Pakistan - A Sporting Nation No More...

Umar Akmal is not the best wicket keeper in his country. Hell, he is not even the best wicket keeper in his family! Why in God’s name would Pakistan, therefore, choose him to keep stumps in a crucial World Cup tie against India?

Nasir Jamshed averages an incredible 102 as an opener against India. Why, in God’s name, would Pakistan sideline him and opt for the ageing warhorse Yunus to open the batting??

Asif and Amir already stood banned for spot fixing in 2010 (surprise, surprise, Salman Butt now confesses to the crime!), Ajmal has been banned for bowling like a baseball pitcher, Hafeez and Junaid were out due to injury.

So Pakistan was already on the backfoot. Then they go and shoot themselves in the foot through selection blunders! Had they lost the match even before the first ball had been bowled?

Yet, when India seemed to lose their way in the last few overs, I shuddered.

“We’re thirty runs short,” I told Sid, “they’ll make it!”

“Not a chance!” he dismissed.

“The pitch is flat” I warned.

“It’s two paced” he said.

“Our bowling is weak” I shook my head.

“Their batting is even weaker!” he countered.  

His confidence in their penchant to self-destruct was unshakeable!

As things turned out, he was spot on. Pakistan committed hara-kiri as only they can. From a comfortable 90/1, they went to 100/2, then slipped to 104/5! Sohail, Shahzad, Maqsood and Akmal left in the space of a few overs.

The firecrackers in Karachi, as the Star Sports ad suggested, would have to wait another day.

In the sixties and the seventies, Pakistan was the cynosure of all eyes in the subcontinent. Their GDP was way higher than India, PIA was among the best Airlines in the world, and they justifiably preened themselves as our rich and glamorous neighbours.

The old PIA ad

The liberals in Pakistan today wax lyrical about those `good ol’ days’. They post old black and white ads of PIA on Twitter, showing smartly dressed stewardesses, frolicking hand in hand with the male cabin crew, and no eyebrows were raised. Glory days indeed!

On the sports field too they were way ahead. Of the top five squash players in the world, as many as four were Pakistani! Their hockey and cricket teams were world beaters as well.

On the ‘79 tour to Pakistan, Bedi’s India was roundly thrashed by Mushtaq’s Pakistan. Zaheer Abbas, with his silken artistry, had single handedly drafted the obituary of India’s famed spin quartet.

And they were gorgeous, boy were they gorgeous! From Fazal Mahmood to Imran to Majid to Sarfaraz, they were all Greek Gods!

Then Muhstaq went and ruined the moment by declaring “Muslims all over the world will be thrilled by our win!” I was astounded. Didn’t that jackass know that there were more Muslims in India than in Pakistan??

I think that one sentence summed up everything that went wrong with Pakistani sport. And in a sense, Pakistani sport became a just metaphor for the Pakistani nation. That’s when things really started going south.

PIA became `Please Inform Allah’. (To be fair Air India, at `Already Informed’, is no better!)

Today, while India is the fastest growing economy in the world, Pakistan is still struggling to come to terms with its `Muslim’ identity.

And Mushtaq, sadly,  wasn’t the only one. Years after his asinine comment, Shoaib Malik, who I cringe to refer to as India’s `son in law’ (Sania Mirza, seriously, what were you thinking?) remarked before a match that Pakistan was bound to win because Allah was on their side! The fact that they then went on to lose that match was probably because of the three Muslims in the Indian side!

There was a time when Pakistan’s sportsmen came from Aitichison College Lahore, or Oxford. Today they are picked off the streets of Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Sialkot. They come from humble backgrounds, lack basic education, have no access to the lucrative IPL, and so fall easy prey to temptation or worse, radicalisation.

Eight of the players in the current World Cup squad are fined 300$ each for breaking the curfew. News just coming in speaks of Afridi, Ahmed Shahzad and Umar Akmal `misbehaving’ with the fielding coach, and the chief coach Waqar appears to have his hands full.

 

Yousuf Youhana (Joseph John) becomes Mohd Yusuf, grows a beard, swaps his `cross’ sign for a `dua’ in the hope that he will get to captain the side. Inzamam makes namaaz compulsory for the players, in the middle of the Lords ground, mind you! No wonder they slowly drift into the tableeghi fold.

In Sri Lanka, Ahmed Shahzad guarantees a place in Heaven for Dilshan if only he converts/reverts to Islam.

