During the last few years, I have not missed reading an article about cricket in news-magazines. These magazines do not have anything to do with cricket and I believe that by reading these magazines, one can get other angles to view the game from. However, most of the time I have found that such articles have a common thread. A partisan attitude is evident (barring some good pieces) and it almost seems that a witch-hunt might be on sometimes. And even the best in the team is not left alone. Not surprisingly, these pieces of criticism have come, not from former cricketers, but from writers whose connection to cricket is not evident, at least to the casual reader.

Here, I have tried to put across a coherent reply to one of the common questions raised by such articles – “Is Sachin, an all time great?” A general feeling around the media and some sections of the Indian public, is that Tendulkar, for the greater part of his career, has failed to deliver for his team when they need him the most. And a number of instances have been quoted where we were near and yet so far. These views go as far as indicating that the tag ‘chokers’ that the Indian team has earned in the last few years is because of one man alone.

The one major fact that these people have always overlooked is that there have been many a knock where he has done his bit (rather, almost the whole thing) and India has failed to win because the other ten failed to do their job. I am not a stud with statistics, but what better example to come up than the Chennai Test against Pakistan in 1998-99. Wasim Akram recently said in a TV program that the Chennai test was one of the best Test matches he had ever played. And this match is quoted by one and all as a prime example to illustrate the ‘fact’ that Sachin is not what he seems to be.

At Chennai, hasing 271, India were at one point 82/5 and then Sachin and Mongia put on a stand that got India close, when Nayan Mongia’s irresponsible hoick put the pressure back on Sachin. With just one half decent batsman to follow and back spasms racking him, he had to hit out and go for the finish rather than exposing the other end to Akram & Co. Prior to his dismissal, Tendulkar scored most of the 37 runs in just 5 overs and was the 7th batsman to get out for a score of 136.

Even though only 17 runs were required at that point (“only” is not the word to use when Saqlain and Akram are bowling, but nevertheless) India lost all the 3 remaining wickets, scoring only 6 runs in the process. A good question to ask at this point would be – What happened to the other 10 ??

Ganguly got a bad decision (bad is a word that does not convey the enormity of that umpiring slight) , but you get the sense that Tendulkar’s innings (even though the finishing was not there) was invaluable when u see the scorecard. We would just not be discussing this match if it were not for the scores of the other batsmen in the team. Only Dravid (10) and Mongia (52) got to double figures.

And surprisingly some (like the author of this article) have compared him with Andy Flower at his best. This reveals another basic flaw. While, on the outset, it is probably fair to dismiss the Zimbabweans as a one-batsman team, the team is full of dangerous floaters (as Douglas Marillier and Travis Friend amply demonstrated last week!) all of whom are capable of 30′s and 40s in any given day. And they do get these runs regularly. So the “exceptional average” of 84.5 % (which he had a couple of months ago) would lose some sheen if you look at the scores of the other batsman. I am sure you would find the above-mentioned 30s and 40s supporting the hundreds made by Flower to the maximum. So it’s unfair to use statistics as a tool to evaluate Tendulkar.

Sidhu might be partly right with his “Statistics are like miniskirts…” statement. But sometimes the hidden stuff makes compulsive reading and convinces us that the open stuff is all hogwash. And maybe the question that has been posed is answered by the usual view that these people put across. “Given his prowess, Sachin does not seem to be able to set up a victory as often as he should”. Where are the other batsmen to sometimes finish what he started?

Cricket is just not a one-man game. If you don’t have another batsman to take guard opposite you, then you cannot even bat. This is not street cricket where sometimes all the players get to bat. I hope every Indian fan realizes this and does not get into any conclusion of this kind. Sachin is just the major piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is the Indian team. Only when all the pieces fall into place, will India win.

Accountability is another factor that the Indian public and more importantly, the team and the selector need to understand. They should understand that “no member is bigger than the team” and that includes Tendulkar too. I think he has realized that. His decision to relinquish the captaincy stems from the realization that he cannot cope up with the kind of hassles that a captain has to face and then perform of the field too. But again this has been held against him too. So what more are we going to hold him responsible for? The Babri masjid issue?

