Here’s to the crazy ones

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent.
They imagine.
They heal.
They explore.
They create.
They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Mumbai meri jaan .... but something is wrong somewhere ....

In Mumbai, normal life, it seems, is the time between two terror attacks on the city.

When the largest democracy in the world becomes one of the twenty most dangerous places to live in, then something is surely wrong.

When gun yielding young men are roaming free spraying bullets at innocent civilians for no reason at all then something is wrong.

When the politicians take this as an opportunity to gain some cheap publicity or sling mud on each other rather than debating on a solution to the problem then something is wrong.

When the deputy chief minister thinks that this is a small issue that could happen in every big city then something is wrong.

When the regional parties can use force against harmless 'outsiders' to protect the so-called local pride but cannot use any of this force to tackle the terrorists or help the injured then something is wrong.

When even after getting frustrated and sick to the stomuch about the on-going terror strikes on my motherland, all I do is sit and write a blog .... something is wrong

Vote for .....

Listing down some of the achievements of our esteemed politicians in recent times ....
-Driving Tata out from W. Bengal
-Creating a hue and cry about the N-Deal without knowing head or tails about it!
-Bribing MPs and accepting bribes for Trust motions in the Parliament. On top of that, bringing wads of currency notes in the session and creating a scene about it
-Killing converts and bragging about it
-Appealling to pardon convicted terrorists
-Claim that all police encounters in which Terrorists get killed are 'fake'.
-Support reservations and treat common man as vote bank.

The list goes on .... I dont remember any of these as the reason why I had voted for them.

Hollow-scope

If your horoscope says that you will not believe your horoscope then what should you do?

If you believe your horoscope as mentioned above, then your horoscope is incorrect because it said that you will not believe it. If you don't believe your horoscope then you proved it right and it means that you should have believed it!! But doing so will prove it wrong!!!

Makes sense??

Blame it on Indians

First the Americans thought that we (as in Indians and Chinese) are pushing the food prices up, now they claim that we are gas-guzzlers and inflating the oil prices too! This has prompted me to think about what their next allegation will be? Here is a list of what I think that Georgy can think of ...

1) Indians and Chinese are pushing the price of Hair Oil up!!
Reason - Most Americans are anyway bald!! The only race with hair to look after is Indian and Chinese. The entire population of Indians with a full head is 100 million times that of America.

2) Indians are pushing the price of Cricketers up!!
Reason - Obviously, Indian Premier League. And NBA tall boys cannot tell a bail from the ball.

3) Indians and Chinese are pushing the cost of Visa fees up!
Reason - Admittedly, that is fast becoming the best and the most reliable source of Income for America and Euro! Higher the demand, dearer the Visas.

4) Chinese are pushing the price of Olympic torch up!!
Reason - With the number of protests and attempts to extinguish it, Mr Oly Torch has really started acting very pricey!

5) Indians are pushing the price of clothing up!!
Reason - same as food, The huge Indian middle class wants to dress up now, the naked, hungry street kid has given way to a brand conscious urban legend.

6) Indians are pushing the cost of slapping up!!
Reason - who can forget the Rs 30 Million Bhajji slap that landed on Sreesanth?

7) Indians are pushing the cost of Television and cable up!!
Reason - With the overwhelming number of Reality shows, T20 Cricket, Saas-bahu soaps, contests, etc, one TV set per household is just not practical.


I am sure there are many more such accusations, and most of them sound silly, but so did the originals such as Indians pushing the food and oil prices up.

An Interview with Mr Oly Torch

Today we had the privilege to interview Mr Oly Torch from Greece who has always been in the limelight, but this time for all the wrong reasons. With protests in almost every continent it has visited and people clambering over one another to extinguish it, we have sneaked into the Vanity van where Mr Torch is taking a break from the unruly protestors outside.

Me: Hello Oly, Thank you for taking some time off your busy schedule to speak to us. How do you feel about the Anti-China protests and the way it has dragged you into the limelight for all the wrong reasons?

Mr Torch: Hell yeah, speaking of wrong reasons, the fact is that the protests are aimed at the wrong reasons and the media has goofed up again, none of these protestors are sorry for Tibet! They are all victims of cheap Chinese goods bought from K-marts and Walmarts of the world and now just got a reason to swear at China.

Me: What! But we always thought that these people are protesting against the inhumane Chinese treatment on the protesting Tibetans.

Mr Torch (peeping from his vanity van window): You see that bloke with a pot belly and the fat cow with a moustache next to him (that’s his wife)... like most of the protestors, he cannot even locate Tibet on the world map. He had bought a cheap Chinese slimming medicine for his wife couple of months back. She didn’t get any slimmer, but after the first week she had a moustache! Now he sneezes every time they kiss!

Me: Oh, that’s sad. And the world thinks that all this is for a Tibetan cause.

Mr Torch: Non-sense. Most of these 'protestors' are using Chinese goods from head to toe! Right from their clothes to the sneakers and cell phones to iPods and they are protesting against China. What an irony!

Me: Ok ok, lets not talk about the protests. Tell us about your job. It must be exhausting travelling across so many time zones and so many countries. What is the most difficult part of your job? It must be passing through extreme weather and staying lit.

Mr Torch: The armpits!

Me: Huh?

Mr Torch: Most of these 'athletes' don’t use any deodorant and they sweat like pigs! I can't bear the stench! And I am worried it might be harmful for my flame as well. What I hate the most is the fact that in all my photos there is an ugly armpit peeping from nowhere!

Me: Yuck! Anyway, are you looking forward to pass through India?

