1-0

In the mid nineties, I was in middle school. Those were heady days with me trying to understand the relevance of logarithmic tables and whether I would ever get to date Ms Christina, the third standard class teacher. That was also the period in my roller-coaster athletic career when I used to play football. I know it’s difficult to visualize me on a football field but for around three years I was a member of my class soccer team.

My talent was first noticed in the sixth standard by my class captain while I played defence in the annual Students Vs Teachers match. Our school had a devilish custom where every year a faculty versus students football match took place. But the catch was that the student team would comprise not of the best footer players from each class but of people who had ranked first academically! The dastardly scheme was based on the presumption that top rankers were usually athletically challenged. As a result the mostly pot-bellied faculty members would end up looking good and a few of the teachers could then perhaps manage to impress the oh so gorgeous Ms Christina. I apologize for the repeated references. But she is the still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

Of course this plot came unstuck in 1996 when the top rankers curiously also happened to be a bunch of reasonably fit individuals with an acceptable flair for sporting events. Yes, I just described myself as reasonable fit with an acceptable flair for sports. I played defence and our team won. My class football captain and his advisors appreciated the fact that I didn’t wince in tripping the vice principal multiple times and pushed the principal into the mud. They agreed that what I lacked in experience in football, I made up in stupid courage of standing in the way of rampaging over-weight forwards and possessed a deft foot which could make a career out of tactical fouling. In short I would make a decent centre back.

My three year soccer career was not spectacular but it wasn’t a disaster either. I committed an average of three fouls per match and usually got substituted after a half. The highpoint of my career was my last match in standard eight where we were playing the other section in the finals. The match was sponsored by Milo and the members of the winning team would be getting free 500gms packets of Milo. The match was a humdinger with the score tied at 1-1 before our defender Srikanth Gupta let in an own goal. With that we lost the finals and the Milo packets. I decided it was time to move on to cricket. The move would have suited Srikanth better who unfortunately continued in football the next year where he scored yet another own goal in the very first match of the season. Till date he remains the only player in Don Bosco’s history to score two own goals in consecutive matches.

Since that fateful Milo sponsored afternoon, I never played competitive football again. Till a couple of weeks ago. With the world cup on, I was losing tremendous amount of money in the syndicate and beginning to feel that perhaps I have completely lost my feel for the game. The fact that the intra-office Futsal tournament was happening at the same time was a happy coincidence and I signed up immediately for the green team. A big indoor Futsal court in the basement of the twin towers was an impressive setting for my return to the game after eleven years. But the huge turnout from the various departments was unnerving as it meant that I stood a good chance of making a fool of myself in front of half of the organization’s staff in the East.

My team gathered around for a mild warm-up session before our match against the yellow team. We stood around in a circle and kicked the ball around without allowing it to hit the ground. Till it came to me, of course. Without getting into graphic details of my comic attempts at keeping the ball in the air, I will just mention that my team quickly developed a fair idea about my proficiency in soccer. My captain showed his tactical genius by not playing me in the starting five. The match begun and I have to mention that indoor footer with its relaxation of a few of the rules of regular soccer did have its thrill. Though the total game time of just fifteen minutes instead of ninety did seem a bit brief to me.

Our team started well. The defence was solid and the way the team was playing, one could see glimpses of Johan Cruyff’s Totaalvoetbal. But frankly with only four players on the field, every tactic would begin to look like total football at some point. A blistering counter-attack in the fifth minute took the opponents completely by surprise as our team put one pass the goalie. Two minutes later as the referee blew the whistle signalling half time, I began to sense that I may play an important role soon enough. We were two minutes into the second half when the inevitable happened. I was asked to go in.

In view of the really limited time, my tactic was to get into the thick of the things immediately. I was mentally prepared to play defence who often made attacking forays along the flanks. There was no strategic thinking behind that plan. I just thought the whole thing sounded cool. It didn’t take too long for the ball to come to me. After a futile attempt on the goal by our opponents, our goalie passed the ball to me. As the yellow team player charged towards me, I tripped over the ball and almost fell. But this inadvertent move managed to flummox the charging player giving me enough time to pass the ball. The spectators gasped at what they considered an intentionally brilliant fake move. Having had a narrow escape where a dreadful error was misconstrued as a skilful shuffle, I decided to take care as I wouldn’t be so lucky the next time. The best way to avoid messing up with the ball I assumed would be to avoid getting it in the first place. With only four minutes of the match to go I decided to keep marking all the yellow team players but stay out of the ball’s way at the same time. The ploy worked beautifully and I was seen doing a lot of running up and down the court without embarrassing myself. Unfortunately my team management noticed that I was actually not adding any value to the proceedings and I was summarily substituted with a minute to go till the final whistle. I spent a staggering four minutes on court and was proud as hell that I didn’t do anything to squander my team’s slender one goal lead. To cut a short story shorter, we won.

