Justice for Priyadarshini

Are we still living in the medieval times. Because that is what it seems to me. How can a person, who is known to have committed a crime as heinous as rape and murder get away scotfree. Even the Hon'ble Judge in this case commented - "Though I know that he is the man who committed the crime, I acquit him, giving him benefit of doubt". I guess this must be the only case in history where the judge has made such a statement. Really whenever I think about the whole incident, I feel shaken, what a country we live in. We had died a thousands deaths since independence, Gandhi ji's India has been raped and murdered a thousands times over. Shame India Shame. Na samjho ge to mitt jaoge - E- Hindustan waalon, Daastan tak na rahegi tum haari dastanon mein. God give her soul peace and bring her cruel murder to justice.

A different Saturday

Hey you all. So another million dollar sturday comes and goes. So how did i spend this sat. Well not the conventional way, at least not what the people who know me would think I would like to spend the one sat I get in a week. I attended a conference on "Role of Lawyers in the Changing Global Scenario". Well I dont regret that I went. Met so many interesting people, I should rather say 'saw'. This guy from South Africa, Prof. Mason of the University of KwaZulu Natal was a very interesting guy. The conference was held at Indian Law Institute, New Delhi. A premier institute of Law in India. All this courtsy AM. Had a good time and was glad that I got to be part of something so international. There were people from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, US, South Africa, UK, etc. Reminded me of the times I used to attend conferences at IIITA. How we made PPTs. And how rushed we always used to be. May be those days will come back soon.

Am running so low on cash had to take the public transport and leave the car at home. As luck would have it I got a cab at Kapashera. He initially decided to drop me at Moti Bagh Flyover but when i was about to get off I asked him to take me uptil India Gate. From India Gate I decided to walk to the Krishi Bhavan Metro Station(Central Secretariat). So I was backpacking across all of Central Delhi. But as lifts are natural to me, I got sweaty soon and decided to take a ride off someone's two wheeler! Lucky I got one again. All in all it was different baby. Thanks AM for making it possible. And yes, a great talk it was!! Keep it up and hope to see you at bigger and better conferences.

Trade Off

So I had to forgo a chance at visiting the best monuments of the Pink City Jaipur so that I would be able to go to my cousin sister's baby girl's function. Now I really did want to be able to go to Jaipur but then again sister is sister and Sanika is Sanika. At the end of the day I am glad that i did what i did coz i feel family should come first, not in all cases, but still one should think about the family from a various aspects. For one i rarely meet Meenu Didi and Maneesh Jiju and Sanika. So this was an opportunity to be able to visit them. I wanted to get the raport going with the office guys too...but I made it at 0600 hrs to the office just to see those guys off to Jaipur but then I guess not going is not going. Anyways there are trade offs to everything in this world. DSOI was good. Banu gave me a good tour of the whole campus. Meet pretty interesting people whom I usually dont bump into in such functions.

Anyhow had fun. Lets see tomorrow what happens.

Why I dont blog often

So often in the night I wanna blog, write about all the things i did since my last post, write about my views, write about how m heart grieves for the people who lost their lives and their loved ones alike in mumbai, how sad that i will be leaving delhi/gurgaon and Tekriti very soon, how dismayed I am coz i am not able to go to Jaipur, how happy I was to be able to go to a disc, how much fun it was to be able to party with friends all night and into early morn...a host of emotions and experiences, but alas at night when i come to my bed and fire up my laptop, there are thousands of other things at hand and when it is finally time I finish my stuff its already too late to write anything legible.
Anyways, so last weekend was great after one very hectic week. So much of partying that I feel I have one less thing on my to-do-before-I-die list. Anyways met couple of nice people like Shoikata Das from Pulsar Knowledge Centre. Nice chap and nice looks. The vanilla flavoured cigar...well I would have perferred a non-flavoured one hehe!! And boy is Le Meridian outta this world or what....one really has to visit the loos...a plasma TV...designer fittings...neon lights...damn good furniture. Coffee at 0445 hrs..u gotta love it.
Anyhow so I am moving along at a brisk pace on my ZEN when suddenly i feel my vehicle tending toward the right side of it own and then I figure out its a bloody puncture. Thankfully I was 100m from a petrol pump and was again underway in less than 10 minutes. I had hardly moved another Kilometre when i noticed the samething again, and this time it was the rear tire. Anyways i had to drive almost 5 KM before I could halt at a proper place. So 2 punctures in a day...not bad eh!
Some how these days i have been bitten by the entrepreneural bug..I keep thinking and searching about it...somehow I wished someone could guide me...well dont we all wish!! Actually working in a startup one gets it...may be its infectious! Well I really dont wanna lose Tekriti...wished I could do some productive work for it frmo Stanford...may be something like business development...but lets see...bhagwan ne chaha to kuch hoga!! Alrite so gotta make a move now..catchya all later...peace out