So let’s not blame Tendulkar for not making “match-winning” scores. The difference between winning and losing lies in playing as a team and not as a collection of individuals. And if someone says that Tendulkar is responsible for not the team not winning, even though he has had good stints at the crease, then he cannot be more wrong. If one batsman’s score alone would win a match, I am sure India would be the only unbeaten team around, cause from his first Test to the latest, he has done his bit and would continue to do so until he feels he cannot. Then he will gracefully get off the bandwagon and let India rue the day they asked – “Is Sachin an all-time great?”

This post is not about callipygian features. It’s about allegiances and disappointment, specifically my allegiance to the the Old Lady of Mount Road and the disappointment resulting from reading her newest stable-mate.

There was a point, even after I came to the US that The Hindu was the place I’d go first for my news, soon after I walked into the lab in Ohio. And you could argue that I lost my fan-boy like blind following when I found a report in The Hindu about a “100 days” celebratory event for Saamy.

Then, sometime last year I found out that The Hindu had a new stable-mate. This paper, Ergo, is circulated apparently in an “all-color format” and has been described (on its website) as a free sheet targeted at young, salaried professionals of Chennai initially “targeting the IT corridor”. I found that the web edition had a proper RSS feed and almost immediately I added it to my Google Reader feeds.

Then suddenly, the feeds stopped and started again after a gap of a couple of months.But from the feeds, I think that the content leaves much to be desired. With headlines such as “Nicole Kidman poses nude for magazine“, “Jordan set for fifth boob job“, “Christina Aguilera back in shape” and “Gemma Molloy off to party with Hefner“, it looks like Ergo is positioning itself as a supermarket tabloid or what could pass off as one in Namma Chennai.

First thing, who is Gemma Molloy? Apparently she is an Australian model. And Michael Jordan has man boobs? And Cuba, did you get an eyeful of his Airness’s man boobs when you did all those commercials for Hanes? Oh, they are talking about Katie Price? Whew!

Jokes apart, it looks like most of the entertainment news is recycled trash from TMZ or Perez Hilton. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but what’s the point of doing it in Chennai? What’s the core value that this “tabloid” is shooting for? Dumbed down news to the email forward creating, fast food chomping BPO types? Now that would sound like a sound business plan to my father. To me, going by what I see online, it seems like the editorial team’s priorities are muddled.

I am not sure if Page 3 Australian celebrities are worth newsprint acreage in India. I am not sure even Hollywood page 3 celebs are worth it. Wait, am I wrong? Do people in India really care if Kim Kardashian took a public shower in a bikini top and a sarong, which the people from thesuperficial.com very kindly brought to my attention last week (I have thesuperficial in my feed reader, solely for the illuminating commentary about Amy Winehouse’s skin ailments, honest!).

If recycled trash was the first thing that strikes me, the last straw is this gallery that showed up on the Ergo feed today. It made me do a double take and wonder if this was a feed from Ergo or one of those Kollywood type websites that post publicity photos from movies that never get made publicity photos that almost always show skin. You know, the one’s that make you think later that the pictures were probably from one of those movies that ended up as soft porn?

I went back and looked at the About page and found this line -

The team was handed total editorial freedom, with just two riders: to follow the “rule of the land”; and keep a check on issues pertaining to taste.

Well, there is no law that prevents “galleries” such as the one that I linked above, but I thought it was in poor taste for a publication that is a stable-mate of The Hindu.

The website itself looks like it is still in beta, though a footnote in the About page indicates to the contrary. For quite sometime (when the feeds weren’t being updated), on the main page, the link to their feeds took me to The Hindu’s main page. The section naming doesn’t make sense (Featured story 1 and Featured story 2?). This Podcast link leads to nowhere, though there are podcasts available (there is an error in the WordPress category id used in that link). Frankly looking at all of this, I think the beta testing was a sham and the design looks amateurish.

I would be willing to look past the website because I am willing to make the assumption that this was intended to be an offline till someone decided that they should have a web presence. It is stupid to give the online edition step-motherly treatment, but India being India, I guess that happens.

However considering that the website design is credited to a company owned by someone who is considered by many as a doyen among Chennai bloggers and that the “Editor, Publisher and Printer” for Ergo used to be a notable Chennai blogger at one point (if it’s the same person!), I am appalled.

