Feeling the pinch…

I lost my friend Amresh in the Mumbai blasts.

The guy lost his life for no fault of his whatsoever.

I got the news of his sad demise next day afternoon. I could feel the cry in Amit’s voice when he told the news.

Till then I had a totally different point of view towards the entire blasts series.
I had not lost any near and dear ones so I could easily write about the blasts and the resilient city and all.

It all changed all of a sudden. I could not work for rest of the day. All those college days were were scrolling through my mind like a movie.

I went home. All news channels were bombarding with news about blasts. Busy blaming Police… Intelligence…. Pakistan… and so on…for the incident.

For me it was just another painful reminder of the fate of my friend.

Amaresh was my hostel room partner during college days. I shall always remember him for his practical approach towards life and the way he used to support his friends when they needed him…

Every news on TV brought up memories of the days we spent together… the fun we had…

Being in Bangalore I could not even attend his funeral. It became too difficult after that to watch the photo’s of the injured and the dead…. Somehow I could feel the pain.

By the evening all channels were busy showing how the people were courageous to return to their jobs very next day….

I now realized that it was more of a helplessness than the spirit… the same helplessness that make them risk life every day when they hang out of the door of local train.

A few days ago I came across email that talked about Mumbai’s response to terrorists and all… How easy it is to write that “Just 200” died when none of them is related to you…

Today it is after so many days that I could gather courage to write about this…

You will always remain in our hearts... Amresh……

Mumbai...The resilient city

I am feeling anguished… for whatever has been happening in Mumbai for a past few days. It is not only about the series of blasts but the seies of the events for past few days…

I guess some terrorist organizations had played cleverly (I must admit) with the city and it’s people. Shiv Sena guys seem to have fallen prey to the plot. Those terrorist must have expected them to behave in a certain manner and they did. There is nothing new with shiv sena doing such acts but more sad part is that Bal Thakare publicly approved whatever those guys did.

Ok… it’s democracy… u have full right to protest… But one must remember that your right to move hand freely ends where other persons face starts….

Burning of busses and vehicles?? Tarnishing statues of other party leaders??

Why someone else should pay the price?

In my opinion this must have been the plan to divert the attention of the police so that others got a free hand to execute the plot for bombing.

We are not new to bombings now… bomb threats have become a matter of routine now… and Mumbai has now become a seasoned city thanks to all these disasters that we are conferred upon every now and then….

Everything has its own positive and negative traits… The local trains may be overcrowded but one must admit that they develop a tremendous sense of co-operation and patience into the people of Mumbai. The daily travels make you resilient enough to face such disasters with courage.

We have seen this courage many times before… last major show was a year ago when Mumbai was flooded….

The stupid people at the readers digest can now eat their words about the rudeness of Mumbai.

It’s amazing to see how people who would normally be acting indifferent to surrounding suddenly spring into action to help total strangers. You won’t hear of any looting or for that matter any incident of someone taking undue advantages of helplessness of people who are stranded. You can easily see people giving lifts to stranded commuters and them accepting it without any hesitation…. Something one would never do on a normal day.

Temporary shelters being arranges and local residents doing all they can to help those who are suffering…

I saw on TV a tea vendor who was distributing tea freely to everyone in an hospital premises… when asked how many tea cups he distributed till now, he answered “Maine gina nahi…. Seva ka koi mol nahi hota….” That’s the Spirit of Mumbai…

I am not willing to write anything about the dirty polotics that will soon follow….

One more thing amazes me... What is this significance of date 11? First New York (Sept 11) … then Madrid (March 11)… and now Mumbai …. All bombings happened on the date 11….

It less than 12 hours and city is back into business…. People are ready to travel as usual…

I believe this is where we are superior to cities like London and New York... a never say die spirit…

And I also believe that it is this resilient spirit of the people that is firing our economy ahead despite of so many hurdles.

The Priority Game...

Today’s Times of India has a nice “A thought for today”.

FIFA has 207 members; we have only 191.

– Kofi Annan.

This tells a lot about the popularity of the Football.

Even in country like ours this world cup fever has significant impact.

In a “Mad for cricket” country like ours, Since last so many days one rarely comes across a discussion about the recent test series between India and West Indies. I won’t even dare to comment about attention given to Azalan Shah Trophy where we were at third place.

The common discussion now a day is of course about Football... The priority game…

Last Friday… Evening…We had four sports events going on in parallel…two crickets matches Sri Lanka vs. England & India vs. West Indies, then Wimbledon and the World cup quarter final between England and Portugal.

Frankly speaking both the cricket matches were damn interesting, India wound up the Windies for 103... and Sri Lanka chased the target of 321 in just about 39 overs.

I don’t remember Wimbledon matches but even those beautiful gals playing out there could not distract our attention as usual….

We simply found ourselves selecting the England vs. Portugal match above all these distractions.

I found that it is an easy activity to watch these football world cup matches than cricket. Since India is not there, there is no tension about loosing so we can enjoy the match for sheer quality of the game.

But this also raises a serious question about the quality of sports in our country. When these poor African countries like Ghana can enter the knock out round; a so called developing country with a population of over a billion can not even quality for the world cup.

Current Ranking of Indian Football team is 117!!!!!!!

There are two main reasons for this I guess…. First one is that in our society Playing is not looked upon in a good prospect. If we look around then we find that children are discouraged from concentrating on sports.

The second reason I see is that cricket has acted as a predator for all other games in this country. Only the cricket players are admired… because of this only they get all the sponsorships… and everything. I won’t blame the sponsor companies because after all they are here for business.

Look at the number of well-known people in other sports… Few hockey players (Thanks to PHL….) and a few others like Vishavanathan Anand, Baichung Bhutia or Sania Mirza, Rajyavardhan Rathod… we don’t even have handful of players to name from other sports.

No wonder we are no where in the Olympics either…