Surely Heaven can wait. Shouldn’t he try and win the World Cup first?

Today, no country tours Pakistan, and they’re forced to host their `home series’ in the UAE!

In a country ravaged by terror and internecine warfare, power cuts and dharnas, eleven men in `water melon’ green, playing cricket ten thousand kilometers away, offer the only hope for any cheer. Sadly, those men aren’t playing ball!

PS – Both Sid and I used to be fervent Pakistan supporters, but the behaviour of the Pakistani hockey team at the Champions Trophy dented that considerably.

  

Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie!

Cat chases mouse. Mouse outsmarts cat. Mouse slips away. Always and EVERY time! Cat never ever catches mouse.

Substitute Elmer Fudd for Cat. Replace mouse with rabbit. And lo and behold, the story line is the same.

How long can you stretch this theme? Apparently, forever! Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny have been among the most successful cartoon franchises for longer than I care to remember.

My brother, all of 67 years, still watches them, still guffaws in glee! Me, I stopped watching cartoons even before I grew facial hair! Ok, they’re now called Animated Films, and, along with my brother, Pixar and Disney are also laughing – all the way to the bank!

Ok, so what makes a good cartoon?

The first requirement of a cartoon, the sin qua non of course, is that it evoke mirth. It be funny. Even if you don’t actually guffaw or ROFLOL, it simply MUST raise an odd chuckle, or at the very least, bring a smile to your lips. Right?

The next requirement is that it be subtle. It should poke fun with the delicate touch of a rapier, rather than a sledgehammer. No place for slapstick or tomfoolery. None at all!

Also, it should be in good taste. Lavatory humour should stay in the lavatory.

Lastly, it should not be offensive. Of course this is totally subjective, in that one man’s food is another man’s poison etc, what is offensive to me may be side splittingly funny to you. But suffice it to say that all grey areas must be avoided. There’s plenty to poke fun at without stepping on anyone’s toes!

Viewed in the light of the above, do Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons pass the test? An emphatic NO, the more emphatic the better! They are downright vulgar, in pathetically poor taste, extremely offensive and evoke only disgust – with nary a trace of humour anywhere!

I could point out the link where one can view them, but believe me, they’re disgusting and SO not worth the effort! 

Believe me, I have seen graffiti on the toilet walls at Fergusson College that was more artistic, had better taste and was way more hilarious! My favourite being the one-liner some genius had scribbled  `Yahaan jo bhi aaya, gaya haath mal ke’.

Michael Angelo's David

Of course there have been geniuses who have caused offence. Michael Angelo’s nude David, or his fresco The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chappel raised a lot of hackles, and even brought the nature of his own sexuality into question.

Nearer home, Hussain’s depiction of Hindu Goddesses in the nude caused the sort of reaction that exiled him to Dubai.

But these are works of genius. I am tempted to include Rushdie’s `Satanic Verses’ in that category, but good friend Samina will wring my neck and hang me out to dry!

Charlie Hebdo’s nonsensical `satire’, on the other hand, never rises above gutter level. Along with the abominable YouTube movie `The Innocence of Muslims’ it ranks as the most asinine piece of garbage ever churned out in the name of free speech.

But would I kill the cartoonists for their rank bad taste? No matter how offensive I find them? Most certainly not! At best, I’d dump the magazine in the trash can where it belongs.

Free speech is a myth, and all the brouhaha surrounding it is pure bunkum! No freedom can ever be absolute. Will free speech allow a man to yell `Fire!’ in a crowded theatre, and cause a stampede? With freedom comes responsibility.

So the groundswell of outrage and protest world wide, the million strong rally at Paris, that had over 40 heads of state in attendance, was basically a protest to allow people to print the vilest of garbage without fear of life and limb!

Or is it a protest against any form of radicalisation, a cry for reform within organised religion, particularly Islam? That I can agree with, but not at the cost of basic decency and good taste.

The latest cover

As if to remove any lingering doubt from any of our minds, the very next issue of the magazine again had a terrible caricature of the prophet Mohammed on its cover!

So no, as the title of this piece says, I am NOT Charlie!

It was Voltaire who said `I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it!’

He probably hadn’t seen Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons!

Frankly, My Dear..

I don’t do New Year Resolutions. I don’t do Resolutions, period. I made an exception on 8^th August 2011, the day I officially turned senile, the day I `sathiaoed’.

