Posts Tagged ‘chennai’
Cold weather is depressing
Posted on: July 30, 2010
- In: Chennai | Entertainment | General | General Lunch Time talk | Indian Cities | Real Life | Snow | Summer | Weather | Winter
- 1 Comment
I live in Illinois, USA and it is summer here right now. Contrary to last year the summer this time has been pretty hot with temperatures touching 90 F almost every day. So recently when we were discussing about the weather over lunch one of my friends told me that he would rather prefer the winter in Illinois as the summer is too hot for him. When he said that I almost fell of the chair, this guy comes from same state as I do from India, Tamil Nadu, which except for few cities is not exactly known for its cold weather.
I would have agreed with him if we were in Bay Area, California or in Florida where the winter indeed is more pleasant than the hot summers but Illinois, you got to be kidding me. The winter here to put it plainly is downright “depressing”. How great can the weather be when at 4:00 PM you reach home and it’s already dark? Winter in Illinois is lots of snow, very low temperatures, Ice/sleet formations on roads and parking lot most of the times. It means not going out, lots of cleaning snow from your cars, feeling lazy, eating a lot and jumping up and down in joy when the temperature is 30 F. Thanks but no thanks.
I practically hate the winter here. Even though the summer has been hot, I would take this anytime over the winters here. I come from Chennai where the idea of winter is 60-70 F and 90-100 F during the rest of the year so naturally I am more inclined towards Florida sort of weather, but it’s not like the locals love winters here either, they complain all the time about the winter and would rather prefer the hot weather.
So basically I disagree with him big time as worrying for my life driving at 20 miles/hour on snow is not my cup of tea. Anyways the summer is almost over and winter is around the corner and I think my friend will be one of the very few who will rejoice the prospect of the same. As for the rest of us it will be a hard to say good bye to summer.
During my customary lunchtime conversation with my friends few months back I got to know the hatred people had for my home town Chennai. I was first a little bit perplexed and annoyed with their accusations but understood that most of their issues came about due to the language. I decided to do some research online and found lots of blogs and articles regarding the same issue.
To be frank I don’t understand what the big deal is. The major accusation against Tamil Nadu is that they don’t speak the “National Language” Hindi. Which itself is a false premise for the hatred as India as a country does not have a National Language. People fail to understand the same as they have been wrongly taught in schools as Hindi is our National language. Indian constitution does not mention a National Language for India. Hindi along with English is one of the official languages of the country and each state has their own official language along with English.
So this makes our country a linguistically free country, which means that anyone is free to talk their own language. No one is under pressure to speak or learn any language unless they want to out of interest. So this begs the question as to why people from other parts of India expect Chennaites to speak in Hindi. Why can’t they converse in English as it is the other official language of our constitution? My parents were bank employees and we have had our share of moving around the country and every time I am in a new place I would have to adapt myself according to the place I am in. Being a Tamilian I cannot go to Delhi and expect them to speak to me in Tamil. I have to learn Hindi to blend with them. People fail to realize that someone coming outside Tamil Nadu faces the same issues as the ones coming into it.
When I came to the US in 2003 one of my Tamil friends warned me about the Telugu friends in the college. He said that we are isolated and they don’t talk to us. I did not take any of that nonsense and I mingled with them and learned their language and smoothly slid into their circle. I now have great friends from college and I am still in touch with most of them. It just teaches one thing, people who are happy to change themselves and adapt themselves will always come out ahead. People who crib about anything and everything will always fall behind.
I now can speak Hindi, English and Tamil fluently and can understand and speak broken Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam which makes my life easier. For me cribbing is not an option in these scenarios. We are always competing in this world and it’s always survival of the fittest. No place is a bad place; every place has its own charm and culture. If you embrace it then you will be the winner. When we go to a new place the people there don’t change according to our needs, we have to change according to where we are.
I am not going to sit here and say that Chennai is the best place in the world, for that matter even in India but it’s not the worst either. Yes Chennai has its issues like language, Weather etc but has its advantages too. Every place in India is the same. For a Tamilian travelling to Delhi or Mumbai, the issues are the same but we try to adjust. There is no complaints on our part.
Chennai is a great place, I love being there but if I have to move to a different part of the country I will do it without a problem. If I have to learn Marathi, Gujarati or any other language to blend into the local crowd I will do that. That’s what makes life interesting isn’t it. We are moving towards new age India and it’s sad to see that we are still in the stone age of fighting over language and region. Just try to blend with the locals wherever you go and you will find that the place is not that bad after all.
