The body has it’s demands, no doubt. We work, earn and feed it. We give sex to it. We clothe it, transport it and nurse it when it is ill, though it cures itself. We need it in perfect shape in order to carryout other functions.

Body comes in different shapes and colors. The color of the skin, the eyes, the hair and different shapes of short, tall, thin, fat etc. But the inner organs are uniform for all. You don’t boast of three ears or two tongues! Everyone eats through the front and excretes through the rear, though the shape of the rear is a matter of pride for some species!

It houses the senses and the brain for processing all the inputs coming in through them. We think and act on the basis of these inputs. Every cell of the body develops intelligence and is capable of performing independently.

It grows old, often due to misuse than anything else. But even when it is looked after well, we don’t know whether we are looking after it well enough, but it does grow old.

When it dies it dies once for all. Nothing is recoverable. For the soul they say another body may be waiting but for the body there is no another soul. It is burnt or buried but it never returns.

The biggest mystery is the death because we don’t know when it arrives. The body is totally out of our control as far as death is concerned. Disease is only an excuse but the end is certain and uncertain at the same. We know it is going to die one day but we don’t know when. Diet, exercise and medical intervention only help to an extent. There are hundreds of mysteries inside the body and we don’t know which mystery is going to claim our life when.

Our hopes are our next life, God, heaven and after life. But this life in this body is finished once for all in death.
This is the tragedy of life.

What I have in my drafts
Is what matters the most.
The drafts are unsent and unread
But remain there for ages for me to read

The drafts bear testimony to my life
My broken relationships and my self
The tragedies I can’t share
The tears I can’t shed

When life becomes unbearable
Drafts come to my rescue
I pour out and save as a draft
And my being feels light as a raft

My drafts don’t yield to delete
And remain forever in the cache
My mail accounts keep changing
But my draft folder is always full.

Now is Yuvy a poor guy? The recent triumphs in the world cup are yet to fade from the memory of the cricketing world. His wickets, runs and the Man of the Tournament awards. Is he out of form? Certainly not. In his individual capacity he is still doing good. Still the team he leads lost 5 matches in a row, and are at the bottom of the table, vying for a place with another loser the Delhi Daredevils.

That brings up another question: Is he fit to be the captain of a team?Siddhu brought up a very interesting point in his comments about Yuvy’s body language during the tournament, and he felt Yuvy needs to improve his body language to win as a captain. And I think he is absolutely right.

Now let’s look at Yuvy in the field. He wears the looks of a bored man. Chewing on his gums, and the gaudy coolers on top of his head, he looks casualness personified. As for His attitude towards his team mates he comes across as condescending and arrogant. When a wicket is taken he is in no hurry to go and congratulate the bowler. When a catch is dropped or when there is a mis-field he looks at the offender like he is dirt. He shouts for change of field. In short he looks like one hell of a slothful character on the field. Indeed he needs to improve his body language like hell.

On the other hand look at Shane Warne. I think he is one of the best captains. Notice how he goes and hugs the bowler when he takes a wicket. Look how genuine is he in his expressions. How humble he looks and conveys a feeling of amicableness. No wonder women fall for him!

The message is clear. It is not enough if you are a good player. You need to be a good man to lead and motivate your team. You need to be expressive, lovable and the one who leads from the front.

Is Yuvy poor? Yes he is as far as the skills of a captain go. The same goes for the wooden faced Shewag too. They may be good players but certainly no good captains. If their teams win it would be not because of them, but inspite of them.

You educate the mind for it
You work and earn for it
You eat and sleep to maintain the body for it
What is it?

You have a house to relax and a car to transport the body for it
You go to temples to pray for it
You raise a family to perpetuate it
What is it?

You prepare so long for it That You lose sight of it
You get lost in the body and mind that you forget it
You run around to find it forgetting where resides it
What is it?

You expect your body to house it and mind to know it
The consciousness to find it The ego to conquer it
You think happiness will produce it Your possessions will protect it
What is it?

You grow old not looking for it
And die not finding it
You come again in search of it
What is it?

It is the one which holds all these tools in it
Body mind and consciousness to discover it
That Which holds the whole of universe in it
And your are It.

The files which give me satisfaction are locked away with password
And I forget the passwords quickly
But the files which are nightmare are always open
And they play by themselves as I open the mind browser.

The videos are vivid, play in HD in Dolby sound
Where I fell and got hurt
And where I had some triumph the files got corrupt or deleted by routine cleanup
Bad memories become part of the operating system

I want to format the hard disk of my life
And start with a new operating system
Could some one tell me how to back up my good files and erase the bad ones?
Could anyone tell me how to shut down and restart?

The setting up of the committee and the passing of the bill, will be the first step. What do we do after that will determine the sustainability of the movement.
Are we equipped to do it?

First, let’s understand what is corruption and whether we are on the same wavelength in understanding it.
1. Are we talking only about corruption in the government including the legislature, the judiciary and the executive? Are the press and the private sector are corruption free?
2. Does corruption mean only exchange of money under the table for favors done/received?
3. What are the other forms of corruption we understand?
4. Is corruption the only force debilitating us?
5. What do we propose to do in a corruption-free society?
6. Disproportionate wealth offered by the society for cinema and cricket- is it ok?
7. What is required of us, as individuals, to do, to set right our individual lives?
8. What is the prevailing value system of our nation? Do we border on the frivolous and the shallow?
9. Do we have a system to identify individuals of high integrity to lead the nation, the government or the organization
10. What sacrifice we are ready make at the individual level for the campaign to succeed?

