No Individual Rights – be it cricket/ Workplace

I did not want to write much on the Indian cricket drama…so sad it has been but yeah i am forced to for more reasons than one…because mostly when i hear it it seems less cricket and more Management stuff in general relating to workplace politics.

Like i saw walk the talk by Kumble and he spoke how just because a set of players go out for lunch or other places together does not mean they have a rift with the rest.

Well this is what i fail to convince managers of….why do we read up the management books of the west and apply them to ourselves miserably.
I m told one must interact with all the team members of a 40 member team well great ….cool but i do interact and help…but how in the world do you expect that 15 as in the Indian cricket team or 40 in say my team previously would hang out together and have fun.

Why do we have team building activities thrust upons us….playing ball and games will not make anyone like a person who talks shit or is a egotist or bores you with self falttery.
Yeah we work together comminicate and as long as i do that why am i supposed to be oh so chummy with them.

In fact in some cases may be i do appreciate the difference in the opposite person and admire it too but that still does not make me be chums with him/her because i may not fit in there.

Ever been a single sitting at team lunch among married people discussing kids and inlaws.It gets to you.
Ditto the opposite …ever been a busy married one sitting among a bunch of singles planning the next fun weekend.You hate it.
This is a way too simple example but there are many other reason why you have groups and will always be there.

Important thing is there should never be any disharmony about work and communication in general should be encouraged but that hardly means mass meetings at lunch or some games devised by a foreigner(read it as Self help books…Seven habits/ DeBono amd what not) with no knowledge of Indian sensibilities.

One or two day training or activities do not build a team…esp if the constituents are the real quiet people who are not very outgoing.
In fact i guess a better way was as in school they rotated the desks and so rotate the cubicles. At least with some time you know a person in general than as a game or a lecture tells you.

Things take time…oh yeah they do.But we like it all instant….well food can be …and so can be other things but with people instant stuff never works.

Next was the damned BCCI contract thing…..i heard about.

Isn’t it the same when the CEO of a business goes about acquisitions mergers and what not for business and money …well quite good…but the moment a employee resigns for money its not really seen in the same light.

How does an employer get a right to your personal time and space…..
Sack the players for bad performance …surefire…
but how can you take away their personal right to choose what they do with their personal time.
Next i guess there would be a clause in the contract….should not go out with any Bollywood actresses 1 month before a major series.
Its more like mothers telling children …sit at home and watch TV and rest the sun and dust is not good for you….and implementing it strictly.

Managers ask you why you need a leave where you will be….and no most projects we do insoftware are not some mission critical stuff where your lack of presence will drown millions or lives will be lost.

Managers want to be the first to know when you get married…is the guy from town…coz you may have to leave otherwise.

This whole Management lanaguage upsets you ……its apt they’ve started calling the new post a manager. Oh yeah professionals the great power point wielders.

Wonder if all Aussies stuff is to be followed by players why not go the whole hog and do what they did to Pawar.

Shove such politics and political people off and say Get moving!!!!

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Some SRT nostalgia as unfashionable as it is

This is something so precious a feeling i mostly wont put on my blog much….but came across a few posts and it brought back that overwhelming nostalgia and just for a memory of that feeling i write this post.This post is purely that nostalgic feeling .

Its been disturbing the way this whole campaign of drop Tendulkar drop Tendulkar is being conducted all round in the media….as much as you try to ignore it.Some use the reverse make him captain…ah more suitable to publicly humiliate…no please.

Oh well i do wish they drop him…at least for the Bangladesh tour please.So much unnecessary humiliation….lets have our young blood and lets see ….how fortunate this generation will be.
Its so sad how we love to put up a statue and then throw stones at it.

Our times were really fortunate…for all said and done we’ve had a wonderful time watching Sachin Rahul and Saurav until the media and finally Mr Chappell may seem to have succeeded in spoiling the whole thing.Divide and Rule someone said…Well!!!!

Watching Cricket has never been the same for me in the past 4 yrs since i started working but oh those days when i watched it….such joy was bestowed by this cricketer.

