Thou Shall Not Crucify Sreeshanth

More than a year has passed since Sreeshanth has been arrested for alleged spot fixing during IPL matches. During this one year he has been shamed, ridiculed and been the object of many a meme and cartoons. I am fed up with all this; it is finally time for all of you to know the truth. We mallus have known this truth all along but we didn't want to tell it to the people of other states who don’t have 100% literacy yet. I have finally decided enough is enough and have decided to exonerate Sreeshanth.  

I am not saying Sreeshanth didn't do spot fixing, he indeed did it. But it was not for his selfish greed as you all have thought, what he did was sacrifice himself for a lot of other people so that us Indians could have a better future. Confused? Don’t be, I will explain in detail.

Sreeshanth has always been a very self-less person. Even when he was in school he used to give up batting first even though he owned the bat and would choose to bowl instead. This is how he got into bowling. Sreeshanth was a pacey leg spinner when he started playing, but he shifted to fast bowling because he didn't want to break all the records of Anil Kumble. Fast bowling was not an issue because the only records Indian fast bowlers held were for the most runs conceded and for the best mustaches. Even after he came into the Indian cricket team he continued sacrificing, when the Indian team played badly he played worse so that the entire team would not come under focus but just him. When India were getting killed in South Africa he did that dance after hitting a six of Andre Nel just to shift the focus to him and save the others from blame. What you guys didn’t know is that it is a step from the Kathakali show Keechakavadam which is done by Bhima after killing Keechaka and is used to suck all the energy away from your enemies. And whenever it came to world cups he made sure that he didn't ruin India’s chances by playing really badly in the starting itself and hence getting out of the team and coming back for the final to take that all important catch. I really don’t understand why you guys still don’t have a life size statue of him made out of gold outside the BCCI headquarters.

Now coming to the spot fixing scandal,  Sreeshanth only did it because he wanted to save a lot of things in this world that were on the verge of going out altogether like IPL, Rajasthan Royals, Blackberry, towels, Tihar jail and Carter road. I will explain each one in detail.

Let us be honest, the IPL was not interesting any more, everyone had got bored of it and no one was watching it anymore. Moreover with the addition of Danny Morrison the viewership had reached the same level as Kim Kardashian’s IQ. The future of the series was doomed, but Sree would have none of it, he stepped in and put the masala which was badly missing, back into the IPL. Everyone started watching IPL again to see if the players were raising their towels more than what is needed or if they were wearing red underwear and things like that. Sreeshanth saved the IPL from extinction.

The Rajasthan Royals, both the team and the family were being forgotten by everyone. The team had won nothing since winning the first IPL and the last time the Royal family won anything was in the 12th century or something. The royal family had reduced to people who put up the pic of the Udaipur lake palace on Facebook with the caption ‘Mah grandpa used to live here’. Sreeshanth made sure that the team became famous again and also by marrying someone from the royal family made sure that they came back to prominence again.

Now coming to Blackberry, we all know that the Canadian Smartphone maker which was undoubtedly the world leader once was running on fumes, and then comes along Sreeshanth who uses the phone for talking with his bookies and it was because the police couldn’t intercept these conversations and messages that the arrest got delayed. After this news the sales of Blackberry have shot up like anything in rural Pakistan, Afghanistan and near the parliament in Delhi. This shows that Sreeshanth is not just self-less on a national level but on an international level too.

Towels are those sweat stained pocket dwellers which were going out of fashion. With new AC offices and cleaner armpits thanks to Anushka Sharma, people were not sweating as much as they used to. So the usage and sales of towels were coming down. The fact also that Rafael Nadal keeps wiping his face after every single point with a towel also lead to the towel losing its dignity when it came to sports. Sree with his innovative method of using a towel to signal that he is going to throw an over brought back the glory years of the towel hence saving the towel industry and the millions dependent on it.

Tihar jail was also down in the dumps after all the infamy it had been getting due to the hundreds of politicians getting jailed there. Tihar had been trying to sign a good brand ambassador for a long time. They were waiting for Salman Khan to come but the wait seemed to be never ending and they finally decided to approach Sreeshanth to help save the face of Tihar. They decided on this after seeing Sreeshanth’s dance after thumping Nel for a six which is also the perfect technique to knead the dough used in the making of the famous Tihar chapattis. Sreeshanth readily agreed to this proposal as it would help regain the image of one of India’s most important national monuments.