Love for the game
Posted on: August 13, 2009
- In: Cricket | Cricket and Sports | General | Real Life
- 1 Comment
Kids playing cricket in India
I was like any other kid in India growing up in Chennai. Like most I was drawn to Cricket at a very young age. A wooden plank and a rubber ball and you are good to go. Cricket is one of the most inexpensive outdoor games anyone can play. For me as a kid I started playing the game even before I understood the rules. Even the harshest critic of the game now would have at least had a couple of hits during his younger days. I still remember the first time I watched any cricket match. It was India Vs Pakistan and Sachin Tendulkar smashed Mushtaq Ahmed for two consecutive sixes in Sharjah.
Since then I have been hooked on to this great game. Cricket has been a part of my life in one way or the other for almost 18 years now. I used to watch almost every game that India played, kept track of the records Sachin broke (I Still do) and played the game whenever possible. We even had a team in our locality in Chennai and we used to play some matches with random teams in the play grounds when we were young.
The playgrounds in Chennai during the weekends were an incredible sight. Starting at 6:00 AM in the mornings teams used to run to the grounds to catch a spot to play a match. The matches mostly will be fixed between two different teams and they will agree to play in a particular place at a particular time. It will mostly be a bet match. The money never used to be huge but still enough to keep the teams competitive.
It was fun and we also played our share of bet matches. We did not win too many games but it was great fun. On a Sunday, getting up early in the morning, assembling outside a team member’s house. Riding our bicycles to get to the ground to catch a good pitch to play our game used to be a thrilling experience at that age. We have had our share of losses but even though we played the game as hard as we can, we always had a hearty laugh about the game later when we met again in the evening.
I remember the first ever time my team had a tie and the first game we won. It’s all part of a memory I will always cherish. The game has been so close to my heart and has remained a passion. When I was a kid I always wanted to be involved with the sport. I used to think, even if I don’t make it as a player I would at least become a presenter or commentator or writer or even a statistician. Even though I could not achieve my goal and ended up as a software engineer, the game still lives close to my heart. The main reason I started blogging was due to my love for the sport.
Cricket is a game of extreme emotions and unlike other team sports it is played for a longer duration. In the other team sports you don’t have enough time to go through various emotions during a game. Cricket is a game where you can be happy a minute and shattered immediately after that.
I have learnt a lot from the game. It has taught me the virtues of life like patience, competitiveness, team spirit etc. Even though I hardly get to watch any games these days and mostly follow the scores online, I still try to keep in touch with the game. I write about the game whenever I get time.I still have a dream of reporting cricket for living in the future but that might not happen.
The game has been really close to my heart for all these years and will continue to be so throughout my life. I am not sure how involved I can be with the game in the future but I will always cherish the memories the game has given me till date.
Attacked by a Crow
Posted on: July 16, 2009
Crows are very prevalent in Chennai, the city in India where I come from
I was in the 6th standard when this weird incident happened. We were at that time living in Royapettah, Chennai in a two storied building. We had a huge terrace where I used to spend lots of time. Most of the times playing with my friends but sometimes I just preferred to hang out up there as it was one of the tallest buildings in the street.
So one evening my cousin and I decided to go upstairs and play some cricket and as usual the ball was hit outside onto the road. So I decided to go and see where the ball fell and that’s the time this happened. There was a huge tree right in front of our house and its branches came up to our terrace. So when I leaned over to take a look suddenly from nowhere this crow flies and hits my head. I was shocked at first and then thought that it was just an accident as there was a nest close to where I was standing, so I thought that I was just on the of the bird’s flight path.
It was no big deal and we went down and picked up the ball and went back home. The next day I was leaving to school in the afternoon walking down the stairs and again this crow from nowhere flies and hits my head once again. Now I realized that it was not an accident and the crow was really trying to harm me. That terrified me and at that age I couldn’t make out why. I was so terrified walking down the stairs that our house maid had to walk me down every time I left to school.
This happened one more time to me and after that the only time I was confident walking down the stairs alone was after dark. This went on for few weeks and one day while I was at school my aunt came home to visit us and the crow for some reason decided to attack her and this time it was serious as the crow’s beak made contact with her forehead and she started bleeding. That did it for everyone, the people around the house decide to end this and took the Crow’s nest from the tree and put it somewhere else. That stopped the crow attack forever.
When I came home and heard this, I was sorry for my aunt but was relieved that they had moved the nest from the tree. It is funny, come to think of it now as to how a crow terrified me like anything at that time. At that time I couldn’t figure out why the bird would do such a thing but when I think about it now, I feel that it was just trying to protect its nest. When I leaned over to look for the ball I was close to the nest of the bird which probably made the bird think that I was trying to harm it for some reason.
Well anyways whatever may be the reason it was such a weird incident and one which I could never forget. Anyways at that age I was relieved that I could walk down the stairs again with confidence and without fear. I guess the bird just acted out of fear at that point but a funny story nonetheless.
