lover hangs herself by a rope, you know Archies and Hallmark have taken a beating in their attempt to market love as a cute fluffy thing that you can purchase from their shop window.

You are reassured that love is still a matter of life and death, as it was meant to be.

Mind Games – How the Australians Play It And We Don’t!

Sourav Ganguly is known to dish out as hard as he gets

In 1993, when Graham Gooch led the English side for a three-Test series in India, in the only warm-up fixture before the first Test at Calcutta, two North Zone batsmen Navjyot Siddhu and Ajay Sharma went after the two frontline English spinners in the touring party, Phil Edmonds and John Emburey.

The experienced duo of Emburey and Edmonds were savagely taken apart by Siddhu and Sharma. The attack was so brutal that a nervous English management drafted into the squad at the last minute, Ian Salisbury, a rookie leg spinner who plied his trade in the county circuit.

The day before the first Test began in Calcutta’s hallowed Eden Gardens, was one of the most special days of my life. I was covering a Test match for the first time in my life. After I managed to file the curtain-raiser to the Test, as my somewhat jangled nerves were beginning to calm, I found two veteran English cricket writers approach Sunny Gavaskar and ask his comments on the inclusion of Salisbury.

Gavaskar sagely explained: “The move to include Salisbury is a brilliant one. It has taken the Indians completely by surprise. He is an unknown quantity for them, and by the time this series is over, he could well be their trump card.” As I heard those words, my heart sank. Just an hour before Gavaskar spoke those words, I had sent my first despatch from a cricket ground in which I had stated, rather unequivocally, that the move to include Salisbury betrayed the panic in the English camp.

I quickly visualised how the words spoken by Gavaskar would make headlines the next day across the cricketing world, even as the readers of my newspaper would be appalled by the observations of this newbie cricket writer. I had half a mind to call my editor and request him to stop the publication of my piece.

I nervously walked up to Gavaskar, a man with whom I had never spoken before that day, a man whose game I had worshipped since my childhood. Understandably nervous, I was at my inarticulate best as I explained to a most patient and very polite Gavaskar about what I had written and what I just heard him say.

He nodded a few times as I spoke, then suddenly his face broke into an impish grin. He put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me away out of the earshot of others in the press box. Then he whispered in my ears : “Apna Sachin us se (Salisbury) achha ball karta hai, yaar.” (Our Sachin bowls better than Salisbury, my friend.)

“But..but…but…you just told those two English journalists that Salisbury could well be their trump card”, I spluttered, now thoroughly confused.

The wicked grin was back on the great man’s face. And then seeing my nervous state, he explained : “What I said there, to the two journalists, was part of the mind games that go on during a series like this. Cricket, he went on, is played as much on the cricket ground, as off it.

Mental games aren’t new to cricket. Former Aussie skipper Steve Waugh, who always played his cricket hard but square, used to call it “mental disintegration”. You launch an assault against your opponents well before the first ball is bowled. Carefully made comments to the media by the side’s top players or even ex-players are all part of a cleverly-designed strategy to destabilise the opposition.

That is why, before the beginning of any series the great Glen McGrath would inevitably announce in the media, that he was targeting the opposition’s best batsman. That is why, Shane Warne, not exactly known for his restraint to get in a word or two against his opponents, told the Aussie media before the Indian tour to Australia in 2004, that the Indians should get ready to face some “chin music”.

Warne was referring to the known Indian weakness against the short ball. Specifically the then Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly was being targeted. It was not the most well kept secret in international cricket that the man once described by his team mate Rahul Dravid as the ‘God of offside’ didn’t exactly relish the short pitched stuff.

When it comes to mental games, Ganguly of course is no pilgrim himself and is known to dish out his own version of mental disintegration. He got under Steve Waugh’s skin when the Australians toured India in 2001 by making the Aussie skipper wait out in the middle during the toss. Ganguly knew Waugh didn’t like to be kept waiting, so he would inevitably show up late for the toss.

