I must be the most irregular blogger in the world. It's been many months since my last post. Well, actually, I must be the second most irregular blogger. Krithika (http://krits.blogspot.com) hasn't updated hers for over a year I see...
What's been happening? The world's elite cricketers suddenly go off form collectively. The much-hyped World XI takes a hiding from a born-again Aussie side playing without some big names. Why on earth was an in-form VVS Laxman not played against his bunny boys? Why was Inzamam, who in the middle of a season can be described as half-awake, played in a World XI after an injury layoff and a long vacation? The selectors could easily have played Chris Gayle for an ineffective and disinterested Jacques Kallis. It's well known now that Mark Boucher is not in the same league as even Kumar Sangakkara (who, incidentally, is in swashbuckling form), let alone Adam Gilchrist. And the selectors must be given a dunce cap each for choosing Greame Smith as captain. He's unimaginative at best and clueless on other occasions. If they decided to play Inzy, they ought to have given him the captaincy too, or at least given it to someone with a cricketing brain, like Rahul Dravid. In the end, the World XI looked like a Real Madrid side - all stars, no action. I personally am of the opinion that there are two lessons to be learned from this debacle - one that a side full of big names almost never delivers, and two that such an obvious marketing stunt must never again be given an official status for the good of the game. Cricket, unlike football, is still a game between nations and without a national identity to play for, most cricketers would find it hard to concentrate on the game and not on the publicity. Readers are advised to look up CLR James' excellent book "Beyond a Boundary" to fully understand the relationship between national pride and cricket.
A second internship at Infosys gave me a few more insights into the functioning of the well-oiled machinery of India's best known IT company. An older post might have suggested a City (it's actually called the Infosys City) full of nerdy zombies, but I have discovered that there IS some life here. Perhaps the main reason for this change in attitude may be that I was inducted into an online quiz community for Infoscions (their website says that this is a mix of Infosys and Scion, a word associated with a monarch or patriarch). Nevertheless, I walked into Building 18 one evening and discovered dozens of erstwhile zombies enjoying a game of pool or table tennis or pumping iron in the state-of-the-art gymnasium or chilling out with a swim at the pool which is fit for a luxury resort or five star hotel. I also accompanied Lahar to a coffe shop on campus after dark, and found several people there sipping a cuppa and having a chat about everything under the sun. On another occasion, I was travelling to office by the company bus and a sudden braking by the driver (to avoid a bovine jaywalker) resulted in a dozing lady slamming her cheekbone into the bar in front. Several seemingly unconcerned fellow-passengers rushed to her aid. It was just a light blow, but the incident served the purpose of demonstrating the large hearts present under the nerdy exterior. Well, so much for Infosys life...
The National Law School of India University has a brand new website. The new site even features a pic of me (blush, blush...), albeit in a crowd and taken without my knowledge. But what I found intriguing was the presence of 'invisible' pages. The home page shows a link to 'check results' (http://www.nls.ac.in/academic_programmes_undergraduate_trimester_results.html), but the target page says "the results of the last trimester will be made available shortly". However, on entering this URL (http://www.nls.ac.in/results/index.html), the promised results are already available!!! So much for censorship (if that's the right word)... The next twist in the tale came when i used the search tool on the home page and looked up the term 'results'. What happens? The first link shown above never features in the search results, but the second link does!!! In a game, this might have been called a 'cheat code'...