Sreeshanth was arrested on Carter Road. This was very good for Carter road as the road was getting a lot of bad press because of all the South Mumbai people coming up to the suburbs to partaaay and saying stuff like “Oh you live in Navi Mumbai? I never come there as my passport expired”. Carter road required a new lease of life and needed to show that high rollers still came there and Sree did just that.

All these will not come even close to the biggest sacrifice he did, which is give hope to billions of people out there. Sreeshanth was paid 60 lacs to bowl badly. That is like paying a fish to swim or Rahul Gandhi to be stupid or Arnab Goswami to be loud. He showed to all of us out there who think that we are not good at anything that the only thing we need to do is to leverage it properly and we can make money out of it.

I hope from all this you have understood the innocence of Sreeshanth. He is not a dancing idiot but actually an inspiration to billions. I end this post with a humble request to the new government to declare May 16th, the day Sreeshanth got arrested for spot fixing, as national sacrifice day.

Losing my …

One day, about couple of months back, I had come back to my hostel room from my college after a day of classes. My phone was out of charge, so I looked in my bag for my phone charger as I had taken it to college with me. It was not there in my bag, I was using it in college and I thought I had forgotten it there. So I called up a friend, who was sitting next to me in campus and who was still sitting there and asked her to check if my charger is there. She said it wasn’t. So I checked for it again in my room only to find it plugged in my multi-plug. Apparently, I had already taken the charger out, put it in the multi-plug and was searching for it in my bag again. This kind of thing happens to me all the time. Half my life is spent searching for something because I cannot remember where I kept it. I lose a lot of things and I also lose my way very often. This blog post is about some incidents that happened in both these areas.

I was going to write this post much before, but I lost the paper in which I had written down the title and points for it, twice.

I lose so many things that when I play the “Which song best describes you?” game on Facebook I get "pichle saath dinom me maine khoya". I sometimes even manage to lose things in a manner that even my mom can’t find them. 

Keys are number one in the list of things I lose. My losing keys habit can single handedly sustain the steel industry in India. I lost my hostel keys so many times that my roommates stopped giving me a key, so I ended up losing the lock. My first week in MBA college I lost my room keys, I searched for it only to get it back it from the bag of a friend who lived in the opposite room to me. I lost the key again couple of weeks after, by this time my friend who had the key earlier had moved to some other college. Nevertheless I still called him up to make sure that he didn’t have my keys. I haven’t found the keys since. Once during a trip with my friends, we managed to lose the horn in our rented car. It didn’t just stop working, we lost it. The horn was working fine one moment and suddenly there was no sound, we thought there was some problem with the horn and took it to a mechanic only for him to tell us that there was no horn in the car. I once managed to lose a SIM card from inside my phone. I lost my customized sweatshirt which has my name on it, twice. Luckily both times it came back to me as it has my name on it. I once lost every proof that I had a bank account including the passbook, the ATM card and all relevant receipts. I lost an assignment once, searched for it for two days and couldn’t find it. I went to the faculty to tell him that I had lost my assignment and that I need more time to redo it only for him to tell me that I had already submitted the assignment.

If I just kept writing about the stuff I lost it would never end so I will now switch to the instances when I lost my way. 

1. There is a drive-in beach in Kerala called Muzhupilangad. A drive-in beach is one where you can ride a bike or drive a car right on the beach. If you are ever in Kannur in Kerala, this beach is a must visit. Take a car or bike (Preferably not your own as the beach stinks up your vehicle) and then have awesome fun driving up and down the beach. If it is low tide you can even drive to an island in an SUV. My friends and I were once on the beach in two bikes and a car. It was almost 7 in the evening and the vehicles were parked on one end of the beach, me and my friend Roshan took one of the bikes and went riding up the beach, when we came back we couldn’t find the car, we searched the entire beach two three time and still couldn’t find the car. We didn’t have our phones on us so we took a phone from a stranger and called one of our friends only for them to tell us that they hadn’t budged from where they were. And indeed when we went back to the same spot they were there. To this day Roshan and I believe that they lied and that they had actually moved away from there. 