Also Warne’s “chin music” threat against Ganguly backfired spectacularly. In the opening Test of the series, on a lively Brisbane track Ganguly put the Aussie bowling attack to the sword. His swashbuckling knock set the tone for perhaps the finest Indian batting display in a series outside India. All the top Indian batsmen, Sehwag, Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar, scored heavily and by the end of the series which was Steve Waugh’s swansong, the Australians were relieved to have escaped with a drawn series.

As far as this series is concerned though, the first round in the mental battle, it appears, has gone the Australians’ way.

They arrived in India a week before the scheduled start of the series to get a hang of the Indian conditions. To the chagrin of many, including a few officials of the Indian cricket board, world class facilities at the Rajasthan Cricket Academy were put at the service of the Australians. This, after the Indians in their last tour to Australia in more than one venue had struggled to find local bowlers to bowl to them at the nets.

What has galled the Indians even more was the sight of the Australians strutting around with Greg Chappell, India’s erstwhile coach. Chappell isn’t the most popular cricketing figure in this country, the pain he inflicted upon Indian cricket is still fresh in the minds of many. A number of cricket writers have commented how Chappell might pass on secrets about the Indian team to the Australians.

To be honest, though, I personally think it is not such a bad idea that Guru Greg is advising the Aussies. He is undoubtedly one of the best batsmen the game has ever seen, the same can’t be said about the man’s coaching abilities though. I would rather have Chappell coaching the Aussies, than be on the side of the Indians.

Far more than Chappell’s presence in the Australian camp, what might hurt Indians seriously is the choice of venues for this series, which has been somewhat baffling to say the least. Given the visitors’ known weakness against slow bowling, you would think the Indians would have opted for Test centres which are known to be spin-friendly. Instead, Indians kick off the series in Bangalore where they have a dismal record. The second Test is to be played in Mohali, which sports one of the more livelier tracks in India.

You mention Nagpur, the venue for the last Test of the series, to the Indians in general and Sourav Ganguly in particular, and you would get to hear some very interesting things, interspersed with several invectives. The last time the Australians toured India, the curator at Nagpur prepared a green top. Despite the request by the Indian team management to shave off the grass, the curator refused. An angry Sourav Ganguly walked off from the match in a huff, citing a non-existent injury. On what the curator claimed was a sporting wicket, the Australian pace battery demolished India and recorded a famous, and rare, Test series victory in India.

The official explanation for the choice of venues is the rotation policy followed by the Indian cricket board in choosing venues. It is a policy mired in board politics and devised to keep voting state units happy. It is a policy that has little cricketing logic.

India has lost six (two of them to Australia) of the last eight Test matches they have played in Bangalore. The last time India won a Test match in Bangalore was against New Zealand, way back in 1995 – that is, even before either Sourav Ganguly or Rahul Dravid had made their Test debuts. Dravid and VVS Laxman average in 20s on this ground. Yet this is the venue chosen by the mandarins of Indian cricket to take on the world’s best Test side for the first Test.

Off hand, it is difficult to think of a more generous way of squandering the home advantage.

A Little Bit of Diplomacy With A Lot of Style

An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in a recent session of the United Nations General Assembly that made the world community smile.

A representative from India began: 'Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named.

When he struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, "What a good opportunity to have a bath." He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.

After a long, leisurely bath, when he got out of the water and looked around for his clothes, he found they had vanished.

At this point, the Indian delegate paused, for dramatic effect, and then as a rapt audience of international diplomats waited to hear what happened to the missing clothes, he added, straightfaced : "You see, a Pakistani had stolen the clothes."

Understandably furious at this allegation, the Pakistani representative jumped up and said angrily, "What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren't there in Kashmir then."

The Indian representative smiled, almost grinned, and then said, "And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech."

The Khairlanji Verdict

The eagerly-awaited verdict on the Khairlanji case is out. The fast track court trying the most notorious case of caste violence in recent memory has sentenced six persons to death, and two have been given life sentence.

The verdict has been hailed as a landmark judgement on account of two things. First, in a nation not exactly known for speedy trials, the verdict has come less than two years after the crime was committed. Second, by awarding six death sentences among eight accussed, the judge has sent a tough message.

Having said that, a number of activists who have been following the Khairlanji case for a while now are deeply upset that the judge has not charged the accused under The Prevention of Atrocities Act.

