Life at crescent – part II

The 1st year

I had a very auspicious start to my college life. I was ragged the very first day and became popular instantly as the freshers saw me rowing a titanic boat oustide the freshers party hall. I also learnt that the one thing you are not supposed to tell your seniors when they question you is ‘I don’t know’. You would invariably be asked to do what you don’t know. After the first few months, all of us (the freshers) were pretty comfortable (read 'used to') with the new environment.

Now for the most hilarious incident of the 1st year. Actually it happened even before I officially joined the college. I was asked to come to the college and complete the joining formalities before the classes started and so it was me, my mom and dad at the college on an afternoon. We were asked to have tea and biscuits. I had mine but I did not know how to dispose off my used Cup. Just then I saw a maid and showed her the cup and saucer and asked her to take care of it. She just gave me a glare and said there will be people attending to it. I was still wondering what went wrong and carried on with my parents into the correspondent’s room. When I came back outside and asked the receptionist who the maid was I realized to my horror that his lady was the chemistry lecturer for first year students. I silently slipped away without being seen by her and hoped that she would’nt be my lecturer. But as luck would have had it she tormented our whole class for the next 1 year allegedly teaching chemistry. In fact, my friends weren’t surprised that I mistook her for a maid ( read ‘aaya’ in tamil) but felt that I went overboard handing over my used tea cups to her ;-)

Our 1st year A section was arguably the most notorious class as it had mostly mechanical engineering students. The maths lecturer had a difficult time teaching anything useful to us as most of us would keep pulling his legs all the time. His standard threatening line was – ‘ En kitta vechukaathenga . I am from loyola. Mind it’. We then realized that he had learnt these lines from somebody else and dint really mean any of these. The easiest way to while away the maths class was to look for instances to laugh. Yes, that’s what we did. We used to laugh heavily for anything even remotely humorous that he utters in class. It only takes one person to start and the rest of the class will follow suit (it was surprising that even the girls in our class joined us). There was a guy called ‘Wasim’ who had this peculiar way of laughing which resembled long and deep hiccups. He used to go for atleast 5 seconds more than the last person who stopped laughing. Sometimes even if the poor maths lecturer doest crack jokes, a simple shy smile from him is enough to send the class into ruptures. We deliberately tried to laugh longer and harder so that we can avoid his math problems.

As the first year went on, the proxies started. We had some eager seniors popping up to our class to sight-adichify our class girls. Sleeping in class was common, but we had classmates who would actually snore in the class !
The best thing was that we never had any internals then and so teachers had a hard time controlling us. We became more and more unruly as days went by and by the time we completed our 1st year we were the new rogues of Crescent !

…to be continued…

T20 - The Conspiracy Theory

Why we do we have so many fairy tale endings in almost all our popular T20 tournaments ? Why are we always led to believe that T20 is so very unpredictable and there is no clear science to playing this game ? Why is there the extra involvement from media, the extra entertainment, the extra money in this game ? There are so many such lingering questions in my mind when I try to look out for a pattern in all these recent tournaments starting with the 2007 T20 WC.



Lets rewind to the farcical 2007 F50 WC which was poorly organized. ICC incurred heavy losses and the game lost much of its sheen. Most of its losses can be attributed to India crashing out in the group stages and the sponsors following suit. This clearly showed that apart from Indians there were not too many people watching this game. The other cricket boards always complained of lack of financial resources.



And then we have a T20 WC in the same year. This time India performs well, beats other teams goes to final and then we have the Misbah-episode and the team wins. This would have been acceptable had this been the only fairy tale T20 tournament win.



The IPL 2008 again carried this dubious distinction of an underdog winning against all odds. Hmmmm.. There were loads of close matches played out in 2008 and I can only think of a couple of them which now gives me a feeling that something was not alright with IPL 2008. Andy Symmonds bowling a last over to Shane Warne where Shane Warne hits 15+ runs for a victory and a match and one where Mumbai loses to Rajasthan in a terribly close match. Even in the finals , we suddenly see chennai's best fielder, Raina, dropping a catch of yusuf pathan.



IPL 2009, we again have the team which finished last in the previous tournament DC win it against RC. The finals (a collapse from RC) stand testimony to my statement that something is not very correct with this tournament.



Come to the current 2009 T20 tournament we suddenly have Pak which were nowhere close to even qualifying for super-8s, suddenly win it. Afridi who was reckless at the start suddently turns responsible. Dilshan, Jayasuriya & Jayawardene - the smart srilankans play irresponsible shots. And then you suddenly have Pak win the match against all odds ! Even in the semis we have Boucher and Morkel come too late to make any impact suggesting the players who played earlier never made an attempt to win it.



First you had India win the WC, you build interest in the game. They you have IPL with all the glitter, glamour, money and close matches. They you again have WC in which Pakistan win against SA and Srilanka. Yuck - The stench becomes too much to ignore.



Tendlya did not want to play the WC, but happily plays for IPL and for the Indian team in bilateral series. Dhoni, the shrewdest of them all, committs very simple tactical mistakes. His team selection becomes poor. The whole Indian team conspicously avoids net practice even after losses to big teams . hmmm...The reason why i have a reference to tendulkar is simply because he is the only reason why i watched cricket thru the nineties. I believe he could not throw matches for India. (though he can do so happily for his IPL team which afterall is only an assorted team)



the signs are too blatant to ignore. ICC's agenda is to popularize the game and take it to more countries, bring more public and make T20 an entertainment (not a competition). Its the biggest 'reality show' in which the results are 'fixed' by the ICC themselves. Probably explains the lack of interest shown by the Australian and English boards who are financially well off. The telling sign was from Younis Khan who may have inadvertently revealed the truth by saying that "T20 is for the public. It is an entertainment. People should not take it seriously."

daffodils

Ramya and I had a discussion the other night about poems from our school days (started with a heated argument on slumdog millionaire actually) and both of us were trying to recollect lines from ' the daffodils '. Believe me, i dreamt that one day i too would sing beside a lake and appreciate daffodils like Wordsworth did (vettiya !). I did get a chance when i spent a whole weekend in lake district, the place where Wordsworth came up with this masterpeice but somehow it slipped my mind that i could have emulated him !

So here goes one of the best poems, i have come across till now ! ...

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced;
but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.