Mind over matter

Chennai summers are slightly on the warmish and humid side (note the ironic understatement). Actually, Chennai's winters are also slightly on the warm and humid side, at least during the daytime.
This summer has been, incredibly, even warmer and more humid than Chennai's usual standards. But I did not notice it much. Well, let's say I chose to notice it much later than everyone else. While most people started commenting about the weather in April, I managed to refrain till a couple of days ago.
My secret? Habit.
For 14 of the past 15 summers, I have been out of Chennai, mainly in the US and UK where the height of summer isn't till July (some years in the UK, not even then). Even Qatar doesn't get outrageously hot till August. So, in my mind, April simply cannot be hot. Never mind that the temperature was nearly 100 F most of the time and that people were suffering from heatstroke (and worse) in parts of the country; it's April! Ergo, it cannot be hot.
Then came May, and with it came power failures at inconvenient times, and even I have to admit it's a tad on the warm side now (105+). Oh, well. It was cool while I managed to fool myself.

My civic duty

It only took 15 years, but yesterday I finally got to vote in a General Election. I didn't become eligible to vote in India till 1993, and I missed every General and State election since then because I was always overseas, and India doesn't have absentee ballots (half a billion people vote here, who is going to miss a few thousand scattered throughout the country?). Actually, I was in India for the 2004 General Elections, but my records were incorrect so I was ruled ineligible to vote. This time, however, I got it done.

Actually, I very nearly put this on my Bucket List.

The rehabilitation of stinkers

One of the great benefits that a cricket fan had till recently was that there wasn’t much cause to change one’s opinion about the players. Cricket has traditionally been divided on geographical lines: a player represented his local club , then his state or county, and ultimately his national team. There’s very little changing of teams by players. So once you decided you didn’t like someone, you could carry that hate pretty much till the player retired.

Then came the Indian Premier League, an American franchise-style tournament with players from around the world playing for teams based in eight Indian cities. This posed a dilemma. The team based in Chennai, the Super Kings, has for two of its star performers Matthew Hayden of Australia and Mutthiah Muralidharan of Sri Lanka. The problem? I’ve loathed these two guys for years. Now I love 'em.

Am I fickle? Not a bit. In my mind, they’ve undergone repentance (by joining my team) and I’ve forgiven them. Being a star player for one of my teams wipes out a multitude of sins. Welcome to my world.

(Mind you, when Murali represents Sri Lanka, I still loathe him. My forgiveness is not yet unconditional.)

Happy Star Wars Day...

May the Fourth be with you.

May Day!

In honour of May Day, here's the funniest commercial I've ever seen: