The Storyteller - part 1

He was definitely one of those people whom you had to try to meet, if you wanted to meet them. He was the type of person I always seem to pick out in any group. You know, the guys who stand in a corner and blend into the surroundings, who have nothing to offer for mass consumption save for the occasional twinkle of the eye and loads of silence. Even if you were to put them in the spotlight, they would somehow manage to make themselves transparent to it. Masters of camouflage, you might call them. And true to my track record, I found him.

The interesting thing about silence is that it is open to so many interpretations. As I love to keep reminding people, nothing makes people as uneasy as a silent entity, and he seemed to fit the idea right down to the T. I sought out his company often, mostly to try and get him to speak on some topic or the other. It proved to be alternately easy and difficult. I would speak for five minutes non-stop, trying to explain myself, for he was always particular about matters of detail. Sometimes, infuriatingly so. And then, like a burst of machine-gun fire, he would put forth his response, occasionally with a very well-disguised look of boredom that proclaimed, "You know it, but I didn't say it!".

However, with time, I got better at my job, and he probably relaxed the rules of probation that he had laid down for me. As with any other person, he had buttons that needed to be punched for the music to emerge. One of our most fun pastimes was plotting mischief, and I rue my lack of foresight, in not having chronicled our plans of wreaking chaos upon our immediate universe and beyond. His penchant to dream up ways of mischief was matched only by his sheer inertia to move his body from one point to another, and so, most plans remained sadly unfulfilled.

(contd.)

Where No One Knows Me

I'm not going to screw this song up by adding my commentary. All I'll say is that I love it :)

Got my suitcase
Got my dog
I'm packing up my life so far

Got my pictures
Got some cash
I'm getting out of here at last

Got my hands on the wheel, got my foot on the pedal
Gonna drive til I drop, til the tires turn to metal
Gonna sleep when I'm dead, gonna laugh like the devil
Gonna find some place where no one knows me

Gonna stop when the last drop of gas turns to vapor
Gonna ride til I can't even seem to remember
Who I was when I left and it don't even matter
Gonna find some place where no one knows me

Feel the sunburn on my skin
I feel the wind whip through my grin

Took the rear-view mirror down
I wrapped it in my wedding gown

Got my hands on the wheel, got my foot on the pedal
Gonna drive til I drop, til the tires turn to metal
Gonna sleep when I'm dead, gonna laugh like the devil
Gonna find some place where no one knows me

Gonna stop when the last drop of gas turns to vapor
Gonna ride til I can't even seem to remember
Who I was when I left and it don't even matter
Gonna find some place where no one knows me.

More Trivia...The Binary Scorecard ;)

I realise that this doesn't hold much importance, but good for a few laughs nonetheless. This is the first half of the scorecard of the ICC Women's WC qualifiers game between Bermuda and South Africa:
(pay attention to the scores of the batsmen (batswomen? batsperson???!!) and the extras :D)

Bermuda Women innings (50 overs maximum)			R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
		L Mienzer	c Minnie b Loubser	1	60	48	0	0	2.08
		W Woodley	c Chetty b Smith	0	19	14	0	0	0.00
		S Albouy	lbw b Smith	0	17	16	0	0	0.00
		M Jackson	lbw b Benade	1	11	7	0	0	14.28
		TL Paynter	lbw b Loubser	0	3	8	0	0	0.00
		R Richardson	st Chetty b Loubser	0	6	1	0	0	0.00
		R Smith	c Letsoalo b Loubser	1	14	5	0	0	20.00
		N Jones	b Loubser	0	2	1	0	0	0.00
		A Smith	b Benade	0	4	2	0	0	0.00
		C Furbert	not out	0	7	4	0	0	0.00
		S Todd	b Loubser	0	3	3	0	0	0.00
		Extras	(b 2, w 7, nb 1)	10
		Total	(all out; 18 overs; 77 mins)	13	(0.72 runs per over)

As for the result, South Africa duly won the game by 10 wickets...in 4 balls. This is how that went:

	South Africa Women innings (target: 14 runs from 50 overs)			R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
		OV Anderson	not out	4	4	4	1	0	100.00
		CS Terblanche	not out	1	4	1	0	0	100.00
		Extras	(w 9, nb 1)	10
		Total	(0 wickets; 0.4 overs; 4 mins)	15	(22.50 runs per over)

Cricinfo.com had this to say about the game:

"The statistics of the match are mindboggling. Eight Bermudans failed to get off the mark, and the three that did only managed a single each. Ten of the runs that helped make up their meagre score were extras - 71%. South Africa's score of 15 for 0 was also made up of ten extras - nine wides and a no-ball. Anderson scored 50% of the runs scored off the bat in the match, and 80% of her side's runs.

