This goes to Warneeee.....

Here's a tribute to the this great guy from Australia. He is, arguably, the best Test Cricket bowler the history has ever seen and he narates which were his best eight deliveries.

Six Months...!!!

Six months...eh..?? yep..it has been six months since i have posted on my-so-called BlOg. This has partly been because of my incorrigible habit of being lazy and had nothing much to write over here...

Well, these six months i was and still am a part of a B-School...The B-school is named NMIMS and boasts of being a top-15 B-school in the country..i have never been a beliver of the rankings, but i can safely say that the quality of students present here on the campus has been one of the most admiring crowds. People do comment on placement, infrastructure criteria to enter in a B-school..but for me the student quality is the most important factor...anyhow, i dont want to go with all these gyaan...the fact is I am happy about the place where i am going to be there for still another 18 months...

This is all that i am going to put now...and then catch on with the most important thing in life and that is S L E E P..!!

I will be regularly updating my blog with critical writings on movies, football to continue...but i have also thought to put up some writings on Cricket in my happiness to see Saurav Ganguly return to the Indian Cricket Team..

See you soon...!!

Spain's Week out..!!!

Well..the week of sports has really been Spain's...with Barcelona winning the champions League, Fernando Alonso winning the Spanish Grand Prix and Rafael Nadal beating World Champion Roger Federer...anyhow, will post soon..!!!





Barcelona captain Carles Puyol hoists the UEFA Champions League trophy aloft

Liverpool all the Way..........Yes, Champions of FA Cup for the 7th Time...!!!!

Game on.........!!!!!!!!!!!




Gerrard delivers in injury time....Mr. Reliable...!!!!!!!!!



Champions of FA for the 7th time..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Football, Movies...UnIllustrated..!!!

Everytime I watch an Arsenal match, one thing gets clearer and clearer and it says that this might just be the end of Oliver Kahn..For people, not understanding what i am speaking, this is FootBall..!!! Something which i eat, sleep and watch every weekend..since the Premiership is at the climax and so is the European Champions League..so getting back now, is it really the end of Oliver Kahn...The man, who single-handedly took Germany to Last Year's World Cup Final Clash against Brazil....(though Michael ballack did also needs some mention) and then he was also the person who faltered in the finals to see Ronaldo and team getting their hands on the title once again...but why I am talking such things...its because Lehman, the current Arsenal goal-keeper, german born, is in sublime form, his save against Villareal in the final minutes...just suggests the way he is saving the goals..which could prove dangerous to Oliver Kahn...and also might just help the Gunners to fetch their first Champions League victory and also make a direct entry to next year's Champions League despite not being in the first four at the Premiership...Oh yes, we are talking about Premiership...and sadly, the fate has been decided with Chelsea getting the crown for second consecutive time and bidding for a promised Jose Mourinho hat-trick..!!! But will the magic of Mourinho work in the European league...that is, what everybody is questioning...because, though they have won the Premiership comfortably in the two years, they have disappointed at the Champions League with losses to Liverpool and Barcelona respectively in both the years...so the question is what does Mourinho have in mind for the next season..?? Premiership, Champions League, FA Cup triple crown..?? Lets see what happens next season...before which the great World Cup is going to be held..Also, before that three weeks from now in Paris will see the Arsenal facing the mighty Barcelona...in short Henry vs Ronaldinho........Cant wait to watch that...

well, the topic of my post says Movies also...and speaking of movies, have been a pathetic round of movies coming up in the theatres...with moi watching Pyare Mohan and The Fog in this week...both being disastrous movies..!!!! Had also seen Basic Instinct 2 in the earlier week, but even that was not better...so where are todays movies heading..?? In some Businessworld article six months back, i read an article on the Bollywood Film Industry, which said that it was on a consolidation phase..with less movies releasing and resulting in higher revenues...but till now, only Rang De Basanti was good...!!! its already May and movies, as i guess, are not upto the mark this year...also, Being Cyrus was an innovative thing happening this year...and if such kind of movies are further coming, then i belive that the taste of people around will change...which does provide something off-beat rather than the usual Taxis, Malamaal Weekly, et al...true that you dont have to carry your mind while watching the movies, but that also means that movies should have something to attract...!!! All said and done, i guess its too early to comment on the year, which is looking forward for great releases .....so lets see how does the year turn out to be...well as of, for the next week...i have Gangster, Ice Age 2 and Pink Panther lined up...lets see how do these turn out to be..

Anyhow, i guess its time to get back to Howard Roark..!!!

