I was shocked to see the video of Jarnail Singh, a correspondent of one of India’s largest Hindi-daily the Dainik Jagran launching a shoe at P C Chidambaram at a Congress Party press conference. Firstly, the conference was called by the ruling party for the updates to the upcoming elections. Secondly, Mr. Chidambaram was presiding over the function in his capacity as a Congress Party member, not as the Home Minister of the Union of India. But I think he did a tremendous job by maintaining his composure and controlling the commotion as one can see in the video.
I was visiting my favorite restaurant in south Mumbai along with a couple of my colleagues. We were the first customers ushered to the mezzanine floor which was surprisingly partitioned into a smoking and a non-smoking area but not clearly indicated anywhere. We had no clue about it until we found a lady bellowing smoke sitting behind us. I signaled the steward bringing my apathy to his attention but he’d only shrug in helplessness. So we continued with our lunch and the bonus passive smoking. However when I visit the place next time I am going to be the one shrugging vehemently at the steward.
Are we taking our Marathi baana (pride) too far? a few weeks ago I reluctantly accompanied my friend who is a native of Kanpur to the MSRTC (ST) bus depot. He wanted to reserve a ticket for Nashik. Before I go further, I want to clarify that my friend is an educated MBA and a computer Engineer from a reputed institute and not the typical Paraprantiya (outsider) that one would associate with North Indians. Anyway, with his credentials in mind I didn’t know what the fuss was about and why was he asking me to come along? shouldn’t it be easy for any commoner to negotiate from the time-table, pay the exact fare and get his reservation done?! I realised how wrong I was in my logic.
Mumbai Indians lost horribly by 10 wickets against the Deccan Chargers yesterday. Gilchrist struck a mammoth 9 sixes for the Chargers scoring the fastest hundred of the tournament in 42 balls to blow the Indians away. This makes Mumbai Indians the only team to have lost all their 4 encounters in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Being a true blue Mumbaikar, I support Mumbai Indians whole heartedly although my loyalties are wearing thin after the successive losses and the Harbhajan controversy which is the saddest thing to happen in Indian sports. On the other hand the team doesn’t seem to be gelling together and there seems to be a complete lack of strategy and decision making. The openers Ronchi (pronounced ‘Ronki’) and Jayasuriya are waltzing to different tunes. Ronchi in particular got out to a wide R P Singh delivery yesterday trying to hit it over the slips. As for Jayasuriya, in the 90s he along with Romesh Kaluwitharana were the dashing Sri Lankan opening pair who instilled fear in the opposition with their explosive batting style in the first 15 overs. The match was normally won during that period as well. At present he seems to lack a good batting partner at the other end and looks over burdened by the huge responsibility and expectations of scoring big runs. Everyone is aware that if he gets going with Sachin, there will be enough runs on the board to demoralize any opposition of the day. I believe Sachin’s recovery would coincide with that of the team’s as well and that’s the best that I can hope for.
As I was focusing on some work of the day, my colleague came running towards me and announced the launch of the much hyped Tata Motor’s 1 lakh car aptly named ‘Nano’. I was waiting for the event for a long time to come. It was being shown Live on TV from 11:30am onwards but by the time I reached, the ceremony had got over and the journalists and photographers had started crowding around the small car (I could only see the rooftop). After few minutes, I got the first glimpse of the white ‘Nano’ which was driven by Mr. Ratan Tata himself (coincidentally in Gujarati ‘Nanu’ means small although pronounced differently). Just yesterday some channels were busy speculating the name of the small care – Atom, Jeh, etc.
Post the car launch there are discussions on the effect on the environment and the stress that it will put on India’s infrastructure, etc. On one hand I am happy that the Tata’s have launched a product which specific to a particular segment of the society. On the other, I shudder to think about when the car would flood the roads of Mumbai and the high possibility of a traffic snafu that it will generate. For this moment though, I am waiting to see the car run on the road pretty soon.