Hey folks!! So lotsa things been happening since the last time I wrote a blog. Been working on a few things on my laptop. hen my car came from Kota, dad was kind enough to send it though I am practically a beginner but I think I am getting the hang of it..driving I mean :) Met not so good people - the lady at BA are not too good...very doer..then people I thought were different are no different from the bad ones...anyways who am I to pass judgement but yaar SV this is not what i expected...

Anyways, this is what happened on Monday last, had to get a draft made for over 30K. Had to visit ICICI, SBI, HDFC and finally CitiBank to get my things in order. Travelled more than 70Km within Gurgaon in over 40 degrees without A/C (ok sometimes A/C!) to get it and took me till 4:30 in the evening starting from 10 in the morning. Anyways, I guess that is life, but it hurts that one has to do so much for a simple thing. Am too tired though its only 11:15 but still.

The train to Tibet - seems like a good thing. Bought a book today - freakonomics...dunno when I will get the time to read it - lekin khareed to li hai. This sector - 14 market is not a bad one. Tomorrow am off to mamu's place.

Generations

Cut to 3 days back -

So its just another hot summer morning and I am coming down from South Delhi to Gurgaon to go to office. I was lucky enough to get a ride in a call centre cab, nothing out of the ordinary about the car except after a while of sharp turns at over 40kmph I realized I would be lucky if I reached gurgaon in one piece - the driver was so sleepy I thought he would look in better shape after 6 pegs of vodka. Well anyways i reached gurgaon in a record 25 min from Hauz Khas...tell anyone from Delhi and he will look at you like you were some sort of superman - such times in today's day and age are impossible. Anyways I reached IFFCO Chowk and had to catch another bus for Sukhrali Chowk where Palm Court is located. I got into this DTC bus and immediately took out a Rs. 10 note to get the ticket. The conductor gave me a Rs 4 ticket and I enquired politely - "dont you think it should be the Rs 3 ticket till Sukhrali Chowk". And that was like the last straw - he started to yell at me like I was some kind rapist traveling in the bus - he told me to get out and get into a Rs 3 waala bus - I told him i dont mind Rs 4 tickets I was just enquiring, but he wouldnt hear any of it - he shouted out - 'I am not selling onions and potatoes this is a government bus and u can get ur ass out of here if you want to pay less'. I told him - 'sir I can pay u double the fare why are you getting so upset'. But I couldnt get anything across to him, he was so angry as if I had slapped his wife. But anyways, I made the rest of the journey in pain as I had been humiliated in public by a man who was half as educated as me and half as time for values/manners. When I got down, it hit me all the more. I was very upset. I though its things like this that make u think - to hell with everyone. I told myself that my grandfather surely must have experienced such things, I know for a fact that my father had to experience such things, and now its my turn. I mean where is the progress from one generation to the next. I thought there should be an uplift at each level - but where is it - who went wrong - who didnt do his/her part to the full?? Well I think its better to not look for someone to blame..rather try to be a better human being and not do such things which you wouldnt want people to do to you.

