Chak diya!

This post has been lying in my draft for 2 days.. finally found time to finish it..

India-Pak T20 world cup finals on monday... what an awesome match it was! The fact that it was a match b/w India and Pak itself made it exciting... and that it was a world cup .. made it a bigger deal.. It's been one of the most electrifying matches i've seen lately. The match was running in favor of both the teams, till the last ball nearly.. Not very often do we get to see such matches; where you sit at the edge of your seat till the last ball/over is bowled... It was a great game.. and luck was defnitely on our side that day..and prayers of millions of Indians.... else for some of the glaring mistakes that we made.. like Sreeshanth's 2nd over of ~22 runs and a couple of more costly overs towards the end.. we would have almost lost the world cup! Joginder sharma's magic worked again.. he bowling the last over seemed to be like a lucky charm :) I was glad that Irfan Pathan was declared the man of the match... i think he really deserved it.. He being from a very small town, had so much dedication towards the game... the way he bowled in a controlled manner was awesome.. and few of those wickets were turning points in the match...

Towards the end of the match.. the camera was being focused more on Shahrukh khan who was present there to see the game, than on the game itself! Anyways, thats our country.. we crazy about bollywood .. we crazy about cricket! It's just amazing to see how the whole country celebrates the win... including myself.. like it is some joyous event of my life :) That's the kind of impact that cricket has on us! Thoroughly enjoyed watching every bit of it...

Chak de India!

Well, this time its not the movie but the Twenty 20 world cup that I am referring to. India-Australia semi finals yesterday - what an awesome match it was!! I had lost interest in cricket over the last few years.. but since I started watching this new young team play the series, I am back to the same old craze of getting glued to the TV so that I don't miss a single ball of the game.. After India won 2 consecutive matches, against England and South Africa, like everyone else, even I had thought that India cannot repeat their victory.. I was not wrong in thinking so.. coz thats the kind of reputation the team had built up... But yesterday's match really changed a lot of perceptions am sure!

I have never seen Indian players fight so hard till the last ball... in all aspects - batting, bowling and fielding. Even though the match seemed to have favored aussies at many points, these people just kept fighting and it finally paid off... I really admire the way Dhoni has performed as a captain especially... Even though J.Sharma gave away a lot of runs in his first couple of overs and proved to be very costly to the team... Dhoni still gave him a chance to bowl the last over... which was very crucial... Aussies could have easily managed the 22 runs in 6 balls.. it wasnt a big deal for them.. But sharma got a chance to prove himself and cover up for all the bad bowling he had done ...... he really managed to do it and lead india to victory. I don't have to say anything about Yuvraj... we all know he played classy and professional cricket... We need more batsmen like him, who can play so well under immense pressure and not just keep swinging their bats hoping to connect the ball...

Anyways, I am back to watching cricket all over again.. I guess we don't need tendulkar, ganguly and dravid till this new team continues to play with the same 'josh' :) It was a treat to watch the Indian's play and am really looking forward for the India-Pak finals. Doesn't matter who wins... it's not necessary that we have to win all the matches... 'coz thats not the only thing which proves the team's potential.. what matters more is that they fight till the end and play their best game....

article...

Here’s a nice article by Gurucharan Das about the education system in India. I felt that the example he has used to put his point across is very intriguing....

Link to the article

100th post...

This marks my 100th post since I created my blog! When I started writing, I had never thought I would continue to write for so long.. but am glad I did and hope to keep it more frequent in the future :)

I had a lot of things in mind to blog about, over the past 2 weeks but the lack of internet access at home kept me out of the blogging world. (Yeah, my office blocks even blogger sites!) Yet another instance which made me realize how dependent I have become, on technology..... Cell phone and internet - two things which I feel I cannot live without :)

I watched this movie 'Ratatouille' over the weekend. Felt good watching an animation movie after a long time. A fun movie, which keeps you entertained thru out. The movie is all about a rat named Remy which dreams of becoming a great chef despite being a "Rat" and also his family's disapproval. But fate does give him a chance... at one of the finest restaurants in Paris... and thats where the story is all about... Overall a very hilarious movie.. but I felt it could have been cut short by at least 20-30 mins.. the last bit seemed to be very dragging and I lost interest in the story at some point... It was the animation part that kept me hooked on till the end...

Another good part about the weekend was this english play that i watched at Rangashankara, called 'Flame of the Forest', directed by Gowri Ramanarayan. It was something totally different from all the plays that I had seen so far.... it was a combination of dance, music and drama. The carnatic music and bharatnatyam were the best part of the play.. it suited the context really well. The story is adapted from Kalki's immortal classic 'Sivakamiyin Shapatam' and set in the medieval period.. during the time of Pallavas and Chalukyas. One of the drawbacks according to me was the length of the play. I felt it could have been cut short by half an hour and it would still remain equally impactful. The story started off by focusing on 'Paranjyoti', the general in the Pallava army.. but only at the end I realized that it was all about the court dancer Sivakami, in Mahendra Pallava's kingdom, Kanchi. This was another confusing aspect. That apart, the acting was brilliant, well carried out by the dancer and the vocalist..

Overall a really good play and I would highly recommend it...