I came across the article by Rahul through Jaiarjun and can say i too share the same irrational feeling. Another link from the above blog to this lovely piece by Nirmal Shekhar.

Oh yeah drop him by all means but please don’t negate or question the sheer happiness he brought to a few like us who unlike many remember.Yeah except this world cup the last 3 world cups it was he who shone and i remember it well enough.

Its true as pointed out by both “I could never be as EMOTIONAL about India as I have been about Tendulkar.”

I enjoyed it when Sehwag was hitting or Dhoni was slamming but it never
felt the same….i’ve never been emotional about it. It was good fun.But then they were the new heroes of the new set hooked onto contests and Mandira Bedi and what not….. not those who loved to hear Boycott and Harsha or even remembered those Henry Bloefeld Sharjah days of earrings.

Somehow rather than those multitude of Sehwag’s or Dhoni’s sixes the six i remeber best is the one by the most unnatural hitter of sixes…Mr Dravid to Allan Donald in South Africa.

Yeah this is all nostalgia. No ones asking this to be taken into account for our great team’s selection and such high brow things but i do wish this demeaning and humiliation stops .

Don’t worry he will retire he sure will later if not sooner and what a vaccum it would be …nah not for cricket…it will find its own…but for the people and media who like to make gods and then malign them.

He is human …… and thats why its so much more joyous.He is not the world’s greatest cricketer anymore and may not be ( as hard as i find to say it) but he is someone who once brought more joy to more people than the world’s greatest do even now.

some more blogs i read long ago and yet look back – and love
Like this

“We are really blessed to have been part of a time when we could witness someone like Sachin at full flow, and we are fully justified in flattering ourselves into believing that as long as he chooses to be around on the cricket field, there is a miracle round the corner, waiting to happen.”

Ok many will quip …yeah it did not happen the miracle.
Oh yeah…we don’t believe in miracles as they say we actually rely on them –
so when they don’t happen things go awry.

or this –

“Today, even though most believe he may not score many more 100s, should one doubt his intent? Questioning his intent is a slap at our belief and everything we once believed in. …….. And any good cricketer will tell you, the timings just not right. You either believe or you have never watched Sachin Tendulkar bat. Get a life. ”

Oh yeah we sure had a good lifetime.

Oh well let me end this….rather than going on in my nostalgic drawl …… thats why i stopped watching too much of the game …last world cup in 2003 i got hooked again when i watched Sachin and was scared it would be repeated again in 2007 ..well if it were not for his probable last world cup i’d even bat an eyelid…..coz if without miracles pure cricket is to be considered India simply were never the best not even when they won it.
Its the miracles of certain days and some people that make this world so special.

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Our Cricket – Shakespearean Dramas

Time changes us some say
It does not it only unfolds us some say…..I am not sure and it surely can be a matter of another post but yeah times have altered perspectives truly.

There was a point in time years ago when half of what happened yesterday had happened. India were knocked out of the semi final in 1996….it was a moment for grief…it was funny how passionate one can be when young.Sort of remind me of those lines from the poem “Evening Solace”

But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart’s best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back ­a faded dream;

Well so yesterday it was sort of very cool this time …somehow quite expecting them to lose…only some part of the old heart buried deep peeped out for miracles.
But reality sure was the flavor of the day and at no point was there any belief that India would be through…and the team did nothing to change that.
Sad part is unlike those days when some or the other unfortunate thing could be ascribed to failure…umpires …pitch..here it was so plain blunt clear we were just not good enough. Something had somehow blunted out the passion of the whole team….Somehow i usually even in worst moments dont imagine Sachin out but felt so casually that it was gone and thats how it was – gone.

Somehow it seems fitting and actually good that India is out. The whole real passion has died out i felt …sometimes i ask it it in general or specific to my being old enough to always reflect back on the older days.
I had only one reason to even bother to watch this world cup(huh bother …there were times i dared not use such a word about watching cricket.) …this would be the last World Cup of probably the generation of cricketers we grew up on.
Sachin Sourav and Rahul.I agree they did not do well here and if some
says drop them oh well please go ahead do it.

