On the South African Premier League outsourced from India

So the IPL-2 started more on a whimper rather than a bang in the far away wilds of South Africa. The common man has to stick to his television to have a dekko at the cricket fare, the mundane and fairly insipid coverage. The Set Max team covering the event are doing everything except covering cricket. There is the Chinki dentist from Dhanbad, Meiyang Chang, cashing on his Indian Idol fan following and trying very hard to impress exercising his Hindi and often landing on a pile of tomfoolery. There is Mandira Bedi, back in full form and less hair, doing a wee bit better than her performance in the coverage of the 2003 World Cup. There is some tall dude, model, I guess, doing such that- modeling and engaging with Arun Lal. The normally loquacious and glib Arun Lal has perhaps been given feedback to improve his vernacular and keeps more engaged at communicating in Hindi rather than concentrating on cricket. The ever trustworthy Samaritans - old stalwarts Harsha, Gavaskar, Ravi et.al., restore some semblance of propriety with proper cricket coverage.

For the game, I must say I do not have too many complaints. The nature of the 20 – 20 terrain is such that the most innocuous of batting skills can win the day and couple of bad overs can take the game away from you. If you can live with that then there is a lot to applaud to. There is the dependable Hayden starting off Chennai Kings on a run riot in each game. Rahul Dravid is a man on a mission and plays all the shots he never played in his career. Gilly continuing from where he left off last time, has been playing like someone who easily has another ten years in him. Shane Warne turning and bouncing as usual and leading his band of unknowns. Sachin has turned in couple of blitzkriegs, though I think he is ‘trying’ too much. But the best batting so far has been AB De Villiers’s century, which was a classy innings and made Delhi Daredevils’s batting line up perhaps the most destructive. Then the magic man Murali whom I still can’t read and don’t think most of the batsmen do – but then at time swings connect and runs come in this form of cricket.

The celebrity quotient is fairly high with actors, models and business heads wanting to show their mug and talk cricket. There is Shilpa who is basking in the glory of her new found role, Priety continues to charm her team and the crowds, Shah Rukh flys kisses at the televisions as if the entire world is watching IPL to have a glance at him ( secretly I like him in this role, far more tolerable than his film roles and prosaic acting ), The GMR hoi polloi with whistles and clarnets, Nita Ambani showing some polish and looking more glam than the others and our man Vijay Mallya keeping his fingers crossed and praying that Jessie Ryder and Peitersen will do some justice to the Kingfisher beer sales – gobbling beers if not runs !

The popularity of the event is definitely no match to what it was last year. The ad men are running around frantically with the falling TRP rates, with election coverage in India picking up equal TRP and some viewers preferring to read the news rather wake up till late for the match results. The cheer leaders seem to have faced the recession with receding top lines and reducing bottom lines. Thank God, the Muthaliks of the world did not have enough dollars and are totally engrossed with their political futures, to fly in the moral police from India and mess up the dances. Lastly, I do feel for the Pakistani cricketers who could not participate in this event - I hope things are better for the next IPL and we see them play active roles.

For the business consultant in me, this is another venue for more consulting / outsourcing moolah. The IPL actually seems like the South African Premier League outsourced from India !

On the changing landscape and shifting of residence…

I render my apologies to all of you folks who have been motivating me to write more often and commenting on the slowing output of the blog entries. Not as an excuse, since I consider my writing seriously and will one day be hopefully sitting and gazing at the ocean and watching a sunset and nibbling away on a laptop, watching the sea gulls and the birds guarding the sea and lilting to the tunes of my mother’s ancient lullaby from those wonderful days of childhood; Huh( deep sigh !) – But I digress.

Moving into a new residence can be a tedious task, even if you are lying around in the couch and firing away orders to a group of thin wiry Bihari and Bengali packers chewing and sucking on their ‘khaini’. We shifted into another part of town near the buzzing M G Road and the busy Brigade road. In spite of the busy traffic and the proximity to thickly populated business streets, we are cushioned in the saddle of some aging greenery and large rain trees. The streets inside are more silent, has the everlasting dampness of the tree guarded denizen has the rare smell earth one has to consume and not write about. As the rain gods showered blessings in the last two days, the green gained in pulchritude and the jacarandas boasted their blossom, suddenly I felt I was in the Bangalore of the yesteryears when it was truly called the ‘Garden City’. Those days when your backyard had the Mayflower, Moulmein Rosewood, Hibiscus, Tabebuia, Silk Cotton, Indian Coral are just memories and we have to rely on the ‘Namma Metro’ to restore some of that green grandeur. For someone from Kerala, like me , greenery is no novelty but the sheer variation in the naturally found trees in Bangalore has been a matter of a queer inquisition. Lalbagh has managed to retain much of the old glory in spite of the plethora of vendors and the apathetic citizens trying their level best to tarnish the place with all sorts of waste being thrown around.

One of the ills of urbanization has been the children of this generation missing all the faun and flora. When we stayed in our apartment in Gurgaon which we were always talking of the day when we will have to show our daughter a ‘rain tree’ on Google and not take her one and bask in the wide shelter it gives to the on lookers. When I first considered Bangalore for relocation, I was warned of the nagging traffic and the disappearing trees and I must say that some of my earlier day trips to Bangalore have been excruciating on the count of traffic and have barely managed to reach the Domlur airport for the return flights in the evening. But the shift never felt so rewarding till the last few days at the new residence.