Oh sorry guys, must be thinking I am a mad guy! Well, I was thinking what would have been the headlines had India lost the cup.
Considering the overreaction of the people, press and the media, I am sure this would have been the reaction. And in place of encomiums and gift which are being showered now, brickbats would have been thrown and Dhoni’s house attacked.

It is evident that our nation is immature, and the collective consciousness has to evolve a great deal. Except ourselves and perhaps our equally unworthy neighbors, any mature nation would have moved on. The crores of rupees being showered and surrendered at the feet of the players, apart from the legitimate match fees, only shows our greediness to identify and profit from a chance event.

We never learnt to see a sport as a sport and to take victory and defeat on par. The reason is simple. We see ourselves as underdogs and underdogs we are. Any small victory, as in a sport like cricket which is known only in a dozen out of 200 odd countries in the world, makes us euphoric because we know we are not up to the mark in many areas of life.

No one would be aware of this attitude of ours in cricket, than the cricketers themselves. They did well to keep out of the diplomatic clowning which the two nations indulged in. They resorted to prayers instead of mindless optimism, because they knew things could have gone wrong anytime. My respect for Sachin went up a notch when he said he was trying to ‘access the sub-conscious’ to ensure success. Sachin, and the cricketers seem to know what really matters.

Today a magazine carried an interview of an actress, Revathy, in which she was asked whom would she like to have dinner with and promptly came the reply: Mother Teresa. It was an old interview reproduced by the magazine. It looked like the actress met Mother once.

There was another interview a few days ago of Kangana Ranaut, who wondered why there are no more people like Mother Teresa in the present day. I don’t know whether it was the handy work of the magazine or just a coincidence, there was a photo of Kangana in a provocative dress alongside her pious dialogue. I tried to imagine what she wanted. This is what I saw in my imagination; Kangana is walking on the pavement in her bikini and Gandhiji comes along and politely says good evening and gives way, while mother Teresa approaches from across the road and smiles at her.  By the time she finished with her she spotted Jhansi ki Rani driving and waving. She enters a restaurant and catches Nehru having a plate of idlis…. Sampath, check yourself!

We come across people devoted to virtual figures, who will worship only Gods, read only Bagawat Gita, talk only about people who are dead and gone. Society also encourages such role models to be followed and adopted.

The tragedy of the situation is we think we don’t find such people anymore. We don’t pay attention to people whom we meet and have relationships with. We don’t accept them even if they have Gandhian or Teresian qualities. We refuse to see such qualities in the people surrounding us.

When you succeed in finding a Buddha or a Christ in your own life, the next step would be to find the Christ, Krishna or Teresa within you.

Zen tells you to kill Buddha when you come across him. This essentially means that instead being obsessed with Buddha, you have to find yourself.

Zen was bold enough to say this. We can only say forget them, find them in your surroundings and find them in yourself.

Forget Teresa.

It is indeed true that defeat and victory are common in sports, but to borrow Dhoni’s own words, it is better to be defeated by a stronger opponent than to lose the game, as a weak team. Pakistan was defeated by the stronger Australia in the semis but India lost their matches consecutively in the super-8 matches, because it was weak.

When other teams in the Super-8 were looking skyward, measuring the wind speed, and timing the ball to the boundary for a six, Indian players were looking to the ground, in the same old-fashioned way of a test match, measuring the ground to be slow, fast, spinning, the outfield small. Slow and what not, and hitting the ball all along the ground, except when giving catches, and running between the wickets in the 20^th over! Here I can’t help commenting on the way Gambhir ran in the last match, with the bat held by both hands and ambling to the crease taking one run where there were three! It is hard to believe that he doesn’t know how to run for a run, grounding the bat at least two yards away and sliding in to save time and distance.

But there is no explanation at all for the inclusion of Ravindra Jadeja for the second match, when he had solely contributed to our defeat by giving away huge runs- 3 sixers each in two overs, dropping catches and scoring big zeros. One was reminded of the persistent presence of Ajith Agarkar in the Indian Team, match after match he failed to deliver. Any other member who failed twice would have been permanently out of the team, and I am afraid, Murli Vijay’s would be one such case. He might go the Sadagopan Ramesh’s way.

Contrast this with the performances of stronger teams, which won the matches even when the top order failed; Srilankan and England teams in the Quarters. But the best example would be the Australian Team in the semi finals when the lower middle order rose to the occasion to score 60+ runs in last 4 overs to win the match against Pak. It was one of the best games ever played.

It is silly to talk about the so called brawl in the pub and removal of Dhoni from captaincy. Remember his home in Bihar stoned after he lost a match or something? This is the ridiculous way we behave. What do you do when you are taunted by frustrated fans who ridiculously demand the expenses from the players? I was talking to a top official of the BCCI, the next day of India exiting the tournament and he blamed the team as ‘a pampered lot’! They will come back and win one match and everything would be forgotten, he said!

And so we move on to the next episode of cricketing drama, waiting for it to unfold, to cheer, to blame and praise, to new endorsements and fresh contracts, corruption charges and new IPL franchisees and last but not the least new co-owners and brand ambassadors from Bollywood to wave at the crowds and sign autographs. Long live Cricket!