The Mother Teresa complex

I was watching a show on Mazhavil Manorama channel called Midukki (means Smart Girl). And I almost threw up listening to the contestants speak about themselves. Almost all the conversations went like this

-I like working with charities / underprivileged. I want to do something for cancer patients / leprosy patients / children / ….. , (take your pick )

- If I give my 100% at something , I will really be happy

- I don’t want money, I want happiness. My family is the most important thing to me

This is indeed a mysterious virus that seems to be affecting contestants of any beauty / fashion / multi-talent shows. I call it the Mother Teresa complex, which I formulate as follows :

“In a fashion / beauty contest, when a contestant is asked about what she would like to be, 99 out of 100 contestants will transform themselves to subtle variants of  Mother Teresa. The one contestant who responds with honesty will be laughed at by the entire world and will finish last in the contest”

Case in point -  Madhu Sapre who when asked “what would you do if you became the prime minister of your country?” answered truthfully that she would look to provide facilities for sports persons to practice as there are no such facilities in India now. As you would have guessed, she finished 3rd of the 3 people in final.

Honesty ? what is that ? Just not in fashion any more …..

Courage

We see examples of exemplary courage in our day to day lives. However we have been tuned to see and appreciate only acts of physical courage. A commando facing a terrorist is something all of us can immediately identify with. Would you think the same if I told you about Saina Nehwal rising to top 5 badminton players of the world, or Mary Kom becoming a multiple boxing world champion ?

I am quite sure not. “Hard work , dedication for sure, but where is the courage ? “, I hear you ask.

To continue to believe in your dream when no one else around you does, requires courage
To hold your head high and never waver from your vision even when you stumble along the way requires courage
And to tread a path along which others before you walked and failed requires courage

By this bar, I admire the courage of the above mentioned people.

Being a sports buff, I just happened to choose two random names that came to mind. But tell me, don’t you see lot more examples of courage now around you ?

Sentimental Idiot

Well, I am one. I am also often accused of being ultra-sensitive. But some situations do bring a tear to my eye

Case in point was my daughter’s annual day celebration. One of the events was a ball room dance with around 20 kids . This the one in which a boy has to partner a girl for the uninitiated

It so happened that one boy did not turn up for the dance , maybe he was unwell. There was this little girl who was partner-less and struggling to dance .She had to imagine that her partner was holding her hand while she tried to sway and whirl around. Even from the back of the auditorium, I could see her face fall as she stumbled through her steps.

What happened next was really a special moment. Her teacher ran up to her and took to the stage as her partner. Spinning and swaying with the little one, whose face suddenly lit up like a 100W bulb.  Had to flick away a tear from the corner of my eye as I watched it. I can guarantee that kid will never forget her teacher for the rest of her life.

Which reminds me, one of these days I should get back to teaching …..

Regret

Got this from a friend’s page on Google+

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
It is regret for the things we did NOT do that is inconsolable."
- Sydney J. Harris, American Journalist

I envy the people who say “I can look back on my life and say I have no-regrets in life” and really mean it. I cannot do that, I have several regrets :-(( Not necessarily ones that I brood over or spend a lot of time thinking about. But they are there still the same.

Now what are some of those regrets ? Well I regret blogging about this already for starters :-)

The fall of a hero

What is your life worth , if your entire life’s accomplishments have been on the basis of lies, deceit and intimidation ?

I was so dejected to go through the shockingly clear proof that US anti doping agency has assembled against Lance Armstrong. I think for a person who has supposedly never backed down from a fight, his decision not to fight the charges could indicate that USADA is speaking the truth.

I was so thrilled to read his autobiographical books, I thought this guy must be the greatest ever …... I guess I might never know what prompts someone to do this. I am not an aggressive achiever like Armstrong, I never will be.

However I can look my family in the eye every night and tell them that my life has been built on honesty. I feel that is more than what Mr.Armstrong can manage now !!

The latest comedy in town

House-full-2 ? Mindless , slapstick comedy, but you can get a few good laughs in

Cobra ? Pathetic excuse of a movie. Time for Mammotty to play 65 year old character roles, not this kind of nonsense.

Team Anna fiasco ? Priceless. Undoubtedly, the best comedy in town. People contradicting each other, so called up-holders of transparency becoming shrinking violets when their own team discussions are recorded. Hypocrisy flowing like the river Nile. Ugly fights on television channels. This one give you full value for your time spent :-)

Yet another example that there is one fight that you can never win, the one with the Government. They have far too many resources on hand. And just when you think you are winning, they change the rules completely.

Go ask Vodafone

Ads

Actually the story is quite old, just got around to writing my point of view after a few months. Times of India, which is on an aggressive expansion spree, put out this ad ahead of its Chennai Launch.

I thought that it was really subtle and genuinely funny. They do not not directly show The Hindu paper, just visuals of folks going to sleep clutching the paper. ( God knows that has happened to me as well. The Hindu was unreadable when I tried it a few years back, I have not dared to touch it ever since !!) 

The Hindu response was more in the face and basically calling Times of India readers dumb. I did not find it funny, it was just a rude advertisement and tasteless.