I had spent six decades, `giving a damn’ to people/things I shouldn’t have bothered about, while overlooking people/things that I should have. It was time for some course correction.

I wrote my first post `Resolutions at 60’ on `Mitti Pao!’. Basically, the now senile Harish Puri resolved to:-

·      Stop believing that the world revolved around his magnificent aura

·      Accept that life didn’t have an Undo key

·      Junk all unequal relationships

·      Make his days count

Now, three years later, I realise that I had not verbalised the most important of them all – to stop giving a damn. The world is full of idiots, and most people are not worth the trouble.

The problem is we spend our lives `giving a damn’ about far too many issues, and then feel outraged, angry or cheated when things don’t go the way we want them to.

Reserve your `damns’ only for things that really matter. Family. Friends. Purpose. The New York Cheesecake. The occasional heated argument or two.

But that’s easier said than done. Life has far too many trivialities and unimportant dramas that suck us in, and steamroll us into becoming inveterate `damn givers’. And boy, are we screwed!

So-and-so said such-and-such about you. Really? Aisa bola?? Salay ki toh main.. Your BP sky rockets, you picture dark and forbidding scenarios involving Mr so-and-so, and if he has really pissed you off, his mother and his sisters as well..

We live and die by the side notes and the distractions and the vicissitudes of life that simply don’t matter. We must learn to shrug. Learn to say `I don’t give a damn!’ Or a rat’s ass, Or a f@$k. Take your pick.

By no means am I saying `Be indifferent’. Indifference is bad. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Just know who are the people you really care about, and who care about you.

The rest? Just stop bothering about whose toes you’re stepping on, or who you’re pissing off, as long as you’re convinced you’re right.

If you find yourself consistently `giving a damn’ about the trivial shit that life is so full of – a silly pique at one of your posts, how quickly the battery dies out on your new iPhone, how Homeland-4 ended in a damp squib, chances are there’s not much in your life worth a real damn anyway.

And that’s your real problem. Not her pique, not your iPhone, and certainly not Homeland-4! (An aside here. Are all ISI agents as hot as Nimrat Kaur??)

When you’re young, you have the energy and the gusto to really give a damn about any and everything. Did that hottie at the other end of the room return your `look’? Why has that PYT replied to your ardent sms with just a smilie? Is she into you or not??

With age come weariness, if not wisdom. You care less and less. Ok, even a smlilie is a response after all.

And once you’re past 60, you probably won’t even look at the phone. It’s probably an equally weary spouse reminding you to pick up the Toilet Rolls from the Canteen.

Sigh..

Lovers, friends or family, I have been `unfriended’ by all at some time or another - people I care about, mind you - for the silliest of reasons. Back in the day, I would have apologised abjectly, if not actually grovelled. No longer. Now, I shrug it off. I don’t give a damn. The loss, I say, is theirs! And it is!

Unequal relationships have been truly junked. Love me, and I’ll love you back. Intensely. Anything else, and I’ll be Rhett Butler to your Scarlet O’Hara. Remember moviedom’s greatest comeback line ever – Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!

2014, Be Done With You!

It’s a sombre post I write as 2014 slips into history. Barely ten of the 162 bodies have been fished out of the icy waters off the coast of Borneo. Another crash in SE Asia, another linked to Malaysia. Not just lives, families stand destroyed.

Yet our hyperventilating TV Anchors are screaming themselves hoarse over the timing of Dhoni’s resignation from test cricket. The media is always like a dog with a bone. Wearily, I switch to CNN and BBC.

Earlier, the horrific massacre of school children at Peshawar. We empathised. My own children have studied at Army Public Schools at Udhampur, Bangalore and Dhaula Kuan (Delhi). I don’t think any event affected me quite as much.

Animals! They shouted `Allah-o-Akbar’ (God is Great) as they mercilessly snuffed out young lives. Lives yet to blossom. How great can your God be if this is done in His name?

Islam needs some serious introspection. Maybe it’s not merely the interpretation that’s skewed. Maybe it’s the texts themselves. But oh, it’s not about Islam, is it? It never is!

  

But there have been positives too. We’ve finally rid ourselves of that Italian waitress and her cohorts who have systematically decimated the country. We have a man with vision at the helm, a firm hand at the tiller.

But he is slow. And we are in a hurry. Soon, the promise that he showed may fade. The economy has yet to get the `animal’ instinct it’s been screaming for. Canon mouth ministers continue to make idiotic statements, and remain unchecked.