India gain a slight advantage
Posted on: December 11, 2008
Strauss scored a magnificent century on day 1
England finished on 229 for the loss of 5 wickets on day 1 of the first test match in Chennai. The fact that this series is going on after the Mumbai attacks is really wonderful as this would help to shift the focus of the people in India. England had a great start to the day when Pieterson called right at the toss and decided to bat first. Everyone knows that the key to success in India is to bat first and bat big. England did the first part right but let the advantage slip by scoring too slow and losing too many wickets.
The tourists at one stage were 164/1 and were looking good for a big first innings total but to finish on 229/5 was a poor effort. The fact that Paul Collingwood got a rough decision to be incorrectly given out by Billy Bowden did not help their cause either. While rest of the English top order looked scratchy, it looked as though Andrew Strauss was batting on a different pitch. Batting beautifully throughout the day he scored 123 before getting out caught and bowled to Amit Mishra.
Eventhough England batted poorly, nothing can be taken away from the Indian bowling on a flat batting track. As Harbajan rightly pointed out after the days play England could have easily scored 300 at the end of the day. Zaheer’s brilliant spell with the old ball and Harbajan’s twin strikes made sure that India finished up with a slight advantage on day one.
England still have Flintoff and Matt Prior in their ranks and they would be hoping for a total of 350-400. Day2 is going to be vital for England’s chances in this series. India would be hoping to get an early wicket to put pressure on the lower order. Its going to be an interesting day of test cricket.
Dhoni at the practice session
The English team have decided to comeback to India to play the 2 test series after the Mumbai blasts. The team had left home following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai after a 5-0 one-day drubbing. Currently the English team is practicing at Abu Dabi before they fly to Chennai to play their first test. The Indian team for the test series has been announced and Yuvraj makes a comeback after the disastrous Australian tour earlier this year. Yuvraj is all set to grab the vacant spot in the Indian middle order after the retirement of Sourav Ganguly. The rest of the squad will remain the same with Sehwag and Gambhir at the top of the order.
Zaheer and Ishant will take the new ball with Harbajan and Amit Mishra managing the spin department at least for the first test in Chennai. I would put the Indians as the favorites in this two test series going by the recent form and the strength of the squads. England just have two world class performers and would rely heavily on their captain Kevin Pieterson and Andrew Flintoff to have a chance in this series.
This series is very important for cricket in India after the Mumbai blasts. A safe series would go a long way in ressurrecting India’s image among the western countries who are not that keen travelling to the sub-continent. Its funny though to see the entire western community supporting India after the attacks which shows how much impact money can have on cricket and mentality of the respective boards and players. I am sure 10 years ago the same England team would not have returned to India after a terrorist attack of such magnitude. Coming to India is advantageous for the players of the English team as it enhances their chances to be a part of the second edition of IPL.
Whatever may be the reason for the England team’s return its great for Indian cricket. I sincerely hope that this series would be a hard fought one and will be remembered for the performances on the field.
Chennai test ends in a dull draw
Posted on: March 31, 2008
The first test match between India and South Africa ended in a dull draw with the visitors on 331/5 when the play was eventually called off. Except for some great induvidual performances this match was truely one of the most forgettable games in recent times. The only silverlining was provided by Sehwag’s great triple hundred. The innings in itself was great but the way he scored those runs was exceptional.
The Indian team would be really dissapointed the way this test match turned out. Every team would want to put the visiting team to their toughest test in their first test match on the tour but we decided to give them a great batting practice. SA batsmen gained more in this test match than the Indians. With centuries from Mckenzie, Amla and half centuries from others in their top order SA batsmen will be really confident ahead of their second game in Ahmedabad.
The pitch in Chennai was really dissapointing as it provided no help to the bowlers, fast and spin alike. The batsmen from both the teams enjoyed great success as it became difficult for the bowlers to dislodge them. This isnt a great advertisement for test cricket when the Twenty20 is ruling roost in this country. After a wonderful series against the Aussies, this was really a dampner on the games oldest format. Hopefully the Ahmedabad pitch will provide some interesting tussle between bat and ball.
The Indians have some injury concerns ahead of the second test with Sachin Tendulkar being the noteable absentee. India have recalled Mohammed Kaif to replace him but I am afraid he will lose that spot to Yuvraj. For some reason Yuvraj seems to have lot of backing from his team mates and keeps getting chances even though he is very inconsistant in this form of cricket. India could afford to miss Sachin for a home game. In the bowling department RP Singh seemed to be unfit in the first game and looked very ineffective. India would be hoping that Ishant Sharma recovers from his injury. RP singh can have a little bit more time off to make sure that he is completely fit.
India would be hoping that the second test is played on a better surface and will produce some interesting cricket.
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