In 1989, the Government of India passed the Prevention of Atrocities Act (POA), which delineates specific crimes against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as “atrocities,” and describes strategies and prescribes punishments to counter these acts. The Act attempts to curb and punish violence against Dalits through three broad means.

Firstly, it identifies what acts constitute “atrocities.” These include both particular incidents of harm and humiliation such as the forced consumption of noxious substances, as well as the systemic violence still faced by many Dalits, especially in rural areas. Such systemic violence includes forced labor, denial of access to water and other public amenities, and sexual abuse of Dalit women.

Secondly, the Act calls upon all the states to convert an existing sessions court in each district into a Special Court to try cases registered under the POA.

Thirdly, the Act creates provisions for states to declare areas with high levels of caste violence to be “atrocity-prone” and to appoint qualified officers to monitor and maintain law and order.

One reason why the Khairlanji case attracted such a lot of media attention was because all those killed were Dalits. Even the fast-track court was set up by the Maharashtra government to assuage the Dalits who were angry over the initial inaction by the authorities even three days after the Khairlanji massacre.

If ever there was a crime that should have been tried under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, then it should have been the Khairlanji case.

For those not familiar with the case, on September 29, 2006, a group of villagers in Khairlanji village in Bhandara district in the western Indian state of Maharashtra forcibly entered into the house of one of the residents, Bhaiya Lal Bhotmange. Bhotmange wasn't at home at that time. The crowd dragged Bhotmange's wife, his teenaged daughter and his two sons out of the house, beat them with stones, iron rods and anything else that they could get hold of.

The four members of the Bhotmange family were dragged into an open area about 50 yards from their house. Bhotmange's wife and daughter were stripped naked and gangraped by the villagers until they died. His two sons were beaten and stabbed, their bodies repeatedly thrown up in the air and, according to eyewitnesses, the lynch mob cheered as the bodies crashed on the hard ground. It went on until both the boys were dead.

The Bhotmanges were among four Dalit Buddhist families who lived in Khairlanji, a village dominated by OBC (Other Backward Classes) families. Unlike most Dalits in the area, the Bhtomange family was comparatively well off. The two sons worked with their parents on their land and daughter Priyanka was in her final year of school.

Over the years, there had been several run-ins between the upper caste members of the village and the Bhotmanges. Once the standing crop of the Bhotmanges was destroyed. On another occasion, an attempt was made to forcibly carve a road through the Bhotmange land. What upset the upper caste villagers most was the pride, and the lack of subservience, with which the Dalit family conducted their life.

Matters came to a head when a family friend of the Bhotmanges was beaten up by a group of villagers, and Bhotmange's wife and his daughter identified nine men as the culprits. Later, when they were released on bail, these men led the angry mob which attacked and brutally killed four members of the Bhotmange family.

Curiously, the judge trying the Khairlanji case has ignored the history of animosity that existed between the upper caste villagers of Khairlanji and the Bhotmange family. In his judgement, he described the incident as "revenge killings", thus absolving the accused of the caste violence charge.

A few NGOs are also upset that of the 48 people initially arrested and tried for the case, only eight were eventually found guilty by the judge. This, despite the fact that almost every eyewitness called to testify in the trial, deposed before the court that a mob of at least fifty people had attacked and killed the Bhotmanges.

An Interesting Take On The US Economy

Dr. Marc Faber, the celebrated contrary investment guru, concluded his monthly bulletin with the following observation:

''The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.

The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I've been doing my part ."

A Marriage Bureau for HIV Positive People

"I have come here because I want to get married. I am HIV positive," says Rasik Bhai, a 31-year-old diamond polisher.

"We are a marriage bureau. You have to give us some details about you, about your family background, about yourself, " replies Daksha Patel, with a pleasant smile.

It is a typical day at work for the woman who runs India's first marriage bureau for HIV positive people. art of an non-governmental organisation (NGO) working with HIV-positive people in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the bureau has so far helped seven couples to get married.

Among those looking for a bride is Rasik Bhai. He has to convince the bureau he is capable of taking care of his wife.

Daksha asks him how much he earns.

