Vallam from the air?

This reminds me of Vallam, the blind turns, the red earth and the thatch roofs on the houses by the side of the road! That picture (caution: Takes long time to load if you are on a dial up) is essentially a aerial shot of one of the numerous desert villages along the route of the Paris Dakar rally, the car section of which was won this year by Stephane Peterhansel followed by Hiroshi Matsuoka both driving Mitsubishi Pajeros. One of the red and white Pajeros can actually be seen in the picture. See the Mitsubishi team picture here.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the geography of the Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu or are not alumni of Shanmugha College of Engineering (aka SASTRA) or Periyar Maniyammai College, Vallam is a small village around 12 kms from Thanjavur (toward Trichy) on the small dirt path that passes for the National Highway between Nagapattinam and Banglore(?). For all the hostelers from Shanmugha (ok.. SASTRA) Vallam was/is like the closest source of really goood food. Sathya's was a favorite hangout for me on Thursdays usually and on some other days of the week too when the description of hostel food veered towards the unpalatable.

From the minute we sat down at the table, it was as if Kumar was reading our minds as dish after dish made its way to the table. Kumar, who seemed to be the man in charge at Sathya's seemed to know what each and everybody wanted to eat even before we could order and a steady stream of food (accompanied by genorus amounts of "getti" chutney used to land at our table by the roadside the moment the food in the plate disappeared. My routine used to be four parottas, one omellete, one onion uthappam with (no crushed tomato on top) a generous helping of chilli powder to top it and lastly, one veechu parotta. This would be washed down rarely with streaming coffee. The meal would end with a packet of ARR Fruit Masala (I hate the traditional ARR sugandha paaku that the other guys used to have), from the potti kadai. The whole bill used to be exactly Rs. 17.

Its almost four years since I sat down at Sathya's. When I was in India in December 2002, I thought I eat there when I went to Thanjavur, but the preceding week was spent in a slew of feasts at three different wedding that by the time I left Coimbatore to Thanjavur, I was sick as soon as I smelt any hint of food. I miss college life and Sathya's is fondly remembered even now. Hmmmmmmmmm.................

My Oscar picks (wow... unimaginativeness at its best!)

A couple of hours from now, the whole world would know who won the Oscars for 2003. And what better way to shake of almost a week of inactivity than to predict who’d go home with statuettes of their own.

Well, I might as well be putting my foot in my mouth when I don’t pick Peter Jackson for the best direction, but I thought Clint Eastwood painted a better and poignant picture of a misfit trying to avenge his daughter’s death. As for the best actor Oscar, two of my personal favorites, both odd-balls in their own right with a penchant for oddest of roles, are both claimants for an award that a couple of previous winners are fighting for too. Though one of them, Jude Law picks Sean Penn for the ultimate prize, I am rooting for Johnny Depp as the incorrigible pirate with the painted eyes and a swagger reminiscent of one resulting from too many Jack Daniels, Jack Sparrow (see a picture of Depp as Capt. Sparrow and one look-alike at the Athens Halloween Street party this year here). But sadly, I think I am rooting for a losing cause, as the Oscar’s never seem to favor comedy and Capt. Jack Sparrow raises a laugh every time he walks on screen, whether it is when he lands lithely on shore from the top mast of his slowly sinking ship or when he fights the “un-dead” Barbarossa and his henchmen. Tim Robbins and Renee Zellweger earn their votes with such earnestness and spontaneity. For Robbins this is perhaps his best role since playing Inmate 37927 in 1994’s prison saga, Shawshank Redemption. As for the best animated movie, Finding Nemo is everybody’s choice though some people claim that Ellen Degeneres should consider herself unlucky to have missed out on a best actress nomination for her role as the voice of Dory, a short term amnesiac. But she’s sure to be remembered as much as Robin Williams is for the voice of the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin. I watched Finding Nemo twice and it’s my pick to win the best original screenplay award too.

So here are my picks….


