Goa Sojourn : Irony Immortalised

( The following post has been jointly written by me and Vaas, since several fundaes were involved it obviously required two writers to recall all of them )

It was nearing midnight. Eleven people lined up in one of the most happening streets of Goa in
front of one of most well known pubs, all grinning, all conscious of their
mien, all confused. It was a proper ironical ending to an already comical
day. The click of the camera and the flash of light seemed to last an
eternity. Many people around us stopped in their tracks, some of them
urged us to give a bigger smile, others were just stunned by our mere
fatuity. The pic in more ways than one summed up our day. The pic was
nowhere on the cards, it was totally uncalled for but still no one protested
when one of us came up with the idea. Everyone had their own reasons.
Many might think of it as a consolation, others might say that it was
a final nail in the coffin but for me it was irony immortalised.
To make any sense to anyone apart from those who were
a part of this fiasco, lets rewind the clock back a few hours.
It was our second day in Goa. It was a day when our plans were being made
a subject of mockery. It was a day like none other. To begin with we woke
up to find ourselves fooled with the news that instead of avengers for our
bike trips to the beaches we would have to be getting a splendor,
an old fazer and an activa. The mayhem had begun.
The fifteen kilometer ride to the beach was
filled with more drama. Dry bikes, flying helmets and dribbling
volleyball on the road were just the starters.
The insanity reached its pinnacle when vaas dropped his Rs 14000 cellphone
on the highway without realising it. The other guys were at quite a distance
from vaas and yasser to notice anything falling off. How we got the cellphone back
is unbelievebly more shocking. Aneesh noticed a guy picking up a cell phone from the ground and managed to just get a peek of the phone. It looked pretty similar to him the model that vaas owned. Making a wild guess he stopped and shouted to us that vaas has dropped his cellphone and that a guy has taken it. What hapenned next was fairly straightforward.We got back the phone and carried on.
With all our bits and pieces in place we finally reached the Baga beach
by noon. The next 3-4 hours proved to be the epicentre of all the drama
that was yet to follow. With the Goan air slowly but surely sinking deep into our
souls we became more tempted and longed for more entertainment.
And thus began our 8 hour regime that all of us present there
would never forget( one can get a clue of how impacting the whole saga
was, from the fact that it prompted even lara to say that he would never forget it).
While we were playing, we found it difficult to concentrate on the games as we caught hold of these five beautiful girls, all in their beach wear, roaming around the beach. These girls were the center of attraction on the beach with all the men and boys being distracted by these girls. We also gazed at them and admired their beauty like the rest of the people on the beach. But there was a twist in the tale, me and Aneesh decided that we wanted to go Parasailing and we sat in the boat and what do we see in the boat four of those girls sitting there and talking. We could not believe our luck that we would be spending the next hour with these girls, just the two of us and these four girls.
But, we being from VNIT College, where talking to girls is a sin, so we didn’t speak a single word but just stared at them. They even tried to start a conversation, but we stuck to our VNIT credentials and didn’t continue it. So we were back from our rather silent but interesting nonetheless parasailing experience and we told everyone about it. That increased the frustration levels in our group, and I don’t remember whose idea was it but we were seriously thinking of asking these girls out (Its true, no matter how bizarre it may sound, but it’s true.)
With a little bit of persuasion everyone talked Akhil into asking a group of
girls at the beach to join us at dinner at Tito's(its one of the most famous disc in Goa).
He agreed. We got our first opportunity shortly but failed to capitalise
on it as no one dared to take the initiative. With time running out, we
began to feel it was out of bounds for anyone of us to muster the courage
to talk to the strangers. Then we got another chance but again were left
begging. We started to make mockery of ourselves for even dreaming of
having dinner with a group of unknown girls at a pub. Suddenly out of nowhere
Akhil went back and followed the group of girls accompanied by none other
than Vaas and Lara. The other four of us cheered them on without any effort