On the sports front, our badminton stars did well. Apart from Saina Nehwal, we now have Kashyap, Srikanth and Sindhu among the world’s elite.

We won the Asian Games gold in hockey, thus automatically qualifying for the Rio Olympics in 2016.

But Vishy couldn’t regain the chess crown, are his days over?

On the personal front, we made delightful trips to Singapore and the Andamans. While Singapore had mind blowing 4G speeds, there was virtually no data network in the Andamans. Ah, the facets I notice, it’s a digital world after all!

2014 has been brutal. 2015 can only be better.

`Happy New Year’ messages pour in on WhatsApp. I try to personalise each response. I mean every word.

How do I plan to ring in the New Year? Wrapped up in a quilt, watching TV, I suppose. Age has its downside, sigh! I remember the Dordarshan days where the 31^st December programming was special. Now with the proliferation of TV channels that are indistinguishable from each other, it’s one big mish-mash.

May all of us see a bright and fun-filled 2015! May `Mitti Pao!’ flourish, may love continue to conquer!

New Year Resolutions? Watch this space…

The Champions Trophy 2014

Spoiler Alert. If you have little or no interest in field hockey – yes, it IS our national game – then this post is not for you. Am tempted to throw in a few expletives here, but hell, to each his own, I guess.

Me and my son Sid, we’ve always been great sports buffs. Even as a toddler playing `gully’ football, he’d name himself Platini or Cruyff (Pele was far too common for his esoteric tastes), much to the surprise of my fellow officers. Of course I was proud!

Sid's selfie with Dilip Tirkey

At the first match of the Champions Trophy, he ran into Dilip Tirkey during the half time break.

“You recognised him?” I asked incredulously. “Of course!” he replied, “I even clicked a selfie with him!” I was delighted!

But wait. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Field hockey, our national sport, was for years, the only medal hope for India at the Olympics. Between 1928 to 1964, we won 7 of the 8 Gold Medals on offer, losing only in 1960 to Pakistan. Who can forget the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, where we beat Pakistan by a solitary goal scored by Mohinder Lal. Pakistan piled on the pressure, but the great Shankar Laxman in goal stood like a rock. Incidentally, other than Lal and Laxman, all the remaining nine players of that team were sardars!

Apart from the Olympics, the Hockey World Cup was started in 1971, and the Champions Trophy in 1978. The Champions Trophy has the top eight teams in the world competing with each other, and is naturally a treat to watch.

India was to host the 2014 edition of the tournament at the newly built Kalinga Stadium at Bhubaneswar. Since Bhubaneswar happens to be my sasural, I grabbed the opportunity. Sid and I decided to witness all the matches.

We managed VIP passes, courtesy my wife’s nephew, and were all set.

The eight teams were split into two pools of four teams each – Pool A had Australia, England, Belgium and Pakistan, while Pool B featured Holland, Germany, Argentina and hosts India.

The tournament draw was a bit odd. All 8 teams were already assured places in the Quarter Finals – the pool matches were only to decide the placings, ie who would meet whom in the Quarters.

Strange as it may seem, the two teams who finished at the bottom of their pools, ie Pakistan and Germany, were the ones who met in the finals! Naturally, there was a huge criticism of how the whole tournament had been drawn up, as teams received no benefits from the points earned in the league phase!

Other than India, Pakistan was the team that was cheered most – when browns play goras, we brownies tend to team up!

All smiles after beating Belgium!

While the non-India matches were thinly attended, the stadium was packed whenever India took the field. To hear the 7000 crowd sing the national anthem in tandem with the 15 players lined up in the India blues behind the tricolour is enough to give anyone goose bumps!

India were to meet Pakistan in the semis. We reached the stadium two hours in advance, as there wasn’t an inch of space available anywhere. As the Pakistani greenshirts entered the stadium, there was a huge round of applause, only out decibeled by the roar that went up when Sardar and his boys entered, in their traditional sky blue jerseys.

The SF line up India vs Pak

Watching an India Pakistan hockey match in a jam packed stadium should be on everyone’s bucket list. Sid and I had managed to interact with both teams at their hotels the previous day, and were licking our lips in anticipation.

It was a nail biter. We scored first, they equalised. Then they took the lead twice, we equalised twice. Then, in the last quarter, we did everything but score. Then, to our horror, and totally against the run of play, they scored with barely a minute to go. The stadium went into a stunned silence. The final hooter sounded. We had lost 3-4!

