DHONI, WE HATE YOU

Dear Dhoni,

A student who has failed in his exam will always say “one exam doesn’t define me”. If I fail in an exam, it doesn’t mean that I am not fit to live. I will not let my parents and my friends criticize me for my failure in one exam. These are the usual words uttered by a student (including myself) who has failed. But you are different, we will criticize you, we exaggerate your overseas failures (One exam failure), because only that defines you.

We criticized Dravid/Ganguly/Laxman (Yes, we did), but today we see millions of posts praising them. Once upon a time, we wanted them to retire. We wanted them to be out of the team. Sehwag was continuously criticized for his inconsistency; he was removed from the team but we have forgotten that now. We praise him as the best opener. I remember a post about "Coke bottle opener being a better opener than Sehwag". Today all these people are nothing less than legends; they deserve it, despite their failures many times. We see the whole picture, not the failures here and there.

We wanted Ganguly to be removed from captaincy when his personal records were abysmal, but today we raise and shout "Dada Dada", the best captain blah blah.

All said, are we being too critical on you? YES... Without a doubt we "hate" you Dhoni.

We forgot we clapped for you when you scored 148s and 183s with arrays of never before seen sixes, I have personally forgotten your 77*(56) against Pakistan. That was the time when not many Indians had a strike rate of even above 90 against Pakistan. Everyone followed your hairstyle. You were the poster boy. You won us the T20 WC. We were praising your cool-headed captaincy at that young age. Sorry, we don’t remember that now or rather, should I say, we don’t want to?

We forgot that you took the test team from Kumble and reached the top. Test team No. 1. We don’t remember that, because we have never seen that before. We forgot that we grew up being happy seeing India above Pakistan in the test rankings. We forgot that we never even dreamed to be the number one in tests. Yes, we had the same legends when we were young, but we forgot that it was under your leadership that we grew to be the number one team. 

In the end, we remember one thing, your string of failures in Australia, and England, but wait we have forgotten the 4-0 white-wash of Australia at home. We still praise Clarke though he had lost on foreign soil but we are being “logical” to shout against you.

We forgot that it was on the same England pitches that we won the Champions trophy. We won both the WC's under you. We dedicated the WC 2011 to Sachin, but we don’t remember who scored that brilliant 91* in the finals. When we were shaken after Sachin's dismissal in the WC finals, you stood there showing a brilliant intent to take the cup and give it to Sachin. Sorry, even after Star Sports showing it a million times we forget that innings.

We praise Bevan but somehow we forget to praise you as the best finisher India has ever had. We praise Sanga for his keeping abilities but somehow we forget to even mention your name.  We somehow forget we switched off our TV sets when 5 wickets were down before you came to the team. We somehow forget that you scored impossible 15-16 runs of the final over n number of times. We somehow forget that you won us all the major ICC trophies, but wait, we REMEMBER one thing; we remember that you lost your overseas tours. We would continue to criticize you for your inability to win your away tours, because winning matches in Australia and England are more important than winning  2 WC’s and Champions Trophy. Winning down under is more important for us than dedicating the WC to Sachin. We wouldn’t have been this aggressive against you if you hadn’t done any of the above, but won just 8 test matches in England & Australia.

We will continue to “hate” you. I wouldn’t even Thank You, instead I'll call you a ‘deserter’ for leaving the team.  Get lost Dhoni, get lost from us, because we don’t deserve a captain like you.  We will start showing our respect for you when Virat starts to fail, probably after 4-5 years. We will put up posts and stats about you, we will salute you then. We will get 1000’s of likes for you. Till then get lost. 

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.- M K Gandhi.

Dhoni,this quote is for you.

By –

Dhoni admirer. 

THE SCIENCE OF FRIENDSHIP IS BEING REWRITTEN

Off late I have a habit of regularly watching (addiction would be a more suitable word) a serial based on Mahabharata. Barring the grandiosity and the tailored characters who act in it, I started to admire the way in which the great sage Veda Vyasa has scripted the story or how he has adeptly captured all the essence required to lead a successful life.

