the gray sky speaks

Sitting inside a lit train,

as I look outside

to the light fading into the darkness.

the view all hazy

and the sky violently gray,

the rain drops on the glass window

sharp like an arrow

seeming to want to

make an attack.

While Some drops combine

To form a bigger drop

Looking blunt make me feel safe

A light shining outside

Probably brighter than it should,

Supported ably by the

Visually mean looking sky,

That hits the eye so hard

You realize its not the

Light at the end of the tunnel

Rather tunnelling with the violent surrounding

Making the end of the tunnel seem endless.

Everything around seems dull

Making the light even more strong

At the same time gripping me.

The rain seems to have stopped

But the sky still angrily gray,

The light in the train suddenly dims...

Making the sky now look mighty and a bit blue now?

Its empty as it seems but the vastness,

Gives me the goose bumps telling me,

Almost in anger that....

"If it all seemed easy all this while,

Hold on! I am on your back.

I just made the rain fell all this while,

Now its the world around you,

That would love to see you smile."

Space between us!!

In the space between us

I don't feel the air anymore

In the space between us

there is a distance that takes away the dream

In the space between us

I am hopelessly trying to drift away

In the space between us

there is an attempt to join a thread to hold us

In the space between us

there is a fear to look at the right as wrong

In the space between us

there is a lot more than you and me

In the space between us

there are those memories that hold no truth

In the space between us

there is no doubt we'd fail again

But in the space between us

there is a chance that we remember

the space we never had between us.....

My fav Indian Cricket team Part II

So comes number 4....The God to every Indian cricket follower...Sachin Tendulkar

Interestingly when I started following cricket I was not a major Sachin fan. He was already a superstar and everyone spoke of him. I found it odd at the amount of importance given to the one man in a team sport. I probably became a Sachin fan much later but I truly understood his effect on the mass when I became friends with this person to whom 24th April was the biggest day in his year than his own birthday. I myself was a huge cricket fan and had been with many others but none like this friend. Every major accomplishment of Sachin's would be celebrated by this friend. I started to understand that this guy is a God and cricket is just the mode he chose to come by. Well you could compare a Sachin innings with Pink Floyd’s music or for that matter even Dire Straits(his fav band). I personally became an ardent Sachin fan after his amazing knock of 136 in a losing cause against Pakistan. The innings is just a perfect Pink Floyd number a lot of instruments with a lot of class with the orchestration and just amzing lyrics with an epic guitar solo. The pain he was probably so much so that he was probably comfortably numb .Yes he has played many more amazing test innings before and after that but that was a show of his greatness. In an innings that probably became greater by the attack he was facing Wasim and Saqlain at their best and Sachin nursing a back injury the hot draining conditions at Chennai. The 136 runs he scored you could feel the pain he was feeling with every run he scored, but then it never showed on him. The fact that he never showed the pain is remenecent of Mark Knofler’s strumming. So complicated but yet made to seem so easy or a Gilmour riff just spectacular played with no real flash. Probably the only time he looked down was when he played that shot to saqlain to get out and when the last wicket fell. Everything about the superstar fell in place for me. India had that test up for grabs but Sachin got out and the rest just fell like a pack of cards. The most amazing test and one of the most amazing innings goes down the drain. From there Sachin has played a number of great test knocks probably the other great one would be the 241 he scored at Sydney an innings that I would compare to John Lennon’s Imagine. The song one would say not to the class of the Beatles, no special instruments or vocals just amazing lyrics just so was this innings of 241 simple and not a true Sachin knock of flamboyance but still amazing because of his class. The greatness again not at the number but the fact that through the entire innings he kept the cut out was a sign of his mastery in batting. Most of his shots were on the leg side and one would probably say that he was not a risk taker but I would say to score so many runs by curbing a natural shot is a sign of the mastery. There has been much written about the great man. His greatness is in him being humble, polite, and competitive and the perfect idol. His godliness in being a man of few words and even if he makes mistakes his ability to accept them. Probably the two of his greatest attributes to me is the fact that never have I seen any player in the opposition abuse him or pick up a fight with him a mark of respect he has earned and the other is his want to be in the game. I remember the Kolkata test in 2001 against australia where Hayden was going strong and then Sachin got him out with a googly. The man is a genius with the bat or the ball or even in the field.... He could be a Gilmour epic solo or a bono voice or even a Mark Knofler subtlety or just all of them put together or just watch a Sachin innings and you would know what I mean...The man is a legend and a great ambassador for not just the sport but also the country....

