Terminator

The taxi had driven past a sprawling hospital en route to the bistro. Was that the one, he wondered. With the framed painting in the waiting room. Of Bradman pulling to midwicket; crinkled visage of authoritative satisfaction in oil paint. The doctor had been efficient and effusive. Proceeded to embarrass him by asking for an autograph. The cast had been pristine white. Perhaps I should get the gracious doctor to autograph it, he had thought. Signed and sealed for the trip home.

Cement Head

Featured on Bored Cricket Crazy Indians (BCC!) on January 16, 2012

Now you’ve done it, you’ve done it haven’t ya?
Yes, you’ve opened up your addled mind
Squelched out a priceless and noxious beauty
A tracer bullet off your copious behind

A mind and behind of opulent plenty – aye we know
Buckling under its glorious Orca gluttony
Bereft of hint of nurturing thought
Numb in pursuit of absolute hegemony

Dear Mr. Arlott

Original draft of article published on ESPN-Cricinfo, November 27, 2011

He himself must resolve them as well as he knows,
Or else take them with him wherever he goes.
– J. A

The sun shone weakly. It was April and the milieu was cold and bleak in Tilbury. Dark smoke billowing out of her funnels, the Orontes drew away in sombre deliberation and sailed out towards the grey waters of the Atlantic. Out on its deck, there was one last wave before the diminutive and huddled up figure stepped back from the deck rails and turned away. His silhouette dissolved into the mist and fog. And then Harold Larwood was gone.

The Botox has gone Toxic

If you go around in circles faster and faster, eventually you will disappear up your own arse. That would be a Being John Malkovitch moment, albeit at the other end. Right now, the game of cricket has done exactly that and has virtually disappeared up its own behind.

London (and Nottingham) calling

Landed in London and was faced with the sad news of Amy Winehouse’s death. Then discovered that my camera’s motor had passed away too.

Oh well…there was still the cricket to look forward to. At least that’s what I thought then…until…oh, you know what happened.

I do tend to forget to take photographs when I am preoccupied, but here are a few of the cricket and in and around the stadiums taken with my crippled camera.

"Look daddy, those green thingies at the Oval!"

My city, my festival

I can recall September 12, 2001 very vividly.

Sitting out on the patio at Hemingway’s, a cozy restaurant-pub in the upscale Yorkville hood of Toronto, I was having lunch. Right across the table in front of me sat Dustin Hoffman, flipping through a newspaper, nursing a drink. I had my eye on the NY Times Tootsie was reading, since the city seemed to have sold out every copy of every newspaper that morning. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Dustin stand up with a broad smile and start chatting with two ladies across the railing of the patio. I glanced, and it was Kathy Bates and a jaw-droppingly ravishing Marisa Tomei. Right there on the sidewalk.

The Beacon

In retrospect, it was on the second day at Edgbaston when it unraveled in surreal fashion. It would only get worse after that. Ground out by the dour Cook and pummeled into dazed oblivion by Pietersen, India disintegrated. Disintegrated into a catatonic state – a condition that afflicted them for the bulk of the remainder of the series. And the last over of the day slapped an exclamation mark on their sorry tale.

Weird Fishes

Yeah, I’ll hit the bottom
Hit the bottom and escape
Escape

-“Weird Fishes”, Radiohead

It told us volumes about what was to happen over the span of the last three days of the third Test match at Edgbaston. And doesn’t bode well for the Oval either. On day two in Birmingham, India descended to the depths, laid siege to the nadir and comprehensively conquered the pits. For if there ever was a truly disheartening and depressing day for an Indian cricket fan, this was it and it brooks no competition whatsoever.

Nine days in heaven

Publised in Cricinfo, August 10, 2011

The kid was about 10 years old. There he sat in his white three-lions shirt, with a look of intense concentration, all his attention on the shiny new Dukes ball in his little hand. The father gently positioned his son’s index and middle fingers across the seam, whispering into his ear. Whispering stories and anecdotes, I imagined, about the magic that the grip could impart to that red, shiny object, larger than life in the child’s imagination.

Oi, you alright?

“Hell yeah! But it took a while!” says a rock and roll survivor from India.

Published in Popmatters on July 5, 2011

“No Alcohol or Firearms” read a perplexing but ominous sign near the entrance. Then I remembered, we were in Arizona.

The jostling to get through to the turnstiles was rowdy, but the mood still had a tone of booze-soaked cheeriness about it. Surrounded on all sides by what looked like Hell’s Angels with their leather-clad vixens, we waited in the long line as it inched forward. An uncomfortably thorough full body search later, we were in. By this time the looks we were getting were making us uneasy.