Finally.... the day has come...

I was never really a cricket fan..until I saw Rahul Dravid play. His innings with team India almost coincided with my growing-up years and for a large part of those years, he was my hero, my first love, my crush, my everything. It was because of him that I paid attention to the game and learned all that I know today about cricket. He was not just an amazingly good looking Banglorean(he was my eye-candy for a large part of my teenage years!), but also a fabulous player and anyone who knew me back in my school and college days will vouch for how aggressive I was in defending him. I hated all those detractors who mocked his style of play and said he was too slow to fit in the ODI style. I felt he had to prove himself over and over again....

But all that has been put to rest. In the past 16 years he has done enough even more than what I think his detractors ever credit him for. He has not just created records, but also earned respect from his team and those on the other side of the fence. Arguments about his greatness may vary, but till date I haven't met a person who doesn't respect him and that is what truly counts.....

Like I had said earlier, he was, is and will always be my hero. I wish him all the luck for a wonderful future..

And to nobody's surprise I have almost gone back to not watching cricket...

I wanna be with you again..

There is something about this song that I just love...
It is a song by French band "The Two" sung by Ara Starck and David Jarre.

Long Distance Relationships and all that...

Back in the day when I was still getting a hang of relationships, I was often told that long-distance relationships do not work. And then why just told? I saw them falling apart all around me like a castle of cards. I remember my college days when a friend of mine rationalized the decision of breaking up because "it is so difficult when you are so far away," and I, forever the optimist and believer in making things work, could not really agree with the point. Then there were my roommates, one in particular, who was on an on-off relationship with her boyfriend mainly because she couldn't handle the distance.

I have had plenty of arguments with all sorts of people: friends, colleagues, random acquaintances and some that can not be easily slotted(I'll just call them people!) and to be honest, though I was still a believer and an optimist, I was losing the argument rather poorly. More people had broken up because of this long-distance thing than had worked on to sustain it.

Then, recently there was a twist in the tale where I suddenly met and spoke with a whole array of people who have and are successfully managing their long-distance relationships, some for as long as 5 years!!

They have proved that if you want things to work, they work and everything else just fades into the background.

Just heard..

Marriage is now a euphemism for Dating...

Looking beyond the war...

A couple of months ago, I read this wonderful book "The Dressmaker of Khair Khana." It was a courageous tale of a woman (eventually a group of women) who survived in the most unreal circumstances by sheer determination, grit and tons of courage.

The book made me think about the life that real people live behind those rugged mountainous terrain shrouded by the smoke of war. In short, the book had piqued my interest in the subject of Afghanistan and its people and since then I have been trying to read, watch and see anything that talks to me about Afghanistan through its people, who still have needs and desires, dreams and hopes just like us.

And in the last one week itself, I have come across this wonderful FRONTLINE documentary "Opium Brides," which I think has drawn some inspiration from the book "Opium Nation" by Fariba Nawa and just today, while working on a story I found this incredible project by David Gill - "Kabul A City At Work."

And I am game for more. Any good suggestions?

Random thoughts..(2)

There was a time when happiness was measured in smiles and laughter, in togetherness and bonds, in moments of uninhibited joy...............

.......And then the times changed and the scales were weighed down by money...

Do we need these reasons to hate?

It is astonishing how man can find a reason to hate. There are so many boundaries, so many man-made barriers, so many differentials that you just get trapped into one of them somehow or the other and get lost in the maze.

As a kid growing up in the times of communal riots, I thought religion was perhaps a great divide and that men fight over religion, even though that is one of the most paradoxical things to do.

Then, as I was debating the idea of religious divide, I was confronted with a land where people's mistrust was rooted in race. So it was not religion, but color and race that became the tools. It took me back to the horrific World War that had the genesis of race-based annihilation.

Eventually, over the years I have realized that men always find ways to discriminate. If not on the basis of religion then color, if not that then language or petty things like caste, creed or the omnipresent status and class.

Are we humans designed to not like people who don't look, talk or feel like us? What breeds hatred? And does everything need to have a hierarchy? Can it not be that all religions, all race and all languages are equally best? (I say "Best" because good has not been good enough so far..)