manedge

“One of us drops anchor/ While the other gets off to a flyer./ It’s not because one is more impetuous/ Or cautious than the other./ The assault, like the defence, is calculated./ We play the same percentages/ to different rhythms, following/ our own sequence/ of stressed and unstressed beats,/ each of us fashioning/ our own departure from the norm.After the crescendo, the rest,/ after the rest, the crescendo./ One of us foil for the other, as it should be./ Personality will out./ We perform in our styles/ Because that is our function./ We never get in each other’s way./ We perform who we are/ Because that is what the situation demands –/ But at a pinch we can swap roles,/ One coming out of the shadow of the other.” Ref: Street Music, collection of poems

When Yajuvendra Singh took seven catches in the Bangalore Test against the English in 1976-77, my friend Sajeev showed me still black and white pictures of the match and that drew me to cricket, which I have been romancing since then. After losing the first three Tests to 'magical' bowling by John Lever, India had fought back and won the fourth at Bangalore. By then the vaseline headband used by Lever to keep the bowl shining had been exposed by Indian captain Bishan Singh Bedi. The first series that I really followed, first day by day, and virtually ball by ball was India's tour Down Under in 1977-78. The Indian team began the tour by playing four-day as well as one-day matches against state teams over a period of four weeks before the First Test at Brisbane. The Kerry Packer World Series had, by then robbed top teams like England, West Indies, and Australia of its superstars. Australia fielded a near rookie team, except for Jeff Thomson and out of retirement 42-year-ol...

Everyone today, barring a few who might have seen wars or famines or riots in their lives, or even suffered on account of having been affected by these catastrophic experiences, is seeing a lot of things for the first time in their lives. Most of us have not been affected by the Emergency or the anti-Sikh or Gujarat riots directly or for that matter the economic crisis of 2008-09. The 1971 Bangladesh War to a six-year-old was a time when lights would be switched off in the evening with police loudspeakers ensuring total blackout. And in less than a month, our lives have changed. We are no longer doing what we would be on a normal working day or even on a Sunday. We are, at the same time, doing what we have never done for many years - clean the car and the house, pick up a book, watched movies on TV or series on Netflix or Amazon Prime, and so much more. Our conversations with friends and family are more intense and lengthy. Forwarding WhatsApp messages is a new service we have taken...

Mumbai has been the subject of so much malice. Ever since we can recall, a majority of the Hindi movies have been made in Mumbai, and on Mumbai. The underworld, the brothels, the dirty slums, all have been portrayed with romanticism, again and again, bringing more and more infamy to the maximum city. But going by the New India narrative, when Kota feels maligned by the makers of Mardaani 2 , which is a sequel to the same drama that led to  Padmavati being   renamed Padmavat, Mumbai should have felt so maligned by now, it could as well drown itself into the Arabian Sea. So then I am reminded of so may cities across India who would be crying wolf at being labeled negatively - Wasseypur, Mirzapur, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Gurgaon, the badlands of Bihar, UP and MP and of course Ramgarh. If we look at the non-Indian moviedom, there would be many candidates vying for the Hall of Shame - New York, Las Vegas, Sicily, to name a few. To those who have reasons to complain, however invali...

When Greta Thunberg accused the world leaders of having stolen her childhood, many people thought she was pointing fingers in Trumpesque style at Trump himself - "How dare you?" When I was younger than what is Greta's age today, in the 1970s and in school, the term global warming had started getting attention. We were told how the world would be hell in 50 years' time with glaciers melting and sea-levels rising. But there were comforting voices as well who brushed under the carpet the seriousness of the issue by putting up interesting convincing arguments. And so two generations - mine and the one before that - continued to plunder the world. Forests were uprooted. But weren't we planting 10 trees in place of one that we had cut? We were doing so by overlooking the reality that a tree that took thousands of years to stands on its feet was being replaced by saplings which may or may not survive a few years. After all we have been planting saplings every year a...