April 2010

There were 6 posts published in April 2010 (this is page 1 of 2).

My take on Bangalore

The Ulsoor Lake - One of the Numerous lakes in Bangalore

The Ulsoor Lake - One of the Numerous lakes in Bangalore

Eighteen months after moving here,
I feel much better off than before!
Looking in hindsight I feel,
I am glad I came to Bangalore!!

It is a brand the world has noticed,
And come to recognize India for!
The whole software / investment boom started here,
And I am glad I live in Bangalore!!

With our cheap manpower and outsourcing,
The city is not only a noun anymore!
Bangalored is now a verb used to indicate a layoff,
When jobs are moved offshore!!

Me having come from Delhi,
I can say one thing for sure!
When it comes to how to treat women and elders,
Those from up north can learn a lot from locals in Bangalore!!

Some people stretch it too far,
And call it India’s Singapore!
But let us not forget the mess,
With traffic, pollution, and garbage galore!!

Infrastructure, or lack of it, is a big problem,
Which you will realize as soon as you step outdoor!
With the speed of urbanization in the last two decades,
A lot of catching up needs to be done, wake up Govt of Bangalore!!

Bad Traffic is one of the issues,
Which critics of B’lore point out to level score!
But then it is a common problem in all Indian cities,
And it is unfair to single out just Bangalore!!

But the weather here is like a silver lining,
When wind blows and the clouds roar!
You should forget everything,
And just be glad you are in Bangalore!!

I do miss the winters of Delhi,
And the various hangout options are difficult to ignore!
But for me, given my state of affairs,
I will anyday choose Bangalore!!

P.S. – This poem reflects my personal opinion about Bangalore and hence no offenses to other cities and people living there.  I have just tried to put into words my current take on Bangalore 😉

5 examples to show how our environment influence our behaviour?

Our behaviour is the most important thing. The way we interact with others, react to situations and go through our daily chores eventually makes us the person we are. Be it our work life or personal life, our surroundings shape our thoughts and our actions originate from our thoughts. Our actions / behaviour actually shape the way people think about us, or whether we succeed or fail. For example, having lived in both Bangalore and Delhi, I can say the weather does have a big effect on me. It is much easy to get angry / shout at one and all in the sultry hot delhi weather. Even if you are not angry, it is very easy to lose your temper on the slightest provocation. But if you are greeted by a cool breeze whenever you get out (as in Bangalore), you tend to become happy even if you were in a bad mood earlier. The point is, our surroundings, whether natural or chosen, tend to have an effect on our personality and our day to day behaviour.

I am listing 5 examples how we can choose to surround ourselves with different things and how can it bring out our best or worst –

1. Want to be creative, surround yourself with art – If you are in a job where you are required to come up with creative ideas or just want to improve your creativity, surround yourself with art. Keep in touch with what is happening in the art world, and look out for creative advertisements, paintings, or any other form of art. Slowly, you will start appreciating work of other creative people and get your mind working. You will desire to do something on the same lines, and this will get you started. And continuously following up on different forms of art can give you ideas which you can apply in your area of interest.

2. If you live near or visit places where you will find fast food restaurants or advertisements about fast food, you will end up craving for that burger or french fries. Burger and French Fries do taste good (though not healthy) so our mouth will start lickering and our subconscious mind will want us to have it. And if you are hungry at that time, the craving might get to you and you might end up eating fast food instead of doing what you should be. I am thinking of going to a MacDonald today as I am writing this piece, and I need to move on to the next point before I head to grab my fries. (Unfortunately, a MacD joint is just across the street where I live)

3. Expose yourself to metrics about your work or business or performance and you’ll work to improve them. Metrics, and depicting them by graphs and other forms of pictorial representation give us a sense of how we are doing and how we should be doing. If we keep track of such metrics, we will work on improving them. It is the same reason schools and colleges have marks or grades so that people know what to measure and how to improve on those metrics. Collecting metrics is a qualitative way of improving stuff that is otherwise difficult to measure, and hence easy to ignore. If you want to improve something, find a way to measure it and surround yourself with info about it and you will see yourself working to improve it.

4. If you see a lot of negative emotions in your daily life, you will tend to react to situations with a negative bend of mind. If you see people getting angry at each other, you might end up justifying their actions and find reasons to get angry yourself. If you fear something, then thinking about it or being in a vicinity which reminds you of your fear, you will tend up acting more reluctantly on matters you would have been confident otherwise. So if you tend to be around people experiencing negative emotions like frustation, worry, anger, disappointment, be aware that they can spread to you very easily.

5. If you ineract with people making smart decisions, you will also take interest in it and learn from them. You will slowly and surely be able to understand how to handle different situations and how to go about in your decision making process. Your thought process will start reflecting the people who you spend time with. You will understand why they took a certain decision and will try to learn from it.
Eventually, it is a choice of how we choose our surroundings. If you want a change in yourself, then just spend time with people / situations where you see that change. This holds true for both negative and positive thoughts.