I am personally not a big fan of TOI, they have no sense of proportion while printing main stories and focus too much on sensationalism. But in the ad-war, I liked the TOI one better !!

Now which paper do I read ? I prefer Deccan Herald. Less to read and more relevant :-)

Something is Rotten in this Apple

Well something is not right. Two very un-apple like updates in the previous year or so.

First the iPhone 4S which actually is a minor improvement over iPhone 4 ( a better camera and Siri, which surprisingly for an Apple product is a beta version. Jury seems pretty much out on effectiveness of Siri anyway)

Then the iPad3 , which is heavier and thicker than iPad2 ( admittedly with a higher resolution display) . Now that is even more un-apple like where successive versions are usually sleeker and feature dense.

I have never been a big Apple fan. Products are fun to use, but usually ridiculously over priced.

May Steve Jobs was the key factor behind Apple’s success after all. Very curious to see what they put out next.

A tune out of nowhere

Life does seem a bit surreal at times. [Actually now that I used the word surreal, I realized that I don’t exactly know what it means :-)] A quick reference online  and now I can confirm that surreal is indeed the word to describe it.

Had to step out to buy dinner tonight, so took a parcel from close to Marathahalli. As I crossed the busy old airport road and walked towards my car, Istarted humming a tune - Laung da Lashkara ( see link below) . I had no real reason to hum it, I do not understand the lyrics ( heck I can’t tell if it is hindi or punjabi) , I had heard the song only couple of times before and never in full. And I do not really hum too much anyways !! [ With good reason too . If I sing at full volume, there would be few better crowd dispersal tools. Pepper spray and water cannon included  ;-) ]

Got into the car , turned it on and guess what song is playing on the FM radio ? The exact same one !!! What are the odds of that happening ?

Actually now that I have listened to the song in full, it is nice to listen to. Still no idea what it means though :-(

Avial

Avial : It is a thick mixture of vegetables,curd and coconut, seasoned with coconut oil and curry leaves. Avial is considered an essential part of the Sadya, the Kerala vegetarian feast” - from the Wikipedia entry for Avial

Though I love this brand of Avial too, the one I am referring to is a mallu rock band. I came across their songs very recently and I must say I was impressed. This is the not the fake mallu rock folks who sing with an accent. The malayalam used and the pronunciation is pure. Especially enjoyed “Nada Nada” song

Quite catchy, I must say !!

The Wall ….

Sitting around with a set of impacted wisdom tooth and it hurts like hell. Good time to get back to blogging. Lot of things have kept me off blogging so far, laziness being right near the top of the list.

When the return is after such a long break, how can I not mention the retirement of The Great Wall of India  . Folks, you will realize how good he was only when a bunch of unknown seamers knock us over for next to nothing on the next foreign tour.

Here is a salute to a guy who never gave up
A guy who always put his team ahead of him
A guy who always stepped up to the plate and delivered when the odds were stacked against his team
A guy who never complained
And to a nice guy who finished first

Class is one word that comes to mind when I think of his on field and off field behavior. Little wonder that the class shone through in his retirement press conference too. A very neat piece written by his wife is also worth reading. If Dravid ever pens his Autobiography, you can bet I will be among the first to buy it !!

Now that the wall is gone, whom will we hide behind ?

Rs. 32 …

To have so many people struggling to meet ends in such a vast nation is sad enough, what we don’t require is for moronic excel sheet economists to come in and say if you earn more than Rs.32 a day, you are not poor.

Most likely that guy never stepped outside his air-conditioned office, has no clue what it is like to live on the brink. 

The guy who is poor has enough things to worry about, least the economic wizards can do is not to insult them and us with this definition .

Read this too : http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article2622214.ece

Lows in sports

How can you tell when a country is going through a low point of sports ?

Would it be when three of the country's top cricketers are jailed in U.K for match fixing, thus confirming what the rest of the world already suspected ? Hmmmmmmm, that sounds bad enough.

How about when you lose in Kabaddi to U.S.A in the kabaddi world cup ?? (I can count like 3 counties at best which play kabaddi, I'm shocked that there is a world cup for this ! ). Man, that must hurt.

All I can do is this: Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa......

Older , Wiser

Yet another birthday passes buy.

A sign of growing old is that …………….. well , I forgot :-D

Done with the mandatory growing old part, the growing up part continues to be work in progress. Guess it always will be , belated happy birthday to myself :-)

The gadget guy

Well, quite an accumulation of gadgets at home now. iPad2 ( gifted by me to Wifey), Kindle ( gifted by my friend to me) and Samsung Galaxy S2 ( Wifey to me). I love gifting :-)

My phone has simply been brilliant so far. Especially in my trip to U.S. It hooks on to free WiFi networks ( which are plenty in the U.S), so then I can be online through Skype , Yahoo Messenger, Gtalk etc, enabling easy access to staying in touch. No need for the exorbitantly priced international roaming plans !!

Need to recharge battery on a daily basis though, I don’t really consider that as too much of a drawback though.