Unfortunately for South Africa, but mercifully for the record-books, Bermuda's debacle does not count towards the official statistics because they are ranked outside the world's top ten countries. "I am disappointed that today's stats don't count for nothing," said Loubser (the SA captain), "but I would say it was a team effort to win the opening match of the tournament." "

Hehe....

Follow-up to last post

I think I got why I muddled the picture up with Zimbabwe. Less than a month before the England v NZ tie, India and Zim played out another one in Paarl (famously ending with one ball remaining because the last Indian batsman got run out on a wide ball while needing 2 to win; they got one for the wide) on Jan 27, 1997. That game was tied at 236 apiece, while the one the following month ended at 237. Maybe the closeness of the two scores tricked my poor memory :(

Faulty Memory -> Spot-on Foreshadowing

Caught the second innings of today's one-dayer between New Zealand and England at Napier, with the Black Caps needing 341 to win. As far as I can remember, I've had a sharp memory for inconsequential trivia, and I normally don't mess up a recollection. As I was watching the game, I seemed to recall that Napier had hosted 2 tied games in the past (For those who know what happened in today's game: at this point NZ were 230-odd for 2 and cruising), NZ tying with England and Zimbabwe. Out of curiosity, I dug up the list of tied games on Cricinfo , and found that there had been 22 tied games in history, but only one in Napier (26 Feb 97). Admittedly, I was not too happy about that, but hell, it's not the first thing I've forgotten or remembered wrong anyway :P

As it turned out, Napier DID become only the second venue to appear twice on that list tonight, nearly 11 years to the day after the same two teams had tied! Today's game was also the highest scoring tie in history, and to convey an idea of how rare it is, only 23 out of 2682 one-dayers played have ended with scores level; that is 1 in every 117 games. And even though what I remembered was wrong, it didn't take too long for that to be set right :D

Great game, BTW, and do catch the highlights if you get a chance. Super bowling at the death by Sidebottom, Anderson and Wright negated the amazing innings of How, who made a dominating 139 off 116 balls.

Happy Valentine's Day.....NOT!!

Just dropped in to warn all you guys out there of a potential situation. Read on:

A very shy guy goes into a pub on Valentine's Day night and sees a beautiful woman at the bar. After a long struggle with his shyness, he finally managed to walk over to her and asked her politely, "Um, would you mind if I give you company?" She made a furious face and yelled at the top of her lungs, "How dare you asked me to sleep with you tonight?" Everyone in the pub started staring at the man who was completely embarrassed. After a few minutes, woman walked over to him and apologized - "You see I am a student of psychology and studying how people respond to embarrassing situations. I am sorry but I was just doing my experiment!" The young man suddenly gave a loud yell, "What do you mean $200?"

Have fun!

PS: Maybe $100 would have insulted the female a lot more ;)
Thanks to Chawla for the joke!

Psssst...what's your password?

Have to confess on this, people: I'm addicted to long passwords. Most people I know take a lot of pains to put in a tedious, totally unguessable combination of letters and numbers (and special characters too, if they're especially paranoid), and it's really weird when somebody like that has to give you their password (in an emergency, poor things...) on the phone. It goes something like this:

XYZ: Hey, I need a really, really urgent favour.
Me: Sure.

XYZ: I'm
(a) stuck in a traffic jam
(b) without my web-enabled cell phone
(c) my web-enabled cell phone's battery is out
(d) my IPHONE's battery is out (gotta give those rich people their own category ;) )
(e) at home (!!!!, you might say....but this used to happen a lot back in India, and it still does. When someone goes home, they are incommunicado. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right...)

So, can you please login to my email and tell me if ABC has replied or not.
Me: Yeah, sure. What's the ID and the p-word?

XYZ: The login is xyz_awesome_dude@yahoo (ouch, ouch, OUCH!) and the p-word is...
Me: Wait a sec, man...that ID is just terrific. Has anybody told you that before? (snigger)

XYZ: (playing cool) Chalta hai yaar...Let me give you the password now. It's knph3101$1m.
Me: Huh??