of hiding our sarcasm. Soon vaas, unable to conjure any more audacity retreated.
It was Akhil and Lara that finally intercepted the girls on their way.
Akhil, with confidence oozing from every inch talked the matter through
and managed to get their phone numbers. Lara in the meantime did what he always
does, went up to the girls and stared at them, watching them talk to Akhil.
The final outcome of the short meeting was that the girls
would consider our proposal and would call us back in an hour. In the meantime
we had our lunch, all confident of a negative reply from them. On our way
to another beach, they called. Their reply was affirmative.
We all stood there at the Anjuna beach,STUNNED by our own courage,
bedazzled by our luck, intrigued by what was in store. Beach...What beach?....Forget the beach...innumerable plans were brooding in everyone's mind...although it must be said that some of us were still apprehensive of them turning up in the night. Our stay at the Anjuna beach was stunted to a large extent. Time was running out. We had to make the choice of going tothe pub directly i.e. dressed in casuals, bathed in sand or to go back 15km and 'change'.Our apprehensiveness fueled the former option but i guess we were lucky that we stuck with the latter. It was a choice that made the day unforgettable.
Our journey back to our house was relatively serene keeping in mind what we had
already gone through and what was in store. We reached our place with only 45 odd minutes remaining before we needed to start our engines again if we had to reach the disc on time.
It was utter chaos. Pandemonium reigned.
The following is an actual set of events that happened in our apartment:
As soon as we reached the apartment, there was utter chaos. There were people running here and there, to the bathroom, to the toilet and then again back to the bathroom.
Akhil : abe shave karna chahiye...
Yasser: haa yaar...but there's no shaving cream left!!!
What followed was mind boggling. With adrenaline running high and time running out they were almost on the verge of shaving using Pantene shampoo instead of shaving cream. Have you ever in your wildest dreams seen a bunch of guys shave their hair using Pantene shampoo, we almost did! But fortunately, they were spared the eccentricity as Aneesh had bought shaving gel with him.We were left on our fours, almost choking with laughter, struggling to catch our breath
when we came to know about this.
Yasser: Abe unko call lagake time pooch na.
Akhil: Ha poochta, pehle mereko brush karne de.
That guy brushed his teeth to talk with those girls on the phone!
With time running out fast some more innovations had to be implemented.
Some of the guys washed thier hair in the basin because the bathroom was occupied by someone else.
Some even started speaking in English with other guys.
Akhil was thinking whether he should wear his goggles at 10 in the night.
He spent nearly10mins in aligning his sweat shirt in perfect symmetry.
Lara was confused for about 10-15 min on whether to should pull up his collar or not.
Finally, with all the final touches completed, we embarked on our journey just about on time. We reached there only to find that the girls had not yet arrived. Frantic calls were made. They said they would reach in 10 min. The wait was agonising in its own harsh way. We weren't able to concentrate on any other substance, too perturbed, too edgy. Empty stomach wasn't helping our cause either.
Finally, they arrived. With butterflies in our stomach, we went up to them, still
not quite able to fathom the fact that they did come. Our worst fear was over.
However, things did not go as we had planned. The rates of the disc turned out to be hyterically higher than what we had been told earlier. For the nth time that day we were all stunned to silence, struck dumb, totally at a loss of words. What was more peeving was that the girls were allowed free entry. We tried to see if we could shift our venue to some other place but unfortunately that was not to be. Having a free entry to such an electrifying pub was something the girls were not able to put down.
It might have something to do with the weather that day
coz our fundas just kept increasing. Finally as a parting funda, we asked those girls to click a photo with us and they obliged. The picture described at the start of post finally brought the curtains down on the entire saga. The best description of the entire fiasco was given by Bade, when he said after clicking the picture “ Ab main kiskiko muh dikhane ke layak nahi laya “, and then wore the helmet that was in his hand.
It was a proper ironical ending to an utterly comical day.
It was in the end as Yasser said, A Perfect VNIT Ending (khaya piya kuch nahi bas photo nikal ke aa gaye!)