BeInG CyRuS

Well, the last post was indeed very long...and people who would have started to read, i am sure would have left it in the middle...well, was confused about what should i write next...well, life seems to be chilled out to me with sittings at coffee shops, listening to songs while OrkuTing....watching movies, Movies...OH yes..the last one i saw was BEING CYRUS..an exception off-beat movie...and here's what i thought about the movie.......
------------
Being Cyrus can aptly be titled a Hinglish or English film. It is a different, interesting and unique movie. Fortunately, many moviegoers today want something different from Indian cinema, and Being Cyrus caters to exactly to those people. Being Cyrus is a film, which will definitely appeal to the thinking man, rather than common folk. It may however get its fair share of recognition due to the rise of multiplexes, which cater to films as well as audiences with a different taste. Being Cyrus has a distinct flavour to it.

OK, Boman Irani Rocks…at some point of time I thought, the movie name should be Being Farokh (it’s his name in the movie) instead of “Being Cyrus”…this was the time when Boman Irani was making me laugh like hell and overshadowing our dear Cyrus (Saif Ali Khan)….but as the movie moved on..I felt…Being Cyrus is the correct name…I hope you got the point? Didn’t you…well, let me explain..no…rediff is better at it..

First half of the movie will keep you wondering why the movie is named as Being Cyrus and what Cyrus has to do with the movie…but the twists in the 2nd half of the movie clears all your doubts and makes you say..”Woha, that was a good movie”. You can say, the movie has 2 heros…1. Boman Irani who makes you laugh like hell in the first half and 2. Saif Ali Khan…who makes you think “Yeah..I can act in non-masala movies too”, very good acting by both the guys infact all of them were good, Dimple Kapadia looks pretty different and Naseeruddin Shah is also very good…he has limited role in the movie but he again and again proves that, he is a great actor…Manoj Pahwa has very small role to play but he has played it very well…funny guy with great acting skills…

The movie is pretty short…approx 1.5 hours…all the actors have acted pretty well…the movie is made for multiplexes and I could not believe that I had to sit in the 2nd row..bloody theatre was jam packed…

So in short..the movie is surely worth watching in theatre…go for it…we need some more good movies like this in India….

THE WARRIOR-HERMITS OF SOMANAHALLI

Guru Freddy, the Belgian `Swamiji' of Somanahalli, is one of those men whose identity resists easy categorisation. You can call him a sadhu, but then he has no time to sit under a tree and meditate. You can call him a guru, but then he doesn't believe in Guru Seva, being by and large a `do-it-yourself' man. You can call him a Gandhian, but then he can teach you to kill in self-defence when your life depends on it. Guru Freddy is indeed a multifaceted man; you could even say a polymath. He can be protean in appearance as well, oscillating easily between the saffron robes of a swami and the fatigues of an army commando, beret and all.

The Nataraja Gurukula, which Guru Freddy founded and continues to direct, is quite a remarkable place. The verdant 15-acre campus, brimming with fruit trees of every kind, hugs the slopes of a craggy hillock, and is in vivid contrast to the semi-arid boulder-strewn landscape that stretches beyond it. Here and there within this little Eden, a mere one-hour drive from Bangalore, are the simple and beautiful buildings of the Gurukula, all single-storeyed and with sloping roofs of coconut leaf thatch. These huts of varying sizes blend harmoniously with their natural surroundings and are reassuringly human in scale. Entering the place, one can't help feeling that this is the kind of environment the human body was originally designed for.

The Gurukula is multidimensional, like its founder. It is at one level an ashram, a sanctuary for a small community of ascetics who live a life of contemplative action. At another level, it is an institution of learning, imparting valuable skills in mind-body integration, outdoor adventure, mountaineering, jungle survival, self-defence and eco-friendly living. It is also a resource centre for viable techniques of wasteland regeneration and social forestry. In short, it is a place with the power to transform those who visit it.

How did it all begin? What made a young man in Belgium decide to become a sanyasi and spend the rest of his life in rural India? What led him to remote Guddappana hillock near Somanahalli to start an ashram? To find out, I made a trip to the place one cool February morning. As I walked up the path that leads from the entrance gate to the Gurukula's main cluster of dwellings, I could hear birdsong, a phenomenon that is getting rarer all the time in Bangalore. A sanyasi who was working on a new cowshed greeted me with a warm smile. When I told him I wanted to meet Guru Freddy, he left what he was doing and led me to another shed. Soon Freddy emerged, in military uniform, his unsoldierly long hair tied in a neat pony-tail and hanging down from beneath his smart beret. This, together with a luxuriant white beard, made him look like a hybrid between General Montgomery and some Old Testament Prophet. He hesitated a bit to shake my hand because he had been working on the Gurukula's Jeep, and his hands had grease on them. But when he saw that I didn't mind, he gave me a firm and exuberant handshake. His face was bright and cheerful, and as he led the way to the hut that served as his office, his sprightly gait and brisk pace made it difficult for me to believe he was 63.

