Jai Ho!

Chennai's own A. R. Rahman has just picked up back-to-back Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Song for his work on "Slumdog Millionaire". Jai Ho*, Rahman bhai!

Congratulations also to Resul Pookkutty, the first Indian film technician to be ever be nominated for an Oscar, for his win in the Sound Mixing category for "Slumdog...".

* "Jai Ho", the song for which Rahman won his second award, translates to "Be victorious".
Yes, there is a reason behind the change in the choice of music on the blog.

A little healing

There are few things that unite Indians. We are a diverse people united by a sense of...actually, I'm not even sure what is our national characteristic. One thing that most of do share is a love of cricket. We as a nation love the game. Some of us even been known to watch all five days of an international Test Match.
Yes, I said five days. Watching a Test Match is akin to watching someone paint. It takes a while to figure out what the final picture will be, and, as Test Matches often end in draws with neither team winning, most of them are like watching someone paint the side of a house: they have form and function, but I'll be blowed if I'm going to hang them in a museum of fine art. Every once in a while, there are genuine masterpieces, that remain etched in the memory long after their completion.
The Indian cricket team has always had some wonderfully talented players who are among the most admired in the world. The problem has always been that, like the country as a whole, the total was less than the sum of its parts. Until the millennium.
From about 2000 onwards, India has become a far more consistent, scrappy team, ready to go toe-to-toe with the best of them. In fact, India are the only team not to have a losing record against the all-conquering Australians in this time frame (in fact, I think we lead them 7-6 since 2001). In October we beat the Aussies 2-0 in record-setting style, and we looked forward eagerly to the visit of a rather unsettled England side in November-December.
The English arrived. And they got hammered in the One Day matches. Five matches played, five thumping Indian wins.
And then came 26/11. Suddenly, cricket didn't matter. For once. For a few days.
As a nation we were shaken, even more than usual due to the brazen nature of the terrorist attacks. We needed healing. Now. The healing that only cricket can give Indians (you have to have lived here to know this is true). Most of all, Mumbai needed this, because Mumbai has always been the capital of Indian cricket.
The English, understandably, returned home as the tour was disrupted. And then, incredibly, the team returned to India to re-start the tour. The venue of the first Test Match was changed to Chennai from...Mumbai. In a magnificent gesture, the English team donated half their match fees to a fund set up to aid victims of the Mumbai attacks.
As if blessed by the fates for their generosity and bravery, the undermanned English dominated the first three-fourths of the match. An upset win seemed on the cards. India fought back on the fourth day. The English nosed ahead on the morning of the fifth. Then, Sachin Tendulkar played the greatest game of his record-breaking career (which is saying something), and took India to a historic, cathartic win.
It had to be Sachin, a son of Mumbai. For those hundreds of million Indians for whom cricket is a religion, Sachin is a god. And aren't the gods supposed to provide healing?

What's going on? #5

I apologise for not having updated my blog in about two weeks. The last time you heard from me here, I was giving my own, unconventional brand of Thanksgiving. I wrote that post late Wednesday night, not realising the drama that was occuring at that very hour in Mumbai. I also didn't realise what was going to happen over the next three days in Chennai.

As most of you will have heard, read or seen at the time (unless you were incredibly engrossed in Thanksgiving turkey), a co-ordinated series of terrorist attacks took place in Mumbai between the 26th and 29th of November, 2008. Approximately 200 people (including nine of the ten terrorists) were killed, and many more injured.

While the nation (and possibly much of the world) watched with horror, one Indian city did not react with quite as much outrage. We in Chennai, and the areas to the south, had immediate issues of our own with Cyclonic Storm Nisha, which dumped record amounts of rainfall in a four day period. We had flooded streets, power outages and a general disruption of life in general. 204 deaths in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka have been attributed to Nisha.

Happy Thanksgiving to us, I guess.

Now, two weeks on, life has returned almost to normal. The waters have receded; the roads are bad, but not as bad as I expected; there has been no appreciable increase in mosquito levels in my neighbourhood.

We have survived...and we will probably forget.