Today, a walk in search of the morning dew, preciously stored in the folds of leaves, is not a futile one. I can step out after a down pour and shake a branch to shower on me with the saved droplets. I can hear the odd bird chirp in glee inviting the rains. Little pleasures in the ‘garden city’ where I am yet to see a house with a garden …

On Booing, Shooing and ‘Shoeing’…

We are from the land of ‘non cooperation’ where, we believed that active non-participation can move mountains or at least the British. What we learned from the efficacy of these tools is also the power of such protest and a non-violent way of showing dissent. Well, some of these methods may find takers when the opposition is full of civilized minds but may fall by the wayside when the opposition is paan chewing, red spitting, back and front scratching politician. But methods of protest have always seen the creativity of times!

Bush survived two strong well directed volleys by an Iraqi journalist – much credit to his fitness and reflexes. When you have eight years experience of ‘ducking’ issues, one gets a little talented at this kind of stuff. But I secretly admired Bush’s reflexes when the Iraqi statesman standing next to him did not even blink while Bush was all in parry posture.The sales of the particular shoe model increased thirty fold in the next three months ( are you hearing this Gucci, Jimmy Choo ?).

A blog entry on the Wall street Journal writes “ shortly after the incident, online shoe throwing games were the rage. At http://www.sockandawe.com/ 91,498,174 have already hit Bush in the face and the website is even offering a $1,000 prize for the person who hits the 100,000,000th shoe. The tech freaks at DVICE even did a Top 10 listing of Internet shoe games.” In February earlier in the year, another shoe was hurled at the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the Cambridge University did not find its target. This time the Chinese media panned the coverage and virtually censored the news and the video recording. But the effect remained and the inspiration to all those potential ‘shoe warriors’.

Now our own ‘desi’ shoe throwing incident! I would not call it 'throwing' as our man Jarnail Singh gently tossed it at Mr. Chidambaram who did nothing to duck or evade but still maintained his calm and shot out his innocent smile and asked the security to treat the journalist gently. Well, my lament is that the journo targeted the shoe at Chidambaram who is definitely one of the better political faces we have ,and definitely did not deserve such a demeanor. On the same breath, I also wish some one had shown the shoe at some of the other ‘worthy’ politicians.

While the security let off Jarnail Singh and no official police case was registered ( the Iraqi journo is on a three year jail sentence ) the media and the Sikh groups made a hero out of him. Also interesting was the monetary rewards, job offers and even a Lok Sabha ticket that were offered to him. With such incentives, shoe throwing is here to say. For the concerned security men, this is a new challenge – how does no prevent people from wearing shoes to conferences. Well, they may take a page out of ancient Indian ethos were shoes were always left outside houses and places of worship and encourage conference and meeting invitees to remove their shoes at the entrance of the building. But I pray this will not usher the era of a new protest weapon – smelly socks!

On the God of Nano things...

It has finally arrived! India and a good part of the global fraternity had been keenly following the story – the development of the world’s cheapest car. The initial plaudits have found takers in both the television and the print media. Every automaker has envyingly admired the car with the green tinted lenses. ‘Low cost and affordable’ is fashionable in these times of global penury and perhaps the timing of the launch matches the sentiments of the current hoi polloi.

For me, the news ushered in a lot of wonderful memories. The great old GET days at TELCO Jamshedpur! The homely colony, the friendly club, our favorite bar man Khayoomji, the thrill of riding a two wheeler, the October chill in the air and … True, it has been a long while since those days. And it has also been a long while for Tata Motors to emerge into its new avatar. “Why does every TELCO product have to look like a truck” – a cheeky fresh engineer has asked during a top management open house at the Jamshedpur works. The comment was directed at the Tata Sumo. The market also did not take favorably to the products – Sumo was involved in more toppling incidents in those years than all the other vehicles combined. The centre of gravity of the vehicle was the initial target of the critics and then the plethora design errors. But these comments did not dent the market demand and it more or less reigned till the advent of the Scorpios and the Qualis.

Indica (which began as Tata Mint – till the brand definition was changed from small car to Indian car) had too many startup issues right from design bloopers, reneging suppliers, conniving competitors etc. Even when the recalls ended and the design modified, the car was still not the favored passenger car that a consumer would want to take home. Even the wallet conscious did not flock around a very economical diesel design introduced later. But what Tata Motors won the process was the heart and faith of many a consumer and even the customers of other cars unanimously agreed that “Tatas have learned how to make a car!”

To top it all, the name ‘Tata’; it brings in a kind of romanticism and ethical purity like ‘Gandhiji’, our national anthem, our national flag – four letters which have some kind of a spiritual connection in the mind of every Indian. Amongst a lot of us Tata ( and ex-Tata) couples – we have a common joke that our kids will say that Ratan Tata is the father of the nation and not Mahatma Gandhi !

And now the Nano ! Indian technology has for once hit the business headlines and every business reader in India has definitely read the news with lot of pride and for me, it was the kind of feeling where one gets goose pimples and a soft Yanni tune plays in the background. It was a semi–emotional moment where I just wanted to call everyone I knew in Tata Motors and talk, talk and talk… Of course, the first response from their end – “So when are you buying the Nano?” followed by the chuckle. Well, it is not a ‘Na’ or ‘No’ to Nano now, let me just enjoy this feeling and walk around glowing in pride and pray that it will be the dream that a lot of us Indians cherished…