Sunrise at 6

Well I know one thing about myself and that is - I just love mornings...the gentle, light cold breeze against the backdrop of sweet sound of birds, with the sun not too harsh..juss perfect. In fact summer mornings are even better as the day just keeps on getting hotter and hotter and no relief till its late in the night. I especially like sleeping in a room where one is awaken by the sun in the morning. That is it (the room) has a window in the east. Boy that would be real nice to have!! Dolly didi, when she and Gaurav jiju used to stay in blore - they had such a room - it was one hell of a place!

Cell

Well one normal night, in a normal final year engg student's life, it hit me, it hit me real bad. How madly and badly I was dependent on my cell fone, as if without it i would suffocate. I came back from the canteen to get a Hutch Recharge card so that I could call up my bro in Delhi and wish him a Happy Birthday. After the call I couldnt see any signal on my cell. I switched if off and then on again, only to get a message - "SIM NOT VALID". I frantically changed the sim into another cell and found that it was working, and tried another sim in my cell, and still the same message - "SIM NOT VALID". It was shell shocked. The cell had not fallen, it hadnt ben accidentally dropped into an aquarium, or anything like that. But still. Anyways, I had to leave for New Delhi the next day for my cousin's marriage and so I took the 12:15 bus to (CL) Civil Lines go dump it at a Nokia Service Centre. But still I was like what the hell is happening. Thank Godness for Suchit letting me keep his cell for the night and much of next day, but without a cell I was a fish without water. I was literally going door to door in the hostel asking people if anyone of them had a spare cell, but no one had one. In the end someone told me that Loki(Lokendra Kaushik from Sirsa, Haryana) had a cell which he was not using. But it had a battery panga. But still i wanted a nokia cell, more reliable, or so i thought. I traded the Motorola set with Mayank's Nokia which was on roaming as Mayank was still using his Bangalore number, God knows for what!! When I came back from Delhi I missed an interview because of the cell-less being that I was, as Mayank took the cell back and left me with a defunct Motorola piece of sh**. I asked Awantika to call up the Nokia SS and they told her that it has gone to LKO for 'big-people' to look at. So it meant i was not getting my cell anytime soon. Today, even after 7 days now, I am without a proper cell...but "Ab to Aadat si hai mujh ko...". I guess people get used to what they get used to...if u have a cell, one gets used to talking much, if not then still one lives, but it is the transition period that creates the troubles.

HRI

When is in Allahabad, the starting point of great Indian UP East, HRI means the nearest thing to Albert Einstein, Nobel Prizes in Physics, and things in that genre. Anyways, for footballers of IIIT Allahabad, HRI is a place with an awesome outfield, just perfect to play football 8 a-side types!! So yesterday using the contacts of Balwant sir of the Maintenance Cell of IIITA, the 9 of us chugged along to the greens of HRI. The thing is that its damn far off, in Jhunsi, in no man's land. In fact people say that IIITA is in some village, which is a fact, but then HRI is in a no-man's land, there is no one around. Anyways, I started off Left-Back, imagine that, left back, u think I would ever play Back....this is what is called Politics. Anyways, for me it has always been that team comes first. So if the team needed me at the left-back position then I will be at the left-back position. However, I would rather have put Khullar at that position, he has better defence sense. Anyways, in the first have we took 2 goals, one was a penalty from a handball by Suttu. The second was an own-goal from IK. Both goals were a bit disappointing, but there was very little Naman could do, Naman really kept us in the game, with all his acrobat saves. In the mean time I was having a terrible game, with very little support from my skills, which, somehow i found a bit erroded. Arjun, the one HERO of their team, well I started off with a bit of a body game against him, and he kinda got the message. After am illegal push, he said to me - "Thats technically a foul...but the point is how long can you keep this up". Anyways, the game ended with a 0-2 defeat for us, but we were happy with the way we played, at least as compated to the 4-0 route at their hands last time around.