The Indian IPL XI for World Cup

The IPL is going to be followed by the T20 World Cup in West Indies. As per some “hard to understand” ICC rules, all countries had to announce their teams one month before the tournament starts. As a result, many players who are out of form in the ongoing IPL have been selected and many in-form players have been left out. Kris Srikanth, chairman of selectors, has also remarked recently that it is unfortunate that some of the players in good form in IPL have to miss out of the World Cup T20. I am trying to list below a team “Indian IPL XI“, which will include only those Indian players from the IPL who have not been considered for the World Cup. My contention is that if this team enters the World Cup, they would perform as well as the national Indian team.

The team follows –

1.   Murali Vijay* – Opener
2.   Naman Ojha – Opener / wk
3.   Robin Uthappa – Batsman / Captain
4.   Saurabh Tiwary – Batsman
5.   Virat Kohli – Batsman
6.   S. Badrinath – Batsman
7.   Irfan Pathan – All Rounder
8.   Pragyan Ojha – Spin Bowler
9.   RP Singh – Pace Bowler
10.  Sidharth Trivedi – Pace Bowler
11.  Ishant Sharma – Pace Bowler
12.  Amit Mishra – Spin Bowler
13.  Ashok Dinda – Pace Bowler
14.  T. Suman – Batsman

*Murali Vijay was later included in the side as Sehwag got injured.

P.S. – I have not included Ganguly, Dravid, Kumble and Tendulkar as they have retired / refused to play in the World Cup.

Cheering for Warne and not for Sachin? What has IPL done?

IPL bringing 2 greats face to face again

IPL bringing 2 greats face to face again

The year was 1998, and the Australian cricket team was touring India. They were led by Mark Taylor, and had players like Mark and Steve Waugh, Ponting, Warne, Slater, Healy in their team. That was the time when Navjot Singh Sidhu was on the cricket field and not in the commentary box or TV studios. India was led by Azharuddin, and the team had players like Mongia (Nayan, not Dinesh), Srinath, Kumble, and others…. This series had been termed as the “Sachin v Warne” series already. And what was going to happen in the forthcoming weeks was something special.

Australia first played a 3 day game against a Mumbai team featuring Sachin Tendulkar at Mumbai. The world beaters v an Indian Ranji team. Well, Sachin had other plans. There were reports that he made local legspinners bowl to him turning leg spinners outside his leg stump before the Aussies arrive to prepare for the Warne onslaught. Coming back to the 3 day match, Australia lost it by 10 wickets inside 3 days as Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar slammed his maiden first class double century. Warne had been taken for 111 in his 16 overs without getting a wicket. The same story continued in the test series, with memories of Sachin sweeping Warne over square leg perfectly stored in the memories of every Indian fan forever. India won the series 2-1, and the contest between Sachin and Warne was a no contest at all.

The stage turned to Sharjah for a one day tournament a few weeks later involving India, Australia and New Zealand. Australia were trying new players like Adam Gilchrist and made Steve Waugh their captain for the one dayers. India won the tournament with Sachin scoring back to back centuries in the last 2 matches and decimating the Australian bowling attack all by himself. Steve Waugh remarked, “We lost to a better Man“. Shane Warne said he would have nightmares of Sachin sweeping him over square leg for six. Such was the impact of Sachin Tendulkar on these two series. I always backed Sachin and was delighted to see Shane Warne being hit all around the ground.

Exactly 10 years later, in the April of 2008, a man named Lalit Modi organized the IPL, a league of T20 matches between 8 Indian domestic teams. Suddenly, there were foreign players playing for local teams. Indians rejected the concept first (as every new innovation is dealt with in the beginning), giving reasons like how can you cheer a foreigner against an Indian player and how can one cheer for cities when we are only used to see cricket between nations. Still, IPL 2008, with all its innovations, was a huge success. An unknown and week (on paper) team, Rajasthan Royals, comprising of many unknown players and led by Shane Warne won the inaugural IPL tournament. The Shane Warne who every Indian always saw as the Villain because of his rivalry with Sachin God Tendulkar, inspired a bunch of unknown players to the title. For the first time, I (and other Indians) saw him as a cricketer rather than as an Australian. He had done the same thing while leading Hampshire to the title in England a few years ago. And everybody was talking about his bowling and captaincy. Apart from this, he was the second highest wicket taker in the tournament, and he was only 38 years old.

Just a few days back, on 11 April 2010, Mumbai faced Rajasthan Royals. Altough they have clashed many times in IPL before, a true Sachin v Warne showdown has never happened. But this time, Sachin faced the full 4 over spell bowled by Warne, and like 12 years ago, let Warne have no impact on him. But I was not amused. The same players facing off against each other, and the same result as 12 years ago. But this time, I was cheering for Shane Warne and not Sachin. And I am not alone. Millions of Indians found it surprising when they supported Warne in this battle. They are certainly huge fans of Sachin themselves (as am I), but something has changed that made our support  go for Shane Warne and not for Sachin. For the first time, we are seeing Shane Warne as a cricketer rather than as a member of the opposing team. For the first time, we are seeing cricket being played where nationalities no longer figured, and patriotic sentiments gave way for pure cricketing talent. What has IPL done? Lalit Modi, what have you done?