"My income is 3,000 rupees," he replies.

"You will have to look after yourself and your wife - you are both HIV positive, maybe you will have to spend on medicines," says a concerned Daksha.

"Will you be able to manage all this with your income?"

A steady stream of people move in and out of the modest one-room office of the marriage bureau. A prospective bride-seeker insists the bureau should find a match from his caste only. Another tall man looks aghast when told that no girl presently registered with the bureau wants to marry someone of his height.

I ask Daksha Patel what prompted her to start the bureau.

"The idea of starting a marriage bureau came when I began to work with the NGO here. "I came across a number of men who were HIV positive, also lot of women, some of them young widows. "They all had one question - should they get married?"

She adds: "Besides, there was a lot of social pressure on most of these people - pressure from their family to get married."

"I am married myself. A few months after my marriage I found out I was HIV positive. I have been living happily with my husband all these years - without problems, so why can't these people get married?"

Over the past few months, the number of people who have registered with the bureau has steadily increased. Not surprising in a town like Surat, where more than 2,500 people have tested positive for HIV. The city of 2.4m people is the headquarters of India's diamond cutting and polishing centre and has a large population of migrant workers.

Kamlesh Patel, a diamond polisher, got married last December after registering with Daksha's marriage bureau. "I was not very keen for marriage. There was pressure from home," he said. "I saw my wife on several occasions at the support group meetings. I never thought she would marry me," says Kamlesh.

"Daksha asked me if I wanted to marry - but I repeatedly refused. Then last November - during the festival of Navratri - we used to meet in the evenings. Then I decided to get married."

Now Kamlesh is a part-time counsellor with the bureau. He says his association with the NGO that runs the marriage bureau has been a life-changing experience for him.

"It seems a new life has begun for me after coming here. Earlier my weight had gone down considerably, now my health has improved," says an evidently-happy Kamlesh. "When I am under some stress I come here - a few meetings and I am fresh again."

Kamlesh's wife, Nimisha had been married previously. Her former husband abandoned her after she tested positive for HIV during her pregnancy. She says she had a harrowing time in her earlier marriage. She learnt about the marriage bureau from a doctor who had been treating her.

"I had read about this organization which worked with HIV positive people and ran a marriage bureau. I had come to find out more about the bureau - for the purpose of marriage only," says Nimisha.

"I did not want a very handsome person, or a very rich person. I just wanted a husband who can understand me - and who can provide for three square meals a day." From the broad smile on her face, it is not difficult to gauge Nimisha has found that man in Kamlesh.

The fledgling bureau has a problem though. The bride-seekers out-number bridegroom-seekers almost ten to one. Of the 70 people presently registered with the bureau, only eight are women.

In India, few women can afford to come in the open about their HIV status, because of the stigma attached to Aids. Daksha is full of praise for the women who have come forward and registered with the bureau.

Indian authorities draw solace from the fact that India is still behind South Africa as the country with the largest population of HIV positive people.

A lot of NGOs, however, see India as an Aids ticking time bomb.

As the authorities and NGOs quibble over Aids statistics, and the ways and means to combat the proliferation of the dreaded virus, both agree that initiatives such as the marriage bureau for people living with HIV are a step in the right direction.

What is so Hot about Lutyens' Delhi?

From Comrade Somnath Chatterjee to the messiah of the Muslims, Mulayam Singh Yadav. From our videshi icon, Sonia Gandhi to his swadeshi bete noire LK Advani. From the technocrat Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the rustic Laloo Yadav.They all reside in this cosy comfort zone of colonial bungalows with lush green manicured lawns and servant quarters bigger than the average Delhi apartment. I am talking about that oasis of tranquility, surrounded on all sides by a city bursting at the seams, which answers to the name of Lutyens Delhi.

Nowhere in the world, from Comrade Carat's beloved communist China to the imperialist United States of America, from the impoverished nations of sub-Saharan Africa to the prosperous Western Europe, is there such an exclusive residential district for the country's politicians and bureaucrats. The upkeep and maintenance of which is paid for by you and me.