The Indian Cricket fan

I love cricket and until some time back I had stats of most players in the Indian team on my finger tips. Yes my parents wished I had my Chemistry at my finger tips. Not that I disliked Chemistry or science but I just love cricket. To me it does not matter if the game is a 20-20 or a 50 over or test cricket. Till I was in school I would even watch matches between Netherlands and Bangladesh. I just loved the sport to such an extent. I remember watching all the bowlers and practice their styles in my garage. My extent of wanting to copy my cricketing hero’s styles was even their facial expressions. I have dreamt of playing numerous matches for India and actually winning matches from unbelievable positions. While playing with my friends I always wished I could bowl as quick as I could, to just make everyone who faced me be scared of me. Those battles would be tough. But even if I never even played for my school team I had fulfilled my ambitions of being a good player among the small set of friends I had. I would come back from school and start planning of how I would go about playing today.

It was fun playing on streets fighting for the ball with neighbours, breaking their windows and you always harboured the thought you could be the next Sachin or Akram. So when I would watch a cricket match and watch a bowler bowl a bad delivery I would know what mistake he made and probably be reading the batsman while setting the best attacking field to get him out. The most amazing feeling would be if what you thought happens and it works. Well it happens if you watch the number of cricket matches I have watched. Watching cricket on TV is a lot of fun. The commentators with their comments, infact sometimes the pre-match shows where they would teach some batting or bowling skills were just as much fun. I remember this one time when in one pre-match show they explained the importance of the non-bowling hand and I was just so amazed at the new idea given to me. I watched so many bowlers bowl and noticed their non-bowling hand, how that almost insignificant movement of the hand actually was such a crucial aspect of bowling. I remember Sunil Gavaskar explain the bat position the 12 o’clock position the 2 o’clock position to play certain shots. I learnt most of my cricket through these small shows. Of course hearing interviews of various players got you the entire feel of the sport. I would love to watch cricketers being interviewed. Even today though the generation of players I grew up watching and loving so dearly are slowly fading I would love to watch how these players went through the hardships to become cricketers. You are almost everytime motivated by those interviews.

So probably it helped that i was never a whole-hearted supporter of anyone player. Though I had a soft corner for Rahul Dravid in the Indian team but my favourite players are from so many other countries and while I could never get down to liking the Australian cricket team more because they would beat the Indians and were surely the stronger team. Still knowing their strength i always supported India. The Indian team’s winning many times gave me the strength that I would do well in my exam the next day. I am sure the Indian cricket team would not even care if I failed but their winning surely affected my performance in a particular exam that followed. So I would usually wish there would be no India match on two particular days.-my birthday and the other the daybefore an exam. Ofcourse if India lost and I failed I would just think to myself,’I was destined to fail because the Indian cricket team failed as well’. Unfair yes but then I am the fan. An Indian defeat has made me have major fights with my friends. Obviously the problem with friends is that each one would support a different player and so if the blame of losing the match was on Ganguly, the Ganguly fan would probably put the blame on Sachin not giving Ganguly the strike and so on. Those would be pretty hot-blooded fights and arguments. Yet if India won the match these differences would be set aside and the joy would be shared. Its amazing how most of these greats to whom almost none of us even exist played an important roles in our lives. Yes I agree it is unfair for us, as just spectators to rest our happiness or sadness on these people who at the end of the day play to for themselves. Yes no one should care if they do a few ads to make that extra money because while we forget them after a few years they would still need to continue with their lives. Also yes they are the one’s who fight it out on the field put in the ours the effort that they put behind before the games are not even documented yet we judge them by their performance on the field. We get upset at the fact that Sachin plays a bad shot on a particular day not really knowing properly what is going through him through that time. We probably have not even achieved 1% of their achievements in our life so far yet we judge them so blatantly and shamelessly. As my parents would tell me what is there to watch in cricket when someone else is making a life out of it by you putting your life at a stop. Yet despite of all these unfair situations, disappointments and constant parental taunts, I still feel glad at watching a Sachin score a hundred or a Dravid play an amazing defensive shot or a Zaheer Khan getting a wicket or just a wonderful piece of fielding and at those moments I am glad that I still love the sport despite me never making to any level of the sport or fighting with a friend over a decision. I just know irrespective of the fact that I am part of those undeserving judge to players, at times frustrated and demotivated fan club, I will still at the end set my next day’s achievements on my Indian cricket team’s performance.