XYZ: Aaaargh...I'll repeat...k-n-p-h, as in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, 3-1-0-1 , that is the date 31st January, followed by the dollar sign, then the numeral 1 and the letter m, as in mummy.
Me: Hmmmmmmmmmm...!!!

(I fill in the fields with exaggerated care, trying to fathom what in the name of the holy Rajnikanth this password means...)

Me: (giving up on the above mentioned exercise) Yeah...it's opening, give it a second. By the way, what does this p-word mean?
XYZ: Well, don't bother about it. I know it's weird, but....

Me: (Butting in) No, no, no! I think it's an awesome password. I can never make up something like that. Tell me the thought process, coz you're going to change it anyway.
XYZ: Uhmm...well, it refers to my first date with my 1st ex-girlfriend, while we were still in school. We went to watch that movie in the old rickety theatre, you remember that, right? Yeah, so it was 31st Jan, and I had told her of my dreams to become a millionaire that day, and she was really impressed...you know how money-minded she was yaar...so anyway, that sort of stuck...

Me: ...and manifested itself here. That's quite a chain of thought. Incredible. By the way, what happened to that girl?
XYZ: (Desperate effort to change the topic) Hey, what about that email?

Me: Huh? Oh, yes. No, you haven't got any email. Hard luck.
XYZ: (I can sense him eyeing an easy escape) Alright. Sorry for the trouble, man. Thanks a million!

Me: Not so fast! What about the girl....you still in touch?
XYZ: Well, yes and no...I mean I scrap her once in a while.

Me: Hmmm. And what's she up to? She have another boyfriend? (Oh I love driving the nails in...)
XYZ: I think so...last I heard, she was seeing that guy in our class who used to drive his Dad's Merc around town.

Me: Oh! That's interesting...but don't feel too bad about it, I guess she just couldn't wait long enough for the million to materialise...hehe
XYZ: Uh...yeah...hehe (laughs limply). OK, then I'll catch you later. Bye!

Anyway, my most preferred tactic is to plonk in entire sentences in place of passwords rather than think too much. Oh, and my last password (since changed) was laalchadimaidankhadi.

Please refrain from being judgmental.
Thanks ;)

Finding Fischer

It was turning out to be a really bad night when I woke up at 3 am after an hour of fitful, restless sleep. My head was throbbing with a pain that seemed to be getting worse, no matter what I did. Out of irritation and desperation, I finally took a pain-killer and waited for it to take effect. But infuriatingly, it wasn't working fast enough. So, I opened the computer and tried a combination of Pink Floyd and the New York Times to distract my attention from the pain.

I like the NYT for it's refined approach to news, as compared to CNN.com (I don't even know why I still visit that website, but I still do...) and sure enough, something on the top of the homepage caught my eye. It was an article by Dick Cavett (I don't know who he is, but at least I know now that he used to be a prominent TV personality) about his experiences with former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer on his show. It was an engaging personal account of how comfortable Fischer had been on his appearances on Cavett's show. I had some recollection of reading about Fischer's eccentricity and his descent (I hate to be judgmental here, but I'm not getting the word I want) into anti-semitism and his fugitive status in the eyes of his native USA. After reading the article, I was captivated by the references to the champion's amazing genius and his status as an American Hero at his peak, something that is impossible to believe for a chess player.

I dug up another article by Garry Kasparov, the Russian champion for 2 decades till his retirement in 2005, in which he had spoken in glowing terms of Fischer's achievements and his legacy. It also happened to be an obituary for Fischer, who died last month in his adopted home, Iceland. That spurred me on to Google videos, where I found a documentary chronicling the life of the once-in-a-generation genius. I'm not sure I have the will to go on and talk about how I felt after reading and watching what is known about him, for he was a recluse for the better part of his life, and what he has said and done (or done and said, in that order in his life) polarises people irrevocably.

But I think it's a story which, though not unique, is still quite interesting in the amount of time it's protagonist is under intense scrutiny and in the volume of speculation and mystique that surrounds his persona. You can find the documentary here. The advertisements that are splattered over it are a nuisance, and the best way to deal with them is to fast-forward through them; don't wait for them to go away quickly, because they don't :)