2012 Australian Open Men's Final - wuhoooo !!!

It's sad that one player has to lose at the end...but it is the only fair outcome possible.. to decide the fate of a fiercely fought battle. 

Yes..the 2012 Australian Open Grand Slam's Men's Singles Championship final was nothing short than a battle - and with each battle win, Djokovic-The Joker has almost won the war with Rafa. 

The match was BIG.. it had its BIG moments .. and both the players captured these moments with some really BIG points..It was a display of stamina, grit, some ruthlessness, some brilliance and most of all some hard fought and beautiful tennis. Be it the 4th set when Rafa came back superbly from 0-40 down in the 8th game to just avoid almost handing the game, and possibly the match to Djokovic, or be it Djokovic's resilience in the 7th game of the deciding set, to come back from a break down and go on to take the lead by winning a break himself. The match had many such moments. 

The match is already in the history books, with the bunch of superlatives to its name. The longest grand slam final and the longest match in Australian Open history. With more than 100 years of tennis played.. this is a huge thing ! 

It's amazing what sport can do to you. The match kept me rooted, giving me thrills and goosebumps, like those felt during the WC Cricket final. With absolutely no patriotic sentiments involved here that's quite something !

Though I was supporting Rafa and am sad that he lost...all I can say is that I would have been equally sad too if Djokovic would've lost .. that is the beauty of such games. 

The joy and excitement that you feel when you score that run in gully cricket. The tension and thrill you experience while playing a competitive game.. even at a most basic stage like say may be a table tennis tournament in you apartment. Now multiply these a million fold and you get to, what it must be like competing at the world stage, where numerous eyes are watching you, analysing and scrutinizing your every move, cheering you, jeering you.. And competing through all this, bearing the weight of unimaginable expectations. This is not something you and I, a common person can ever imagine, leave apart living. 

Yet, it is all this, that such champions endure, and come out with stuff that is out of this world - to entertain us, to give us tremendous joy.. to come up with a contest like this. A contest where you become the player himself and experience his emotions. A contest where a player almost done and dusted midway through the match turns the table and claws his way back, slowly strengthening his stranglehold, conjuring that extra bit of energy and effort, to almost tilt the contest in his favour, before that one final twist, an impossible will, fuelled by an intense desire to not give up lifts the other player, finally, towards victory !

Thanks Novak and Rafa, for this unbelievable contest ! Though exhausted (obviously nowhere close to how much you are) , we yearn for more...

Onion-snatching incidents on the rise !!

Pune, Nov 25 : Another day, and another onion snatching incident in the city. A 7th such incident in the last 3 days, rocked the city, already shook by more than 40 such incidents in the past week. In 2 separate incidents, a handcart onion seller and a tokri-wali-bai were attacked yesterday in Kothrud and Sinhagad Road areas respectively. Investigations into that had barely began when a fresh incident, the 7th this week, was reported from the Senapati Bapat Road area today. Whats more surprising is that, the suspected people involved in the robberies seem to come from different cross sections of the society and do not have a common modus-operandi.

In the first incident, two men on a motorcycle picked up a handful of onions, as they sped by Shankar Bhau's handcart. " Sandhyakali 5 wajta me kothrud madhye majhi gadi gheun jat astana doghe barke magun ali jorat aNi kande paLavlit" (At 5 pm in the evening, I was in selling the onions in Kothrud when two thin rogues came from behind and grabbed the onions and fled), he said. He lost around half a kg of onions...worth his 20-day income.

Kusumbai, who sits near near the Santosh Hall signal on Sinhagad road had a different experience. According to her a man and a woman, got down from their car and while the woman diverted her attention by trying to get a bargain, the man ran away with one of her 2 baskets. The woman followed him and the couple managed to flee in their car. "Considering that the signal always has heavy traffic, the risk involved in the robbery must have been extremely high, but that is the level of risk these 'thieves' are willing to take", said investigating officer P.K.Sawant from the Abhiruchi Police Chowki.

