"Boys you can break..."

"..you'll find out how much they can take,
Boys will be strong,
Boys soldier on,
But boys would be gone without warmth from a woman's good,good heart..
...So fathers be good to your daughters,
And daughters will love like you do..
Girls become lovers, who turn into mothers,
So mothers be good to your daughters too.."

Daughters...sisters, mothers, girls.....women. A delicate breed aren't we? Like spiders silk, we appear slight and brittle, something that needs to be held carefully and cherished lest the slightest jerk  damage us. Yet, just as a spider cannot be defined without the silk that makes his web, our men, our priapic, self-assured, able men, are nothing without a woman's love to complete them. I love how John Mayer brings the frailty yet essentiality of a woman out in his grammy winning hit, 'Daughters'. Its a song whose message and melody has touched my soul, and moved me to write this post.

Now I can already hear the feminists protesting! "Were strong too!","We can take care of ourselves..", "We can do everything just as well!", and so on! And so we can! The silk that a spider so depends on is tougher than it looks. Spiders silk is known to be one of the toughest materials on earth; that is to say, it can withstand a huge amount of strain before breaking. And I know that everyone reading this description right now is thinking about some amazing women they know, who personify this. Women who have risen through unthinkable odds, stretching,bending, doing whatever it took to build a life for their loved ones and themselves.

I was talking to my friends yesterday about how it seems fewer women than men need to release their frustrations through addictive vices, or how many young girls of our generation look up to women role models more. And while discussing this, a thought occurred to me. Behind this facade of apparent invincible inner strength women seem to have,we must remember, we are fragile. We can break. Even as the strongest of webs can be swept away by a careless broom, we women can break if we're treated without the care and respect we deserve.

I remember a Marathi poem that I learned in school titled 'He bandha reshamache'. Very Roughly,literally translated; 'These silken relationships'. Women seem to have a God given natural ability to protect the deep yet delicate bonds that connect them to the people they love. The sheer number and depth of the bonds that each woman typically has tells you a lot about how big her heart is. So here's to all you amazing women out there, daughters, mothers, sisters and friends. You are all one of a kind. And to all the men who have these amazing women in your life, "You are the God and the weight of her world", so treasure her.

I Love Sports...???

I know the question marks at the end of that statement are a little surprising,especially coming from someone who has spent the better part of their last 10 years playing competitive sports. But i guess no matter how much you love doing what you do, there can be some small tiny part of it that you wish was different.

Sports is something that has given me so much. I love being in a team, surrounded by people with fantastic skills and so much to learn from. I love the training involved, physical and mental. I love the single mindedness that the game demands, that every ball demands every ounce of concentration that you have,else you will see the ball disappear somewhere far, far away. This single mindedness allows me to be able to leave everything else behind when im on the top of my mark. Its a different kind of peace of mind. I love the challenge, the elation when the ball kisses the edge, the sound when it grips the pitch slightly when its released just right, the pats on the back when i've got the breakthrough.

So what's not to love?

Losing.

Yes i know winning and losing is part and parcel of the game. But off late it got me thinking. Sports can never be win-win. Its always win-lose. I hate losing, but I accept defeats graciously and pick myself up and get back on the ground the next day. But every defeat is a dream dashed, loved ones let down, hours of hard work proven to be insufficient. Its an incredibly unsettling experience, especially if you have just lost a big match by a close margin.

Some of my friends work in a tough corporate environment, a dog-eat-dog world. I always felt that i would never want to have their jobs, where a step up the ladder means pushing someone down. And then i realised, i'm already there. Everytime i put in an hour at training, not only am I spending it for the benefit and glory of my team, but also spending it plotting the downfall of another. And suddenly I realised, this is a part of sports that I can't bring myself to feel good about. Where when someone has climbed a mountain and touched the peak, someone else, who is trying to climb the same mountain, has to be pushed off a ledge somewhere along the way.

Superstition Vs Sunburn..

So this is for all my friends who have played cricket, and i'm not just tallking about competitive cricket, but any cricket : gully, street, school playground, apartment balcony, Lord's, wherever. All of you will know exactly what im talking about. Its about our little, or not so little, superstitions within the game.

Now dont confuse these with routines. Putting on your left pad first, tying your laces a certain way, or praying before hitting the field are all more routines than anything,even if they do have a flavour of superstition about them. No, what im talking about is more sporadic, and yet something that is seen very uniformly across teams and i suspect across cultures as well.