BEST FILM
LOTR – The Return of the king

BEST DIRECTOR
Clint Eastwood, Mystic River

BEST ACTOR
Johnny Depp, Pirates Of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl

BEST ACTRESS
Charlize Theron, Monster

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Tim Robbins, Mystic River

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Renée Zellweger, Cold Mountain

BEST ANIMATED FILM
Finding Nemo

BEST WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
Mystic River

BEST WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
Finding Nemo

Update: Hmmm...Five out of Nine is still a good score. But eleven for LOTR ? Wow... And as Billy Crystal said, everybody in New Zealand was thanked. But no one bothered to thank the sheep. Now why did I type that last line?

Yuvi for opener?

Yuvraj for opener? Whoa..whoa.. where does he come in now? Cricinfo features Ganguly's comments on various issues from the opener's spot to Rahul Dravid's keeping. And Ganguly seems to have a "left of left" opinion on each one of these issues.

First Yuvraj could get in if he wants to open. So where does that leave Akash Chopra? Sehwag seems to be in the clear because Ganguly praises him elsewhere in the same peice but does not mention Akash Chopra at all! And then when commenting about Rahul Dravid's wicketkeeping duties, he says "I cannot see how we can relieve Rahul Dravid of wicketkeeping duties now that Laxman has cemented his one-day spot." I wonder what that means. Well, does it mean that Laxman and Dravid were fighting for one position that grew into two because Dravid took over the keeping duties leaving the open spot for Laxman? Hmm... we certainly have an embarassment of riches.

A tribute to a little known master-type fellow!

Kumaraguru's comment on my last post pointed me to a newsgroup that had not seen before today - rec.sport.cricket. One of the threads that caught my attention was this - Americans and Cricket. As the case is with un-moderated groups, some of the 81 messages so far in thread were very offensive.

One of the messages on the thread instructed everyone to search for "Sane Warne is 9" on Google Groups (which were then on Usenet, i think), just to get an example of the offensiveness that has been a staple of Usenet messages once in a while. Upon searching, I landed on perhaps the most interesting and yet unknown online sensation, even rivalling that Ramesh Mahadevan - Perumalselva Pandiyan. The fad seems to have even spawned a fan group of his own - Check out alt.fan.Pandiyan. Sadly the whole thing seemed to have died down towards the end of 1999. But between May and December of 1999, Perumalselva Pandian seemed to have blazed a solitary path through rec.sport.cricket.

I have spent the last one hour laughing at the various references to brinjals, crows, dildoa tins (i can only surmise from the references to cooking that accompany the last mentioned term, that it refers to Dalda, which for the non-Indian readers, is a generic name for edible vegetable fat used for cooking) used in relation to the game of cricket, of which Perumalselva Pandiyan seems to have been an expert at. He also seems to be a fan of T.Rajendar and seems to consider T.Rajendar the finest orator ever. On the flip-side PP (as he was fondly known in the later days of his sourjoun on RSC) seems to be extremely casteist and seems to hate anybody who hails from the parts north of the vindhyas, in fact even north of the Pulicat lake. So I have to include a cautionary P.S with this post.

And yes, I have been laughing at the sick jokes and the worsta language used by PP to embarass himself on RSC. If that makes me more worsta than him, so be it. Everybody is worsta in his/her own way.

(P.S Some of the links are N.C 17 certified. If you are under the age of 17, please skip the links. Some of the messages and the obvious casteist references might be offensive. Read at your risk, only if you can laugh. If you are uptight and can laugh only when Sardarji type of fellows are the subject of the jokes and not yourself, please skip any discussion regarding Perumalselva Pandiyan type of fellows. LOL)

The Dead Game...

It was a dead game. Nevertheless no one on the ground, at least the spectators seemed to mind. A cool breeze tends to blow from across the Pavilion end at the County Ground every afternoon in this time of the year and this played quite a bit of role in cooling the populace that was scattered around the ground in their summer wear on this warm August day. The ladies in their parasols and dainty hats chattered incessantly as the men ooh-ed and aah-ed the game progressed in the middle. A group of kids had finally persuaded their parents to let them out of their eyesight and were engaged in a heated game of marbles at the top of the grassy knoll at the Ashley Down Road end with such an intensity that even some grown ups marvelled at their competitiveness.

