…just like this one,

… and we will use it like the biggest stage in the world and shout our hearts out.

Without any further ado, presenting…. Ashok!

Ten days ago, Lekhni tagged me and urged me to essentially recycle 5 of my old posts. Normally I don’t do tags. I mean, unless there is potential for me to play the fool and essentially evoke a few laughs even if the joke’s on me. With this tag, however, the laugh potential seems to be rather marginal, but then I remembered something else.

I realized that I was closing in upon a milestone. By the time this post is online, it will be 5 years since I started blabbering. My first post was posted on Blogger on the 10th of February, 2003. And barring a few months early on and around 100 days in late ’04 and early ’05, I have been posting rather regularly.

Looking at Lekhni’s tag, I realized that she had given me a good chance to take a retrospective look and to reminisce upon these five years gone by. But the problem with my blog is that, as my erstwhile tagline (( I have an ever-changing tagline now, courtesy Twitter?)) goes, it is the record of an egoist’s road trip through life with cricket, music, books, cars and movies for company.

Which means that this blog is about me and me alone. So, as the days go by, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember the odd posts that one has “written” relating to some of the keywords of this tag. Also, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that I took an oath, with myself as witness, that I wouldn’t post anything personal here. So the odd heartbreak has almost never found an outlet here, even if some friends (both online and IRL) have heard me obsess over it.

I have come to a conclusion that wherever I think I won’t be able to fit within the confines of the tag, I will bend the boundaries to my whims and fancies. Hey, this is MY blog and I do what I think is right. Also, my ego prevents me from sticking to the “1 post per keyword” rule of this tag. I will hence go ahead and regurgitate multiple links wherever possible. But let me just make the basic rules clearer to everyone. (more…)

Could you or your paymasters at the Incompetent Council of (insert bawdy phrase referring to people who pay attention to certain cavities of the female body with their own oral cavities) please let us all know, exactly WHAT resolved, “beyond a reasonable doubt that Harbhajan Singh directed that word at Andrew Symonds and also that he meant it to offend on the basis of Symonds’ race or ethnic origin.”. Also while we are at it, can we quit being “politically correct” and use THAT word instead of terming it “that word”. (more…)

THALAIVAR?????

Rediff’s Rajaneesh Vilakudy says,

If top industry sources are to be believed, Shankar will work with Rajnikanth in Robot, which was planned to be shot with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead and as producer. But the project apparently did not work out owing to ‘creative differences’, with Shah Rukh himself confirming the separation.

(more…)

Every Australian tour is packaged with pitfalls, both for individual and the team itself. The team pitfalls come on the field, via the Aussie juggernaut. But the individual holes are dug by the team management and in some cases, allegedly by the players themselves. Ganguly’s apparent refusal to carry drinks as the 12th man comes immediately to mind.But these individual issues mostly get resolved as time goes by, but the real problems are the ones that are caused by loud mouthed non media savvy administrators of the game who don’t think before their speak. Jayawant Lele’s comment did more for the downfall of the ’99 team than the potent Aussie bowling or the impotency of the Indian top order. (more…)

One Halloween, a few summers ago, on an unusually balmy night, one decided to adopt the best spirit of Halloween that one could and dress up as a M.i.D.

Sadly, and most typically, no one understood! And since then disillusionment has crept in. *sigh*

Update: Thanks for the clarifications, Su. The post’s duly updated to reflect your clarifications.

A couple of years ago, I had ranted (parts 1 and 2) about the disdain shown towards “massy” dappankuthu (and in general non-Hindi/non-Bhangra) type numbers by DJs and the “classy” crowd at dance parties both here in videsh and back home in India. But my personal experiences have mostly been outside Chennai, in fact outside India.

And those who know me will attest that, at times, I can be as “massy” as one can get, mostly in the (few) aforementioned dance parties that I get to go to. And most of the DJs I have seen in these parties, suck. One DJ even went as far as feigning loss of the mix CDs (they magically re-surfaced at the end of the party) that a couple of us had painstakingly created so that he has a mix of Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi numbers to play during the party. But that old post immediately came into mind when I read about the fiasco Radio Mirchi RJ hunt party at Dublin, the disco/night club at the Park Sheraton in Chennai. (more…)