Fountainhead

Well here I am...back into the writing mode…with a fortified will to become a regular at this. Not being able to pursue things for a considerable time period for it to yield results has left me unnerved. This is one virtue of mine which I became aware of, the hard way. I know this is way too small an effort to metamorphose my persona but still it’s a start and hence I call this the Fountainhead.
For a guy like me it’s not a laborious affair to decide the motif. Beyond the shadow of a doubt it has to be cricket. And unlike my last post which was dedicated to the swashbucklers of the game, this is one is about the man who has made the headlines recently, who has predominantly been held responsible for the T20 World Cup debacle of India, the captain of the Indian cricket team Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
A lot has been said, written and published about M.S.Dhoni ever since he came on to the big scene. Once the darling of the shutterbugs, Dhoni has had to face the wrath of the Indian media for the first time in his career. He is being blamed for the early routing of the team in the T20 World Cup 2009.
But before starting with the blame games and pointing fingers, let’s rewind the clock back a couple of years. Indian cricket had come to a standstill with the pre-mature elimination of the former finalist from the ICC World Cup 2007 in the Caribbean. What followed was blatant trauma, outright upheaval and an all out charge by the media. Rahul Dravid, then the captain of the Indian cricket team, unable to sustain the pressure, resigned from captaincy just after England tour later that year. Sachin Tendulkar was offered captaincy by the board of selectors and Sharad Pawar, but Sachin politely refused and said, "Give it to someone like Dhoni". The Board agreed.
The decision paid off. India went on to win the inaugural T20 World Championship held in South Africa in 2007. Under his captaincy, India went on to win the CB Series of 2007-08 in Australia and the Border-Gavaskar trophy 2008 in which they humbled Australia 2-0. He also led the team to their first ever bilateral ODI series wins in Sri Lanka and New Zealand. India also overwhelmed New Zealand in 3 match Test series (2-1). The victory was India's first in New Zealand since 1967-68. Even at home, Team India vandalized the touring England side, winning both the Test (1-0)
and ODI (5-0) series.
Under his captaincy, Team India scaled newer heights. India finally managed to shrug off the tag of ‘Poor Tourists’. Dhoni, now regarded as one of the coolest heads to captain the Indian side was calm and composed all the way cashing in the success and booting out all the drawbacks. Such was his aura and talent that in 2009, the prestigious Wisden named M.S.Dhoni as skipper & Wicket-Keeper of its first-ever Dream Test XI team. The man with the Midas touch was nominated ICC ODI Player of the Year 2008 (the first Indian player to achieve this feat).
Indian Cricket has always been like a lifecycle of a seasonal flower. On its day Team India has torn apart any and every opposition with ease but it has also been humbled by the minnows on more than one occasion. Agreed that cricket is just a game and winning and losing is part and parcel of it, but there is no point in hiding the fact that the sporadicalness of Team India can be matched by only a few others.
Now consider this. Out of the 7 Test matches played under Dhoni's captaincy, the Team India has won 5 of them and 2 drawn, thus making him a winning percentage of 71.42%. This has created a record which states that: Out of 289 players, who have captained their respective sides in Test cricket, only nine have remained unbeaten after leading their sides in five or more matches, of which Dhoni is the only current player in this elite list.
One must not forget that he has changed his batting style entirely just to balance the side. When he came in to the Indian team, the idea that a defensive shot can be played to ball was alien to him. But now he is arguably the most dependable batsman in the team after Tendulkar.
All I want to say is that form is temporary , but class is permanent. Since the day of his inception as the captain, Dhoni has changed the landscape of Indian Cricket. From being looked down upon just two years ago, we now enter the tournament as 'Favourites'. His Charisma and belief in players has inspired them to play out of their skins.The fact that he gave the final over of a World Cup final to a rookie like Joginder Sharma when he had some of the finest bowlers waiting in the wings probably outlines his captaincy the best. And inspite of being the captain, he is modest - giving his former captain Sourav Ganguly a well deserved farewell by letting him captain for the last few overs of his career. This rare combination of supreme talent, charisma, modesty, self confidence and self belief has made him captivate the hearts of not only the cricketing fraternity but the entire country. Today he is a source of inspiration for an entire generation of Indians who have finally found someone to look up to after a longtime.
He is truly a Fountainhead!
.

Fear Factor

Playing for your country is probably the ultimate fantasy of the countably-infinite cricket lovers all over the world. Cleaving those who get a chance to represent their country and those who don’t, we are left with only a handful. Further analysis shows that many out of the few, who are able to reach that cherished level, do so as a result of their hard-work, determination and dedication. Only a minuscule shoot to instant stardom following a magnificent century or a five-for. Many of them ebb away into oblivion without much exploits. Then there is a further smaller class of players who invoke respect, admiration and reverence. They are legends who need no recommendation, no introduction. Their statistics are scribed in record books, their lives are stamped on books, their names are etched in mortal intellect. Then there is a still smaller group of players who invoke a different kind of feeling, a feeling much powerful than respect, a feeling much contagious and detrimental than any other, a feeling of fear.

Only a few players in the history of the game of cricket are worthy of being categorized in the last group. It all started with a care free, flamboyant West Indian slaughtering any and every bowling attack he faced. Vivian Richards was the first one to stand up and give back an eye for an eye to the bowlers. Add to the list names like Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Virender Sehwag, Sanath Jayasuriya, Chris Cairns and a couple more and what you have is an exhaustive list.

They might not be the most elegant; they might not be the most consistent; they might not have any records to their name but they are the players who make the game enthralling; they are the players who make the game engrossing; they are the players who are willing to risk anything and everything for their fans; their country; their game.

Contrary to the popular adage that if you don’t risk something you won’t gain anything, these players risk everything to gain something.