After some genial small talk, I asked Freddy to tell me the story of his life. He talked enthusiastically, his face registering a range of emotions as he took me on a journey across the variegated landscape of his life thus far. And quite an absorbing journey it turned out to be.

Born in Belgium a little before the Second World War, he was christened Freddy Rene Marie van der Borght. The third of seven children born to a middle class Belgian Catholic couple, Freddy was expected to become a priest. A born non-conformist, he defied parental expectation and local tradition by opting to study engineering. Later on, he went to Paris to study at Sorbonne University. As a young man coming of age in a Europe recovering from the trauma of the War, Freddy was disgusted by the hypocrisy, the selfishness, and the rampant materialism he saw around him. He soon found himself out of sync with the lifestyle of the social mainstream. He had questions welling up from deep within his soul for which he found no answers in the rationalist intellectual outlook of his time. Neither did he find any in the staid and dogmatic religious circles of the day. He started looking outwards, beyond Europe, for other paradigms about the meaning of life and how to live it in a way that was fulfilling.

Freddy soon found himself drawn to the philosophical and cultural traditions of India, which he encountered through the books he was reading. Not long after, in the early-'60s, he met Nataraja Guru, who was on a lecture tour of Europe at that time. Nataraja Guru was a disciple of Narayana Guru (1855 - 1928), the great social reformer from Kerala. The meeting sparked off something in the young Freddy. He had several meetings with Nataraja Guru, who was able to give him satisfying answers to many profound questions. In 1965, Freddy gave up his job as an engineer for the Belgian government and hit the road for India. His journey was an adventure in itself. He covered the 22,000 kms to India by jeep, passing through rugged terrain in Austria, Turkey, Syria and the Khyber Pass.

Freddy spent nearly a decade with Nataraja Guru in his ashram in Kerala. Nataraja Guru helped him to probe further his childhood interest in Christian mystics like St John of the Cross. He opened out to him the vast world of the Indian shastras, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, freeing them from narrow casteist and sectarian interpretations, and, in a manner of speaking, `secularising' them. Recognising that Freddy was no longer in tune with the dominant ethos of Europe, his guru advised him to make India his home. Freddy gladly accepted the advice and applied for Indian citizenship through naturalisation. He was granted citizenship in 1976, three years after Nataraja Guru's death. In the last year of Nataraja Guru's life, Freddy started an ashram at Erimala, near Kannur in Kerala. He blended well with the local culture and soon became quite proficient in Malayalam. In a 1994 interview he gave to the newsmagazine The Week, Freddy said, "There are three wonders in this world; a white crow, a white elephant and a white Malayali. I consider myself a white Malayali because I took Indian citizenship while I lived in Kerala." In 1984, 10 years after founding his ashram, he was forced to close it because the Kerala government acquired the land on which it stood, to start a naval academy there. Freddy was footloose again.

His determination and resourcefulness came to his rescue - "Never give in, never give up" says the Gurukula's motto - and the same year Freddy bought the land near Somanahalli where he now lives and works. In 1984 however, it wasn't the lush Eden it has now become. Denuded and rocky owing to years of illegal tree-felling and granite quarrying, it was a desolate wasteland. Freddy and his disciples, most of them foreign-born like himself, worked hard over the years, helping the natural vegetation regain a foothold, and planting saplings of a wide range of species. Today the once arid swathe of land proudly wears its mantle of green. Freddy and his disciples then underwent training in rock-climbing and mountaineering at the Himalayan Mountaineering Foundation. Soon the Gurukula began to offer courses in rock-climbing, survival training, adventure sports and so on. Word got around and, before long, the NCC, various police academies, and even army regiments got interested and the Gurukula became a regular training centre. The nominal fees charged for these programmes started to bring in some valuable revenue towards the upkeep of the institution.

As Guru Freddy brought me up-to-date on his own, and the Gurukula's, history the sound of a bell being rung drifted up to us. "That means it is time for lunch. Do join us," he said. We moved to the large hut that doubled as a dining hall and an audiovisual room. I joined the residents for lunch. We sat on mats spread out on the floor. The meal, served in steel thalis comprised ragi mudde with sambar, a staple of the average Kannadiga's diet, some rice, two different vegetable side dishes and a banana.

"We are not feeding you any poisons," said Freddy, laughing. I got the point. "You mean, no pesticides?" I asked. "Right," said he, "we are a self-sufficient community growing almost everything we need right here on our land. You can rest assured we use no artificial fertilisers and no chemical pesticides." He also told me he and his fellow-ashramites were vegetarian. "We try to live a simple Gandhian life here," he added. At the far end of the hall was a gentle European swami with a grey beard and smiling face. He was the last to come in for lunch. I learned later that he was Swami Peter, once a successful journalist in Austria and now the man who does all the cooking at the Gurukula. The simple meal we ate was his handiwork: simple, but very tasty. And, of course, highly nutritious.

