“The mobile number you are calling is not reachable.†I am trying to reach Shah Rukh Khan for Marie Claire’s Valentine Special but his majesty’s phone is switched off.
Photographer Atul Kasbekar did mention that SRK’s phone kept beeping right through the shoot and the missed calls and unopened text messages piled up even as SRK fussed with the white shirt that he insisted on wearing with “My own jeans since I have over a thousand pairs. Each time I find the perfect fit, I buy four to six pairs.†Atul suggests nixing the shirt and going with a white T-shirt instead. That does the trick. There is no army of personal stylists spoiling. King Khan is firmly in charge.
]]>The women are taking over.
The thought crept up on me as I surfed news channels over Christmas weekend. In two hours of watching six news channels, I came across only two male newsreaders and lost count of the number of women wielding microphones and lapel mikes. I tried the same exercise with music channels and, sure enough, the female veejays outnumbered the male of the species by a mile. There’s not much sporting action on Christmas weekend but the sports channels, too, have not been spared. Mandira Bedi and her ilk populate the commentary-breaks during cricket. In tennis, the women’s game has infinitely more depth and variety (the men’s game has little beyond the Federer-Nadal rivalry) and, going back to the news channels, one of the best sports bulletins was anchored by a woman.
]]>Mauma, my mother’s grandmother would rise at 4am and about an hour later, our rambling ancestral house was redolent with the aroma of kapi. It lulled you out of bed and invited you to seize the new day, one sip at a time (kapi diem). Mauma made the coffee in a copper kettle and served it in stainless steel tumblers. The kettle and tumblers are to kapi what the kullad is to chai. Or paper cups, green lounge chairs and jazz notes are to Starbucks Coffee.
]]>Let’s go shopping.
Men are unable to comprehend this sweeping, amorphous, all encompassing word. Shopping. It brings to mind images of several dollar bills springing wings and flying away. The kind you see in cartoon films and comics. Except that life is not a comic book and the joke is on us.
A man’s idea of shopping is pretty specific. If, say, we want after-shave, we go to the chemist and pick up after-shave. We don’t decide, upon reaching the chemist, that while we’re here we may as well stock up on ice cream, Alka Seltzer, mints, Aspirin and anything else that catches our fancy (or our hypochondria).
Sure we go crazy at gizmo stores and window shop more than we should. We may even buy the odd iPod mini (and we’ll pick up the pink one if it makes you happy, hon). But gadget stores are the exception in an otherwise sane shopper’s behaviour.
]]>At the tender age of 10, Dravid learnt Goliath was beatable.
What is his most special memory of that day? “After India’s victory, my cousins and I went out and had ice-cream.â€
Ice-cream. Maybe, just maybe, that’s the secret of his by now legendary cool. Through the rise and ebb of the team’s fortunes, through personal triumphs and tribulations, he has stood firm, resolute, unwavering.
In 2003, he crafted an epic 233 against Australia in Adelaide. After batting for 594 minutes, he said the innings would be of consequence only if India won. On the final day of that match, India were six down and looked like choking but Rahul stood in the way, stayed unbeaten and took India to her first win on Australian shores in over two decades.
]]>One billion Indians will tune in 36 minutes from now (this is being written at 10.54pm on Sunday, 4th September) to watch you play Maria Sharapova in the fourth round of the US Open. Never mind that all Indian households don’t have television. Never mind that of the ones that do have television, only a fraction has cable and satellite coverage. Never mind that, unlike cricket, it is unlikely Doordarshan will carry tennis coverage.
One billion is a nice, round figure and we’ll leave it at that. We don’t want to be rational. This is no time to be rational. If rational is what we wanted to be, we would have been in bed by 11pm. We wouldn’t be up watching the fuzzy telecast on Ten Sports. The telecast is pretty poor, Sania. This once, we’ll make an allowance for your black socks. They help us see through the snow.
]]>The first time I sat to write it, India was playing Pakistan at Karachi and the team amassed 349 runs. I abandoned the computer keyboard for the television remote and jabbed away furiously, surfing 100 channels looking for Ten Sports and finally finding it housed on Doordarshan. In the second half of the game, I put a cushion on my lap and my laptop on the cushion. Some three hours later, I heard a faint beep, looked at the cursor blinking on a blank Word document and a red cross on the battery icon at the base of the screen. The game went down in history and I’m afraid my piece, too, was pretty much history.
The Editor let me off with a warning and a new deadline that, alas, coincided with not only a cricket match but with Formula1 in Malaysia. The TV screen and the computer screen, each vying for attention, spun around my head like Schumacher and Montoya whirring around the Sepang International Circuit. After a leisurely Sunday lunch (which was served in the presence of Messrs Afridi, Haq, Razzaq and Akhtar), I bit my nails to the quick as India’s batsmen slumped. Just as I was giving up on the game and the series and returning to the comp, Dravid and Kaif pulled off a spectacular rescue act. India was back in the series.
]]>Ever since he went under the surgeon’s knife for his tennis elbow in May, the daggers have been out for him. There are suggestions, some from past players, that it’s time for Sachin to retire. That he’s not quite the force he used to be. The back is breaking, the heel is aching, the bat is too heavy, the runs are drying up and hey, so are the endorsements.
Criticism, unlike surgery, does not even happen under anaesthesia.
Sachin refuses to take the bait. “I have always preferred not to react. It’s not my nature. My father taught me very early in my career that I must not react and just stay focused on doing my job. He told me that as I go higher, some people will try to pull me down. They may do it to meet their own ends but I should not waste my energy in reacting. There are times when the provocation has been immense but I have held back.â€
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