Balderdash

Dhoni* says that the Dalai Lama's blessings made his team win in IPL, perhaps.

The last word in the sentence is the saving grace.

If Dalai Lama's blessings had such powers, Tibet would be free.

No, I am not making light of the Tibetans' plight.

The owner of CSK* is supposed to have invoked Vaastu and other hocus pocus, according to the papers. Dhoni says that many (all?) cricketers are superstitious and do "little things". Amazing that only one team wins! Isn't it?

One of these little things I was close to was that a classmate of mine wore the same set of clothes for all papers of engineering examinations, if he did well in the first paper. He could do that because he came by car and I went by bicycle. (I imagine that if I did any such thing, I would have got thrown out of the examination hall for being "a public nuisance" I guess.) He invariably did well in the first paper. He was placed either first or second in the University ranking and yours truly was way down below.

So, the difference between his 1st or 2nd ranks and I was a car - the late unlamented Standard Herald at that. How unfair. The fact that he studied some sixteen hours a day and I, sixteen hours a week, for the last four weeks, favoured him just a little perhaps.

* For those apologies for human beings from the large majority of nations that do not know Cricket, and who Dhoni is or what CSK is, here is something to set the scene: Dhoni is the captain of a Cricket team called Chennai Super Kings in a tournament, of a game called Cricket, called Indian Premier League (IPL)

Anand and IPL

Good start for the morning. Saw that Anand has won his second game against Topalov.

I watched the streamed version of the second for a while. I thought that Anand looked confident and Topalov looked tense. I am not sure if it was wishful thinking.

I watched the IPL final too till 11. I wanted CSK to win. Someone asked me why I wanted it to win. My answer? Because Dhoni is from Ranchi. I have a soft corner for Ranchi and that is a long story.

The contrast between the game of chess and IPL finals was striking.

The glamour, glitz and the bling of IPL. The deafening noise and physical energy of all involved. The colours, the lasers and lights and the dancing girls and the endless discussions about the nuances of the game. Even the murky happenings behind the scenes appeared to be erased.

The chess? Two immobile figures. One dressed as if he is attending a board meeting and the other looking almost ridiculously informal, in a formal shirt, in contrast. The display of the board on the screen in black and white. For those who do not have a deep understanding of the game, which includes me, the affair must appear incredibly boring.

The match itself does not lack drama. An Icelandic volcano erupts. Air traffic is cut off. The defender of the title reaches the venue by road. 22 hours in a bus. Three day postponement of the start requested. One granted. Defender loses the first game against a well rested challenger playing before his home crowd. The word crowd sounds almost irreverent and inappropriate. Does "the challenger playing in front of his countrymen" or some such thing sound better?

But! Imagine the happenings in the brains of the contestants. Neurons firing. Memory being accessed. Patterns being compared. Moves being evaluated. Imagining patterns that would emerge with a certain course of the game. Steely wills. Controlling the emotions and the thought processes.

The "fireworks" in their combined brains will perhaps put to shame the wildest creations of the pyrotechnic artists.

Coming down to the results, CSK won. Anand won. I feel happy.

I hope Anand wins and retains the title.

Ten Good Reasons to Learn German

I came across an article called “Zehn gute Gründe, Deutsch zu lernen” - Ten Good Reasons to Learn German, by Sebastian Sick, a columnist for the German Magazine Der Spiegel. He writes regularly about the German language. He is passionate about his mother tongue (Muttersprache). Interestingly, the Germans have a father land (Vaterland) but, a mother tongue.

I admire his passion, sense of humour and concern for the language. I wish we Kannadigas have our own Bastian Sick. Our language is sick and looks terminally ill when you look at the way it is used, misused and abused.

I have attached my translation of the article here. It is not a translation that would get me a first class in a German course or in a translation course. But, it conveys the meaning and humour at least a little bit. I hope you enjoy it.

Clerihew

I won a book "The Dord the Diglot and an Avocado or Two" by Anu Garg sometime ago and finally got down to reading it seriously. I came across the word Clerihew in it and Wikipedia defines it as:

A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The lines are comically irregular in length, and the rhymes, often contrived, are structured AABB. One of his best known is this (1905):

Sir Christopher Wren
Went to dine with some men
He said, "If anyone calls,
Say I'm designing Saint Paul's."

The sub-rule seems to be that the name of the person whose (purported) biographical work it is, appears in the first line.

So I cooked up the following Clerihew.

Mr Shashi Tharoor
Was shown the door
When he played on an unfamiliar wicket,
A game that does not sound quite cricket.

But, one more rule seems to be that it is not satirical. Perhaps mine does not qualify.

Catch 22 Inverse

A friend told me that RC (Oh no, not Royal Challengers (nor Rum n' Cola), you dummy, it's Roman Catholicism) does not allow divorce.

However, (Ah! How I love that word!) if one of the partners is mad, RC allows divorce.

In that case any marriage could be declared null and void.

Isn't getting married proof enough?

Celebration Time!

I wrote a short piece on British Chiropractic Association vs Dr. Simon Singh libel case. I wrote that piece being elated about the news that Simon Singh had won a case in which the judegment was that he could defend himself on the ground that what he had written was opinion and not a statement of fact.

Now the good news is that BCA has dropped its case against Simon. You may read all you want (and a lot more) here.

24 Hour Classical Music Channel

Yesterday, I attended a concert, a violin - Mohana veena jugalbandi, of Mysore Manjunath and Viswamohan Bhat. This was at the 72nd Ramasevamandali concerts held in the grounds of the Fort High school Bangalore. Before the start of the concert Bhat took the microphone and started talking. I usually do not take such talks seriously and only half listen to them (Don't ask me how that is done!!!). You may call me a cynic, but such talk is usually all about how the artist "loves" the audience of Bangalore (or Mysore or Pune or Timbuktoo where you happen to be and he or she happens to be performing)

But, this speech jolted me to attention with the second sentence. Here is a transcript of it as far as I can remember it.

"Good evening. I thank you all for coming to this concert. pause.... ignoring the two hundred TV channels ..... and IPL. I wish we had at least one channel devoted to Indian classical music. Even animals have three channels. (Said with a beautifully self deprecating smile)

In this place of Sri Vijay Mallyaji, I would like say that it will cost about 0.5 percent of his expenditure on IPL and Force India to run a channel like that. So I request Sri Vijay Mallyaji to ....."

I felt like crying. Now that World Space has been shot into deep outer space, this plea sounded more poignant.

As for me, if I have a 24 hr music channel on the air I will unsubscribe from the cable and will watch the four Tennis grand slam finals in some friend's house!

Are the Mallyas of the world listening?

Kudos and Congratulations to Simon Singh

The news of the day for me yesterday was "Simon Singh Wins Libel Case"

If you don't know what this is about, type the words Simon Singh libel in google and find out.

For those who are satisfied with a short report, here it is.

Simon Singh is a best selling science writer from England, of Punjabi origin. In 2008 he wrote an article in which he expressed his opinion that Chiropractics were offering a "bogus" cure for even children's ailments such as colic and childhood Asthma. The British Chiropractic Association sued him for libel. It so happens that the libel laws in England are such that it could drive the defendant insolvent.

After two years of fights in the courts and launching a movement to get the libel laws changed, he has won his case and also succeeded in getting all the major political parties to promise that they would work towards changing the libel laws in England.

He has had to stop writing and do this full time.

Bravo Simon Singh!