Of flights, tall buildings and convocations

BIA to KLIA

As I woke up last Saturday to find myself flying over the Malacca Straits, cosily nestled in the non-cattle class of MH193, I asked myself a pertinent question which seemed very relevant to me at that point of time. What the fuck am I doing here? Last I remembered, my team mate offered me a vada pao and told me that it wasn’t spiked after failing to convince me that an issue with metallurgical undertones, required my immediate attention. A glance at my forearms gave me a clue. There was a tattoo which read ‘metallurgical emergency’ and another on the wrist saying ‘KL Office’. I rushed to the toilet to check for more and found ‘solve energy crisis’, ‘one month job’, ’Global Credit Card’ scrawled at various areas over the torso. One week later most of those tattoos have made sense except one on the back which said ‘One Chicken McGrill please’.

The first impressions of KL were clouded by the experience of a horrible flight at an ungodly hour with a brutal thunderstorm thrown in for special effects. Why have a 4hr 5 min flight in the middle of the night beats me completely. By the way remind me to tell you the story why the flight length is exactly 4hr 5 min. Interesting are the ways world economies work. The daft timing was supplemented by a cruel coincidence of my VP taking the same flight. His presence at the executive lounge and then in the seat in front of me killed all prospects of a drinking binge I had planned for the evening. Modifying the recruitment process would have been high on his to-do list if he saw me racing against time to finish a bottle of JD which recent events have confirmed is a difficult thing to do.

But I can say that KL is a striking city at the first glance, just like the way Chennai is not. I always assumed South-East Asian countries to be hot, crowded and chaotic like my motherland and I was very disappointed to find KL was not so. I will devote a separate post to the joys and sights of this city and how the ubiquitous presence of vadas, idlis and posters of Trisha in a pink saree made me feel at home.

Level 19, Tower 2, PT.

My excitement about working at the hottest address in downtown KL and perhaps one of the most striking structures made by man was very short-lived. Once I realized my desk was at the measly nineteenth floor and there are chumps working on a further sixty nine floors above me, my ego didn’t allow me to enjoy the otherwise electric atmosphere around the place. Additionaly the fact that my status message on Facebook indicating my new address proved to be too cryptic to get the number of comments to my liking, disheartened me further. Naturally I dismissed the other possibility that people just didn't care.Inspite of RMZ Centennial being relatively downmarket compared to the Twin Towers, I was at least at the top floor there (sixth) and loved talking condescendingly to the poor bastards in the fifth.

A few of my colleagues have asked me whether the office here is better. The feelings are mixed. The space is less and it’s so quiet that I could actually hear myself procrastinating. They have an inhuman practice of shutting the coffee machines at five which is a bummer of a situation with me trying to get used to a 12 hr work routine for the first time. Of course there are none of those weekly mock drills/false alarms we have in Bangalore where everyone has to vacate the office because someone wanted a well-done toast and got a bit carried away. Evacuation from the floors 18/19/20 has their associated complexities. Of course the ladies seem perhaps a bit friendlier here. Either that or I am taking too much caffeine.

The Zen Convocation

I was pleasantly surprised to see this morning that I have been included in the annual convocation for Zen Masters. The invitation to the event can be seen below.(Source: Uss)



As you can see I am nothing less than the presiding faculty himself. I look forward to this event every year and it’s such an honour to be sharing the dais with such distinguished names.

I will take this occasion to impart some ancient wisdom to the students present. For those who failed remember that failure is but a stepping stone to yet another opportunity- to fail again. So watch your step.

To the students passing, if you misunderstood the trips of your faculty members as imparting of wisdom and dropping of knowledge then my best wishes for a future you are completely unprepared for.

For the PhD candidate, I must admit, that was fast!

For a very deserving candidate of the Egregia cum laude, let me humbly admit that it often felt while teaching you that we were on the wrong sides in the classroom. As the ancient saying goes, the greatest teachers are those who feel like a student. So congratulations on a job well done on of making me the greatest.

To the rest of the faculty members, “Arey yeh qualification resume me daal sakte hain kya?”

A New Blog.

I realized that sucking at one is not good enough. Ineptitude should be displayed in an overwhelming and multi-faceted manner. I always felt the need of a forum where I can post these short, crisp reference-laden one-liners/ notions which keep striking me. When I go back and read them, it feels good to remember how I have been thinking at various points in time. Twitter didn’t do it for me though as I wanted it to look the way it looks now. Of course every statement is so vague, pretentious and inconsequential that either it would make me look mysterious and intriguing or a complete pompous jackass. As my credentials in the latter have been firmly established I decided to take this low risk initiative.