The Pakistani players were understandably jubilant. But what they did next shocked us to the core. While two of them fell to their knees in prayer, the others went berserk. Ripping off their shirts, they screamed obscenities at the crowd, showing middle fingers, and gesticulating as if to say `Ab kyun chup ho gaye?’

In a word, it was disgusting. Shahnaz Sheikh, their coach, had to run onto the field to curb them. He even slapped an over enthusiastic Amjad Ali who was doing something unmentionable.

What a contrast to the last India Pakistan match I had witnessed at Bombay in 1976. Then, the Pakistan captain Islauddin had won 60 thousand Indian hearts when he and the team threw rose petals into the stands! Nobody, just nobody had grudged them their 1-0 victory over Bhaskaran’s Indians that day!

“Pa” said Sid to me as we wound our way out of the stadium “I was all set to root for Pakistan in the finals. Not any more!” he shook his head in disbelief.

In the finals that followed, so roundly were the Pakistanis booed, and so heartily did the crowd back Germany, the Germans felt they were playing in Munich rather than Bhubaneswar.

It doesn't get any better!

That nasty bit apart, we had witnessed a great tournament, seen some terrific hockey, met some of the greats of the game, and came away totally satiated!  

The 2018 World Cup, with 16 teams, is once again scheduled to be held In India. At the very same Kalinga Stadium at Bhubaneswar. Will we be there? Insha Allah!!

Hockey rules! Give me Sardar Singh over Dhoni, anyday…

Ravinder weds Ravindar

“But sir,” the nervous attendant at the Check-in counter stammered, “I’ve already handed you the Boarding Pass for Ravindar Dugal!”

“That was for Ravindar Dugal. Now give me the Boarding Pass for Ravinder Dugal!”

“Sir?”

“Check the spelling” Ravi urged him, nary a trace of exasperation in his voice. He’d been through this before. A zillion times.

But wait. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Sikh names, for some strange reason, are gender neutral. So it’s not uncommon to see a neon lit sign in Maler Kotla cheerfully proclaim `Mahinder weds Surinder’, or a garish `Harpreet weds Manpreet’ lighting up the skyline of Kot Kapura.

Or even in Bombay, as in the case of Puja’s in laws, a card being delivered at your doorstep, reading `Ravinder weds Ravindar’!

Ravindar and Ravinder

Ravinder weds Ravindar, seriously?? You’d be forgiven for thinking that this guy called Ravinder was really taking narcissism to a new level. But no, if you looked closely, you’d notice a minor glitch in spelling. An `a’ versus an `e’. And, if you read the fine print, there was also the case of a `Singh’ versus a `Kaur’ 

Of course this only adds to the confusion. Seriously, what on earth were they thinking?

To come back to our case in point. We had just returned from the nuptials of Puja and Sukh at Ananda near Rishikesh, and were trying to check in at Dehra Dun’s Jolly Grant Airport for our flight back to Pune.

So Ravi was being patient. The check in clerk was a meek, mousy little guy, unlike the beefy, no nonsense African-American female at Newark, with whom the Dugals had had a similar altercation. She had almost chucked them into a flight back to Bombay!

Ultimately, the clerk saw the light, and realisation dawned. His eyes, behind their nerdy glasses, actually twinkled! Relieved that he wasn’t on Candid Camera, he notched this incident up as yet another sardarji joke!

And then there are the highly anglicised Sardar nicknames. All Grewals are invariably `Gary’, and anything ranging from a Harminder to a Harpreet to a Harsimran is automatically shortened to a `Harry’.

Check how their conversation goes.

“Hi Harry!”

“Yo, Gary!”

Having exhausted their angrezi, both Harminder and Grewal immediately revert to their roots in Phugwara.

“Hor kiddan??”

The word `Hor’ in Punjabi is loaded. Punju etiquette dictates that when the first `Hor dasso’ comes up in a conversation, you start looking furtively at your watch. By the second, you raise your collective asses off the couch, and you should actually be well past the door when the third one is uttered.

Don’t get me wrong. I adore this community. Anybody who has spent 30 odd years in the fauj will tell you the same. And now that I have a Sikh samdhi, how can I even afford no to?

But gender neutral names? Seriously?? The confusion is best summed up in the limerick

Harminder wed Sukhjinder in Khartoum

And when they finally retired to their room

They spent that night

In one hell of a fight

As to who should do what and to whom!