The reason i got to writing this is that we were very recently playing a match in which something curious happened. Our openers were batting, and the rest of the team was sitting in the spot on the ground which we had occupied the match before as well. Incidentally, the match before was a cakewalk for us, and we were carrying in confidence from that encounter. As the sun began to beat down on us, about half the team moved to a shadier location, and the rest stayed close to their kit bags. Around this time things started going downhill in our chase. what should have been a regulation chase, turned out to be a bit more 'interesting'. Our middle order got some exercise they were not expecting, and our short tail had to pad-up in a bit of a hurry.Although we got over the line, we had our hearts in our mouths for a bit. somewhere in between, our team management called us all to sit together, in the sunny spot, and we fell in without question. Nobody said it, but everyone was thinking, "shouldnt have gotten up in the first place!" Whats a little sun burn when compared to a tension free commanding win eh?

So im asking all of you; my 'cricketer ' friends, who hasn't experienced this? Who hasn't been glued to their seats during a budding partnership? Who hasn't stopped themselves from going to the bathroom even when they were bursting, just to make sure they are not d reason our team didn't get the win? Who wants to make sure that they do everything right, even the silly things, to feel the joy and relief in the end?

Like i said, if you are a cricketer, you know what im talking about..and you are smiling right now, and thinking about the time you chose superstition over a sunburn..

The Differently Abled..

A friend of mine lives life with a physical disability, a handicap if you will. I've seen close up how different her life is from those who are not physically challenged,and how much we take for granted the simple things that we can do without much trouble. Her blog(which is worth reading), got me thinking on the one sided view we have to the concept of a handicap.

Does a handicap only describe a physical or mental disability, or can we stretch the term into an emotional one as well? Take for sake of argument, the popular character Sheldon Cooper from the sitcom 'The Big Bang Theory'. Dr. Sheldon Cooper has full possession of his physical abilities and is gifted with an exceptional intellect, but when his room mate has a loud fight with his girlfriend, Sheldon is unable to handle it and goes to any and all lengths to drown out the fight, even walking out of the apartment, leading his roommate to worry for his safety. Does this inability to be in the presence of two people having an  argument( to the point which it, for that time, cripples his academic pursuits and perhaps endangers his life) point to a disability of sorts?

In a way, we all have handicaps. We are all crippled in some small way or another. Some cannot speak up in front of a crowd, some cannot keep their cool when they need to. Few cannot see the silver lining, few keep looking for a greener side. You will argue that these 'handicaps' are 'curable'. That physical and mental disabilities cannot be remedied without major medical intervention, while my so called handicaps are a matter of applying  some will power and the right support. And I agree with you fully. In both cases, the crux of the matter is acceptance. In both cases, we need to fight like hell, but accept when our inability holds us down, and ask for help. There is no shame in that. Those who see this move ahead in the race of life, no matter whether they can or cannot run.

life in slow motion..

        Anyone who sits at home and while watching the match on their TVs, says "this looks so easy!",should actually take the trouble of visiting a stadium when a test is in progress .Had they been among the crowd and actually seen Fidel Edwards steaming in and digging the ball short,and VVS at the other end nonchalantly pull-flicking it through  mid wicket, they would have come to appreciate a touch more, the amount of skill and precision required to play the game at the highest level and in its toughest format.It is this feeling, this awareness, that only live action can bring, that was awakened within me after a friend convinced me to watch a bit of the last test between India and the West Indes at the Wankhede.I was surprised at the invitation because i had never been to watch a test and somehow had never felt inclined to do so.But i took the chance to erase one more item from my (quite long)never-done-before list and tagged along.And i didn't regret it one bit.It is an experience i would recommend to all those who have played the game, and here i unashamedly admit that there will be quite a few of us who ,like me, never felt inclined.Not just because it is perhaps the best exhibition of the game we love, but because it gives us an idea of how things that appear so simple are in reality extremely difficult.
        We will never get an idea of how fast is fast until we sit in the stands at ground level , perpendicular to the pitch and watch a quick bowler bowl.(A better view is probably inside the batsman's head ;i am curious to see its 'colour' as the bowler nears the crease.)  But it all  looks deceptively simple on TV.We think nothing of the fact that Tendulkar and Dravid can play a short  ball just on off stump down to fine leg with deft wristwork.It looks easy and so it must be.And this is how we think when we are dissatisfied with our lot and look at other peoples lives .We see only the results, and the apparent ease with which they are achieved.we look at their lives longingly and think" if only i had it made ,like they do".We see only the TV view, not live action from inside their heads.This is why everyone must watch a test match live, at least once in their lives, and go home knowing that everyone plays in the real world, and no one does well easily,for there would not be any sense of achievement if it was so.No one lives slow motion, TV lives.The grass is as green as you make it on any side.