I just have one question in mind though ….and that is the matter of this whole post. Its a job for them in the end and lets say we do badly at our job at some time or actually most of the time……or rather not as well as say someone else is doing how many of us will go ahead and resign?

But yet we clamour that one should retire or give up.I too felt passionately many times esp in the past and do say stupid idiots when they ruin the whole day by some horrid stuff…..should be given one tight slap and other expletives but problem starts when one starts beleiving in them as super heroes.
They would be playing cricket in whatever way they can good or bad just like quitely our other sportspersons play their sports if we did not love them and the game as much…We put them up as heroes as there’s nothing as easy because our lives lack them in reality but when they turn out as vulnerable as us we hate them with vehemance.

“They are responsible for a whole set of fans who suffer so many things and watch them and love them” …
yeah i said that a decade ago.
I wonder to what extent today would one take as much responsibility for the job you work just because all team members and leads adore your work and depend on you…but something somehow needed presently were were beyond the capabilities possessed.

They are humans just like you and me ….and if you ask me a bit better than you and me…cause i am not sure how many among us can resist the huge tempations that are offered to this bunch of cricketers by us or in us the fans name by the real businessmen of this world.

This is not to defend their game but to defend their right to live beyond their job….
Yeah i still say they deserve to value their job a little more and keep up its spirit because after all how many of us have the fortune of having a job we love and enjoy.

One good thing about their losing is this….

This match despite so much money on it in the end was NOT FIXED…
why simple for anyone who watched it.
If India had won almost everyone would have somewhere ascribed it to being Fixed.
Whole day prior to the match i was sick of hearing …”these bunch of jokers no good will lose if the match is not fixed.”

Yeah Sad a relatively(this word is very important) nice bunch of cricketers who gave us joyous moments once will retire without fullfilling dreams……. neither theirs(honestly even a cricketer who might be a match thrower sometime would like to win the world cup once
cause that is the dream you begin career with) nor our dreams fulfilled.

I guess thats why so many writers say cricket is the closest to Life in its intricacies and fortunes…and its Tragedies….and Comedies.

And India Pakistan take it somehow to the heights of Shakespearean Drama.Woolmer’s murder confirms that………Its unbeleivably tragic……and somehow so very Shakespearean i guess.

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A few notes to remember

You just know it when you had a disastrous interview …..
Well at least i do …..
….they were quite nice….i was like terrible

Well neverthless i needed it….
it was a reminder
go where you are good at….
not where its good to be.

I attended another which was kinda better but i simply lost it at the end as the requirements did not match the expectation and the resume. Thys dug up the skill set too much.
6 yrs ago difference between abstract class and interfaces was like u could speak half asleep….now its like i blanked out.I remembered it while returning in the auto.

As it is i lack memory and these thing simply blow me over…
its dead hard to memorize the simplest things….
even the code to click a button…..ha ha ha.

Also i remembered that however good something might have been they dont last….Nothing lasts forever….not even Sidney sheldon….whatever.

And when things arent good just drift….
it doesnt help to fight with a retarded memory and mental agony.

So now that after this disaster i,m home taking a leave
what do i do…make notes of this kind post em and do what ….

Hmmm like
its been so long since i blogged a piece in general that i like rather than my sob stories

Lets think of some better things

This would be the last world cup of probably my generation….STARS at least.. i still have that Outlook issue from college days almost 2 world cups back i guess or less. One with Sourav Sachin and Dravid as Trinity…..Ha Haaa how things’ve changed…and how i have…i still have not seen the schedule completely this time aur ek zamana thaa ki i almost had it by heart.

Its been sooo tiring this nonsense of trying to memorize code that its been soo long since i read what i love …..Fiction.
So go open that bulkiest of bulk books by Vikram Seth which i read once a whole week sitting in the library of a university i enrolled for PG diploma in communcation .And relive that fursat ke din…..well not fursat may be but well you could make time.

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