aditya kumar's weblog

A quick one, just to say– I am Alive!

It’s been quite some time since I updated my blog. I have been travelling, as one might expect — the last weekend was a long one.

About my trip to Goa, pictures and more, soon.

Most news channels yesterday night, beamed “Breaking News”. What could it be, I wondered? Another bomb blast? Some Natural calamity? Turned out, Aishwarya Rai had agreed to marry Abhishek Bachchan. And what breaking news it turned out to be. Heartbreaking News rather, for all those Aish fans.

My life has changed since then. It will never be the same again. Afterall, the giggle goddess has finally zeroed in on one man and it has turned out to be a matter of national importance. What a drastic turn of events. Aby’s baby has finally found his baby. Oh, I am so sorry dear Salman and Vivek..oops, Viveik..err.. Viviek.

Live feed of the marriage could be hitting your TV screens soon. Tell you what, can’t wait for that one too.

The airport runway gives me a high. Always has given me a high. Today it happened, quite literally.

The airport boundaries are guarded by long, fenced walls. In a quest to catch a glimpse of the runway and aircrafts taking off, I had to climb a tree off airport road — On one side heavy traffic and on the other side a tall wall with barbed fence.

Airports, like Bangalores, lie in the middle of the city. There are residential and commerical complexes around the boundaries of the airport. These places offer a decent enough view of the aircrafts that hover around. Yet, photography around the airport is prohibited. Why? This is the age of the internet and google Earth, yet, simple and harmless guys like me have to act like monkeys to get shots like these:

The above aircraft is an IAF HS 748 Avro, a medium range utility bird. Of course, the picture has been taken by me, after much hardships. Frankly, an ordinary photo. The sunlight was against me else the shot would have been better.

All said and done, I must say this business of clicking flying birds is not an easy one. It’s a real pain, at times, quite literally. And the Government doesn’t make it any easy for people like us.

There are less sights better in life than being in the cockpit of a cessna 172, 500 feet above and going down while ahead lies a runway and you’re cleared for landing. I tell you that from personal experience.

Three bachelors, including yours truly, spent their new years eve walking down Brigade Road. Then to Residency road, briefly touching St.Marks Road and then most of MG Road before coming back to Brigade Road. And then doing it all over again. We could have walked from Brigades to MG but for the Police. Not only had they made Brigades a “Pedestrian-only” zone, they had made it one-way as well. Not a bad thing, considering the amount of crowd expected in the area.

Few minutes past ten and hunger strikes. What better than to have Pizza at Pizza Hut on this eventful evening? Only that the restaurant is closed. This got to be some kind of joke, I say; New Years eve and Pizza Hut’s shutter down? Just the shutter down, not closed per se –as we find out 20 minutes later.

Turns out, same time last year, people high on beer did some bad things to the Pizza Parlor. So this year they decided to play safe. Shutters down, and (backdoor) entry to people only after being sure that they’d not create trouble inside. Of course, a little extra time to prepare your order — It’s rush and everyone wants to have a good time here. Lovely, take your own time — We have plenty to talk.

An hour later we are still wandering, no where in particular. The mob that surrounds us is high on alcohol. Not exactly the kind of place you’d want to take your girl to. Amidst of all this, the crazy cricket fans that we are, we try to arrive at a conclusion on why our team has had a hard time in South Africa. Speaking of which, would they care if they knew? The Sehwags and the Dravids, would they care if they knew that at a quarter to New Year, in the middle of a crowd of thousands at MG Road, Bangalore, two guys were indeed found discussing, of all things, reasons for the miseries of Indian Cricket? Crazy, yeah. We’re just the kind of people BCCI needs to run the show here.

They say what you do at the stroke of the hour, you tend to keep doing for the rest of the year. We, afraid of the excited mob that we had witnessed, spent the moment in the auto rickshaw going back home. So much for the New Years. In the words of Garfield, that lazy fat cat, “We’re bachelors, baby“.

The more I see of Sreesanth, the more a character he appears to me. Towards the end of the days play, South Africa at a good 139 for 1, Sreesanth bowling to a well set Amla. Our hero starts his run-up from — guess where — Somewhere near long off. Running topsy-turvy, parabola like, as he approaches the crease, he’s completely behind the umpire and then finally comes out with a, another guess what — slower delivery. So he is trying everything legitimate to knock off the concentration of batsman. Reminds me of this historic test match when Gillespie bowled to Laxman (or was it Dravid?) with his arms flapping like a bird.

Except that, in both cases, the batsmen didn’t oblige.

And Muralitharan. Look at his face while he bowls — his eyes are not only focussed at the point where he intends to pitch the ball at, but almost popping out with his mouth wide open. Goosebumps guaranteed. Oh and that peculiar chinaman from South Africa, Paul Adams. After a bit (?) of twisting and turning while he bowls, at the point of delivery — his eyes are in the sky(!) . He’s taken more than a 100 test wickets like that. Without even looking at the batsman.

Sreesanth could have taken a cue or two from Andre Nel, his South African counterpart of sorts. Both are good bowlers but have a long way to go. Nel, by now, must be knowing the names of all the ICC Match refrees at the back of his hand. And yet he gets away with it.

How could you justify these antics then? More often than not, these are unsuccessful attempts by desperate bowlers. I think the answer lies somewhere in the fact that, over the last decade or so, cricket has turned out to be more of a batsmans game and bowlers need to do something different. Though things like these have added to the amusement of the spectators, I doubt if it has done any good to the bowlers.