As Delhi grows vertically (simply because there is no empty space any more to expand horizontally), any building activity remains prohibited in Lutyen's Delhi. Ostensibly to maintain the aesthetic nature of that area.

Dearly departed Rajiv Gandhi, another man with exemplary asthetic taste, actually got a law passed that decreed the sanctity of the Lutyens bungalow zone must be maintained. The poor fellow was cut down in his prime. Methinks if he had been around longer, he would have surely built a multiplex on Shahjahan Road. So much more convenient for Rahul baba to get his Hollywood fix. Even Vajpayeeji could have seen his favourite Hindi movies there, without stepping out of his comfort, oops I mean bungalow zone.

Hey, but what about us? The Chakravartys and Chaddhas who spent a small fortune to buy flats and houses in different parts of a Delhi in the 1970s and 1980s, a Delhi that was until then unspoilt by the mindless building boom that has overtaken it since? What about maintaining the asthetic sense of the place I live in? What about my private slice of sunlight whose entry into my bedroom window has been blocked by the monstrosity that has come up next door, simply because I happened to live in a house that wasn't located in Lutyen's Delhi?

Have you ever heard a squeak from any member of the Indian Left, the self appointed champion of India's toiling masses, about this den of inequity? You would think an anti-imperialist party like the CPI(M) would have nothing to do with something as steeped in colonial history as the Lutyens Bungalow Zone. The left parties protest about the docking of USS Nimitz in Chennai, they cry hoarse about atrocities in Nicaragua, and they shed tears for the hungry in Sudan. But nary a word about the prime piece of real estate on which the India's ruling elite reside.

And, honestly, why pick on just the Left? The Manmohan Singh government makes all the right noises about ushering in a market economy and doing away with subsidies. Most members of that government live off water and electricity supplied at highly subsidized rates in Lutyen's Delhi. Most importantly, the supply of both is uninterrupted , 24 x 7. Phone lines are never down in this land of plenty.

Despite that subsidy, unrealised water and electricity bills from India's political elite run into crores of rupees. The dubious list of defaulters reads like the Who's Who of Indian politics. And such is the love for life in this beautiful part of India's capital city, that several occupants of these colonial mansions simply refuse to vacate the premises even when they have lost in the elections and thereby lost the right to live there.

And now as if free water, electricity and telephones were not enough, to ease the miserable life of our country's first citizens, the New Delhi Municipal Council has decided to subsidize internet connectivity in the area. An NDMC team is visiting Bangalore to meet up with Infosys honchos and discuss ways to make Lutyens Delhi a wifi zone. I checked with a friend in the Delhi government if entire Delhi could be converted into a wifi zone. He gave me a look which suggested he was deeply concerned about my mental well being.

Lutyens Delhi is not by the far the only or even the worst den of inequity. But it is more in-your-face than others, you pass by it, you read about its residents in newspapers and watch them on TV preach and pontificate us ad nauseum about the life we should lead, and then lead the life they lead. You drive through Lutyens Delhi, look at those bungalows and idly wonder: "Tumhara ghar mere ghar se zyada safed kyon hai?" To me it is a bit like what Bastille was to the average Frenchman during the times of Luis XVIth, a constant reminder of a life beyond his reach.

I invite the socialist, secular democratic rulers of India to step out of that cocoon of comfort and see how the lesser mortals live. May be live in a flat in Rajouri Garden or a house in Lajpat Nagar. Face electricity shortages in South Delhi and deal with water shortages in west and north Delhi and have a nodding acquaintance with the unfortunate neighbour whose son or daughter became the latest victim of Blueline rage.

Many many years ago, an Indian prince stepped out of his royal palace and witnessed firsthand the lives of the common people. The experience proved to be life altering for him. May be modern India's rulers need to borrow a leaf out of that book.

And who knows, come election time next time round, when they don their starched khadis, fold their hands and oh-so-humbly tell us how they are one of us, I just might buy that story without choking on my food!

Kashmiri Right To Self Determination

I was more disturbed than I cared to admit when a close friend of mine recently took US citizenship. I had been cool with his decision to move to the United States some ten years ago. But the taking of US citizenship to me constituted an official abandonment of India. It was his private decision, but one that left me rather peeved.

