A Hundred Hundreds and a Million Salutes

When Sachin Tendulkar scored his first international hundred, Nelson Mandela was in jail, liberalization was yet to dawn on India, Croatia was not a country, and the internet was a captive of a few computer labs. 

The world has changed since then. Sachin has journeyed to the age of 39 years. The body is not as swift on the pitch as it used to be. The back foot punches, the pulls, the hooks have reduced in number. What remains unchanged, however, is the hunger that Sachin walked down to the pitch with, his flawless technique, and his Cricketing genius that is rarer than the twenty-ninth of February. And yesterday, as all of us know, Sachin created a record that wasn't even thought of till the last decade. A hundred international hundreds are a record second only to Bradman's average of 99.94. It will survive the test of time. It will last for years and years together, through different ages of Cricket, just like Bradman's has.

Over the most illustrious career in the history of the game, Sachin has climbed several heights, some of which are so high that nobody knew of them before Sachin reached there. He has ruled the game, and ruled it like nobody ever has. Not only has he been the greatest Cricketer of the modern era but he may also be the greatest sportsman of his time, for nobody has dominated a sport for more than two decades. 

Yes, Indians have a habit of glorifying the ordinary. The nation is known to overdo things. We are fanatic about India and Indians. We are never objective, we fail to believe that we could be the best in the world. It took some of us years to accept that Sachin was the best  because they had almost given up all hope on anything Indian being the best in the world. We needed that to be told by the others. We read the Sydney Morning Herald in 1992, we read the Daily Telegraph time and again in the nineties, and then we saw the cover page of the Time magazine. That was when even the most cynical of the Indians accepted that Sachin was the best in the business. 

Now it has been 23 years since he batted for India for the first time. All the discussions about Sachin's greatness are over and done with, the world knows that he is the best. Sachin is someone who has given us, as a nation, a reason to believe that we could be the best in the world. He is an inspiration to me, to my city, and to my entire country. As the youth of India, rather than looking for some virtually non-existent poor sections of his sublime career just for the sake of some specious arguments, let's stand united in admiration for someone who has deservedly been the best in the world in what he does, and remains as one of independent India's priciest possessions. 

Cricket is as lucky to be played by Sachin Tendulkar as Sachin Tendulkar is to play Cricket. He is one in a million or more, and nothing can change that. Take a bow, Sachin, and take more.

Art and Artists

Nothing can define art - nothing. And that's the beauty of it. 

Art is an uncertainty that lingers in all sorts of by-lanes in the walk of life. Art goes beyond all the worldly jazz. Art is free, art is courageous, and art is boundless. Art is divine. 

Art surpasses the barriers of cultures, traditions, and time. Art knows no limits. It could exist in anything from the extravagant to the mundane. Art is omnipresent yet esoteric. 

Art is a friend one could fall back on in abject loneliness. Art doesn't betray its lovers. Art is what remains when all else fades.

Art is an interpretation. Art is an expression. Art is a perception. And again, art is divine.

Art is not skill. Art is not craft. Art is only art.

An artist is he who can create. 

An artist thinks differently from everyone else, and that is what allows him to create. An artist is often insane and eccentric. An artist understands individuality, and always upholds freedom. An artist is often a narcissist for the fact that he is the source of his art, and art is his only pride. 

An artist is a rebel, for he feels the need to create a world of things that does not exist before him. An artist is an observer, an analyzer, and an expressionist. 

A bastard is the last thing an artist could be, for he is free of societal expectations, and is usually unbothered about the world's perception of him. An artist may be indifferent but never resentful. An artist is extremely honest about life, and is always a gentleman at heart.

An artist often faces strong disapproval, for the world around him is not as quick as him in accepting and acquiring his creation.

An artist is married to struggle since forever, and the marriage lasts a lifetime. An artist is never content, and that instability fuels his art.

No two artists think alike, for every genuine artist creates something that has never been done before.

An artist is he who journeys through life like a roller-coaster, befriends discordance and animosity at regular intervals, is possessed by tragedy for long spans of time, yet refuses to trade his art for a happier life.

Happiness

I am happy. 

Sounds childish, right? Not Abstract Writings material? This is a blackmagic special. This is what I - Mihir Chitre - call a Game! You will know soon; you soon will. 

