Cricket and the rest

I was a very staunch cricket fan in my school and college days...would miss classes to watch a test match,even one between India and Zimbabwe,would watch from the 1st ball to the last without missing a delivery in between.The knowledge of cricket statistics that I had could have been easily converted to an encyclopedia.I could tell you how many runs David Gower scored in the 2nd innings of his 16th test match,could tell you the directions in which Ravi Shastri hit Tilak Raj for six sixers in an over,predicted of a man called Rahul Dravid much before he came on the international arena and till today talk of a batsman called Dhruv Pandav who would have outshadowed Sachin Tendulkar,only if he lived.

I would think of cricket all the time,would dream of it,had sleepless night if I had a cricket match the next day and would cry if it rains.I would consider cricketing statistics as precious knowledge when I was not sure who won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

However,I was not alone in this country; there were tens of thousands of people like me ready to waste lakhs of man-hours on any day India played cricket.Such has been the craze of our people for this game,which for all practical purpose is the National game of India( not hockey).

But, what is disturbing is that our extreme enthusiasm for this game has taken its toll on other sports.Cricketers have become millionaires...nay, billionaires but another sportsman who excels in another game is reduced to penury because his game does not have the viewership.

The problem with our sporting scenario is the inequality of sports.Sportsmen's career are not protected satisfactorily....they should be made financially secure or else sportsman will no longer be talent driven but will become reward-focussed.I have seen players leaving certain form of sports because that game does not pay you even when you are at the top-level....and why not...your bread is more important than the laurels your talent may bring to the nation one day,which will be forgotten in no time.
India has to seriously think on this concept of 'Equality of sports',otherwise the country of one billion people will at best, continue to aim at only one gold medal in the next Olympics,too.

Of Relationships and Control

Out of the myriad reasons,that causes breakdown of relationships, one commonest that I have observed is our undue exercise of 'Ownership Right' on people who are close to us. We often try to control the people who are near and dear to us.... be it our spouse, children or even friends.....decide on what they do, what they wear, with whom they make friends etc. without realising that such acts of control comes much at our beloved's chagrin.
We are born alone and will die alone.All these relationships are farce. Nobody actually belongs to no one. Even the phrase that we often say'My Body' reflects that we are not our body..we are an entity seperate from our body...an entity more intrinsic than the body...an entity which we call the 'Soul'.
However, to pass this 80 years of being part of a body,we need a lot of things-health, wealth, good parents, good children, good friends....the list is endless and when we go,we take none of these.
' Man is born free but always remain in chains'.Often these chains have come up from people who are our own but who try to dictate us terms,who try to impose us 'Do's and Dont's'....and these very acts of control have often proved to be the apple of discord between two close people.

The Animal In Me

Making me a vegetarian,would be tantamount to converting a leopard to a herbivore....such is my taste for non-vegetarian food but something within me says its wrong to kill, just for the sake of eating. We love our pet and on his trivial suffering our heart aches, we run frantically for the vet. but for another animal we would issue the execution order to the butcher,not at all bothered what pain the animal must be going through.
I really feel bad when I write this article because this one proves that I am not someone who practices what I preach. Have I become such a compulsive non-vegetarian that I can't change inspite of believing that its wrong to kill?
We kill hundreds of lives to celebrate a marriage and we call it auspicious......our mind justifying all the wrong things we do. We, human beings are the most intelligent lot but are not the best or the kindest. We are as brutal as any other animal. How are we different from the other wild animals like the lions and the tigers?
The only answer is we cook.......they don't.