After that invigorating lunch, Freddy introduced me to Mala, one of the swaminis at the Gurukula. "Mala will show you around the campus," he said. Mala is a petite young woman in a tracksuit and looks the athletic sort. She is one of the four instructors on the adventure course. As she took me around, I couldn't help marvelling how this gentle and genial woman was also quite tough. After all, she was teaching men how to be tough survivors. Mala and her fellow women-ashramites live in a separate campus about a kilometre away on the other side of the hillock.

Our first stop was a hut, which functioned as a homoeopathic clinic. A lanky blue-eyed swami named Eric, a German in his former life, is the homoeopath, besides being the man in charge of the vegetable garden. Standing beside shelves brimming with medicine bottles, Eric told me that the clinic operated in the evening every day and was at the service of the people of the surrounding villages. We moved on to the adjoining shack, which housed the workshop. Tools of various kinds, neatly arranged on shelves, seemed to announce that any mechanical or electrical emergency could be easily handled here. After all, Freddy himself is a first rate engineer and mechanic, and does all the repairs on the Gurukula Jeep himself. Mala told me that this workshop also served the farmers in the neighbourhood, repairing their pumpsets and other mechanical devices. It is also a centre for innovation in appropriate technology. Freddy has designed an improved version of the traditional ox-cart. It is equipped with brakes to handle steep descents and a device to shift the load equally on both the oxen.

Besides this, the workshop has produced innovatively designed agricultural implements. Mala then showed me the obstacle course for the trainees. It promises every trainee a rigorous, gruelling set of endurance routines that include climbing, crawling, jumping, and tightrope-walking. This obstacle course is said to be one of the finest in Karnataka. A little distance away is a cable strung at a height of 60 feet, connecting two huge boulders nearly a hundred feet apart. It is an important ingredient of the mountaineering course, and is intended specifically to teach river-crossing skills. Trainees are taught to slide across it using an improvised chair. One look, and you know at once that this is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Mala also pointed out the dim outline of the Bannerghatta reserve forest in the distance, where trainees are taken for three or four days of trekking and jungle survival training.
After this I was shown several check dams meant to harvest rainwater, useful for the growing greenery and for replenishing the water-table. Then I got to see the library, which has a fair collection of books on philosophy, spirituality, religion, psychology, Indology, science, technology and literature. The library building itself is airy and bright, with sloping coconut thatch roof, granite pillars, and mud walls: a beautiful, strong and environment-friendly structure, a model of locally appropriate, low-cost housing. The Gurukula also has a fine herd of cows and the English-born Swami David is the dairyman who looks after them. Then there is the nursery, where tree saplings of a diverse range of species are nurtured in their thousands and made available to the villagers all around, as well as to the forest department.

A hut that functions as a prayer hall has a large picture of Narayana Guru and a statue of Nataraja Guru in seated posture. The Gurukula does not profess any particular religion and lets each resident choose the spirituality he or she thinks personally suitable. Then there is a cave, which has been modified into a dwelling. Freddy himself lives there. It has pictures of Shankara and Rousseau, two philosophers whose writings mean a lot to him.

I had spent nearly a whole day here, I suddenly realised looking at my watch. It was time to leave. I went back to Freddy's office to ask him a few final questions on his philosophy of life. He told me he did not care for any spirituality that could not be integrated with day-to-day living. He has chosen to model himself after the warrior-hermits of the Mahabharata, particularly the illustrious Dronacharya. There can be no meaningful spirituality, he believes, without bodily discipline. He feels that the young people of this country, especially urban youths who are fast falling prey to alcohol, drugs, materialism and junk food, would do well with the kind of training his Gurukula offers. In a world where machines are depended on for everything, people lose their ability to handle life at a physical level. In his jungle survival courses, he and his fellow instructors teach people to fend for themselves as resourceful individuals, creatively using minimal resources to handle, with grace and peak physical abilities, the challenges nature throws at them. Such people are better able to care for fellow human beings and to live in harmony with nature. This philosophy of life, distilled from the best Gurukula traditions of India, enables people to tread lightly on the earth, preserving Nature's bounty and her fragile balance. It is an antidote to the dominant worldview of the West, where science and technology, completely co-opted by rapacious market-forces, is relentlessly destroying our planet and its inhabitants.

At the Nataraja Gurukula, Guru Freddy holds out hope to all who consider opting out of that paradigm