The excitement of watching the ATP tour tennis tournament at O2, London

The one sport that I watch with total involvement is Tennis. I actually sit in front of the TV set with an intent to watch, complete with involuntary jerks and hand motions imitating all the shots that the players should have gone in for. My agony at a netted forehand or a drop shot that falls a hair’s breadth outside the side lines rivals that of the player who at the moment is digging a hole in the court with his racket using it like a pickaxe. I must have been a failed tennis player in my last life or at the very least a failed singles player who turned to the doubles game (mind it! The doubles version is quite entertaining and players earn a decent livelihood. Point in case- Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes).
I am completely transfixed. Never mind Wimbledon and those high falutin Grand Slam championships, it is the ATP 1000 World Tour at the O2 that I wait for every year. Held in the dying weeks of the tennis season, this is a tournament only for the Top Ten of the World. Meaning, only the Top Ten are invited and they play each other in a round robin till the champion is distilled through the finest and the best ten layers to emerge as the only person on the podium. There are no easy opening draws as with other championships where a good player has it easy by playing wild cards or players outside the top 50. Here it is grunt, shovel, grunt, sweat, pant from round one.
This year’s ATM 1000 was no different. Federer playing Tsonga in round 1 and then Federer and Nadal battling in O2 gladiatorial arena with blue light washing over spectators and white light flooding the center court. It’s like going straight to the dessert part of dinner without having to eat your broccoli and fish soup. And the tickets! That’s the best part of this championship. You don’t need to bankrupt yourself or dip into your retirement fund to see a spot of action between top players. Even at this moment, you will find tickets available in boxes closest to the court going for the cheapest ticket of 179 pounds to the most expensive of £ 950. There are other tickets available also immediately around the court perimeter for as cheap as £ 119. The tickets for the finals again the box close to the court goes for as high as £1950 and as cheap as £ 227. Well there are also tickets available for as little as £ 96.99 and £ 179 for a night and afternoon play session respectively. These tickets are for seats at the top tier which if you consider the court as a fish bowl then the top tier would be the rim of the bowl. Oh there also the prize money of $5million to consider. A neat pile to earn at the end of the season so that you must stop at a bank on your way to the Caribbean or Bali for a well-earned r&r.
Compare these with any other Grand Slam tickets and you will notice the difference. For all Wimbledon’s claims to be a Middle Class, genteel sport where heads wear lovely hats and hands hold the customary bowl do strawberries and cream, it is anything but. The ATP World Tour Finals is a more egalitarian venue where tickets are available for as low as 20 pounds for initial matches and you don’t feel cheated because even that early in the tournament you get witness world class action from players who play a far different level of sport than say Qatar Open or Dubai Open.
So folks I suggest unless you are given free tickets in the corporate box, do check the ATP World Tour Finals at the O2 in London. The tickets are cheap, the atmosphere very sci-fi and the location awesome. Am I promoting this event? Absolutely, especially after my initial outrage at the astronomical prices of the premier tennis events.

The cost our leaders extract from us for the job of leading us

My very ordinary mind tries to grapple with the figures that our Esteemed Leaders take away from us and then give some back to the society. Mind you my subtraction skills are adequate enough to realise that the difference is a huge one obviously in favour of what they charge us in return for leading us as a country (is that right?)

The numbers game was triggered by a news article yesterday (a small one on Page 12 of the Sunday Times of India). It read that the entre has declared Rs 6000cr sop for weavers in UP. Is that UP alone or for the entire handloom sector in India? It has the stamp of ‘authorship’ of Rahul Gandhi ahead of UP elections and has left little doubt that the package is his ‘personal gift’. Personal you say? Then I have no problem because I am not middle class and ordinary to not the know the difference between public money and personal. So it means that Rahul Baba overcome with sadness for the plight of weavers has pledged money out of his personal fortune for the betterment of the weavers. Still 6000k crore must be a pretty big sum……

It is not big as the sum quoted by the CAG caused due to the 2G scam and that stands at 1,76,645 crores. Or the commonwealth games scam that hurt us to the tune of 8000 crores.
Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousand, lakh, ten lakhs, crore, ten crores…..my counting abilities stop here and I cannot even for the fear of a hundred lashings imagine a thousand crore. Can you?
Liquor scam cost us 3600 crores where IT officials raided distilleries and discovered that excise duty evasion amounted to 3600 crores and It is believed that 5% of the total excise duty thus saved is paid to political patrons. India lost a stagerring 452 billion dollars due to illicit financial flows due to tax evasion, crime and corruption post-Independence, according to a report released by Washington-based Global Financial Integrity.