Apart from Krishna’s teaching in Mahabharata and obvious lessons learnt from Duryodhana’s wrong doings. I found a not so famous comparison lesson on friendship. I found that even today the comparison is fresh for us to apply with our friends.

Disclaimer: The views written below are purely from the blogger’s point of view and not intended to hurt any friends or friendship directly or indirectly.

So let me start of the comparison. There were two kinds of friendship in Mahabharata, one was Krishna-Arjuna, and the other was Duryodhana-Karna. Though we have heard a lot about these duos, I found a strange connection between the friendship in the epic and what happens today.

To start off with let us take Duryodhana-Karna, they were no less than one of the greatest friends we have seen. Karna wanted to follow the path of dharma and he also wished if his friend would ever follow the same path. But he could do very little to make his friend follow the path that he wished to travel. He did try to advice Duryodhana on many occasions but he was tangled by nuances of friendship which he was never able to break considering what Duryodhana has done to him when the whole world criticized him.

We can’t say that Karna wasn’t good enough to direct Duryodhana  in the path of righteousness but the latter was very much adamant in his way of doing things and the result was obvious, Karna’s efforts went futile and at the end their friendship died along with them. The moral of this friendship is very simple, both of them had a huge amount of love and respect for each other but when one of the two wasn’t reciprocating what the other was doing the end wasn’t far for them.

On the other hand, the hero duo were a picture perfect example of friendship. Arjuna listened to Krishna. Whenever Krishna said what Arjuna was doing was wrong he corrected himself and  when Arjuna refused to do his duties Krishna threatened to break his promises for him which kindled Arjuna to again do his duties. Here they had a mutual respect for each other, Arjuna didn’t want Krishna to break his promises and Krishna was utmost interested in fulfilling Arjuna’s vows. They both shared a relationship beyond one’s ego and comfort zones. Sometimes they blindly believed that what other was doing was to correct him and every time they were proved right.

Disclaimer 2- This second part of the blog is purely fictional and the characters are a part of blogger’s imagination and any resemblance to any person dead or alive is purely coincidental.

There were two friends namely Javagal and Pratap Singh. They were indeed good friends and shared a great rapport between them. But one day Javagal started to follow a path which was not good for him. So Pratap asked Javagal not to do it, it wasn’t not because he didn’t like it , but was also because he has seen or heard from people of great stature of what happened to people who travelled in that path. But Javagal didn’t seem to understand or pretended so. He had always said or questioned who said or where is it written, but never really understood that the answer for who and where was Pratap himself. But nevertheless Javagal was still a great friend to Pratap but refused to listen to his friend on these issues. On the other side, something was throbbing Pratap from inside on what he has to do to get back his friend to the right path.

Here we see a great relationship between Duryodhana-Karna and Javagal-Pratap. They both gave each other a great amount of freedom to share each other’s happiness and sorrows but they refused to correct themselves on hearing from their friend. They forgot to understand that correction of friendship and oneself is perpetual process. That it is the science of friendship.

I don’t understand the fact that how you can give rights to someone for questioning you on everything expect on something which you aren’t comfortable with. In fact there would be 100 people to do what you like but you will have only one person that is your friend to do what you don’t like and to tell you the right things.

We see these things happening in friendship nowadays, all friends share huge respect for each other but reserve them on questioning the others personal views. That formula would suit for everyone around, but it shouldn’t be applied to our friends too, because we are not born with the knowledge of everything and we need someone to guide us when we are wrong and that someone is no one other than our friend.

One, the Javagal-Pratap Singh relationship is going to meet an end like Duryodhana-Karna or correct itself and become like Krishna-Arjuna. The science of friendship written by Krishna-Arjuna combo is rewritten to follow Duryodhana-Karna which of course is not a strong example to follow. We should allow and listen to select few of our friends to give an insight when we go wrong and have an open mind to correct ourselves. After all our friends are the ones who always care for our well-being in this monstrous world by being a family away from our own family.

P.S-Though Pratap Singh is in the place of Karna he refuses to do what Karna did and always looks to being a one of Krishna-Arjuna duo.