Today's incident, that took place near the upmarket Symbiosis College area was completely different. A couple of young men, who seemed to be in their teens, robbed a vegetable vendor of a k.g of onions at knife point. What's more interesting is that they appeared to be from well-to-do families. Unconfirmed reports say that the two might have been students of one of the colleges in the locality, staying in a rented flat nearby.

Police have requested the citizens to be more aware while carrying home their market purchase. The 'Bhaji Mandai Sangh' has requested for more police protection near popular vegetable markets. The Mahatma Phule Market, popularly known as the 'Mandai' has tight police cover throughout the day.

The Onion...even before it is sliced... is literally making people cry !!!

The GOD of India's most followed religion

The cafeteria was filled to capacity. Everybody (like me) had made it a point to time their evening snack break perfectly. I somehow managed to find a vacant chair and grabbed my seat immediately.
(Obviously) a cricket match was running live on the TV and though you expect people hanging around in the cafe during a cricket match, especially one featuring India, there was more crowd than usual.
One of the commetator reminded the viewers that in his career the batsman on strike has been dismissed 17 times in the nineties, and that too 3 times on 99. A slight uneasiness spread amongst some of the guys. He was now on 98. To stretch things a bit further, a 5 minute drinks break followed. As if we were made to earn every bit of joy and ecstasy that we were going to experience in a few moments.
Finally, the drinks break ended. A single was taken to get him on 99. His partner obediently took a single to bring him back on strike.
And then...without any further delay...and to huge cheers of every single person present in the cafeteria, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, aka GOD, took an easy single to bring up an unbelievable 44th ODI century.

And as the celebration dies down, the cafe has started to empty. What's this...the match hasn't ended yet...but whose come to see the match anyway..what they DID come to see, they've been able to. And now they have office work to get back to. The evening snack break can't be stretched anymore. There are mails to attend to, managers to report to (who have managed to get back to their desks only slightly ahead of their reportees). But on such days, even managers seem to time their break when Tendulkar is nearing his hundred :-)

Few other round the world have the capacity to invoke such joy in people. Few other people in the world are revered and loved so much. Few other people in the world are criticized and asked to prove themselves time and again (and they do, even though they don't really need to...probably victims of the standards that they set for themselves).
Tendlya is all that...and much more than that. He is way way above all of it. A great sportsman..a great human being.

By the way..Tendulkar meanwhile has also inched closer to another landmark...17,000 runs in One-Day cricket. Just another landmark that is....


Towards the end of innings:

People have gathered again in the cafeteria...it's time for an early dinner today..it's good for health you know.
Sachin hits a beautiful inside-out six. Very unlike himself, he reverse sweeps the next ball for a four. The crowd cheers. A cafeteria employee carrying dishes somewhere nearby probably trips and a tray of dishes falls. The crowd cheers even more. Sachin repeats the shot. The crowd goes wild. Sachin tries to repeat the shot for the 3rd succesive time but is dismissed LBW. But the people have got more than their share of the entertainment and they applaud all the way on his way back to the dressing room.
India, meanwhile riding on Yuvi's half century post a commanding 319-5. You can expect a few good knocks in SL's reply... but the total looks too much to be overtaken. And India hopefully look good to win another tournament. But the day has already been made !!!

Coincidence or what ...

It's amazing how this thing called 'coincidence' works sometimes.
Me and Vidula came across a new word (wayfarer) in one of Tagore's poem. After assuming a few meanings for it which we thought suited it, we finally looked for it's meaning in the dictionary.

Only a couple of minutes later I came across a Lucky Ali video (Dekha hai aise bhi..) which I hadn't seen for quite a few years. And right there in the middle of the video, there was that word again. It was as if the dictionary meaning was not enough, the word came again in the video giving a pictorial explanation.

AMAZING COINCIDENCE!!!

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