A friend asked me if there has been any great change in people's attitudes to one another in the wake of the terrorism (dubbed by some as "India's 9/11"), much like the US experienced in 2001. It's unlikely. For one thing, acts of terrorism are not new in some parts of India. Mumbaikars have experience this sort of thing on a regular basis since 1993. For another, there is no one single terrorist entity operating in India. While these attacks are being attributed to elements in Pakistan (like almost all of them are at first), some of them, like the 2006 Malegaon blasts, are perpetrated from disaffected domestic groups (similar to the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995).

Most of all, however, I think it's just impossible for cities of 12-20 million people to stop and mourn together for more than a few moments. There are too many hungry mouths to feed.

In July, I posted a summary of terrorist activity in India since 1993. Here is an update to that list:

• September 13, 2008 5 bomb blasts in Delhi markets, 21 killed, 110 injured

• September 27, 2008 2 bomb blasts in Delhi's Mehrauli flower market, 3 dead, 17 injured
• September 29, 2008 Maharashtra and Gujarat bomb blasts, 10 dead, 80 injured
• September 29, 2008 Bike blasts in Malegaon, 7 killed
• October 1, 2008 Agartala bombing, 4 killed, 100 injured
• October 21, 2008 Imphal bomb blast, 17 killed, 40 injured
• October 30, 2008 Assam bomb blast, 77 killed, 300 injured
• November 26, 2008 Coordinated attack in Mumbai, approximately 200 killed, 239 injured

I apologise for such a sobering post to start off the Christmas season, a season of peace and goodwill, but I felt it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge these significant events. I'll try to be more uplifting (and silly) in my future posts.

Major success

Major props to Vijender Kumar, who, by winning bronze in boxing (middleweight), gave India its most successful Olympics ever, with one gold and two bronzes.

Yes, our standards are pretty low.

Photo of the Olympics

This is Sushil Kumar, who won a bronze medal for India in the 66 kg freestyle wrestling competition in Beijing yesterday. Isn't this a great photo? It was on the front page of our newspaper this morning and I can't get it out of my mind. Just look at the mixture of joy and disbelief on Sushil's face. Wonderful.

Finally!

Ok, so this is another Olympic blog post, but I can justify this one.

Earlier this morning, Abhinav Singh Bindra of India won the gold medal in the Mens 10m Air Rifle competition at the Beijing Olympics.

Woo-hoo!

It only took 112 years, but India finally has an individual gold medal in the Olympics Games. As in ever. To put that into perspective, Michael Phelps will win more individual gold medals this week than India has in history.

For a country of 1.1 billion (and perhaps another billion during the span of the modern Olympics), India really is a pretty miserable sporting nation.

So, take a bow, Mr. Bindra. Your nation thanks you, and salutes you.

PS: Take a look at photo of the guy. He looks more like a mathematics professor than an Olympic gold medallist, doesn't he?

Tchau, Alphonso

Summer in India can have many drawbacks: it's blisteringly hot, it's humid, There are often water and electricity problems. But there is one glorious feature that makes life worth living: mangoes. Specifically, Alphonso mangoes.



Deriving its name from the Portuguese naval commander, Afonse de Albuquerque, Alphonsoes have yellow skins and juicy, sweet, yellow-coloured flesh. Some people (and I agree with them) consider Alphonso the King of the Mangoes.



It's too bad that the season is only two months long, May and June, although this year the season was delayed by a few days so we will still get them in July.



I have seen people eat mangoes in a most civilised manner: they slice them, then use a spoon to separate the flesh from the skin, and then serve them on plates with a fork.



Not me.



For me, eating an Alphonso is a very tactile experience. I don't consider it a worthwhile experience unless I get some of the juice somewhere on my cheek (not intentionally, of course) and I need dental floss afterwards to clean my teeth. Why floss? Well, I usually scrape the seed with my teeth to get every last bit of juice from the fruit. Did I mention the season is only two months long? Civility with fruit can be managed during the other ten months of the year.



Hey, at least I don't go as far as the woman in this article. Well, not anymore, I don't.



Sadly, this June, like its careless brethren of yesteryear, is about to give way to July, and so it will soon be time to bid Alphonso a fond farewell for another year. Until May, Alphonso, tchau.