Even then, if someone tells me that the offline version is better, I’d be inclined to believe. The restaurant reviews in the Saapad subsection are pretty informative, considering that I haven’t lived in Chennai for sometime. The Lifestyle section has had some interesting articles that make for nice light reading. And the Entrepreneurs sub section that aims to bring new business models into the open is a brilliant idea.

So if all of those articles (that I read and appreciated in the online version) found a place in the offline paper, then it is all good. However my visibility is limited to the online format alone and frankly if I were to go solely on the basis of this underwhelming online evidence, Ergo is doomed. While I want to root AGAINST that, I don’t think I will win that bet.

This brilliant picture was shot yesterday somewhere in London. Apparently the photographer used a big flash and rendered useless the Stig’s trademark black visor on this crash helmet. Sadly though, speculation still abounds.

The original black jumpsuit clad Stig was once revealed to be Penny McCarthy, a former F1 driver and tester for a number of teams like Arrows, Benneton and Williams. But after he was killed off in a Top Gun-esque stunt on the HMS Invincible, the white Stig was introduced and his identity has been a closely guarded secret.

Interestingly, British bookie William Hill has offered odds on the identity of The Stig. Former F1 drivers, Damon Hill, Martin Brundell and Julian Bailey have all been mentioned on Stig rumors and have received odds of 4/1, 6/1 and 3/1 respectively. Even current McLaren Mercedes driver, Lewis Hamilton faces 16/1 odds. Oddly even celebrities such as Simon Cowell (yes THAT Simon Cowell) has been mentioned as a possible Stig.

While excitement has spread in the Top Gear forums in the intertubes, BBC has refused to comment on the new pictures. Interesting!

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.

The rules of the tag are: Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

Family: As far as family is concerned, my mom offers the single largest (potential) inspiration for posts on this blog, but I haven’t posted much in this regard. Anyways, as much as I denied it then, this post had its genesis in a phone conversation with my mom.

Friends: I think I will use this keyword as a chance to link to a couple of 55 word shorts. This short is about a short lived friendship. Here is another I wrote about what will intrigue some of my vetti friends.

Yourself: The majority of this blog is about me and my overblown ego. I am tempted to link to some of my “infamous” posts here (tulips/volcano, anyone? Or the silly photo meme?). But I have other plans.

Two years ago, I put up an “accomodation wanted post” that the aforementioned vetti friends hijacked and converted into a post that screamed “Looking for a Significant Other” post. Occupied as I was in my worries about finding an apartment and settling into a new job, I edited that post to make it sound less frivolous. But later, seeing where they were coming from and the fact that it did sound like a matrimonial ad, I recovered the post and put it into a private vault, not wanting to lose anything I wrote.

Until today, that is. So here it is – in an unedited, “directors cut” format, my appeal for shared accommodation in the Parsippany / Rockaway area.

Your Love: I don’t know if people realized this. But I started blogging because of cricket and the fact that Rediff and Cricinfo stopped accepting pieces from guest authors. My posts as a guest author/columnist in these portals were perhaps my earliest attempts at putting my thoughts into paper, barring a few emails that I sent to friends from time to time.

So without my ado, here are my earliest Cricinfo contributions to the Writer in You section -

1. About the continued exclusion of Sadagopan Ramesh in March ’02

2. About the test match at Lords in August ’02

3. Thoughts about the first day of India West Indies test match at Bourda in April ’02.

And my contribution to Rediff as a guest author -

1. Musings about the win at Port of Spain in April ’02.

Apart from these, I’m going to link to a pair of long posts about my favorite cricketing pet peeve – The BCCI. These posts (part 1 and part 2), though a couple of years old ring true even now. I also believe that India needs to look at a core competency model for its selection policies, though positive changes seem to have come through in these past couple of years. And lastly this post about playing cricket with a scientific calculator.

Anything I like: I am romantically challenged, but even then I have a soft corner for this post of mine, a what-if tale of romance, from the perspective of a member of the vehiculum futbolus genetrix family. As I do for this one – about PTC/MTC buses in Chennai.