I may not wear my patriotism on my sleeve and I am admittedly extremely wary of the jingoism that goes on in the name of nationalism these days, and you will not see me as part of candle-lit vigils at India Gate, be it for world peace or justice for Jessica Lal.

Make no mistake, though, I take the business of my being Indian most seriously. The blood that runs through my thin, diabetes-affected veins is as much Indian as it is B Positive.

So I was more than upset when I had to witness first hand a group of angry youth first trampling all over the Indian flag and then setting it afire. That, too, on Independence Day.

It is very difficult to remain oh-so-professional at moments like that and calmly film the goings-on. On our way back to the hotel that morning, and on many occasions since then, the flag-burning scene has played and re-played in my mind, forcing me to face the question where do I stand on the vexed issue of self determination of the Kashmiri people.

Like any answer to the complex Kashmir issue, this one isn’t simple either.

In Diglipur, in Andamans, there were no newspapers. My earliest memories of Diglipur are of my father fiddling with the old Murphy radio, trying to tune in to the BBC World Service, and on other occasions, to Binaca Geet Mala, broadcast those days by Radio Ceylon.

My first memories of a newspaper are in Delhi when every morning as I left for school I would see my grandmother reading the newspaper to my near-blind grandfather. As I would get ready for school I would hear stories of American B-52 bombers bombing the North Vietnamese countryside.

Methinks my first political thoughts were shaped by what I heard my grandmother read out to my grandfather. In my eight-year-old mind, I pictured North Vietnamese peasants with their bamboo hats, hiding with their children, amidst the tall grass of their lush green fields as B-52 bombers screamed overhead and dropped napalms. I was in no doubt that the Americans were the bad guys and my sympathies, as those of my grandparents, lay solidly with the Viet Cong.

Later on, in my teens, when I first read books like Exodus and Mila 18 by Leon Uris, and read more about the Holocaust, a part of me almost overnight became a Jew. I couldn’t quite fathom how the world could forgive a Germany that had gassed six million Jews during the Second World War.

Still later as I learnt about the Palestinian freedom movement, I had to re-examine my loyalty towards the Jews. I realised rather sadly that the victims of Germany had turned into oppressors of Palestine, and Yasser Arafat and the PLO became my new heroes.

Point is, I grew up supporting the underdog. Hell, I even rooted for Ivan Lendl to win the Wimbledon.

Under the circumstances, the unsavoury sight of the trampling of the Indian flag, notwithstanding, how does one not support the Kashmiri right for self-determination? A few months ago, I completely identified with the Tibetan cause. I can’t see what is good for Tibet, why can't it be good enough for Kashmir too?

And the demand for this right for self-determination is not being mouthed by AK-47 wielding militants, or Pakistan-backed terror groups, but by 13, 14, 15-year-old boys who aren’t armed with anything more sinister than stones and bricks. Worryingly for the Indian authorities, these school boys are also armed with a fierce determination that bullets wouldn’t be able to quell.

Significantly, during the agitation in the Kashmir valley over the past couple of months, not a single member of the security forces has been killed. The restraint is both a reflection of the maturity of the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination as well as a change of tactics by the Hurriyat leadership which now has come round to the view that an armed struggle against the might of the Indian military might not be the most prudent way to get azadi.

At the same time, on the streets of Srinagar, and in other towns across the Kashmir valley, there is a new determination among the common people – they want azadi. It is not just the old demand for what Pandit Nehru once promised and then reneged – the right to self determination of the Kashmiri people. There is fair a degree of unanimity among the people of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. They demand quite unequivocally azadi from India.

As far as I am concerned, this is not even an issue of right or wrong. For too long the whole Kashmir issue has remained a foreign policy debate, and different sides have played verbal ping pong with not just the emotions, but even lives of ordinary Kashmiris. It is not for us to debate whether Kashmiris should get independence, or whether it is in India’s strategic interests to grant even a degree of autonomy to Kashmir.

I simply think it is the birth right of every Kashmiri to exercise his or her right to self-determination. The rest of us should just respect the verdict of that referendum, whatever it happens to be, and ensure its honest implementation.