Now compare that to what our mai baap gave us- Two things come to my mind as of now because I live in Chennai and these figures are pretty recent and appeared in The Hindu-

Amount spent on Anna Centenary Library- 172 crores
Cost of improving Aanganwadis in Tamil Nadu state- 98 crores
You think my mind is like a headless chicken? Well I will dwell on one more fact before putting my head back on and then trying to walk on the straight line of logic and reason.

Try this-The financials of the Nehru- Gandhi family. Theirs it the bluest of the blue blood. Rahul Gandhi is in his 40s. He has never worked. Rajiv Gandhi worked as a pilot in the Indian Airlines but that was a long long time ago. His Mother, Indira Gandhi also never worked except the 14 years that she was the prime minister of India. His grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru was in and out of prisons during India’s freedom struggle and then became PM from ’47 to ’64. His father Motilal Nehru was the only person who actually used his law degree to run a practise. So I am wondering how such a family like the Gandhi survives in these very hard times- costs of vegetables, petrol, housing, interest rates, gold, milk and bus fares have all gone north.

These questions have always plague me. And the same goes to all politicians like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Advani, Sharad Pawar (to name a few but most of our political leaders fit the bill in my line of questioning) who have come so far on very very meagre earning. And mind you they are all octogenarians (Sharad Pawar is approaching that zone soon). My grandmother-in-law too outlived her husband by a good thirty five to forty years but then she lived frugally as well and he was a doctor with a flourishing practise, not a political leader!
Folks, this is something to think about- Our Leaders give with a closed fist but take with shovel and a dump truck!

Have you ever chucked things you didn’t need?

I have and if not for experiencing the spiritual lightness it lends, then do it for the fun of just junking stuff that you absolutely do NOT need.
I clear my cupboards with an amazing regularity and not it has become addictive. So sadly you will not find wrapping paper, chart paper, sundry tissue papers, springs, footwear, clothes, kitchen items (like dishes, bowls, glasses, katoris, kadhais, vessels) electronic items (though I will admit that I can start a small enterprise on the footpath selling USB ports), plastic bottles and containers, empty pots that held dead and withering plants, extra plastic buckets blah blah and blah in my home. I clear things whether spring or not.

Its spring time in my house all the time. Once my zeal got the better of me and I ended up with having to shop for clothes. No regrets though. A healthy home is one that doesn’t have to lend its corners for stowing all sorts of garbage. Literally and figuratively….for that’s what this post is about.

Just as you junk what you don’t need, have you tried to trim the excess baggage that your mind carries inside it every day for the rest of your life? Sit back and evaluate- bitterness, sadness, reluctance to let go, grudges, memories that you regularly dredge up and let your mind well in unpleasantness all over again. You are a walking talking house with junk falling off the balcony. I came across this thought is a magazine by the Bihar School of Yoga. I couldn’t agree with more.

Just let go of thoughts that increase your heartbeats (that is my test for unwelcome thoughts. These days I feel my pulse do a head banger’s ball when an unpleasant memory swims to the surface) I play a quick twenty questions with that memory as if it were a personified object. Let’s say I replay an incident where I feel that the person in question has wronged me. I feel outraged at the unfairness. The wrong hasn’t yet been righted and never will be so I will forever feel ‘wronged’. Is it right to let the memory pummel me till I feel sick? The person has been bad to me only once but I take over from that person and like a sadist let the memory dictate me into feeling anger and helplessness each time I think about that incident. Enough! Is Enough!

Believe me trashing things you don’t need is fun. So is trashing things in spirit a lot more fun. Imagine you have lit up a bonfire (just like on Holi) and are tossing things into it, one by one. You will be surprised how light you feel, how easy you will breathe when you toss that excess baggage (of people, emotions, feelings) . You feel free. You think it is easy? Ha! Try it. It is like flying. Once you have learnt how to fly, can anyone stop you?

I am fed up of fitness advice that people dish out for free

Hmm so I have been deliberating a lot on food and exercise of late. I have come to the conclusion that what was good for us as kids then is good for us as adults now. Waran, Bhat, poli Bhaji, can’t think of anyway that this food is gonna make you go to fat unless of course you eat a mountain full of it a la Bakasura or Chhota Bheem who keeps popping in Laddus like Churan.

If I am eating curds someone who is watching me eat says quickly “try buttermilk, buttermilk is good for health”. If I am eating Phulka then I am told to try whole grain Phulka (I thought what I ate since time immemorial was bloody whole grain aata, except aata didn’t have such a fancy name as whole grain. My mother went to the local kiranaa maal shop, bought about 5 kgs of wheat and then made a trip to the flour mill to grind it. Voila! Whole wheat aata is ready for you) If I am eating a piece of toast, I am told I should eat oats. I am eating ‘whole grain’ (mind you) aata phulka I am told to mix it with one part soya and one part oats to make it more wholesome and more healthy. If I am eating grapes, I am told to eat peaches and strawberries. If I am eating Upama, I am told to eat couscous. If I jog on the treadmill I am told to do pranayama, If I talking, I am told sleeping is better and when I am peeing, I am told shitting is way better. If I am scratching my nose, I am told scratching my bum will burn more calories. I mean this is ridiculous.