I went to HRI risking missing an interview from a "not-so-bad" company based in Gurgaon. I missed a project meeting as we guys had to wait for Mayank and company to arrive in the auto(we arrived earlier at Kam Dhenu as we were in the HRI Ambulance). I guess its like what people say, one cannot ride on 2 boats simultaneously, if one attempts he is sure to drown. Anyways, lets see if we can have a re-match on Sunday.

The Orthopaedic Surgeon

Well it just so happened that in the first 5 minutes of the soccer game against MNNIT, Allahabad, I injured my ankle bad. But since the adrenalin was pumping, I could continue with the game till the end of the half. But when it was over, the pain brought me down on my knees, i was almost screaming out loud. Screaming and shouting I reached back to campus from the grounds of Allahabad University. I went to see the campus doc at her home as she had already left her office, she prescribed rest. I was trying to be fine with it and thought it would become better as the days went by but after 2 days I found a huge amount of blood collected at the place i had taken the hit (of course the blood had collected behind the skin) and the next day it turned to black. I was shocked at the sight of my foot, the pain was not as much but it was not less significantly. Awantika forced me to show myself to the real doc and so I went to this doc who is largely considered to be the best in the business in Allahabad. She had told me to speak in a good English to him as he had a gr8 diction, well she somehow wanted me to impress him (dunno why, but she knew him..,may be thats why).

I went to him and he seemed nothing like what Awantika had told me, a bit curt and spoke very little. On top of that he ordered an X-Ray and this place called Kriti Labs, the costliest X-Ray dukaan in Alld. Anyways, after he scared the living shit out of me by the xray order, i went to the bank first to get the money for the 400 bucks worth xray and then after 40 min, i was ready with the xray, and awantika, who was juss short of hysterical by now, i all ready to call up amit bhaiya to have me dropped back to campus in case my leg needed to be plastered. Anyways, I went back to the doc with the xray and he said all was well much to my relief. He prescribed something for the swelling and then asked his attendent to tie the crappe bandage around me.

All the while I tried to make some conversation, told him I was from IIIT A, he asked me where i lived coz at present iiit operated from more than one place in the city, all the time keeping my English flawless. Anyways, when it came to making him the payment, I handed him 2 hundred rupee notes and he promptly returned the 1 hundred rupee note, a discount of 50%.

So this is why she wanted me to be good, I had made a good impression on him by my english. Anyways, about 3-4 weeks later, Naman, guy in my batch (who is our goalie and also a member of the basketball team) hurt his thumb in the court. He turned to me to find out which doc to visit. Fresh from my visit, I recommended the same guy. And also told him that he should try to speak to him in English only. That evening I met Naman in the mess and I asked him about the visit and the doc, he told me, "Man that guy sucks, he is curt he is rude, etc etc". I was like, how much did he charge? Teo hundred Naman said. And then Naman promptly added, " I think I need to work on my English!!"

The rhythm

I tell you, I am on a high whenever i hear those thumping songs, complete with glass-breaking drum-beats, earth-shattering vocals and lyrics from outside this world. I am not talking abt Linkin Park(at least not all their songs) or Metallica. I am talking abt songs which belong to a genre which most people can relate to and are not the exclusive to a cetain section of people who think its cool to swivel their necks at 1000 rpm and then give it a fancy name(HEADBANGING).

Music has got to have punch in it, the right instrument at the right place, the right lyrics treated properly with appropriate variations in tone, and some drum-beats which more than juss vibrate the membrane of our ears, they should reverberate our body and make us vibrate in resonance with their frequency. Music should deliver us from our worldly pursuits, make us forget our sorrows(or successes in that) and let us just be. Be who we ought to be.

When I hear such music, I juss want to dive into "it". Dive head-first into some place I dont where, but I juss want to fly into "it", and become "it" and then stay "it". If such music cannot excite you, then God only knows what can. If this is not orgasm, I dont want to find out what is. I juss want to stay here, and get dissolved in this feeling, its not exactly bliss, but whatever it is, there is no good or bad there, its juss there. We can't qualify it.