  

I NEED HELP.

Couple of months back Chennai was ranked in the top 52 places to visit on this planet by NY Times. It was the only Indian city to feature in the list. I was quite surprised to see Chennai scoring more than other Indian cities for its cultural heritage. It’s indeed a great pleasure but when I went through the article I saw one picture that marked Chennai distinctly. It was the Marina beach, the second longest city beach in the world that would make anyone want to stand along the shores to get their feet wet in the Bay of Bengal.

A true Chennaite would always vote Marina beach as the best place in this cosmopolitan city. New resorts and malls have pulled good amount of crowd but always lost to the naturally enriching experience that the beach provides to its loyal ones who come there to do their dose of exercises, to the budding Ambigabathies & Amaravathies (Indian version of Romeo and Juliet), and of course how can we forget the people who rule the beach, the wanderers like me.

On one day, when I was trying to gulp down the immense pleasure that the beach offered to everyone who was there including me, I saw a small boy of age around 12. The boy had a bulk of coloring books, he went from one person to another trying to showcase the book he had. I would say that the boy was smart enough, he didn’t approach any of my fellow wanderers, he went to the families and others whom he thought were potential buyers of the book he had. 

I carefully watched the boy, because I had nothing else to do other than to tune the FMs of Chennai and enjoying the sea breeze, wherever he went, he would start off with a smile and show them the various coloring books he had. Many families which had kids of his age refused to buy the book and they were deeply engrossed with the bhajji at hand. A couple of the people were quite kind to explain the boy that they weren’t in need of that book. But, whatever it is , I saw him approach atleast a dozen group before reaching me. He had a failed attempt of trying to sell the book to the people in his last twelve attempts. He looked very vexed and was searching for some support.

At that time, he came to me, I first removed my ear phones before the boy started talking to me, I was shocked to see the boy finding me as one of his potential buyer. He showed me books on some cartoon characters which I couldn’t recognize, I asked the boy is this new characters who are the heros for  children today..? He said yes with a wry smile, and added that these cartoons feature on chutti TV. I was not in a need to buy the book at the same time I was not ready to tell the boy that I don’t need the book right on his face because it was clearly visible on the boy’s face that he needed someone to make him feel light and get motivated to meet the next set of people.

I asked him about his school and what he is doing, I should say that the answers have changed from the time I was 10 years old when my father asked the same questions to the kids and now. The answers back then would be like they dropped out of school and had to do this for their food. But today the boy replied that he is doing his 7^th std at Chennai corporation school and in the evenings he would sell these books in the beach. He said he liked Rajinikanth (can’t write a blog without the mention of thalaivar at the time of Kocahaidayaan release) and he wanted to get a government job. To be frank his dream looked quite achievable and I encouraged the boy to do well. So slowly, I said, I don’t need a book, but probably I would buy one and gift it to him if he was interested in coloring these books. He said “Paravala na”(Its fine brother) and left.

I should say that I didn’t do much to his economics by buying the book. But I was sure that he didn’t leave me with the same kind of expression he left with the previous 12 people. He looked more calm and left with a smile. 

The same kind of coloring books cost around Rs 150 at big shops that boasts of their chain of stores around the world but what this boy demanded was just Rs 20 for the similar kind of book. In my opinion we have to encourage the budding entrepreneurs. He could have joined the tea shops or bhajji shops there and could have drawn a decent amount for the time he works. But that boy has taken pains in doing his own small business and becoming the creator of his destiny.

Here are the entrepreneurs at the grass root level seeking help and support from the fellow citizens. They have stopped believing in Rahul Gandhi’s Right to Education or NaMo’s promising growth model or even to say they are on the verge of stopping to listen to the Aam Aadmi. They say “I need help” but I don’t need your mercy. Don’t sympathize with these kids but support them with the knowledge they need to grow, because they have waited for more than six decades to get a government that would support the poor needy and not the “rich needy”.

P.S- Don’t give a fish to the poor, instead teach them to catch one. Who knows the same boy I met would go on to become the next Jeff Bezos and start his Amazon to sell his books.