Too many people are thinking way too much about way too many things. I have no problem except that these people want to share their new-found knowledge with me and help make the world a better place. Oh I forgot about rice- If I eating my usual type of rice they say I should be eating brown rice.

Ok now that more or less completes the list of things I do and what I should be doing instead. The other day I was peeling a banana and my friend shrieked at me pointing at the banana. What? Banana makes you fat, didn’t you know? To make matters worse, I didn’t seem to appear too perturbed or emotionally shaken at the F word. I relished every bite. She told me that well what was done was done and I could do an hour of extra walking on the treadmill the next day.
Folks, listen to me. Go back to the diet of yore. Ok I don’t want to make you sound that old. Go back to the food that your mother cooked for you and go back to those portions as well. Go back to healthy living and eating, Go back to the times when you washed your hands and feet after you came home, go back to the times when you lit a naranjan (lamp) and said a shlok before you sat down to eat. Go back to the times when you said vadani Kavala before you put that first morsel in your mouth. Go back to the times when you scrounged around for Pohe, gul and milk (rice flakes, jiggery or palm sugar and milk) since there was nothing else to snack on.

Mother promise, you won’t put on a gram of fat. Of course did I mention stop going to the gym as well because you didn’t do that in those days? Liar, I didn’t say that at all. One of the best things of this age is that there is such a variety of fitness regimes to choose from- gym, tennis, yoga, kickboxing, dancing, Tai chi, Pilates, this tes and that tes but to offset the advantage you also have a gamut of food to choose and from at that too at any time of the day. Times were when tea and coffee were meant for morning and evening (or when you came back from work, to drink to perk you up a bit) and there was no such thing as ‘grabbing a bit’. You had a civilised lunch and dinner.
Times are a changing and while we are thinking too much about weight loss we are doing zero about it.

Nothing in life prepares you for death

My mother in law’s sister’s husband passed away on Monday and though it was no one close, strangely I felt as close to death as I have ever in my life. This despite the fact that I lost my father when I was 18 and have seen how it disrupts life (though briefly). We were back in college (me) school (my brother) and at work (my mother) on the third day after my dad passed away. Too much was happening too fast for us to be away for all those 13 days for indulgences in all rituals and customs and besides I have never been the one for observing them. A person has died, let him be and let me grieve in my own way (which is away from people and privately).

Looking back at our lives we did an amazingly good job. It is truly a
miracle that we survived on 1200 rupees that my mother earned in 1989. The absence of my dad did intrude once in a while but really, we were just busy getting on. My point is, you might have overcome the harshest challenges that life throws at you, you might have come out the darkest tunnels a survivor and yet nothing prepares you for death, that final separation, never to meet again the person you have spent your life with- spouse, parent, sibling, children and friend (have I missed anybody here?)
It is grief mixed with a complete dead-end kind of a feeling. What do I do now had I suffred a similar loss? Should I wake up? Have my tea, go to the gym, do my chores, work, surf the net, travel a bit? I have no idea. I am trying to be in the shoes of the person who lost her husband at the age of 83 and I am lost. I just cannot imagine.

All the books that I have read, films that I have watched or the conversations that I have had with my walking buddies and friends do not give me the slightest idea on how I would deal with this blow. Today’s post has no conclusion. It has no answers or suggestions. I guess it is for each one to find it for himself or herself. AND I am in no hurry either!