And when i see people who can dance to such music, their bodies in complete coherence with the music, now that is what should be called bliss. God has blessed me with two left-feet(and I am not saying this with a straight face). In other words, I cant dance, ohh..I am sorry did u say "dance", I meant I cant even put the "d" in dance. But when i see people doing the thing, their bodies so magnificiently twisting, turning and straightening (sorry couldnt think of better words) with the music, I feel as if God himself has come down to earth. Now, i want you to know that I am saying all this without the rapid gush of blood to any part of my body, and I am not drunk. I juss feel I get a high when i see an elegant dance to an elegant music, thats all.

You know, talking abt elegant things, I get a high even when i see Parli coding. I mean its flawless to say the least. Its like music to my ears. Ha!

The rhythm

I tell you, I am on a high whenever i hear those thumping songs, complete with glass-breaking drum-beats, earth-shattering vocals and lyrics from outside this world. I am not talking abt Linkin Park(at least not all their songs) or Metallica. I am talking abt songs which belong to a genre which most people can relate to and are not the exclusive to a cetain section of people who think its cool to swivel their necks at 1000 rpm and then give it a fancy name(HEADBANGING).

Music has got to have punch in it, the right instrument at the right place, the right lyrics treated properly with appropriate variations in tone, and some drum-beats which more than juss vibrate the membrane of our ears, they should reverberate our body and make us vibrate in resonance with their frequency. Music should deliver us from our worldly pursuits, make us forget our sorrows(or successes in that) and let us just be. Be who we ought to be.

When I hear such music, I juss want to dive into "it". Dive head-first into some place I dont where, but I juss want to fly into "it", and become "it" and then stay "it". If such music cannot excite you, then God only knows what can. If this is not orgasm, I dont want to find out what is. I juss want to stay here, and get dissolved in this feeling, its not exactly bliss, but whatever it is, there is no good or bad there, its juss there. We can't qualify it.

And when i see people who can dance to such music, their bodies in complete coherence with the music, now that is what should be called bliss. God has blessed me with two left-feet(and I am not saying this with a straight face). In other words, I cant dance, ohh..I am sorry did u say "dance", I meant I cant even put the "d" in dance. But when i see people doing the thing, their bodies so magnificiently twisting, turning and straightening (sorry couldnt think of better words) with the music, I feel as if God himself has come down to earth. Now, i want you to know that I am saying all this without the rapid gush of blood to any part of my body, and I am not drunk. I juss feel I get a high when i see an elegant dance to an elegant music, thats all.

You know, talking abt elegant things, I get a high even when i see Parli coding. I mean its flawless to say the least. Its like music to my ears. Ha!

The God of Small Things

Well, I have had it now. Already sick and tired of it, but the last few days have been the last straw. I had to write it. Dont know how to say it, but lets face it, we Indians(and this includes me) are a brood of petty, rustic people brash in every aspect of daily life. And I mean every. What does daily life actually consist of. Lets try to see. Daily life consists of a number of activities which are hmm...trivial, to say the least. We hardly ever think about them more than once, like our relations with our peers at work or in the classroom, the way we shop, the way we talk to the bus-conductor...u get the point..i am talking abt those things which are very common, trifles actually. But it is in these things that the God of small things lies. We guys have over 1000 Gods in our country some of which we most ardently follow. So what if another God is added to the list? Well, we most often tend to neglect this God. We offer sacrifices to the other Gods, offer thousands of rupees to the temples and do all sorts "havans" to placate the angry Gods, but no, not the God of small things. He is constantly relegated to the bottom of the devotion stack. Now u may thing, is this guy nuts, how do we placate the God of Small things...after all we have never heard of it, apart from the fact that it is the name of a Booker Prize winning novel.

