Back!

Having pretty much locked myself out of my blog for the last 4 years, am back in.

A verification code received on the mobile and a new password later, landed softly on the 100 odd passages from the past. Feels good to read some of the pieces again from inside. The sheer joy of the ability to churn out a new sentence from the old, correct a preposition here and dot a t there. And create greater freshness from the same letters.

To reflect on how much the world has changed. Or hasn't.

And on how much my view of it has changed. Or hasn't.

More soon.

Merchant of Manhattan

Caught Al Pacino and his Shylock act in the play- the merchant of venice in Broadway the other day. Cost me quite a packet - $180 to be precise, and I did'nt enjoy the play a bit.
Firstly, the seats at Broadhurst theatre on the 42nd at Broadway were pretty small, and added to the heavy set jackets and overcoats everyone was wearing in snowy New York, it made for very uncomfortable viewing.
Secondly, my seat at one corner didnt give the best of views, the elderly couple sitting next to me were jittery due to something in their seats and the young couple sitting in front of me ,though pretty engrossed in the play, had a packet or two of chips which made cracklimg noise just as Narissa was about to say something that would draw the applause of the crowd.
Thridly, Pacino was shorter than I imagined, his Shylock's delivery of dialogue wasnt impressive either. Antonio was better & smarter, I thought.
Fourthly, Shakespeare at 10pm is tough on any day, but when you have to manage a big event the next day, its even tougher. While seeing the Phantom of the Opera in London a few years back, i had dozed off a few times- due to the sheer darkness of its sets and due to teh late hours spent working on that day. A 50 pound ticket experience spent napping. With the MErchant, while teh sets were imagnative, its the verbosity of Shakespeare that got to me. After dozing off a few times, walked out of theatre half hour before the play ended into the chill New York night and to super Italian pizza.
Finally , $180 left a big hole in my pocket - it was what I was paying for Hilton for a night.
Pacino got me into the theatre, Shakespeare managed to get me out.

A new style of play

The reason I dont like Barcelona's style of play is its boringness.
Under manager Pep Guardiola, the team has become quite invincible- 18/20 wins in La Liga, GF 122, GA 21 ( a record both ways) for a 38 match season. So why is success in this case boring?
Its the way they play.
The team is full of steady(they have 80% match attendance) creative, short players- (most under 5'8 -tallest being Villa) who keep passing the ball between themselves (70-75% possession in most matches), tiring out the opposition and using the awesome quartret of Messi, Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique and David Villa to score.
My team Chelsea normally has 50-55% possession (balanced team, athletic and talented) and a good winning record, Inter had 45% possession and won Champions league last year.
This also is something Arsenal practices- while it does make for some beautiful football, so much science also drains the fun from the beautiful game.
Get creative, Barca.

Escape!

Nietzsche's Nihilistic philosophy is classically summarized by the statement- everything has eternal recurrance, since time is infinite and matter finite, everything will repeat itself. This implies that general human life is purposeless and mans actions have no inherent meaning. A meaninglessness endorsed by existential philosopher Camus in his essay, Myth of Sisyphus.
In contrast, there's a lighter, happier theme in 'Escape' centered works, one of which I have just finished reading- John Updike's Rabbit, Run. Escape to find meaning in ones live , existence and purpose. Escape to a better, more joyous state of being.
This theme has recurred in many books- Somerset Maugham's brilliant book, Moon and the sixpence( where bored stock broker Charles Strickand becomes an artist) ; Eat, Pray, Love - a recent blockbuster about the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, herself running away from a divorce thru Italy, India and Indonesia; Year of the Hare- Arto Passilinia's classic tale of Vatanan running into the forest with the hare and moving away from his drab city life.
A few movies have run the similar theme- Revolutionary road - with the Titanic lead pair of Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet fighting to keep their boring marriage alive dreaming of escape all the time, but not being able to achieve it; A Good Year achieved escape - again a dreary and incredibly busy stock broker, breaks away to work on his uncles wineyard to discover the joys of country life. Russel Crowe is the unlikely hero, but does a commendable job, nevertheless.
Rabbit, Run ranks way above quiet a few of these as a good escape novel- simply because it dwells in escape and its consequences- by covering over four decades of the life of Rabbit- Harry Angstrom, who grows (or doesn't) from being a great basketball star to a dull householder and makes multiple attempts to escape his own life, even as he becomes rich (his Toyota dealership booms in the 1980s) and finally falls to ill health. Written every ten years, Updike managed to reflect on some of the key developments in American polity- from the launch on the moon to vietnam war to the end of communism- possible sheerly due to the span of the novel's progress.
This theme of leading multiple lives in search of purpose- a sort of escape from present circumstances makes very engaging reading.
In non-fiction, escape in the form of Jim Rogers beautiful travel books written with a decade between them 'Investment Biker' and 'Adventure capitalist' or even P. J.O.Rourke's Eat the Rich were highly engaging.
An escape experience, be it a movie or a book, leaves you satisfied that there is meaning in life and that all you have to do is to attempt it.
Getting back to Nietzsche, escape is also a recurring philosophy manifesting itself in different ways and forms.
After all, wasn't it the king Siddhartha- the Buddha, who found enlightenment after walking away from his wife, kids and family?
Is escape, then, the route out of meaninglessless?