Another interest of mine is movies, so here are a couple – this post about one of my favorite movies, and this one about the general state of Bollywood. I have also pontificated in the past about dancing my heart out – Here and here. Lastly, I dont think this tag will not be complete without this cooking type post.

But before I leave, I have to apparently tag 5 bloggers whose blogs I love to read. Seems like two of them have to be new acquaintaces. Hmmm, let’s see.

In keeping with the trend on this post, I will cheat and tag 7 bloggers instead. I will tag – Smugbug, Arun, Pri, Megha, DoZ, Missus Em and Max Da Vinci.

A couple of these people haven’t posted recently and that’s never good. So I believe this retrospective look will spur them on. Particularly, Megha, whose latest anniversary post was such a cop out! Yo, Can we get a real post now? And DoZ, if you want, I will look away if you include your posts from Stochastica as well.

There, DONE!

Whew, five years is such a long time. But I am not done yet. Keep coming back and please do leave a comment or two everytime. Thanks to Lekhni for this opportunity. Came at the right time and I can’t think of a better way to usher in a new blogging year.A new template would have perhaps been perfect icing to this cake.But thanks to a brain freeze by yours truly, it was not to be. Ah well. Life’s not perfect, either.

And in other news, I seem to have been tagged again. Guruprasad’s tagged me to write about “non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself”. Now that is quite an impossible task because the blog does not have anything else apart from non-important things/habits/quirks about me and 480 odd posts is a large number to wade through.

In fact I think that this blog’s the single biggest reason that I am still single, because so much dirt on me can be got with a simple google search. So I have decided that I won’t muddy the waters any more. Can you excuse me, Sir?

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.

Lalchand Rajput’s case of “foot in mouth” and the subsequent denial is the latest example. The funny thing though is that almost every one of these media missteps happen right before or during an Australian tour. Is the Australian media to blame? Or is the egoistic Indian cricket administrators the cause?I think its more of the latter. Indian cricket has always been ruled by men with scant regard for the rigours and pressures of the game. Or if they have some experience, these same men seem to be afflicted with selective amnesia once they decide that they want to be an administrator.

Early this year, one of the ad hoc managers who went to South Africa, a man from the armed forces, if I am right, seemed to do a good job and the job of a full fledged media manager was pooh poohed by the powers that be. Perhaps it is time to take this job more seriously. For, never before has the case for a media coordinator for the Indian team made so inadvertently and yet so forcefully.

More here…

My dirty secret is something that will probably earn condemnation from most of my friends. Some will smile and make polite public noises about how it is all fine and yet privately swear off any association with me in the future. Maybe my inbox will be flooded with emails with “WTF” on their subjects. Maybe people that I haven’t spoke to in years will call and pray to get my voice mail because they don’t want nothing to do with me and yet are forced by social pressures to commiserate with my less than perfect life now.

Such is my probable fate, a fate certainly not pre-ordained, but one that I brought upon myself. You see, ladies and gentlemen, I was once a die hard fan of Shah Rukh Khan. And most inconveniently, that piece of history seems to have come back, ready to bite me on my posterior if I don’t come clean now. Because, lately, even with these historical misgivings and in spite of the revulsion that the infamous 6-pack evokes, I have been doubting my decision to disavow any affiliation with the name Rahul and the most (in)famous bearer of the name.

My induction into the Shah Rukh fan-boy circle happened about a dozen years ago. Being a student in a school favored by the Punju and Marwari crowd in Chennai gave me the unique experience of being in a “indhi” group in a city that was staunchly “anti-indhi”. Even though one’s parents were staunchly against any contact with corrupting influences such as movies, one always managed to catch the most recent superhit “indhi padams” via rental VHS camera prints.

It was via one such VHS tape that one first caught a glimpse of Shah Rukh Khan. Baazigar was not his first on screen stint, but it was certainly his best at that time. Soon he had become the resident psychopath of Bollywood. But he also spoke his lines in a manner more befitting an ass, braying his lines again and again when just a whisper could have done the job. Not that it mattered to his adoring fan-boys ((Not sure if murdering psychopaths are “attractive” to potential fan girls)) like me.