All I am saying is that we should be more careful and observant when we go about doing those daily chores which are of no importance to us. Its like when we are riding our scooter on a narrow lane, we should keep in mind the cyclist coming from the otherside. And if, while walking into the toilet we collide with someone, we should say sorry. And may be the next time someone asks us for coffee, we should "at least have the courtesy to say no", instead of keeping mum. Silly, bucolic fools thats what we are. We are most frugal when it comes to using the P word(please) or the T-word(Thank You) or the S-word(sorry), but some how we are recklessly carefree when it comes to using the F-word or the Hindi versions of it.

Somehow, no one thinks it bad, or even wierd. I mean what the hell is happening? Havent our parents taught us to say Please, THank you, etc when we were young? Where did all those things go. And the most striking thing is not that we dont sorry often, ohh...no ..no sir, the thing which raises my hackles is that the person on the receiving end also has no qualms abt it. He is as happy to be offended(if at all he is) as the other person is in offending him. I mean I saw a scooterist nudge a cyclist, so that both were disbalanced. They didnt even exchanged glances, the scooterist changed gears and was on his way. The cyclist got up back on his cycle and was on his way too. I mean its as if we have become calous, too used to things like this and accept it as our fate.

C'mmon you guys, we are not as bad as this. I mean this is a country where Kings used to leave this Kingdom and go and live in the jungles. They used to leave all their money, all their wealth, even give their lives to keep their word. Those were big things, these are trifles. We should know better than this.

Measurements

Well as an engineering student, one is taught, among other things, ways and means to measure various entities, both natural or man-made. In fact measurements are on of the corner-stones of problem solving, atleast thats what the dean has been telling us in our Computer Controlled Systems course. So, in keeping with these facts, I often questioned myself as to how would one go about measuring (the completeness of) ones life, as in, where one is headed, how happy one is and blah blah blah. Somehow, I want to think that one can do such a measuring by observing some of the very subtle things in life. Now here is where I think you'll start saying..."Oh..what a kid this guy is..", but like it or not, i sometimes measure my life by asking myself if my nails are cut or not, if I am clean-shaven or do I look like a wretched, sick person, have i folded my bed properly, etc etc. I mean I know these are some of the most trivial things, which we wouldnt give a thought to more than once a day, if not more than once a week. But they are important nonetheless. May be because when I was young, I would get into the good books of my dad(as far as cleanliness was concerned),if i kept myself and my bed clean and well made. And it could be that the effect still lingers, but even so, I still feel that the above matrices could well be effective and wholesome when it comes to measuring the order in one's life.

But then is that all to life, just order and arrangement. Nahi yaar, so many other things, like, for example, happiness. So how does one go about measuring the happiness in ones' life. Tricky!!! At this point, I dont think it would be out of place to mention a line out of John Nash's speech at the Nobel Academy, Stockholm when he won the Nobel Prize in Economics, it goes something like this..."..in all my life as a mathematician, I have found that no formula, no equation is more important than the formula of love.....". So there, happiness equals the amount of love in one's life. But its not only love which one receives, its also that which one
gives. Both ways, it only adds to the happiness in life. But then I guess that would scaling down the whole issue, I mean thats not it, I mean one has gotta have a bit of other things in life too to be happy.

One cant survive on full-time love. There are many things(mostly worldy things, that which are material) which one craves for and must attain in order to remain happy. They arise more out of the way we are structured than the pure, chaste need for love, which is universal and without which one cannot go on even for a second. But one thing that I feel is for certain, is that we cannot compare the happiness of 2 people, it just cant be done. And it should not be done. One can only remain as happy as they will, but never as happy as someone else.

