Saturday 23 June 2007

When the God departs!!

The time has come, the departure of Dein and the Master Wenger failing to commit to Arsenal has resulted in the inevitable, Thierry Henry, the God of Arsenal departs. All fans of EPL should shed a tear. Henry was such a talismanic striker, a prolific goal scorer that EPL has seen over years. While his unending love for the club and fans are known, nevertheless he departs.

Departure of Dein, over the controversy of taking over of Arsenal by sports mogul Kroenke has sent a chain of seismic waves across Arsenal. The loss is not for the board, but for us, the fans who loved the club, for the fans who considered Henry as their God. We will miss the va-va vroom. We will miss those goals.

Henry flirted with Barcelona for a while. A year ago when the French star agonised over whether to stay with the Gunners or head for the Nou Camp, there was a gravitational pull dragging him back to North London. The gravitational pull who was there at the right and left of him  when he committed to Arsenal. I still remember that short press conference.

Dein: Thierry has got something to say.

TH14: (with a smile)I have played in France I have played in Italy and I have played in England, but I’ve never played in Spain and in this life I will never play in Spain.

Thus he committed to Arsenal.

It was now or never for Henry. Sadly it is NOW.

This is no ordinary player quitting the Emirates, Henry is a man who epitomises everything which new Arsenal stood for. He played the beautiful game and, given licence by Wenger, transformed the team from one which had the reputation of “boring Arsenal” to “scoring Arsenal”. They were the great entertainers who went through a whole league season unbeaten, not by protecting their own penalty area but by playing the game with a swagger. Henry was Premiership box office. He was one of those players opposition supporters wanted to see. Who could forgot the way Portsmouth fans took him to their hearts while he was single-handedly destroying them. Henry was a man who lifted people off seats.

But without him, and without Kroenke and perhaps even Wenger, the magnificent new Emirates Stadium could soon feel very empty.

Friday 22 June 2007

Love, friendship and the ill-fated self

Here's how it goes, you and me, up and down but maybe this time

We'll get it right, worth the fight

'Cause love is something you can't shake

When it breaks

All it takes is some trying

If you feel like leaving

I'm not gonna beg you to stay

But soon you'll be finding

You can run, you can hide

But you can't escape my love

You can run, you can hide

But you can't escape my love

So, if you go

You should know

It's hard to just forget the past, so fast

It was good, it was bad but it was real

And that's, all you have, in the end, our love matters

The above is a snippet from Enrique Iglesias’ Escape. The song has a great importance in my life, the past, the present and may be the future too. This song has many things I wanted to tell, tell to whom I loved the most. But life never makes us do something that we yearn the most. Sometimes it pushes close the opposites, and sometimes it pulls lives apart. I have never been able to find solution to many things that happened in my life, whatever it may be. I never knew a small fight could have made a catastrophic effect in my life. But I know, it’s past, I have my present with me and my future ahead of me. I know I have a world to conquer.

Certain things always linger in our mind whatever we do or try to forget. Most times it will be the most aching memories that will remain in our minds forever. When we feel we are very much alone it comes to our mind and goes with leaving a drop of tear in our eyes. I don’t know why or how it happens, but it happens. Life is strange.

I had good times, I had hard times, particularly one hard time. It was my friends and family who supported me to get over all the turbulence I had. I am indebted to Bulshee, Kozhi, Sankaran, Ragav, Anish and Anilu who supported me strongly. Now I know one thing, apart from the family, friends not love that is important in our life. The love may leave when the time is bad but friends will never cheat us. They will there always to support you, to cheer you, irrespective of your situation.

 

Monday 18 June 2007

After APJ, is it a lady?

The time has come; the time to elect a new president for the world’s largest democracy, India. There were a lot of debates regarding who is who will be the candidate. Names came up, names went down. People turned up for one. People turned against another. It was all the part of what is called political drama. Channels conducted polls; the entire matter got over hyped.  Names like Narayanamurthy and the Big B appeared from the moon. I couldn’t find any sense in any political party or alliance fielding those names, may be it’ll be just another trick by the channels to add more colour to their news and the polls.

