Opinions of a young Indian

                                      It always hurts to see our country lose in any sport, perhaps even more when the sport is cricket and certainly the most when the occasion is as big as a World Cup semi final. The semi final defeat is indeed heart braking considering the Indian team’s skills and their supremacy all through the tournament. As a true cricket fan and being someone who is utterly dejected after India’s World Cup exit, I might obviously be tempted to pen down my thoughts about what went wrong for the team and to share my opinions according to my understanding of cricket. But for that I guess there are already enough discussions going on in which numerous factors are being debated upon with thorough details. I would rather write about something that I felt with every passing over of the match and the feeling got stronger with each step that the New Zealand team took to b...

The retirement of Yuvraj Singh has come as heartbreak to his millions of fans who wished to see more of this charismatic batsman at the International Level. However, all good things come to an end and so has Yuvraj’s career. To put things in perspective, it would not be an exaggeration that only few players have had such an impact on Modern Day limited over batting like Yuvraj Singh has had during his career. He rather added new elements to white ball cricket- developed a form of exquisite batting in middle order orchestrated with some beautiful stroke play achieved with superb timing and excellent hand eye coordination.   Yuvraj was indeed a gifted player. He had that X- Factor- an aura that made him different from other batsmen of his generation. Something that really set Yuvi apart was his fluency and his positive attitude towards batting. He had an amazing knack of consistently finding the fence or even rotating the strike depending upon the situation. For most p...

         With the biggest show of cricket on earth underway, the excitement level of ardent cricket fans like me is already soaring. We are looking forward to a great tournament and some spectacular display of cricketing prowess over the next month and a half in the birthplace of cricket. World Cups are always special and here in India Cricket World Cups have the potential to literally halt the nation. So my earliest world cup memories go back to the year 2003 and I am sure many of the people of my age group would agree with me on this. You always need something massive, something important or some fascinating connection to develop an interest in any area, particularly in your young age. Cricket WC 2003 gave that spark to most cricket followers of my generation. A spark that turned into devotion and has since resulted in our endless love and passion for the game. The tournament in itself was special, memorable and hugely popular ...

A great statesman once famously said “Today our government has lost the vote of confidence motion by just one vote and the Congress Party is mocking us…but the Congress should never forget that one day we will form government in the entire country and people will be mocking the Congress party”. Late Mr. Vajpayee was absolutely right. This was not just the agony of the moment and he knew very well that Indian politics can be highly generous and can be equally merciless. It has been just a couple of decades since then and we see how the tables have turned. So here we have it…the 'Great Indian Political Blockbuster 2019' comes to an end. The Indian Game of Thrones - as they love to call it has finally culminated. It was a hard (read fiercely) fought battle. It had all that a blockbuster should have – its share of emotions, drama, comedy and even action (you know which state I am talking about). A lot was at stake- political careers, survival of political parties, r...

I have been writing on quite a few issues of late. I mostly have a very clear point of view on the happenings of the country and find blogging as a good source to express and share my opinions. But sometimes the course of events is so disturbing and there is so much agony that it perhaps gets difficult to write it all in one article. Today, I feel exactly the same. There are so many emotions that I do not understand where to start from. We are a country that has traditionally given women the status of Goddess. But what we are seeing happening in different parts of the country has literally shocked me as an Indian citizen. I often feel sad, upset and angry on a lot of things about India, but today, more than all of this I am scared. I am scared for my sisters, in fact scared for all the sisters of India. I don’t know where we are heading towards and whether we could ever give them a safe society to live in. These heinous crimes have indeed got various perturbing interpretations. ...

In spite of all its loopholes and ambiguities, we Indians by and large have a strong belief in our judicial system. Often in times of distress, controversies or administrative inefficiency, it is the judiciary that provides us respite and comes up with a solution in the interest of the nation, thereby monitoring the other organs of the democracy and truly justifying the faith which the citizens of this country show in the law. One of the most talked about and anticipated verdict coming from our courts in the recent times has been that on superstar Salman Khan. So Salman ‘Bhai’- as his fans call him, after a long long trial of 20 years has finally been convicted in the Black Buck hunting case of 1998 and has been sentenced to a five year imprisonment. As has been the case with our country, in a case that took a couple of decades for the verdict, the convict ironically took hardly 48 hours to get a bail. Anyways, these are legal procedures and although they often surprise me, honest...