When IPL originated, critics always pointed out that city rivalries are not possible in India, where cricket evokes nationalist feelings and is such a uniting factor. It was hard to imagine people cheering for Gilchrist hitting Zaheer Khan for a six or to see Shaun Tait bowl out Rahul Dravid with a yorker, and to do the opposite one month later when the players play for their respective countries. But IPL has managed to do that. And it has only started. We are still in the very beginning years of this revolutionary phase in cricket history. How cricket will be seen by the next generation will be determined in the next 2-3 years as IPL and T20 settles down. More so, it is important that how all the media attention, business houses and glamor parties will fit together and form a “cricketainment” option for the whole world to see. Twenty20 leagues could be the future of the game, and it will also revolutionize one day cricket as one day cricket did to test cricket. All three formats of the game are here to co-exist, an absolute delight for the cricket lovers!!

7 Innovations which make IPL fun to watch

Business, Bollywood and Cricket

Business, Bollywood and Cricket

The IPL has taken the country by storm for the third year in the running. But more so, it has taken cricket by storm. If you ask somebody what is IPL and he replies – “It is India’s domestic T20 cricket tournament”, you can’t be more wrong. IPL is the perfect mixture of glamour, fun and entertainment making it a complete package for cricket and bollywood crazy Indians. No doubt it is such a success in a country like ours, where cricket, apart from being a sport, also unites Indians like nothing else. T20s will continue after the IPL too (for the rest of the year), but an IPL match will only come back next year.

Here are the list of 7 top innovations which make an IPL match stand out from (normal) T20 matches –

1. Cheerleaders – Cheerleading is basically an US phenomena that include elements of tumbling, dance, cheers, jumps and stunting to direct spectators of events to cheer. The cheerleaders in IPL have also been imported from US, and dressed in “attractive” dressing, are as much an attraction in the stadium, as the match itself. As expected, some self-righteous Indians have made a controversy out of their clothing and moves, but that is for another post. (You can read about an earlier controversy surrounding the IPL here..)

2. Time Outs – Year 2009 saw the IPL moving to South Africa, and to compensate for lost revenues, Lalit Modi introduced the timeout of seven and a half minutes after 10 overs of each innings to show more ads in the limited time that T20 has for advertisers. Obviously, he called it the strategy break for teams to restrategise… In 2010, IPL modified the concept to introduce two timeouts in each innings of total five minutes duration. And the timing was left to batting and fielding sides to chose. So, more unpredictability and more eyeballs for advertisers. And the time-out itself was sponsored by a Mobile Handset company.

3. Sponsored Commentary – Commentary was once a boring job, just reporting on the events of the match. But IPL made it compulsory for commentators to brand a six as a “DLF Maximum“, a catch as a “Karbonn Kamaal Catch“, any interesting moment as a “Citi Moment of Success“, and so on. In the future there could also be an “XYZ Special Wicket” or a “ABC Amazing run-out”. It can stretch as far as the imagination goes. Looks like it is never enough when it comes to advertising.

4. Microphones – Interesting placement of cameras and microphones have added a new dimension to cricket. IPL has, for the first time, involved the umpires in the game. Umpires, at the start of the match, are wired up with the DJ at the stadium, and hence, instead of just calling a dull “play“, he starts the match with asking “Are you ready batsman? Are you ready bowler? Are you ready Bangalore?” which is heard and cheered by the whole stadium and TV viewers.

Apart from this, during the match, umpires and players are wired up with the commentators and there is an interactive chat with the commentators during the match, which can be about serious cricket matters or it can be funny. Like the commentators teasing the fielder about the 40 degree temperature on the stadium or about the last ball where they misfielded. Or the commentators asking the umpires how did he manage to take his head out of that straight shot hit by Gilly. ICC might mean serious cricket, but IPL means fun (and a lot of it) !!

5. Cameras – Interesting placement of cameras like the overhead rolling camera view in 2009 and the cameras on the “MRF” blimp in 2010 have given interesting angles for viewers to see their favorite players on TV and on multiple large screens on the stadium itself.

6. IPL Nights – As you have seen and read in newspapers, IPL matches are often followed by IPL Nights, which are big parties which happen after the match. These parties include everything from fashion shows to music to booze and continue till early in the morning. There are cricketers, team owners, businessmen, models and bollywood celebrities all enjoying and relaxing after the match. There are Rs 40,000/- tickets which allow you an exclusive entry to these parties, apart from watching the match from the best location in the stadium.

7. Youtube’s Fun Feed – This is one thing which I think most of you must have missed. IPL is streaming its matches live (well… almost live) on youtube, and apart from the usual television feed, there is another feed called the “Fun Feed“. This is basically live telecast of the match but from a totally entertainment point of view. IPL has a former Miss Universe hosting this feed, and it includes interviews of Team Owners, Celebrities, the cheerleaders, players, and of spectators about the match. Even the match is shown from different interesting camera angles. In short, the focus is more on the happenings in the stadium (entertainment) apart from the cricket itself.

If you have noticed some other interesting stuff going on in IPL matches which I have missed, make sure to drop in as comments below…