      

      2. Like Batman has The Joker, Superman has Lex Luthor, Spiderman has green goblin and Rahul Gandhi has, well himself, mine is the Pune- Bangalore Highway. You would think it is hard for a person to get lost on a straight road but I have managed it, thrice. The problem with this road is that it doesn’t really have proper exits, so I always get lost trying to find one. The road is quite near my college and this is where you get buses to go to Mumbai, so I go there quite often to drop and pick my friends who go to and come back from Mumbai. Once while coming back after dropping a friend I didn’t want to take the right turn back from where I came from as it was not allowed. As a good citizen and somebody who follows traffic rules I didn’t take the right but instead went to the left to take a U-turn. Turns out there wasn’t one, so I kept going forward to find a U-Turn. I would have gone ahead some 4 kilometers and still hadn’t found one, I finally ended up turning around the bike around at a break in the divider breaking about 5 traffic rules in one go. Since then I always took the first right turn back, better break 1 traffic rule than 5.

Not even a week later I found myself lost on the same highway again, this time in a car with some friends. We had set off towards a dam which was on an inner road nowhere near the highway. But somehow we ended up lost on the Bangalore-Pune highway again. At least this time it was not my fault.

The third time was on the eve of my birthday. My friend was coming back from Mumbai and he wanted to attend my midnight birthday celebrations. It was just an hour before my birthday and I was waiting to pick him from the bus stop. He calls me up at around 11.30 and says that he has got down about 5 kilometers before the bus stop as there is some problem with the bus. I asked him to start walking from there and that I will come on the bike and pick him up. I picked him up on the highway and then got on to the service road so as to go to the other side through an underpass below the highway. After going for about 100 meters the service road stopped abruptly with a 5 feet drop. The road had ended. I had to turn my bike and do some risky off-road riding to get back on the road. It was well past 12 now and my phone was constantly ringing from all the friends waiting to celebrate my birthday and not finding where I am. I finally reached back to college at about 12.30. My birthday bumps where a little harder than normal that day.

3. Another time I was going to a college in Lavale, some 20 kilometers away to pick up a friend. The straightforward route was through the Pune-Bangalore highway and there was an alternate route through some inner roads which was about 5 kilometers shorter. Because of my history with the highway and the distance saved I decided to take the latter one. I had gone only once previously on this route about 6 moths back and I didn’t really remember it exactly. So I called up a friend of mine who was with me when we went on this route 6 months back and she told me the route. One of the turns was at a junction where there was a huge sign indicating that Lavale was to the right. I was not supposed to go right here but go straight to get to the college I wanted to go. She reminded me this particularly as we had made that mistake the last time and ended up being lost. But indeed at that junction I ended up going right and getting lost again. 

4. This was the night after my CAT exam in 2012. My centre was in Kochi and I was hanging out with my friend Roshan and it was about 2 in the night. We were both really happy as we thought the exam had gone really well (Roshan made it to IIMB so I guess his actually went well). I suddenly got the urge to go to my ancestral home which was about an hour’s drive from where we were. It was in a proper village and no one lived at that home anymore. So we took off in Roshan’s car towards my ancestral place. Now about this home there is a plot of land that belongs to someone else next to the road and beyond that is my ancestral home. You have walk through this plot of land to get to my place and there are no fences or boundary walls or anything. But when we got there, there was a long boundary wall right next to the road before the plot of land that I was supposed to cross to get to my place, there was no opening in the wall and you couldn’t even see my home from there. Being a village there were no streetlights and being the middle of the night there was nobody around who we could ask.  Unable to locate any way to get in, we left the place. Roshan to this day doesn’t believe that my ancestral home is there and thinks I took him to a random place. Then I said let us go to my family temple which was a couple of kilometers from there. To reach there we had to go through a maze of small village roads and again we got lost. We kept circling in the small roads, there was no Google maps or anything to help us and we were unable to find a way out. Finally we somehow made it to the main road and went straight back to Kochi for the fear of getting lost again.

These are not the only instances of me getting lost or losing things but these are the more absurd ones. So next time you ask me directions or give me something for safekeeping think twice before you do it. 

A Friend Indeed

About a month back I was at home for a week of holidays that I had between finishing my first year of MBA in Pune and joining for my internship in Delhi.

One evening I was out shopping with my folks and I ran into an old school friend of mine, Arun (Name changed or even if I haven’t I have like 50 friends named Arun, so you can go figure out which one it is). I had not met him for a long time and we started chatting. Our parents were in touch as my parents used to consult Arun’s dad who is a doctor. We chatted and caught up for some time and when it was time for us to leave he asked if I could do him a favor. I said sure and he told me that his parents want him to get married and they were going to a prospective bride’s home to see her next day. He was feeling really nervous and wanted me to accompany him.