May be it was a conscious attempt to establish a strikingly obvious attribute of the kind that set apart the likes of yesteryear Bollywood heart-throbs like Dev Anand, but it was definitely an attempt that hit the bulls eye. Even now, more than a decade later, his lines have gotten so much following that rumor has it that they may have helped people win JAM contests (in Hindi) at IIM(L) ((Sources in the know, please clarify if its true!)).

Then almost overnight, the psycho-boy underwent metamorphosis into the lover boy and the fan girls took over. And the fan-boys tried to ape the lover boy to get the attention of the fan girls. Even in the farming hinterlands of Tamilnadu, we were not free from his influences. So whether the general populace knew Hindi or not, “Kuchikuchiotha aye” and “Dhilthopaakal aye” were avidly watched.

One was so much of a fan-boy that conscious attempts were made to model one’s wardrobe after his. Pastel shades started to find favor and I think at one point, you could see me walking from half mile away with my fluroscent green and orange tennis hats. And then there was the famous “COOL” chain (( It was substituted from time to time by the oversized metal “bling bling” pilfered from a piece of imitation jewellery that been discarded by my sister. But let’s not go into that.)).

It appeared magically on my neck wore it soon after I got on to the KPN bus to Trichy and disappeared soon after the bus stopped at Tambaram on my way back for the holidays. In the intervening period inside the college, the chain was carefully hidden away from prying eyes and let out during opportunities befitting its stature as the “coolest” fashion accessory.

And then one day, it inadvertently popped out in the presence of a teacher, who asked me about it. Embarrassed, I stayed silent, till a girl who was standing by, volunteered to explain what it was. Everyone else laughed and needless to say, the “cool” fashion accessory was rendered un-cool and soon discarded.

I became more discreet from then on and while movies like Yes Boss and Duplicate were watched multiple times, deniability became the name of the game. While privately his antics were enjoyed and aped, publicly I denounced him for taking every chance to hold his hands apart and go “hhhheyyyyy”. Slowly I really became a hater. The fact that he was a Yash Raj – KJo staple made it simpler.

By 2001, when I came to Ohio, the change was seemingly permanent. Watching Devdas cemented the sense that I had outgrown my fan boy status. It seemed like he was incapable of even swatting a fly without the “hhhheyyyy”. And slowly I stopped watching his movies. Movies like Swadesh did not do much to change my self imposed embargo since they seemed outliers on an overwhelmingly negative statistical curve.

Then a couple of months ago someone pointed me to the most recent Shah Rukh Khan soundtrack – Om Shanti Om. Watching Saturday morning desi tv here in NJ, one found out that Om Shanti Om was going to be Farah Khan’s second directorial venture and that Shah Rukh Khan was going to appear topless in a song, and attempt to emulate Salman (and dirty coal miners). Outwardly I groaned. But soon a sense of déjà vu washed over me.

You see, in one of my pseudo intellectual moods a few years ago, I had vowed not to watch Farah Khan’s directorial debut Main Hoon Naa. Mainly because I had heard that the climax had incorporated a chase sequence with Shah Rukh on a rickshaw with the bad guys in a car. However later, when I finally watched the movie, I ended up eating humble pie because I enjoyed the experience so much. And I was similarly confused for months later.

Fast forward a couple of years, I watched Om Shanti Om a few days ago. Now I am torn between pseudo intellectual hatred for what is essentially entertainment and being the fan-boy that is hidden inside me. Through the movie, I was humming along with the songs and laughing out aloud at the gags. I will clarify that I was offended by the “Enna Rascal-a” gag that draws its vibes from the preconceived notions about South Indians that have been established by yesteryear actors like Mehmood. But at the end of the movie I wanted to get an encore of some of the scenes and at least one song ((NOT THAT outrageous “ewww” inducing number.)).

I am confused. Am I going to be ostracized by my friends for coming out the closet as a Shah Rukh Khan fan-boy? Will people end conversations about me with a “not that there is anything wrong with it”? Will that hot Tamil gal who flashed a smile at the local grocery store last week frown and turn her face away this week? Will my already thread bare social life take a turn for the worst? So many questions. So much confusion.