Spring forth in 2011?

2010 ends this weekend.
Guess it's time to draw up lists of resolutions, pull out reviews of books read, movies seen, progress made, lessons learnt, draw up a mini statement of monies made, blown, left and due, remember places traveled and generally summarize the year for posterity.
2009 was a static year. Nothing happened, it just passed by.
2010 has the makings of a change year- an year with the weight of a decade on its back- seems like a turn around a block, resulting in a complete change in the view.
Another decade is over. From jumping aimlessly into my 30s in 2000 to cautiously planning for the 40s in 2010, it has been a transformational decade. TIME magazine calls it the Decade from Hell; Business Today calls it India's Best Decade. Maybe thats the worldview. When I began the 30s, we were half a trillion $ economy. Today, ten years down we are a trillion and half!
But personally, the decade has reduced my hair, increase my pulse rate, made me a conformist from a confrontist, converted me from a functionalist to a generalist and a tougher negotiator.
To summarize what has changed, transformed- needs more pause, more reflection and more thinking and more projecting into the future. Maybe till 2020.
Whats my view of myself in 2020?
Empty Nest. Entrepreneur. Dollar Multi-Millionaire. Author. Professor. Traveler.
These are six possibilities, not in any order.
But, before all of these possibilities looms a 12 month certainity- 2011.
Should I plan one step towards each of these goals in 2011? Maybe.
Back to 2010. All in all, an year that marks the beginning of a period of considerable progress with some initial milestones achieved. Read very few books this year, but bettered the average in December - having been laid low by flu, have managed to finish in fiction-Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (great 2/3rd- Rome and Indonesia); Sunetra Choudhury's Braking News ( a missed opportunity to produce a masterpiece); John Updike's Rabbit, Run (cant believe it is about life in the 50's) and begun to read the much discussed- 'the girl with the dragon tattoo'. It's also been an year of travel compared to last year- globe trotted to US, France, Hong Kong - mostly places I have been to earlier. Did see many many movies this year, culminating in the launch of a movie channel! Did a small and refreshing education flip course- spent a few days at the ISB-Kelloggs discussing strategy and lectured students visiting from Kelloggs on Indian media. Also gained a definitive couple of kilos as I tipped the 115kg mark. This is one milestone I am not happy about, since unlike my earlier weight gains, this one comes with stress, not cheery prosperity. Could 2010 also be the springboard to greater adventure?

2011, here I come.

No goals at the moment. Just plain anticipation of an interesting year.

European cliffhangers

First, it was the volcano. That just refused to let flights move.
Then came the financial meltdown, Britain which had felt tremors as early as 2008, followed by Belgium, a Greek Tragedy- a collapse of its currency, followed by Spain and a dramatic fall of the Euro from 70 rupees to 55 rupees in under 12 months!
Then the change in political landscape- as slowly conservative preservationsists come back to power in England, Poland and Germany.
Finally, its manifestation on the soccer field.
This FIFA world cup has seen Italy(reigning defending champions), France( winners in the previous cup), Greece, Denmark already falling off. Spain and England struggling to get to the round of 16. Germany and Portugal just about getting there.
Guess the State of country's mind is the State of the country's game.

Soccer & us

The TRP ratings report this wednesday flashed the incredible climb of the TV channel ESPN's viewership from 3 GRP's in the 15-34, AB, C&S, HSM 1mn+ markets to 50 GRP's and then to 117GRP's over the two weeks of FIFA world cup.
I wondered why.
We dont play soccer, we dont like physical sport, we dont like team games, so why is India watching this world cup?
We have been a spectator sport country. We like to watch ( explains our obsession with TV), we like to talk( explains our poor written history records and oral tradition), we dont like sharing credits (explains why we excel mostly at individual sport- tennis, badminton, chess, archery, wrestling or golf) and we like individual skill over collective force( explains why we like cricket which is reliant more on skill - batting, bowling, wicketkeeping).
I think sport to sport, cricket consumes the least amount of calories. Soccer is pulsating, physical extreme sport. Just like rugby or basketball. In soccer, you cant win without teamwork. You need to have people engaged in intensive co-ordinated ball-play to score.
We like the soap opera feel of cricket, you never know what the next player will bring to the game, we like the wristiness of a shot, the slowness of the game( 5 ridiculous days), we like the fact that it creates heroes who can be worshipped, we like the intense discussions around a sport very few countries play. We also like it because maybe it is still the only game where we manage to win.
Maybe what has changed is that as a nation turns capitalist, you learn the power of collective force. The unifying factor has been the pressing opportunity to create wealth for itself, the impending limited period demographic dividend. Which forces the US to build relationships with us. We also begin to get a first world view of the everything as we migrate from defunct and low-leverage groups like SAARC and NAM to BRIC and maybe, G20 and further to a seat in the UNSC with veto powers. For a country that abstained from voting on most issues due to its NAM policy, we have come a long way.
So, we begin to view first world sports. Then, maybe we will play. Health is a big discussion in any meeting. The increasing number of marathon runners will soon make it the worlds largest marathon.
Soccer is here.
Baseball, Basketball and Rugby will follow.
Individual skill will have yielded to collective force.