I was surprised and a little taken aback actually. Sure, the guy was a close friend when we were in school 8 years back, but since then we had drifted apart. We had kept in touch with the occasional message, chat and call but it is not like we were close friends anymore. This was actually the first time I was meeting him after school. After school we both went to different cities to do our engineering and for the first one year or so we made plans to meet each other when we were back in our home town but it never materialized and eventually we stopped trying. I wanted to ask him if he hadn't made any close friends during those eight years. Also to be honest I was at home for only 7 days and I was so busy running around that the next day was the only time I was getting to stay at home fully, do nothing and relax. But out of courtesy, the fact that our parents were close and that my parents would never forgive me if I didn't go I agreed.

One of the other reasons I didn't want to go is because I am never good at these traditional family kind of situations, I am clueless of what to do and also I had no idea what advice to give my friend if he asked for it the next day. But now that I decided to do it, I wanted to do it right. So I called up a couple of my friends who had recently got married and asked them how the exercise went. They gave me some general idea and said that it is not a big deal as everyone makes it out to be and that the movies and all exaggerate it too much so that we have a huge misconception about it. I was relieved and confident from the knowledge I acquired was all set to handle the next day.

So the next day, Arun with his parents came to pick me up in the morning. During the 45 minutes car ride to the girl's place I understood why my friend had asked me to come along with him. His parents apparently thought very highly of me because I had got into high ranking engineering and MBA colleges which their son had tried to get into unsuccessfully. So I guess if something went wrong during the process like if he didn't like the girl and his parents did he was expecting me to take his side and convince the parents otherwise.

During the car ride he showed me a photo of the girl and asked my opinion about her. Now this is a question that always puts me in a very awkward position, whenever someone shows me the picture of their prospective bride or fiancée and asks me what I feel. I am always lost trying to find that answer which says that their choice is good enough without sounding offensive or inappropriate by saying something like oh yeah, she is a hottie. I played it safe and said she looks nice and she did too, she was good looking. But honestly she was all dressed up in a sari and going to some function in the photo and everyone looks good when you are like that. She also looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't place from where.

Finally we reached the girl’s place and were invited inside by her entire family. Apart from the girl’s parents and their younger son who studied in some engineering college the girl’s dad’s brother and his family consisting of his wife and a daughter were also present. After a round of mutual introductions the girl was called to the hall. Her name was Lakshmi( I called the guy Arun, what did you expect me to call the girl?) and she was an engineer from a decent private college in Kerala and has been working for an IT company in Kochi for two years. I also realized where I knew her from. The photo didn't make me remember her but when I saw her in person I remembered who she was. She used to be the girlfriend of one of my friend’s in college. There used to be a photo of him and her together in his room. I remember this because when they broke up we went through the ritual of drinking a lot to drown the pain, calling her a lot of profanity and eventually burning the photo. I really didn't know the reason why they broke up also, I was just part of the ritual for a friend. I didn't know if I should tell this to Arun because I didn't know the reason why they broke up, it could have been a genuine reason and to be honest my college friend was kind of a douchebag and also I didn't know how Arun felt about marrying a girl who had a relationship in the past. I didn't want to ruin what could be a perfectly good marriage because of this.

Lakshmi’s cousin sister was also there, she was her father’s brother’s daughter and about the same age as her. After the pleasantries and some tea and snacks, Arun and Lakshmi were left alone together for the ritual of talking to each other in private. This practice always dumbfounds me, how the hell are we supposed to say if we are ready to spend a lifetime with a person after just 10-15 minutes of private conversation with them. Anyways, after Arun and Lakshmi left, I was sitting there in the company of a lot of adults. Lakhsmi’s uncle was talking to me and asking me a lot of probing questions about myself and what I planned to do in life and all. Out of the blue he asked me if like them I am a Nair (A caste among Hindus in Kerala). Putting together the fact that he had a daughter of marrying age and the probing questions he asked I knew what he meant with that question. He was coming to me with a marriage proposal for his daughter. With a smile on my face and having already formulated a polite reply for rejecting the proposal I said yes, I am a Nair too. Before he could ask any more questions I got a call on my phone. I excused myself and stepped outside to take the call. I took my sweet time on the call as I didn't want to go back and answer the question that I was sure that was going to come.

