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Showing posts from 2012

The Man Who Cannot Die

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It is hard to believe that Rajesh Khanna is no more. The news gave me a jolt when I first saw it on TV. It was so unexpected and seemed so unreal that it saddened me more than I would have imagined. It felt as if Rajesh Khanna with his departure from the world has also taken a part of my dreamy childhood with him. Rajesh Khanna. The name still has a magical ring to it, even after all these years. The square features, the twinkling smile, the disarming charm, the romantic voice – every one of these characteristics were personified by Rajesh Khanna on the silver screen to such perfection that, even today, it is impossible to think of him as a man separate from the characters he portrayed. There never has been, and perhaps never will be a taller icon of romanticism in Bollywood and Indian cinema. Rajesh Khanna is one of my earliest memories, and someone I had begun to love and admire long before I even began to understand the language of movies. My mind floated back to those

From The Jaws Of The Ocean

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Whenever I reflect upon the various events in my life that have had a lasting effect on me, I find one particular episode standing out conspicuously from the rest. Today, it is hard to believe that a decade has passed since, because the events of that day are as vivid in my mind as they would have been had they happened yesterday. It was a typical summer afternoon out in the wild sea. Living in the middle of the ocean, far from civilization, and so far from home that it appeared remote even in my thoughts, has been my job since I chose to be an oilfield engineer, and the sea – its waves, fishes, sea gulls, sunsets – fascinated me far less than it did when I first stepped on to a beach and had my first rendezvous with this vast watery wilderness. That day proceeded for the most part like any other that I had been seeing for the three weeks out at sea on that particular trip. The ocean was shimmering in the blinding whiteness of the high sun. The sky was an umbrella of spotless azure hu

Master of The Game

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Cricket has long been the essential team sport, which has over the years thrilled millions of sport lovers across continents not because it has given rise to great players – batsmen, bowlers, fielders, allrounders – but because it celebrates the spirit of competition and accentuates the intoxicating ecstasy of the winning moment. The players of the team are supposed to be cogs in the wheel of success or failure, each equally accountable for either consequence. However, there are rare moments when individual glory overshadows team performance, and March 16, 2012 was testimony to one such moment. That moment descended upon a nation of cricket worshippers when Sachin Tendulkar achieved that elusive milestone of a century of centuries in international cricket. Sachin acknowledged the standing ovation of the thousands of fans in the teeming Dhaka stadium with a trademark wave of the bat and a lifting of his eyes towards heaven. Ironically, the same day also marked another humiliation of