Make way, the KING is back

Date: 8th Sept'08

Venue: Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York

Event: US Open Finals

Players: Andy Murray and Roger Federer

Result: As expected, Fed Ex wins.

Now this is not to go through the event again, this is to go over Federer and thinking of one of his biggest fans, ME.

It's one way or the other, either you are Federer fan or you are not. There is no middle path here. Nothing like,"You know, i like him but not that much" or "He is good. I like his game"...Oh save them buddy...answer is clear.
Everybody that i know falls in the above division and i guess that holds true for every tennis fan.

And i think Federer has earned this over years. The way he has dominated this game is simply amazing. 13 grand slams in a period of 5 years. 5 consecutive US opens, 5 consecutive Wimbledons...things cant get better.

Everytime he starts a tournament, its taken for granted that he will reach the final..and he invariably does. And then he takes it one step further. He wins the final. None of the other champions before like Pete Sampras, Edberg, Mcenroe etc had this much dominance over the game and for a such a long time. That speaks volumes about his game.

For such a medium built guy, he has tremendous strength in his arms . The amount of top-spin that he imparts to his forehands is unbelievable. In this final, when Murray hit a ball towards fed's forehand commentators said," I dont understand why people keep giving shots at his forehand. You can hit at his forehand when you are closing a rally, you can serve at his forehand but you never give him a ball at his forehand in the middle of a point."

There is an aura of invincibility around him. When you see him playing and hitting those amazing single-handed backhand returns, you just wanna see him doing that over and over again. You just wanna seee him winning. The innocence on his face, composure throughout the match, respect for opponents and the game overall, crowd-winning gestures,pre and post match comments win a fan completely. Then a person becomes one-of-us, the FED CAMP.

Federer, according to me, is undoubtedly the best player ever in the history of tennis. i am sure he will go pass Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slams.

Keep winning Federer. We all love you.

Keep of the Grass

Book: Keep off the grass

Author: Karan Bajaj

Plot: A ABCD(American born confused desi) Yale-graduate joins a investment Bank only to realise that he is not very happy. He wants to discover himself. So decides to do an MBA from India which will give him a chance to connect with his roots and in the process find answers to all his questions and self-doubts. Thus he joins IIMB. Plot then revolves around his 2 year experience at IIMB and the way it changed his life...

My views: For those who enjoy light-hearted, simple-written, without any life-altering gyaan fiction cum real life experiences book, this for sure is a winner. The novel starts in a filmi style and then takes you from Manhattan.,Wal-Street to IIM Bangalore's campus life and Bangalore's streets and bus drivers.

Two central characters apart from protagonist are Sarkar and Vinod. Sarkar,funniest chararcter, is an IITian. Always smoking a joint and having a sab-moh-maaya-hai attitude towards studies and things in general. He likes to live life on his own terms. The guy is gifted with an awesome mind and is among the toppers without any real effort.

Sarkar gives you the feel of an IITian. When it comes to numbers and logic, it's his world.

Author has tried to keep it very simple. He has stated his life experiences and his learnings from them, but has not tried to hammer it in a reader's mind. How much a person learns from this novel in terms of listening to your heart and being-where-you-belong is left for reader to decide.
All incidents and IIM life is presented in a very comic style with some hilarious sequences...

Like the one when he is on a summer intership and along with 29 other Management trainees is listening to the HR head of a firm. He is apparently bored by their general gyaan and is looking around when he founds a chap dosing off. Author says," I immediately started liking that guy."..

Or when he tells how during intership he hates the question forms containing questions like "Illustrate an experience where you demonstrated leadership abilities". According to teh author, most of the questions are repeated. His friend Sarkar does a funny thing. To one of teh questions he says," Check answer 2".

Or when an intern is asked, if given an option what animal would you like to be...and the chap replies,"I would like to be Pamela Anderson's lap-dog..because..because..do i need to say why?"

The way a Yale-graduate ends up in the bottom half of the IIM class reinforces one's strong belief in our education system. Novel definitely makes one ponder over life's choices, though not in a serious manner.

Read it for funny guy Sarkar, IIM's hectic but magic life, post quiz parties, joint-smoking with friends, vomits after drinking binge, I-Bank's lure , general reflection on life, confusions of ABCD's and their effort to come to terms with it.

All in all, a good read.

Anurag..Anurag...Anurag

Date: 3rd Sept'08

Venue: XYZ company's Office

Event: Weekly progress update involving analysts (from both onsite and offsite teams), client lead and country lead

Details: Before the meeting a progress report document was prepared and circulated to all.
It had project spilt into smaller work streams with colour coding used to indicate the progress level.

Almost all the work streams were either green(on time) or amber(a little behind schedule). One particular workstream was RED. Column next to colour index was labelled Reasons.
Mentioned in the document was "Resource not available".

Now lets do a time travel and go a little back in history. I had applied for US Visa on 1 July and was rejected on grounds of CRAP-CRAP-CRAP. This particular piece of analysis was to be done in Canada and the off-site resource was ME. I had applied for Canadian Visa and as usual, though not rejected, it was taking a greater time than usual. Apparently my smiling face from photograph on Visa form scares the daylights out of Visa guys, or my smiling face reminds them of misery their own life is and they reject / delay my visa outta spite...Whatever be the reason, deal is, i wasnt getting visa on time and so was not able to join the team in Canada. The particular piece in document that was RED was the one that i was supposed to do.

Now back to call. People are happy with the general progress of the project. Important points are discussed. Country head and client lead are both sounding satisfied. Then they come to the piece of work that is red. Cant tell you, how important and dignified it felt to be the centre of discussion for doing nothing. Everyone was taking my name.

"Anurag, so whats the current status?".
"Anurag, can you tell us the expected time when you are expected to arrive?".
"Anurag, we need you on this piece asap.".
"Anurag, can't we expedite the process somehow?".

Anurag...Anurag...Anurag

I had a feeling of Dejavu.

Friends hanging together and amidst friendly bantering, a question pops up,"Yaar, hum logon mein se sabse end mein kiski shaadi hogi?"

Anurag...Anurag...Anurag

Roommates check the refrigerator in the morning and finds out that all the rasgulle are gone. "Who ate them during the night?"

Anurag...Anurag...Anurag

Everytime something like this happens, whereby my name is taken by everyone, i think of the movie AUSTIN POWERS. In one of the scenes of the movie, Austin Powers meets Japanese twin sisters and asks them their names. One of the names was F***-ME.

What if i had this name. Everyone taking my name..F***-ME...F***-ME...F***-ME..
Spoiled for choice :)

Just one more thing. Those of you who have seen the movie might remember, name of the other twin was F***-YOU.

What if i had this name. Everyone taking my name..F***-YOU...F***-YOU...F***-YOU..
Reality bites :(