So our Under 19 Cricket team has made us all proud by lifting the World Cup and we as cricket fans just cannot get the enough of it. It goes on to show the robustness of our cricket infrastructure and has reinforced a strong belief that Indian cricket has a very bright future ahead with a large pool of immensely talented players eager on making a strong impression on the world cricket. Days after the triumph, the BCCI announced cash rewards for the team and the support staff as a token of appreciation and for further motivation. The head coach Rahul Dravid was given 50 lakh rupees while the team members got 30 lakhs each and the other support staff walked away with 20 lakhs each. Interestingly, Rahul Dravid was unhappy with the reward allocation. As humble as he has always been, he felt that there should be no disparity between cash prizes for the team and its support staff as everybody had worked hard equally. And this is not the first such instance. From the time Dravid has st...

Few days back, I was just going through news headlines when I came across a report that mentioned heavy snowfall in parts of USA resulting in a huge damage to life and property. I started wondering how America has become a superpower in spite of all the adversities- unfavorable climate and lack of certain natural resources. And why is India, despite such abundance of resources and propitious geographic conditions, still lagging behind? Well, I perhaps got the answer the very next day when I came to know of the Koregaon Bhima violence in Maharashtra. To be frank, we all know this answer, don’t we? We know very well where do we lag and what has hurt the development prospects of our great country all these years. Incidents like Maharashtra violence are just strong and embarrassing reiterations of the unfortunate state of our country. On going deeper, I came to know of the history of the Battle of Koregaon Bhima, the significance of the date and the prominence which the place and th...

The speculations are over, the chaos and noise has finally ended and the all important verdict is out. The Gujarat Vidhan Sabha Results are finally in our hands and the ruling party BJP has won a consecutive sixth time, thus retaining its bastion in the state and reiterating the strength of saffron in the present political scenario. However, there is much more to this mandate than is visible on the face of it. This win in Gujarat, a state which has traditionally been a BJP stronghold, was not a cakewalk for them this time around. Unlike most of the recent elections, the Congress looked like posing some serious challenge to the incumbent BJP thus making Gujarat elections one of the most hard fought and exciting electoral contests in the recent times. So what were the factors that were playing on the minds of 6 crore Gujaratis when they went out to vote? Firstly, as is quite visible from the result, there was a significant level of resentment against the ruling state government,...

In cricket there have been numerous good innings, there have been certain great innings and then there have been rare acts of sheer single handed domination. What Rohit Sharma did at the PCA Stadium of Mohali on Wednesday was undoubtedly an act of domination and mercilessness on the Sri Lankan bowlers. In the process, he went on to become the only batsman to score 3 double centuries in ODI’s (in fact he was the only one to score 2 of them).   The fact that there have been only 7 double hundreds scored and one man having scored 3 of them shows what this man is made up of. Rohit’s career is a perfect example of focus and persistence. Like most other successful sportspersons, Rohit has been through difficult times in his career. As is the case in Indian cricket sometimes even highly talented players fail to solidify their place in the team. Same was the case with Rohit. In fact, having made his ODI debut in 2007 it took him about 5 years to cement his place in the Indian playin...

Understanding India is extremely difficult. It has been thousands of years, and there has certainly been no fixed pattern identified which meticulously defines the Indian mindset and behavior. Such incredible is the diversity and heterogeneity of our country that you can hardly predict which way the things are going to turn. When Sanjay Leela Bhansali would have thought of making Padmavati, perhaps he would not have thought of the tremors that the movie is going to create prior to its release. Or even if he had given it a thought, he probably underestimated the extent of displeasure that the movie would face. This is indeed getting out of hands now. I do not get a very good feeling of all that has unfolded in the past couple of weeks regarding this controversy. And let me make it very clear why. Firstly, let me strongly emphasize upon the fact that I am strictly against any form of distortion with the historical facts and misrepresentation of the rich legacy that we have inher...

The Supreme Court has revisited its much talked about decision taken last year which ordered playing National Anthem in all cinema halls across the country. The Court feels that standing for the National Anthem is not a measure of patriotism. It is now for the Central Government to take its stand on the issue. Whatever the course of events are, I feel it is time we talk about patriotism and nationalism and get a clear idea of what can actually be called as ‘Anti National’. I remember reading an anecdote long back about an incident in Japan. There was a thief who had entered a house. The owner of the house played the Japanese National Anthem and the thief stood in attention which gave the security guards enough time to catch him. Later on, the thief was praised for his patriotism while the owner was found guilty of insulting the National Anthem. Among many other interpretations, one thing which this interesting story prominently tells us is that Patriotism cannot be forced- it ha...