Jokes apart, the biggest question I really have is – while I have been laughing at Shah Rukh these past few years, has Shah Rukh Khan been laughing with me too?
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The circus, my dear friends, has begun. Go and read. And make sure your stomach is empty. I haven’t even started reading and I probably will not have the time to read for the next 12 hours or so, butI have a faint idea that by the time you finish reading, your contents of your stomach would have disappeared in a stream of retching coughs.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

- Anton Ego / Peter O’ Toole (Ratatouille, 2007)

One of my pet peeves has always been bad reviews and their reviewers, be it for movies, books or something else. And this line just stuck a chord with me. Reviews and reviewers are bound to be judgmental, but I can’t stand reviews that give away plot details, even if it is with the usage of a single word.

For example, I read a “opinion piece” about the last Harry Potter book recently that managed to divulge a key Bollywood-esque plot twist that had confounded readers since 1997. All that was needed was just one single phrase. And it is funny that that this so-called “opinion piece” came exactly 2 days after the release of the said book, which makes me wonder if the law should prohibit all “opinion pieces” about books and movies till a few months after the release, giving people enough time to form opinions of their own.

My response to the said piece was to ask for the inclusion of a “**spoiler alert**” warning on top of the piece, which went unheeded. Am I the only reader who knew what “unrequited” meant? Or am I the only one who put two and two together?

And then a few days later, I think, there was a “review” of the same book on the same website. And again, with the use of a single phrase, another plot detail was given out. My response to that review would have been the same as the previous one – a plea to include a “**spoiler alert**”. But the futility of the action just forced me to remain silent. But, after I completed the book, I realized that the use of the phrase was questionable.

These are but two of the recent cases that I have come across. I don’t claim to be a reviewer of note. In fact, there are a few reviewers that I absolutely idolize, e.g., Ebert. DoZ swears by Lane, but I don’t subscribe to the New Yorker, so I haven’t read much from him. Our very own B. Rangan comes close, but I have wondered if some of the movies that he as reviewed recently deserve the positive notes that he has sprinkled in about them. Seriously, Jhoom Barbar Jhoom and charming? But that brings us to the other point. Reviews are but the personal viewpoints of the reviewer. So I would never dare to question Baradwaj on his views.

I don’t typically question reviews because I have a choice. The fact that Variety called Marigold “charming” or that Baradwaj Rangan trashed it makes no difference. I still wouldn’t see it because the sight of Salman Khan always brings to mind that old Hey, I know you. You are the tellaphone man line that has left me totally scarred. I know the Krishs and the Dhooms are crap, but I still saw them. Either because it is totally a personal perspective or I am forced by association to go along with friends to ensure future company when I need it. Like I said, I have a choice.

So, I am sure you are wondering what I am doing here ranting about bad reviews, when I have a choice. Of course, like always, you have a valid point. But I do have an excuse. My feed reader, that’s what. Most of the time, I am deep into a post when I realize I have read too much.

So, my friends, bloggers and reviewers, next time you decide to write a review or blog about something you have read or seen, don’t worry about telling me that the subject sucked. Or that the subject rocked. I don’t care. But please do refrain from describing the subject minute by minute or word to word. As Ego writes about Remy’s cooking in Ratatouille, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. So, don’t make make it worse divulging plot details.

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.

I do agree with Su when she questions the attitude of Chennai nightclubs and their refusal to play Tamil numbers even if the majority of the crowd (in this case, almost the whole freaking team that was responsible for the original numbers in the first place) requests it. On top of all this, I think what Su went to, was in fact an “invitation only” party. Sad days indeed, if the guests at a private party don’t get what the hosts paid for, i.e. a good time!

I get pissed when I hear migrants from North India complain about the lack of a social life and a club scene down south. Let me put this question out there. If the few clubs that are there, (by playing only English/Hindi/Punjabi numbers) refuse to cater to the locals, why would the locals come to these clubs? If the locals don’t come, would the business model even work? I think with a major attitude change, Chennai clubs can attract more locals and therefore make their business model attractive enough leading to more clubs entering the scene.

I know that the culture police is out in full force sometimes, but if the majority takes a stand, would the culture police be feared as they are now?