The cost of being fat

You have often wondered about the time it takes to shed all that excess weight. You wonder if 6 months from now or a year from now you will be your old svelte self and be able to move around that wedding without being conscious of your big backside. You must have wondered how long and how many more months you need to go through the rigmarole of that treadmill and dumb bells, how many more months of eating to a plan, how many months of pain and watchfulness before being fit and being the right weight becomes a way of life. Months, years, decades pass by without your goal in sight. In the meanwhile you swing between periods of fitness buzz where motivation levels are high and depression where even the thought of going to the gym is unbearable. Your children were little when you started putting on weight, you r children grew up and left the family home and you are still panting and sweating. You have only lost a couple of kilograms of that fat while life has passed you by (this is not necessarily a bad thing). Now your body has become a way a life; not the body or the fitness levels you wanted but the body that has become. You still wonder as you argue vigorously over all the technical issues of weight loss and good health and find yourself amazed at the amount of information you have and yet you have not been able to use it to your end.
While you have been wondering about the time you spend on panting and puffing and wiping away the sweat, your pockets are leaking quietly over the years, so quietly that you don’t even notice. Over a period of let’s say a decade, you have renewed you gym membership at least 8 times (let’s also assume for 12k a year) bought endless pair of shoes (for matters of calculation, let assume two pairs a year at 3k a pair) that you need a maybe 3 or four pairs that you want because they are so attractive. You have also along the way bought countless other accessories like an Mp3 player (again for purposes of the cost of being fat let’s assume the cost at 3.5k for a Sony Mp3). Now since we have considered a period of 10 years, we shall assume you have bought at least 3 Mp3 players. Other accessories include sweat bands, socks, gym towels, water bottles, exercises mats, gloves, caps, gym bag, exercise clothes, special foods that takes care of nutrition but doesn’t add to your already existing weight (all hogwash but what the hell, let’s try it). You have also invested in an exercise bike, a pair of dumb bells, ankle weights, skipping rope and stuff that is easy to do at home as well as exercising in the gym. Now catch your breath and calculate the amount of equipment and your hard-earned money that you have spent in the effort for weight loss. I won’t be surprised if you can’t stop catching your breath. The gym membership alone has cost you close to 1 lakh rupees. 1 lakh rupees at 9% rate of interest would have fetched you 9k per year and a total of 72k in 10 years. But let’s not get on that path at all. Let’s stick to money that you have spent so far in VAIN!
Feel like weeping, don’t you? Because you have not only totalled the costs but you also feel totalled. Cost + effort + time, add all this and you could have been a millionaire looking a million bucks, but you have spent like a millionaire and look none the better for it.
Gentlemen and ladies, its time to stop this charade. I give you 8 months, if you were really serious about shedding all that baggage and fitting in the air plane beautifully (where you just slide in and not wriggle until all your layers are in)then you will do it. Don’t spend on memberships (oh alright maybe for 1 year, but that’s it) get the right pair of shoes and don’t bother with the rest of the paraphernalia (it doesn’t help you lose weight only makes you feel like it) and start walking. Get that lazy (I say lazy because you can’t be bothered with your diet and exercise seriously enough to stop yo-yoing) @$$ and start pounding the walkway, sidewalk, treadmill and show me that yes you can lose it!

Legalise bribes? Mad-o-wot!

Legalise bribe as speed money, so said Mr Adi Godrej Chairman of Godrej Industries.Bribe is no longer bribe, it is ‘speed money’, prostitution is selling ‘emotional comfort’ via a commercial transaction, rape is not rape, it is called bleeding the society of weak creatures who are unable to defend themselves by stronger ones who are able to impose their will. Traffic accidents are not accidents caused due to negligence or oversight of laws, it is merely that the machine has a mind of its own and wills the owner to its ways. Wah! Euphemisms are lovely as long as they are literary, used in the printed word. They acquire a cruelty when you use them to subvert something that is obviously unacceptable. And when Mr. Adi Godrej of Godrej industries and Kaushik Basu, chief economic advisor to the Ministry of Finance make these suggestions at the opening session of the annual India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum, my tongue refuses to move at their capability to be facetious. These are men who know their economics. How does it help to legalise bribes? If bribes were to be legalised, then I would still have to bribe the official to get my work done since I still haven’t paid him haven’t incentivised him enough to do my job that he was supposed to do in the first place in exchange for a salary. So on top of the official fee, official bribe money which is called speed money, I will still have to pay him something under the table that he does not have to issue a receipt for. I was surprised to read that N Narayanamurthy had made the same suggestion. I would very much like to dismiss these ideas as idiotic and an insult to the man on the street (the middle class who has to pay taxes and also bribes).
I would have loved it if these ‘captains of the industry’ has taken a non-compromising, stringent view of bribery that is anyways an integral part of any transaction that is out of the ordinary- house registration, name change in corporation, electricity and water supply meter, various permission one must get from the government. So legalising bribe would be just like heaping one more form of tax on us ordinary folks. This idea is not revolutionary if that is what the Big Guys were aiming for. It is not way a game changer if that is what the Big Guys thought. It is downright silly like a kindergarten child make an outrageous request only to have it turned down in an understanding manner because the child in Kindergarten! But Mr Godrej, Mr. Basu and Mr N Narayanamurthy are no KG kids (it’s a different issue that they might feel they are in Kindergarten and they can do as they feel because they have done their life’s work and it is now time to play, yay!). You idiots, you have to fight bribery not legalise it. You have to fight prostitution and not legalise it thereby sentencing thousands of helpless women to hell.
We need to diss these ideas right away and not give them even an inch for them to take root.
This idea came up in the India Economic Forum where all the ‘important’ people whose last names have synonymous with enormous wealth and power have exhorted the government to end policy paralysis. It couldn’t have been more dichotomous.