Awesomely Pathetic Lives: The Texting

Some readers have been wondering whatever happened to our awesomely pathetic trio of heroes. Well, they (i.e. Niku, Funkaz & Deyus) are still carrying on with their pathetic lives in their respective awesome ways (or as it can also be said carrying out their awesome lives in their respective pathetic ways). But lack of time and laziness had prevented their awesome adventures from being told to the world.

Over the last few months they discovered the world of text messaging. Their work life was getting busier and busier. So the daily communication was established through the official phone connection (bills paid by the-company-which-must-not-be-named). It all started when Niku was dragged deep inside the earth's crust. During his entrapment, he underwent some severe EA (emotional attyachar, for the uninitiated). It was then that he discovered the power of the SMS. His flatmates Funkaz and Deyus responded in the times of trouble and the EA was made more bearable with the constant exchange of messages. However, after a while, the period of EA got over, but the texts went back and forth. It covered a whole gamut of topics, from their own awesomely pathetic lives to affairs of the world and the people around them. Going into the entire list would be pretty long (and it would go on and on) but here is a little sample of the awesomely pathetic SMSs which they exchanged.

• Badhai Ho... Salary aa gayi :) {a regular month end feature}
• Coming for dinner? {regular one}
• You guys go ahead... situation same as yesterday {another regular one}
• Lunch? {another regular one}
• Bangladesh are fighting
• Mosquito went to gym
• I broke the six digit barrier
• Tried and failed again {and another regular one}
• The airhostess is looking like Natalie Portman {Reply: Ask her out for dinner}

And so on and so forth. Now its better for everybody's sake that I do not reveal which message was sent by whom to whom :P

Till next time for more awesomely pathetic adventures

The Elections are Here

Its that time again. Time for the biggest festival in India. The General elections. We might have the Olympics and the World Cups in different sports but nothing, absolutely nothing gets bigger or better than this. This time we will be having a 5 phase voting spread over a month. The official notification has been released and the fun has begun. But the political games had started long time time back. The big 2, Congress and BJP are in deep negotiations with the allies. Both camps making new alliances and losing out on old ones (Losing mostly). And we have the bunch of power hungry opportunists who call themselves the Third Front (Left parties, BSP, Telugu Desam etc), who have no common ideology except a shared hunger for power. And this is just the beginning. Post results (with a hung Parliament, the most likely result) will be the time when the power brokers come into action. New back room king makers will emerge. Lets just wait and watch and enjoy the political power games.

Some snippets of the games going on

• Advani calls Manmohan Singh a puppet and has his track record as home minister laid out in open by the PM (which was a bit surprising)
• BJP bombards the internet with links to Advani's blog (Sorry, but no links here)
• Varun Gandhi gets into trouble from EC
• Congress & BJP are ditched by their allies
• Third front starts dreaming again (Personal opinion - Dont care if its UPA or NDA in power, but Congress/BJP should be the one forming the government, not this bunch of oppotunistic jokers)
• IPL becomes non-resident (South Africa is the confirmed venue) and political mudslinging starts on that too (hardly surprising, given that most BCCI units are headed by politicians)

So the fun has begun (though the nation's future is at stake). Lets just sit back and enjoy while it lasts. But more importantly go out and vote on the electon day. (I can't because I will not be in my home constituency at the time of voting)

The Non Resident Indian Premier League

Been a while since my last post here. Well work life has become a bit more busy. Although if I really wanted to I could have still written down a few posts in the interim. And its been a longer time since I wrote about my favourite topic, Cricket. So here goes.

Our biggest festival, the General elections are here. Now, unlike other parts of the world where national elections take place on one day with the results available by the next day, ours is a spread out process. this time the elections are in 5 phases spread over a period of over a month. Nothing wrong with that, specially with the security issues and the logistics involved in conducting this mammoth exercise. But unfortunately for cricket buffs like me, the general elections coincided pretty much with the second season of the IPL. This is how the drama unfolded.

• IPL announces the fixtures for the second season.
• The Election Commission announce the dates for the general elections.
• Sri Lankan team bus is attacked in Pakistan by terrorists injuring many players (which is one of the most disgusting things to have happened).
• The Home minister P.Chidamabaram says providing security to IPL would be difficult during the elections.
• Many of the state governments state thier inability to provide security.
• IPL modifies schedule which is again rejected by some states
• The schedule is modified again and again but always met with unwillingness from some state governments (Seemed like becoming a OR problem with each state providing their time constraints)
• End result. BCCI announces that the IPL will be held outside India.

So the Indian Premier League becomes the Non Resident Indian Premeir League with South Africa & England becoming the front runners to host it. But it does seem ironical that our dometic tournament is being hosted outside India. With the current security situation following the Mumbai attacks on 26/11 and Lahore attacks on the Sri lankan team, there can be no guarantees for anybody's safety. And with the elections going on (which is much more imprtant than cricket) providing extra security would not have been possible.

But as usual we have the political gamesmanship on. Some allege that the Congress governments were the ones refusing to procide security. Others allege that Congress was trying to arm twist NCP's Sharad Pawar (who happens to be ex-BCCI president) for a better alliance deal. Then the political mud slinging has also begun. But it all has become a farce.

Now if the touranment is held in South Africa, who would the people in the stadium (assuming some go to watch) support. TV viewership in India would likely remain same. But will the matches have the seem feel as last year. After all how many people would come to pay and watch the Non Resident Indian Premier League.