Shall we tell the president? Pratibha Patil, the current governor of Rajasthan, the only that ever had a female pair at the helm of administration, name came from no where. I didn’t know even about her existence prior to this. The left always had vied for a female president, last time they fielded Capt:Lakshmi against the talented long haired bachelor from Ramashweram. The result is you know what, was a just a waste of talent, at least according to me.

India is widely regarded as one of the most conservative states, with religious extremism and inequality towards females playing a big part. Religious extremism is more or less a stimulated thing. With many inspirational orators using their skills for making devilish rather than ugly remarks on other religions or sects nothing could get worse than this. The claim for “Ram Janmbhoomi” and the subsequent riots will remain in the hearts of all Muslims and Hindus forever. Everything happened just because of one man; One man who made that dirty claim that Hindustan is for Hindus. Is India a secular state? Undoubtedly it is not. Whatever they do, whoever they kill, the colour of blood will remain red fro Ram and Rahim.

In India the females are supposed to play second fiddle to her husband. They are meant to be at home, cook food, look after her kids and husband, her parents etc, they are housewives married not to her husband but to the house, they are housewives. She should obey her husband, whatever the husband tells. It is always the woman, who resigns her job to join spouse, not the other way round. The sex ratio in many states in India is so pitiful that the grooms need to find his bride from other states. Why the females are always the down-trodden?

Fielding a woman candidate has more political implication than anything else. The taxpayers are not affected by it. It will raise to controversies, the use of “Rashtrapathi” will be awkward. Whatever the president candidates tell there are two things that is certain.

  1. The President of India can’t do anything alone.
  2. The President shall and will remain as a rubber stamp.

 

 

Friday 15 June 2007

On the road Off the road

I have decided many things in the past few weeks; to be precise I have made three big decisions which will have drastic effects on my small life on my big body.

1. Shifting the house

2. Buying a new phone.

3. Losing weight :-)

The first one was their in our mind for quite a long time. There are many things that made us to take the decisions. Dust, airbuses, Boeings and fighter jets are having detrimental effects on our peaceful lives. Whatever we do to keep our house clean something fails every time. We donno why? The house has become more or less dump yard of beer bottles, whisky bottles, empty pizza and Lays packets. The whole house stinks. The electric wiring system is totally perfect that even the best bookie in the world cannot give the odds to which fuse will blow off when we turn on a switch. The drainage system you assume anything about it and you are right. Then Bulshee, the clean factor in our home, he used to sleep in a room surrounded by his stinking clothes everywhere. We are still puzzled how he runs out of clean pair of dress even after two days of washing. The house was fun with the seniors in the floor above and us juniors below. We have had many good times. We were the kings of the good times. But the time has come, the time to part. Anish and Sankaran going to USA, Ragav going to Ahmedabad to have one more degree at the end of their names and one or two more zeroes to the salary they were getting.

The new phone. I am about to purchase the fifth phone this year. I had a Samsung, and then bought two motorolas for me and you know who (doesn’t exist now), after that I bought a Nokia on which I tried to test the impact of it on the wall which left all the intricate elements in it thwarted. So now I plan to buy Nokia E-50 or an i-mate, haven’t decided on it.

When I finished my college last year around this time I was weighing around 70 kg. After a long year of slogging in front of the machine and sipping calorified coffee from the vending machine and drinking beer every other day made my weight sky rocket from 70 to 85 in a matter of weeks. The spare around my waist has also grown a bit too large that I am a bit embarrassed to tuck in my shirt. There are also many personal reasons for my resorting to alcohol for a few weeks. I know you have guessed what my personal problems “was”. It happens in life, and when it happens it happens for good. Now I have a large amount of time, to think about my career, think about my life, and I have enough time to read something useful. Love really was a poison that had gripped me for more than two years. But I am a happy man now happier than before.

Now that we have zeroed in our new house which has a gym and swimming pool there is a high chance in losing weight. I have a plans and I have a partner in crime none other than Bulshee.

Life sometimes is funnier than you expect it to be.

Cheers

-Gunner