Mr Torch: Of course, I have heard that there I will be in the hands of film stars and rich cricketers. It will be a good photo-op for me; I am tired posing with unknown athletes of yesteryears.

Me: But how is that exciting?

Mr Torch: I am hopeful to end up in some Cola commercial or some Premium Cricket league where some other film stars can pay millions for me!

Me: Hmm, tell us Mr Torch, what is you biggest concern? Is it Global Warming? World Peace? Inflation?

Mr Torch: None of those. My biggest concern is that in the next Olympics I will be replaced by a cheap Chinese battery operated torch. :-(

At this point Mr Oly Torch got a bit emotional, got up and joined the protestors! Only this time no one knew what they were trying to extinguish, they only remembered that it had something to do with China and Tibet so someone went to the nearest Walmart and bought some Tibet flags and Hu effigies (all made in China) and burnt it and then started extinguishing it!

Just being 'horny'!

Today is No-honking day in Mumbai, I honked twice! Once when a car suddenly came out of a lane directly in front of my car and then on the highway when a biker was changing lanes without any signals and came dangerously close to my car!

I don't feel bad about it! I honk when I have to honk. It is an accepted form of communication on the roads.

In some of the countries I have visited, honking is close to swearing, to be used in the rarest of rare events. In USA and UK if you honk then you are either considered rude or someone made a gross mistake that could have turned fatal. The long beep is more of a 'What the F***'!

In Bermuda people honk when they see a familiar face in the opposite car. The short beep-beep more of a Hi!

In India honking is normal. It is not intentional but more of a reflex action. I admit that some people use the horn even when there is no need, sometimes just to intimate others, many times it's just a hormonal drive to look 'macho'. But most of the times it is needed. People crossing roads looking the other way, cars and bikes changing lanes without signals, taxis driving slowly just to get a fare. All these people deserve the horn! It's not to teach them a lesson or to make them aware, no one learns by one horn, it's just to postpone the accident to another no-honking day!

All said and done, from my side I resolve that I will try and avoid the horn unless it is absolutely necessary.

Not Cricket, it's Swear'icket now!

Some things about cricket should now be accepted as a norm, and sledging is one of them. No one should complain about being thrown a swear word at the highest level of the game. In fact a true cricketer should take it as a compliment if the opposition is targeting him with a volley of 'ungentlemanly' words, because that only means that the other team is so scared of his cricket that they are trying to score a win over him through psychological warfare. Look back in history and you will find that some of the best players of the game have been subjected to some of the most notorious sledging from the opposition.

It is true that Aussies are pioneers of on-field sledging and when other countries (read: Asian teams) give them anything back then that team is pulled up with ICC code of conduct charges. The art is not in swearing at another player, but the real art is in not getting caught. The wildest analogy I can draw here is the way players in football actually practice tripping over when the opposition has not even touched them in a tackle. Sledging is not just about words, its more about the body language and the sheer timing of the assault. Its about how you say it without getting caught or sounding offensive to the neutral ears. It cannot be a spur-of-the-moment outburst but a systematic cornering till the prey succumbs. There was a time when the think tank used to sit in the dressing room before the match and list down the technical weaknesses of players from the opposite team, prepare a game plan to get him out. That was a different kind of strategy. The new age thinking is to gather in the dressing room before the match and list down where it hurts (psychologically) the most to selected players of the opposition and prepare a sledge hammer plan around that. That's the new kind of strategy.

Soon cricket training will be deemed incomplete till the newbies have had a course on swearing. Soon an important trait to get selected in the national team would be how well you can swear and not get caught. Soon statistics will not merely read how many wickets you took or runs you have scored, but also how many opponents complained about you for abusing them.

Monkeys can't be gentlemen!

So now its proved, Indians are racists! We make monkey chants, we call opponents as monkeys, we tease them from the boundary lines. And if thats what the ICC code of conduct 3.3 terms as 'racism', then I don't mind being called a racist! If we wont like anyone calling us 'darkies' or 'coolies', then how can someone else accept being called a Monkey (so what if that guy is more apt to sit on a tree and throw bananas on people walking by than to play cricket).

What I cannot accept however is that how is it a crime to call someone a monkey, and perfectly normal if that same person swears at us when he is hit for a four or a six? They can call us b*****ds but we can't call them monkey? Where's the ICC code of conduct in such scenarios?

What I cannot accept is that the umpires make 8 wrong decisions against us and one wrong decision in our favor so much so that it influenced the result of the match. And yet we have to gleefully accept the result of the match because thats what 'sportsman spirit' calls for! Would the non-racist teams in the cricketing world have accepted this result with this kind of unfair umpiring?

What I cannot accept is that the Aussie captain getting agitated in the press conference when he is asked whether one of the decisions was correct. This is the same guy who himself made a loud appeal even when he grounded a catch! "Are you questioning my integrity" was how he snapped back at the reporter during the press conference. Mate, we are not questioning your integrity, we know you are shallow!

What I cannot accept is also the fact that Indian team, the captain, the management, the BCCI everyone is spineless. Just making lame comments in press conference after losing the match is no consolation. We want fighters in the team, like Pakistanis and Sri Lankans who did not tolerate injustice and fought hard against it. When Murali or Inzy were unfairly targetted, everyone was behind them. Those teams play to win! What are we playing for?

And most importantly, what I cannot accept is that this supposedly non-racist country had unfairly imprisoned and harassed an innocent doctor for allegedly having terror links, just because he is brown skin and a Muslim! Calling someone a monkey is racist, and labelling someone a terrorist just because he is brown and a muslim is acceptable! It will be interesting to see where this ends!