Toilets

Well I have always wanted to write about the various toilets I have used during the past so many years. I kinda think that toilets tell a lot about the people who maintain/use them. Starting off with a public toilet in a shopping mall in Japan. Till date i havent see a cleaner toilet than that. The floor was so spick and span you could sit there and have lunch. The pot was even cleaner. In fact it begged the question, do the Japanese spent half their lives cleaning the damn things, or are they so "not-dirty"! But this toilet really didn't have even an iota of aesthetic beauty to it, it was just a plain ol' toilet which was extraordinarily clean. But one toilet which was complete with architectural finesse and interior designer made crockery was the one i used in a hotel in Mumbai. I mean such was the surprise with which i met the whole thing, i asked myself whether i had entered the right place. The sink was made of transparent glass, blown into a funnel-shaped article. The urinal was pretty basic, that is to say without any crockery, I leave it to your imagination to extrapolate.

One of the most ghastly of toilets i have ever come across was a battered, dungeon-like pigeonhole in the I.L. School(located in Kota, India). While i was a student at Bansal Classes working my ass off for IITJEE(which i cleared in my first attempt), we used to have bi-weekly tests at this school. At one of these tests I had to pee in between the tests. As bad fortune would have it, out of all the possible pigeonholes i could pick, i picked this one(it later turned out that other toilets of IL were better) and had the most disasterous of urinating experiences. After a while i realized i was pissing and vomiting at the same time.

Anyways, moving to a more pleasant experience, this one happened quite recently at a 7 star hotel in Bangalore(The Leela Resort). As one enters the toilet, you will be greeted (in an accent which seems a disconcorted, Karnatic-Englishish..really unique) by an attendant, do your business and he will offer you a towel from which to wipe your hands, that is in case you decide to wash your hands.

Well, talking about public toilets, the cleanest public toilet I have ever seen in India is the one right here in CC1 of IIIT-Allahabad. I mean i was so flattered to see it so clean and the crockery was so....what word do I use...glittering.

Among other toilets which i remember due to their uniqueness, one was the toilet on a gulf-air jet...yaar I tell u the flush was a vaccuum, and made a deafening sound. I got so scared, I thought I would be thrown out of the aircraft!!

Captain's Log

Some men are born leaders, some have leadership thrust on them, and some become leaders by accident. I think i belong to the last class. And the accident, as told to me very brazenly by someone once, were my Adidas Shoes(soccer shoes). May be that was reason enough for them to make me the captain of the soccer team. But I think I started off with more enthusiasm than anyone else in my batch for this game, and spent a lot of time trying to coax people into playing this game so that I would have someone to play with. That their enthusiasm for it overtook mine later, is another story! The captain of a football team doesn't have as many responsibilities as does the captain of a cricket team, but somehow I felt people giving me undue importance. In my times as a captain, i haven't enjoyed a moment more than the time i lifted the IIIT-A Football tournament running trophy. We danced in mud, we played with it and ate at the swankiest restaurant in town and ate sweet-"PAN". I gifted the smokers of the team packets of cigarettes and treated the non-smokers at the canteen. No moment has been more frustrating than the helpless we faced at being beaten black and blue by an opponent whose supporters out-numbered us 2 to 1, when they were staring at the face of defeat. I haven't been more angry as a captain when a player accused me of corrupt practices, of playing politics against him when he was relegated to the last line of defense. I hadn't been that angry in a long time. I guess I have had to deal with a fair share of politics as well. The best way to deal with politics, I felt, was to do things honestly and with a clear conscience, and with good intentions. Sooner or later people will realize that you are no humbug and you'll have made you point. Out of all the multiferrous experiences i gained from being the captain, one that has left a lasting impression is that a leader has to be a good listener. He cannot and should not discount the views of others and always make space for their ideas and opinions. Especially in a team game, he has to ensure that he has good relations with the rest of the team. The team can do without players letting their game go down due to tensions within the team. I guess i really don't believe in the saying, the captain should lead from the front. I would rather like to believe that a captin should have no problems in letting others lead from the front. A captain is only as good as his team.

If there was one thing that I could change as a captain/player, would be to have stopped K.P. from going over the our supporters side and picking up a nasty fight which would cost both him and us dearly and change our lives for ever.