India Beyond Cricket

India is world champions in the 20-20 format of cricket....... WOW, everyone will always remember who won the first world cup of 20-20 form of cricket. Great. All congratulations to the winning team.

Secularism has been one thing impacting my views since childhood. I feel strongly that all religions should be treated equally. To generalize all equal things should be treated equally, so is it with sports. But do we treat sports equally? Definitely not. Being the Hypocrite that I am like many of my fellow countrymen, I do say that well there are more sports that we should look to and not restrict our reach as well as reach of the younger generation to just a few games. The sports that earns the maximum money spends the most in publicity and hence are famous. Simple economics plays its part here too. But that keeps many of the other Heroes, whom I think are as great a sportsman as Yuvraj Singh in their respective field, away from the adequate due appreciation and adulation that they deserve.

I gave it a thought and tried to pick a few sportsman whom I have not known so well before but feel that they have made remarkable impact for India in their sports in recent times. So here are a few games and a few more heroes to be applauded.

Car Racing

While most of us sitting here were cursing India for losing to Newzealand on 16th of September 2007 in a crucial 20-20 match, there was a happy man standing on the podium of the famous Spa-Francorchamps circuit, tears flowing down his cheeks as he was proudly standing straight, with a head held high, listening to the tune of Indian national anthem being played for the first time for a GP2 Series winner. Karun Chandok was the man of the moment. He made his father's (Vicky Chandok, a Motor Sport Veteran himself) and many others' who are looking at car racing as a career, dreams come true. A true hero, appreciated even by Alonso, was missed back in India for that was the peak 0f 20-20 world cup.

Archery

While the people of the country were looking at the awesome performance of RP singh and Rohit sharma snatching the match from the home team South Africa, there were a group of archers in China fighting to get a spot and qualification for India in Olympics 2008 . Archery has been traditionally the sport of Tribals in India, but recently a whole lot of non-tribal youngsters has been making waves in the world archery. India had to qualify for the Olympics 2008 in archery and the whole effort had to be put in by group of 3 archers, lead by Jayant Talukdar, Tarundeep Rai and Rahul Banerjee. South Korea were the favourites to win the gold and chinese being the host nation had an advantage in itself. Malaysia came up with an upset beating South Korea in the semifinals while India went past the home team China in a nail biting 220-214 win. In the finals on 20th It was even more closer as India beat Malaysia 222-219 to win the men’s recurve team gold at the Asian archery championships. Surely this is a sport to look out for in Olympics for Indian sports fan.


Billiards

After the impressive array of sportsmen like like Wilson Jones, Michael Ferreira and Geet Sethi comes the name of Pankaj Advani. One of the finest billiard players in the world today. Winning many different championships across the world, he is one of the only 2 players to have won both the billiards and snooker amateur world titles.

While the cricket fans were watching a treat of a match between India and Pakistan which led to the first bowl out of a 20-20 match, there was a man standing over a cloth covered cushioned billiard table in Singapore defending for the first time in his life a world title. Pankaj Advani won that thrilling encounter to defend his title and retain the IBSF World Billiards title. What more could you ask for the person he defeated was also an Indian Dhruv Sitwala.


Hockey

Ofcourse we need to mention over here the Asia cup win that we had in hockey this year, an unbeaten team going on to win over the favourites. There is more to come for sure from this bunch of enthusiastic youngsters. Watch them in Olympics 2008.

Apart from them there are many who not just need to be mentioned but also to be encouraged so that they bring Indian glory in their field of sports. Why dont we fight for Olympics the way we want to fight for Oscars.

Badminton

There are many whom you might remember for this game but I just heard about a truly gifted child Rohit. Though not one of the best India has ever produced and the stories thereafter here is a child who fought his shortcomings to become a true champion in life. He is an inspiration to thousands of deaf and dumb children across the country. A 15 year old Rohit Bhakar, has recently beat the national under 16 champion in badminton thrice. Let us cherish these heroes who have come over a thousand things apart from learning the sports to reach to the very best levels in sports.

Squash

Joshna Chinappa, and Ritwik Bhattacharya, two of the real good squash players who have won coveted British open under 16 and under 19 championships are 2 players for us to look out for. Not to forget the coach for the game of squash who is taking the game to a new level Cyrus Poncha is going to bring India many accolades in the year to come. Saurav Ghosal and Deepika Pallikal are the other two players making it big in their world rankings.

Apart from this there are many in the shooting sports, Athletics, Boxing, wrestling, our own game of Kabbadi, swimming, wushu, Hockey and football whom we need to cheer for them to perform and take India to international glory.

Let us not ignore the world of non-cricket sport which is as important for the country as cricket. Let us cheer our boys and girls , wherever they are and whatever game they are playing.
Let us come together and celebrate the rising power of emerging Indian sports.

Teachers : they are everywhere

Teachers' Day celebration are on and all of us are remembering the days when we were young or the days of college where we had the best days of our life. But is it so that people who have taught us have only been inside the schools and colleges. I think everyone of us have learned from a thousand other things in life.

Well so today, I am thinking of all those teacher's of my life whom I have not mentioned in any of my alumini meets.

