And then It Happened

The about me in orkut profile says ' Punter in Paradise'. I am not living in a paradise and for sure I am not a punter. I try to reason about everything within the realms of my little grey cells. I just had this phrase to sound cool, just like any other guy at my age, who is single and ready to mingle would have. But I never thought this tag line could fit me one day until this happened.

It was another one of my trips to Edison, NJ (actually I lost count on the number times I have been there.) The plan was to go to Atlantic city which is renowned as the Vegas of the East and to spend some time in the casino's, beaches and return to Houston on Sunday to face the Monday morning blues.  As an afterthought it was one of those trips where everything fell into place like a T. The wheels of the red Chevy were into motion by 1230 in the afternoon and the shit we were talking in the car wouldn't make anyone associated with me proud.

It was about 2030 when I started to gamble for the second time in the slot machines. I started with a $20 bill and went to $38(lucky me) and then lost some and stopped at $20 again. This was my first time gambling and I was pretty happy with the way things were and to be in a no gain-no loss situation that I found myself in. One advantage, when you play with high risk in slot machines is it does not put you into the torture of slow death like roulette or poker. All you need to do is press a key and wait for the screen to flicker with all the symbols and and if you get few in series or parallel you make some(more) money.

Coming back, I again restarted with $20 and I was reduced to $6 in no time. At that I thought the only way I could make money from a casino is to join Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan  but then ......I still remember the exact moment as if it were a few seconds back. It was my last chance because I didn't want to loose more money and I pressed the key and I heard the sound---cling, kling, cling-----sounding like a Mandolin or the sound of coins falling from above. The amount started to increase from 6 to 60 to 120 to 180. All my friends gathered around me to peek into the screen which went berserk  and finally ceased at $249.

Now I could understand why people get addicted to gambling and always have notion that they could win something with the last roll of the dice, no matter what the odds they are confronted with. It's pretty funny that I never got the urge to gamble more. I made myself a promise that I would never gamble for more than $20 in my life even if I feel I could win all the riches in the world with the next few dollars.

With gambling there is always a probability you can make money, no matter how much you loose but the irony is possibility of the outcome is low.

Remember the quote 

' Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy'. Its really true coz if you think you can win riches by gambling you will go down in the casino books as one more looser as Tragedy and Trump (Donald Trump- Casino owner) go hand in hand..

Irressistable force Vs Immovable object

I was watching Tashan the other day and I suddenly remembered one of my favourite film's and also one, I consider to be an all time best from Bollywood industry titled 'SWADES-We the people'. The fact that Tashan was utter trash is really a minuscule matter here. The sine qua non of SWADES was surely its screenplay (mainly climax) where the protagonist resigns his NASA job and comes back to his homeland. That was awesome. Real best.PERIOD.

The author himself is one of those zillions of student's who after his board and entrance exams thought of one of those cliched phrases ' If only I had one more chance'. I always believed I was one of those guys who came till the very end and failed to step to that next level by a small margin (like the one that differentiates a 95% score to a 89% score).  Then I asked myself a question ' Will I be one of those Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering graduates working in a software company?? (I didn't associate myself on anything related to coding.)

Fast Forward----2 years----I am in USA working as an intern Flight operations and Performance engineer with Continental Airlines, living life in my own terms with 'hell lot ta fun'. But now for the past few weeks I have been asking the same questions but with a twist ' Will I be one of those millions of Desi's to be lost in this jungle of Indians working in America??' The time when I thought that the new land, culture, people, places, ---u name it--was cool is a distant memory . It still paints a rosy picture for sure, but its more like comparing Da Vinci's Mona Lisa to a pirated India FM downloaded picture perfect wallpaper. That's what America is. A pirated picture perfect wallpaper.  Its Tamil New Years day here and we (I echo the sentiments of many of my friends and most other people here) are doing our assignments, racing against deadlines, applying for jobs, working our ass off just for one reason--namely to live a fantasy life.

It is very difficult to define what a fantasy life is. In general it symbolizes a life with no worries with all the material comforts or the life that people would have dreamt during their teens , hearing stories about out neighbours, second cousin or uncles wife's sister's grandchild living in foreign countries. 