A Rahul Dravid Symphony

Watching Rahul Dravid bat would me make you feel like you are listening to Mozart. Slow paced at the start and each shot built like every half note perfectly mixed around used by the master at the beginning of his symphonies. Most of Dravid’s innings start of like Mozart’s midnight sonata, slow and serene but with a smooth shift of the musical wave. You would many times come across a symphony 25 like innings that would be a stamp of class. The cover drive, the cut and when you watch the pull you know symphony 25 is at its crescendo. But well that’s not what puts him above the rest, rather let me take a Mozart symphony to explain a typical Dravid innings. Well his basic innings structure matches the serenade for winds with the grit in many defensive pushes clear and apt like the midnight sonata. Even a cut to the fence is nothing like Van halen riff, it will just silkily be played with the serenade for winds. Yes there are these few times he moves into the sonata in G, K 301. Again sweet and soothing with a bit of pace at the same time maintaining the quality of every shot. Keeping the quick singles makes his innings like Sonata In C, K 296. It’s similar to 301 but a lot more playful at times mocking the watcher in Dravid’s case and the listener in Mozart’s case. Then comes that innings he played against West Indies at Sabina Park. At pitch like a grave and then he fought it out like Mozart’s Requiem for a Mass. Every ball with the aim to live, every shot so perfect like the notes, hurting and painful but so well placed, so perfectly woven a master class. An appeal made against him was like the backing opera but the music flowing through it all intertwined to pull through with grace even in the end. Probably the only difference is the kind of personalities they are but then the way they play is so similar...

Can I....

I wake up not knowing what I see is true.....I wake up not knowing if what I am seeing is true...I wake up not wanting to see whats true.....

I fear to fail but then its better to fail than not try at all....I fear to love but its better than lying about that love...I fear to kiss and yes I fear to touch....I fear to face the light but can't stay in the dark...I want to speak and say so many things but I can't hurt someone....Is it fair to want to make everyone happy or just selfishly stare at yourself and briefly think about that one moment to which you belonged to and not find it....You set out to make a move towards happiness every morning you wake up....yet every moment of sadness pulls you down...you set out to make a point and yet you end up covering it and shielding it safely behind a veil....Do you sometimes feel that summers should be followed by a new season or are you satisfied with the everyday...I am not crying from the outside but within I am flooded by tears and upon asking myself I know I don't even have a reason...So do I really need a reason to cry or love or kiss or touch...Is it fair to think of the touch of those cold, tender and soft lips upon me or is that being sexed up....

I know I would want to go out and change the world someday make it a better place for everyone...Make the unhappy realize that there really were bigger challenges that were won sometime and really unhappiness is just a mental block...Can I go out and say that you were wrong when you stopped me from taking my stand? Can I tell the world I love the few people to whom I mean the world even though I still lie? Can I separate the notes in a symphony and explain Mozart's genius..Can I take music in my hands and feel the words flow through my palms and Can I hold and instrument and play the perfect note in the perfect melody yet not be the greatest star....Can I look into your eyes perfectly saying the most beautiful lines to make you love me forever or can I just look straight at you and say I want to have sex with you....Can I for once just tell you that I don't feel the love anymore....Can I...hmm...Can I just be by myself to become how I was when I was an infant, crystal and clear with no mental degradation...Just look at science in the perfect way to change it in a little way by making it better in no way but my way...Can I...Can I love this world the way it is and then turn it on its head to hate it as well...so that someone somewhere unhappy also loves the world my way...Can I...Just Can I...........