The first name that comes to my mind is Victor Hugo, rather I would say the first thing that would come to my mind is a book that changed my view on life "Les Miserables". Lessons that Jean Valjean learns in the novel while going from a Vali to Valmiki teaches you all the lessons without going through it. Every character even "Eponine" a good young girl in the house of villans teaches you devotion at the time of her death. A true masterpiece which can be reffered to teach you things at the time when life is under crisis.


The next group of people that comes to my mind is a set of slum workers who were involved with making Ganesha Idols in Ahmedabad. My house used to be very near to this slums which people of ahemdabad call "Hollywood". It is one of the most stinking and unclean place that I have ever been to. Still, I never saw these people cribbing about the place or the life they were living. In hot summers of Ahmedabad, after a whole day of hard work working on the idols, they used to sing and enjoy in the evening. Their Loud speakers in the night singing Altaf Raja songs was irritating me and disturbing me in my studies ten, but I feel it has taught me that the place that you are in is only as bad as you think it to be.

There are hundreds of NGOs that you might have heard of, trust me, go and see closely the people involved in any of it and you will strongly relate to them and learn that life is a lot more than you. I during my college days got closer to a group of people from an organization called i-volunteer, two people from the team, Rahul and Sujata are those who changed my view and made me more sensitive towards the world around me. Had talked with Sujata many times after that. She was fighting against "Child Abuse" at that time after leaving her job in the a Media company. She was there because she strongly felt about it. What difference being sensitive about the things you do can make is what I have learned from her. Last time I called her she told me, "Jay, I really think these boys and girls want to make a difference. The waters of Ganga and Yamuna are getting polluted every day and we have been doing nothing for this. Tomorrow I am going to put up a small road show along with these guys (the 15-20 like minded people that she might have found) and would like to send across the message to the people everywhere". Lesson "Do whatever little you can to change lives".

Message to everyone on this day : Look around, you will see many teachers moving with their naked little feet on the road, doing the little work of non-existence with the utmost dedication, doing things that goes unnoticed but creates a difference that is satisfying for noone else but them .

Dark horses run faster on a sunday afternoon

Every good thing has to start somewhere.

This weekend was a start of 2 such things for us.

1. we have registered a new flat on our name which is like investing all we have in something.

2. Started taking Quizzing a little more seriously.

Well am writing this blog to talk about the second. It is my wife and wife alone who keeps me pushing for attending all the quizzes and especially business quizzes that happen in the city. I also get to read a few things along with her for her preparation. Atlast it seems it was all for good and am starting i got a good Morale booster this weekend.

This Sunday at Taj Blue Diamond, happened the Pune regional Finals of Tata Crucible. There were about 125 teams which were participating in the quiz and the first round was of prelims where there were 25 questions asked based on which 2 tracks Finalist were to be decided (6 tata track teams and 6 Non Tata track teams). My wife had participated in the TATA track and me in Non-tata track. My Partner, a particularly bright quizzer from my own college and company, Adheer had lost the touch since last 1 year but was far better than what I could have ever been. And he knew many of the prelims answers ( I too knew a few, so there was definitely some contribution from my side too, Thanks to my Abha for all pestering that she has done in last one year).

The prelims were over and started the TATA track immediately after that. Abha and Deepak (Abha's Teammate, very bright and old time quizzer indeed) both started in a wonderful wonderful form and were leading the quiz in the first two rounds, and it was in the last and fourth round that the questions were to be answered on buzzer and they missed it all as the other team from TCS mumbai was very quick on buzzer. But at the end it was a very very good competition where Abha and Deepak were Runners up by a fraction of seconds. A very proud moment for me indeed :). And it was the first cash prize for my wife in her quizzing career. TATA track ended very well.

Abha's answers about the Darjling Tea logo and a Nescafe add were simply outstanding. Deepak worked out Insulin as an answer to a genric brand in cross word in an awesome manner. The other team was very very good but for me they were the winners.

WIth the start of Non TATA track, we were never expecting our names to be called as we had seen some of the best teams of the region around. Infact team 1 and team 2 were called and team 3 (who eventually won the quiz) was savoir faire (who had won the Brand Equity Quiz from the region earlier this year). I was in complete awe of that team and was looking forward to a great quiz when the fourth team called was our. Absolutely unexpected. After our team too we saw a team from Persistent which had been participating in other good quizzes. I definitely thought that we have lost it and we actually did. But getting on to the stage for the first time for a business quiz was an experience in itself for me. And that was a very proud moment for my wife :).

We knew answers to just 3 questions in the entire quiz out of which one was directed towards us ( I could guess the brad advertised and was very happy on that :)). Another thing I knew was TISCROM material was used entirely to make Howrah Bridge. Adheer knew that Date palm from india is Tamar-e-Hind which brings the present day name of Tamarind. Adheer made some wonderful guesses to work out the other questions which I had absolutely no clue about. But in the end we stood 4th with 2 other teams loosing to the 2nd and 3rd team which were ten points ahead of us. Savoir faire did it again this year. They were absolutely amazing.

But the day marked some very good moments for us. and the day shall always be remembered:).

For more details on the contest visit the website of tata crucible :http://www.tatacrucible.com/