But the batsmen in the middle, in their starched white trousers and shirts, were playing without any undue urgency, the audience gently applauding, in true English fashion, every good stroke or a good delivery bowled by the bowlers, the applause dying only when the bowler started his walk back to the start of his run up. The batsman on strike, the batting team’s captain, a tall bearded man with the physique of a bear and the paunch of a seasoned beer chugger seemed determined to show the opposition that though it was almost thirty years since he had made his debut, he had lost neither his form or the hunger for runs that had seen him head the national averages in eleven of his first thirteen years as a first class cricketer.

At the end of an over, he walked over to the non-striker as the next bowler walked from his position looked on waiting to start a fresh over. “The match is as good as dead”, said the batsman. The non striker, nodding at his captain replied “Yes it is, Sir", his respect and awe of his captain evident in his demeanor. "Let’s just get some practice out of this dull day. Yesterday morning at breakfast, I just wished that these Surrey lads would fall down easily, but Mr.Fry here and the other lad Marlowe put up a good show“. His captain smiled at the passing Mr.Fry as he adjusted his cap. “We did not do too bad either, did we, Mr. Brown?” He looked at the scoreboard and smiled to see a “9" and a 0” appear next to his name as the scorers corrected their error and added one more against his name. “Let us get on with the game, gentlemen”, the umpire goaded, wanting to get the remaining dozen 8 ball overs out of the way and head for the pub in the club house. Mr. Board and his captain took their places at the opposite ends of the pitch as the right arm fast medium bowler waited at the start of his run up.

Mr.Fry looked at the batsman waiting to face him and started his run-up. The ball, a perfect in-cutter landed on the good length spot and was patted back to him by the batsman who seemed to be in perfect peace with his surroundings, his demeanor rivaling that of the description of the great Buddha himself. Mr.Fry walked past the umpire and the non-striker and thuoght to himself, “Will my effort be forgotten against the batting exploits of this maestro?" He dismissed all the thought of his good batting performance that had carried his team to a safe position and concentrated on his efforts on dismissing the stalwart. His next ball fell just short of a good length and the batsman pushed it through the covers on his back foot and ambled across for his runs. The crowd gently applauded the stroke from the master as he returned to his crease, completing two runs.

A casual glance at the scoreboard informed the batsman of his individual tally. “92? Interesting score”, he thought to himself. For the next couple of seconds he busied himself trying to think why the word "interesting" had turned up in his mind. In a moment, he smiled to himself as the answer appeared out of nowhere. Mr. Brown thought that he was expected to return the smile and smiled from his spot at the non-striker's end, as did the umpire who grinned, exposing the gap between his front teeth that had been caused, not by the fall from his horse as he had told everyone, but from the punch thrown by a stranger who had been as drunk as he was, leaving the house of a lady, the company of whom no respectable gentleman would want to be seen in public.

The batsman not noticing these smiles, dug his bat gently into the small depression on the white line and decided to play the next few balls at their merits. The next ball pitched on the line of leg stump and seemed to hold its line. The batsman moved to the back foot and prepared to play it on to the vacant region between the square and fine legs when the ball moved just a little bit and caught his leading edge and ballooned toward mid on. A collective gasp went from everyone, including some of the fielders themselves and umpire and the non-striker. However Mr. Fry looked on in frustration as the ball fell into no-man’s land allowing the batsmen to jog across for a single. The scorers started to add one more to the batsman’s and team’s score

Walking back to the start of his run-up at the Pavilion end, however, Mr. Fry found the batsmen walking back with him. Mr. Fry stopped in his tracks and looked around to see every other person on the field sporting the same quizzical glance looking at the departing batsmen. Mr. Fry thought it was prudent that he ask the master what was wrong. “Mr. Grace, where are you going?”.,he asked. “Well, Son.”, started the batsman, waving his bat like a pointer, at the "93" against his name on the scoreboard. “That...is the reason. This lifeless match has served its purpose.” He started walking again, leaving C.B. Fry, bewildered, shaking his head both in amazement and in immense relief.