Kala Ghoda

Not by the absence of the dark horse

Nor by its history that overlays your fortified stones;

You are known: by your antiquity that treats you like wine

And by your magnetic connection with the mundane;

By your musical and multilingual corners,

Your libraries and lawns, and streets that trifle with them;

By lanes turned towards sandwiches and sev-puris,

And by your compassion wet with cold sugar-cane juice.

You paint self-portraits

On arbors of daily chaos and nocturnal silences

Inspecting the anatomy of Bombay

Through the city’s inverted lenses. 

Players (Haha) - Review

If you are fond of absurdity, especially of the kind that is endemic to Bollywood, you must watch Players to have what probably is going to be the laugh of the month for you. This is a comic-thriller. That is to say, an intended thriller turned out to be an accidental comedy. 

The Players are an assembly of retards who roam around the world as if their fathers have the authority to issue visas to any country. The places they go to are random and have no geographical or historical or logical connection with each other. Most scenes in the movie have got nothing to do with the others and enjoy a kind of freedom that is beyond what a coherent story could ever offer them. For instance, in a scene Aftab Shivdasani is murdered in the snow of St.Petersberg and in the next one Sonam Kapoor shows the middle finger to a drunken desperado in Sydney, and in the next one, Vinod Khanna, a prisoner, shares his apparent wisdom on the art of theft with the police commissioner in Goa. This is when one realises that Abbas-Mustan have finally given up on even attempting to sound intelligent.

The plot has so many twists, none of which are exciting, that I shall be wasting my time if I write the summary of the movie. The point is that Romania is supposed to get back some gold that they had entrusted Russia with during the second world war, and our players, try to steal it. It is Aftab Shivdasani, who is dead for an unintelligible reason, who suggests Abhishek Bacchan to make this plan. It is Vinod Khanna who designs it. And it is our players, who, forget being the best thieves in the world, don't even look like people who have a clue of acting, execute this plan. 

Then there is the betrayal that comes from Spider, Neil Nitin Mukesh, which is directly copied from the Edward Norton starrer - Italian Job. Basically, this movie is a combination of three things. The Italian Job, Ocean's 12 and relentless absurdity that people like Abbas-Mustan, who, after watching this movie one would believe, have a collective IQ of 100, have topped it up with.

The robbery takes place in the first half.  Second half is when the revenge happens. Bipasha Basu seduces a Russian military general at a place that looks like the Russian counterpart of a dance bar. Neil Nitin Mukesh has hacked into Russian satellites in the past, Sonam Kapoor changes the colour of the signal by wirelessly connecting to it from her laptop while driving a fancy car and trying to look good, and after these and many other things we know what we are up for.

Omi Vaidya is annoying in the movie with his dirge-like voice and non-existent sense of humour. Sonam Kapoor makes many attempts to look good and those attempts are not as big a failure as her attempts at acting. She is dull. Bipasha Basu is hot in the movie and acts; not very well but, at least, acts. Abhishek Bacchan is intolerable for who he is. Neil Nitin Mukesh is the best of the players on screen but standing out in such a crowd is not an achievement at all. Johnny Lever is so annoying and so trite that after looking at him I felt as if the world hasn't changed one bit in the last twenty years.

While watching players, each time when a cacophonous sound sings "Players...Players...aye aye aye...Players" in the background, you know you are up for the next level of retardation in the plot. Players will play a huge role in making the absurdity of the commercial Indian cinema known across both the hemispheres. From Bucharest to Wellington, St. Petersberg to Sydney, and Amsterdam to Auckland must be laughing their balls off at this epitome of retardation made in India.

Yes, as I said, if sensible is not your way of living life or absurdity is one of your fetishes, you must watch this bunch of clueless retards who think of themselves as some of the best players in the world. And they must be, I am sure, only if the game is idiocy. 

Identity

You are the light.
You are the boundless.
You are the madness of a cyclone.
You are the piquance of creation.
You are the horizon of beauty.
You are the fragrance of an arcane flower.
You are the flavour of the creator's taste-bud.
You are the fight in the phoenix.
You are the hope of the deprived.
You are the wildness in every street.
You are the animate.
You are human.


You - do not walk -
Fly!