The Club vs Country Debate...

Sachin Tendulkar would probably hate me for saying this but there is something which is true about Indian Cricket and is always kept behind a veil. This topic has been doing some rounds in the media recently and I think that there are some clarifications which are sought for. So, do Indian cricketers really play for India or some club? I am not talking about the situation when supposedly some players choose to play IPL and skip International tours. What I am talking about is that when you actually see them playing international matches on TV, are they playing for India or no?. Well, the answer is that in spirit, may be yes. But technically, no they are not playing for India.

Let me explain. Technically, Indian players play under a "legal contract" for a registered society called The Board of Control for Cricket in India. The BCCI, as you know it, is not a governmental or a quasi-governmental body. It is a private society registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act. And because it is an entirely private entity, it doesn't even have to show it's balance sheet to the country, it is not answerable for any of it's decisions to the people of India and hence, it also curbs the "right to free speech" of all it's contractual players.

So technically, if any other society gains enough support in the country and gets membership to the ICC, then India can have two team. A possible reason why the ICL (owned by zee telefilms) was cornered using different tactics by the BCCI was that it was cutting in on the BCCI's revenues. And the BCCI spoiled careers of many promising Indian cricketers because they played for the ICL and no one could do anything.

That pretty much explains it I guess. Hence, people like Sunny Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and others might in spirit have represented India but technically they were representing a club called BCCI. It's more of our attached emotions that lead us to say that Team India defeated Pakistan. Technically, that's not entirely true. So if this is the scenario, it's BCCI which pretty much governs on when and how to use it's contractual players to raise revenue, whether in IPL or international matches. So let's not blame Gambhir or anyone else for their injury or not playing in the West Indies. The poor chap, bound in legal contract, has to mostly follow the orders of the CEO and what is worse is that his contract even stops him from defending himself in public. And trust me, his shoulder injury, that hurts. So let's not forget that he won us the world cup final not too long ago and stop questioning his Indian-ness. What is required is to make the BCCI accountable to the people of India and make it more Indian than anyone else.

What women want?

This one is hilarious from the new movie Pyaar ka Panchnama...
P.S. I am not a misogynist ;)

foodOlogue! - The Introduction

One of the many surprising things that happened when I was at the Delhi School was my nomination into the cafeteria committee. I asked the director as to how it happened and even he did not know. So the only conclusion I could draw was the perhaps the cognizance of my love for food has spread beyond my social circle and divine interventions were happening.

My take is that, on the whole, food should be value for money. Charging too much for the ambiance doesn't impress. Radical  as my ideas are, this is another genre that I have now decided to venture into and foodOlogue is going to be my mouthpiece about how i see Food around me. In the past five years I have already got my hand and mouth onto food from various places in the city and have liked some not so famous ones and disliked some very famous ones. And now that I have relocated from the north to the south of Delhi for a year (hopefully not more!!) I shall continue my search and exploration into anything that is cognate to food! Well, mostly places that serve awesome food, from small stalls to big restaurants (not too big for lack of resources for now), and occasionally other intricate issues. Two weeks here and I have already a few places in my "to visit" list like - J&K Bhavan for their mutton, Al - Bake for shawarma and Malviya Nagar for kulfi.

So, the agenda is to write about places I have been to and about places I will go to. About experiments with food that I do - both successful and unsuccessful - because as the say "it's a learning experience". The ambition conspicuously is to leave everyone mouthwatering.

For starters, I think it is very important for explorers like me to have a handy food guide. You get to know about amazing places from people in the locality but specially when you are experimenting it's also extremely helpful to have food guide. For NCR my personal favourites are the HT food guide and zomato.com (previously foodiebay.com). 

With that I'd say - "Let the foodzing begin!".

Married on Facebook

So there is this thing that I noticed on facebook and I could be pretty late in realizing it given the time I spend on networking, nevertheless I find it both amusing and intriguing, Females particularly (and I realize that I am risking my reputation to be called a chauvinist by writing this) often change their relationship statuses from "single" to "in a relationship"/"married" to some female-friend of theirs. Now, I wonder what to conclude. In almost all cases I know "they are not in a relationship with the same gender". So, either they are "in a relationship" with a guy and this is a cover up, or they want to be "in a relationship" with a guy and this is a way of signaling that desire. Or may be, they are subtle supporters of the world wide movement for legalizing same-sex marriages.

Whatever be the case, the feminine brain is too complex for anyone to understand and facebook has given us another example why?

(This post be kindly taken in the right spirit and do not sue me in court. I just made an observation ;))