This is where a movie like SWADES becomes great. It puts things in perspective and brings a sense of balance to life and the way we need to look at it. If the fantasy life is like an irresistable force then the values, culture and family, a sense that has been imbibed in one's formative years is an immovable object.

Its pretty difficult to compare an irresistable force with an immovable object and choose one among them. Now you would know why SWADES is one of those beauty or what you call a timeless classic because it helps you choose one.

Dravid or Dhoni: The debate is on

I never thought I will be posting a blog one day. But here I am.

I haven't been doing anything concrete for the last few weeks. The job that I loved the most for the last 8 months is getting stressful and throwing some conundrums to which I have no answer. This coupled with the fact that I am staying alone in a city where there is no one I can relate with is proving to be far more difficult than I initially thought it would be. But is this the reason why I am blogging?? No.  I would prefer to play a game of crazy taxi in Face book than writing some s#$t in the Internet.

I have been reading stuff in the Internet about the victorious Team India returning from Down Under and how Mahendra Singh Dhoni inspired a bunch of tyro's to glory.  That apart I could see few people praising the Indian captain far too much (most common in India and Indian cricket) . The fact that I could not digest is that a few respectable critics  hail Dhoni as a  great finisher of games and are also talking about how he copes with the pressure cooker situation and the way he wins matches with suave and grace, even better than his predecessor, who the same people say relinquished captaincy cos he wasn't strong enough mentally and  couldn't bat well. This is absolutely ridiculous and unwarranted.

It leads to two questions

 Is Dhoni a better captain than Rahul Dravid?

I feel we are drawing early conclusions about Dhoni's captaincy and are hailing him as the next big thing to Indian cricket after S.R.Tendulkar. I just want all of you to remember that we made rapid strides under Dravid in his first season as captain in the aftermath of Ganguly era. In fact we even made a record for winning 16 consecutive times chasing. But I guess there's a lot more time before we answer this question and even debate about it.

The second one is even more appalling;

Is Dhoni a better player or finisher(Test/ One Day...I don't consider Twenty20 as cricket) than the man regarded as The Great Wall of Indian cricket?

This one is synonymous to asking if Himesh Reshamiya is better than A.R.Rahman. Himesh Reshamiya is no doubt a great talent but would he match the greatest of them all-The Mozart of South Asia who has been churning tunes with his keybord  giving us classic after classic for more than a decade(Roja to Jodha Akbar).

Similarly Dhoni, who according to me has played few match winning innings and fewer under pressure,  can and will never become a Rahul Dravid. Don't get me wrong, Dhoni is a good player with excellent temperament but that does not make him a Dravid or Tendulkar, who have and are playing with doggy ruthless determination of a Muhammad Ali and  the fineese of Federer.

Dravid has sculptured many match winning innings and bailed India out of trouble,  with his bat using it like a paint brush few times and like chisel and saw innumerable number of times. I would not dwell into the statistics here as almost all Dravid's masterpieces are etched in the memories of everyone and more importantly in the folklore of Indian cricket. People say Dhoni is flamboyant, stylish, suave, urbane. Does this make him a better player than Dravid? The qualities mentioned here are more needed for becoming the next Jamed Bond but definately not for a great cricket batsman. If these were the characteristics of  a great player then wouldn't Mark Waugh have been 13584297 times better than that Stephen Rodger Waugh whom every former and current player regard highly as batsman and as a captain?

Give Dhoni his due, he deserves it but at the same time don't tarnish the greatness of Dravid. Its a cliche that Dravid has been the pillar of strength around which the Indian cricket has renovated itself after it's dismal 90's. Dravid is the like 510hp, 9000rpm, V8 engine of the F340 Scuderia. People looking at it will never admire the Ferrari for its power but for the sleek, posh scarlet red exterior finish, as we admire Dhoni the brand more than Dhoni the cricketer and get confused between them both.

Just answer this and you can come to a conclusion about the Dravid-Dhoni debate.

 Can Slim Shady be ever better the 5Th symphony?

Did I label Dravid as Beethoven and Dhoni as Eminem?

U Bet...

PS: Inspiration have been drawn from the style of writing of Nirmal Shekar and Brain Glanville of Sportstar.