I finished the call and turned around only to see the uncle standing right behind me. I was startled and then he asked me if he can ask me a question. I already knew what the question would be and mentally preparing myself to say the answer I said yes. He asked me “How would you like to marry Lakshmi? Me and her parents had a talk among ourselves and decided that you would be a much better match for Lakshmi than Arun.” I was left speechless for some time. I wanted to roundhouse kick him where it mattered for bring a proposition to me for a girl whom I had come to see for my friend. But I was too much in shock to say or do anything. As I was preparing an answer for this question which felt like a trick question that had come in the exam for which I had prepared something else he continued saying that Lakshmi is coming here now to talk to you in private, you people talk and then tell me a decision. We are bringing her from the other side so that Arun or his parents don’t see this. Before I could say anything Lakshmi came there. The situation reminded me of the placement week in an MBA college where you are sent to the interviews of different companies who have come to the campus on the same time without them not seeing each other.

The uncle left two of us alone and after adjusting myself to the situation my first question to Lakshmi was that why did you agree to all this? She said she is just doing what her relatives told her to do and went on speaking like this was a normal situation. She started talking about herself in what looked like a well prepared answer like the sort MBA students prepare for the “tell me about yourself” question in interviews. When she stopped talking, out of habit I almost asked her ‘Why MBA?” I stopped myself in time and then she went on to describe how she selected the dress she was wearing right then. Getting really tired of this I said “I am Rahul Menon’s batchmate” (Rahul Menon is her ex and my friend). That stopped her, she took a moment to regain her composure and said “yeah, we were together and we broke up. Do you have a problem with that?” Before I answered this I was luckily saved by her mother’s arrival who announced that lunch is ready. She asked me to come in and Lakshmi to come in through the back door. I made a mental note to pass on their contact on to my college’s placement team. They could maybe take a couple of pointers from these people on how to operate during the placement week.

I went back in. Everyone was already seated on the dining table. The uncle asked me loudly “Oh, that was a long phone call, huh?” and then winked at me. I tried really hard to act normal but I was not very successful. I am sure Arun noticed this and he gave me a dude, what happened to you look. Laskhmi entered at this time. Arun’s parents were beckoning for her to sit next to him but her family made her sit next to me. After a very awkward lunch (Sambar was awesome, rasam was not good) I rushed Arun and his family to leave saying that I had to be somewhere. They said their goodbyes. Lakshmi’s family said they will call them. I was fighting really hard to control my laughter on the analogy of this statement to what an HR person says to a rejected candidate after an interview. As we were about to leave the uncle caught me again and said that he will call my parents to talk about this further. I didn't say anything as I knew I hadn't given them any phone numbers and I knew that the matter would end there. That is when I remembered that I told them that my mom worked in BSNL and I gave them her name and designation. Then uncle had told me that he had a neighbor who also worked in the same department and will ask him about her. I cursed myself for telling him that and got in the car.

In the car Arun and his parents were very happy. The aunty was saying that she liked the girl very much and that she thinks that the girl’s side likes Arun also because they said to her that he is a very good boy especially in the area of having good friends and keeping a good company. She added that she was so glad that I come along and if the marriage gets fixed it is because of me. At this moment I was seriously contemplating suicide by jumping out of the moving car. Finally they dropped me at my home thanking me profoundly all the way.

After I reached home I told my mother the entire story. She almost fell down the chair laughing. I asked her to expect a call from the girl’s folks and she said she will take care of it.

I thought that was the end of it until Arun calls me couple of days later and tells me in a very sad voice that their family approached Lakshmi’s family and they rejected him and didn't tell the reason why. Apparently his parents are very upset and he was wondering if I could talk to the girl’s family because they thought very highly of me. This was getting really out of hand and I decided to put an end to it once and for all. I told him that I had been inquiring more about the girl and I found out that she had a really serious relationship with a batch mate from my college. I even send him a photo I had with me of me and some of my college friends taken in my friend’s room which had the aforementioned picture of him and the girl in the background. This pacified him and he said that then them rejecting him was for the best and that he didn't want to be married to such a girl. He thanked me again for all that I had done for him. I ended the call saying what are friends for. His parents called me an hour later to thank me again for all that I had done and for saving my friend from being married to an “immoral” girl. Aunty went on to add that she wished I was in Kerala for longer so that I could accompany them on all the “girl-seeing” trips. I left for Delhi the next day vowing never to come back to Kerala again.

P.S: I know this is a much longer and very different from the “own goals” I usually write. I just wanted to try my hand at writing a story. I was reading a post about funny incidents that happened during arranged marriages on Quora and this idea struck me. Don’t worry, a totally own-goally post is in the process of being written and will come up shortly.