An Indian summer - 5

I flinched as the moped jolted to a halt barely a foot away from my left leg. My leg hugged the metallic body of the scooter that I was riding on. My friend, the driver of this vehicle, seemed totally unconcerned about the invasion of the crazy moped drivers. Just a minute later, he braked hard to avoid a bicyclist. Meanwhile, an auto-rickshaw was trying to sneak its three wheels into a non-existent turn space. It was chaos all around me - honks, brakes, the rhythmic vroom of supercharged engines - and I was scared to be in this traffic. Those around me weren't, though. They dutifully braked and swerved and zipped past other riders with ease and serenity. Organized chaos.

Some kind soul took a picture of typical traffic in Ahmedabad.

Gridlock 3D

Ahmedabad is notorious for its traffic, but in my absence I had forgotten how bad it could be. Located about 70 km from my hometown, Ahmedabad is the biggest city in the state of Gujarat (total population, including suburbs and associated metro areas, is around 6 5 million)and it has grown in fabulously monstrous proportions over the last few years. Strip malls and massive movie theaters are cropping up in the blink of an eye. Hospitals, luxury condominium complexes and megamansions are rising to keep speed with the new urban development.

As a kid, I cherished visits to Ahmedabad. For us humble small town folk, it was a big deal. Since my parents had done their undergraduate and graduate schooling there, they knew the place very well and had a lot of friends too. And Ahmedabad housed the biggest bookstores in a radius of about 200 km. That was, without a doubt, the highlight of every visit. I always came back laden with enough books to shame a pack mule. These visits played a very crucial role in nurturing my early interest in books and reading. This was the one place that connected me to hittite art, translations of Jules Verne's fantastic adventure stories, and unabridged editions of Charles Dickens' works.

Kiddie book collection (pardon the flash)

This time I was more interested in acquiring Gujarati books, mostly from the pre-independence (i.e. pre-1947) era. These books are very hard to find in the US (even UCLA's well-connected library system has failed to do me any good in this department). I have never been too big of a Gujarati novel fan, but Gujarati non-fiction, specifically essays, is very enjoyable. There is an air of worldliness in these pieces, and it is not uncommon for these essayists to quote Dostoyevsky or Martin Buber to explain some social quirk in India.

You'll be happy to know that I was successful in my quest. Sure I had to dodge hellish traffic while holding on to my dear life. Sure I had to perform Indiana Jones-like acrobatics to get there. But I live to tell the tale.

An Indian summer - 4

Naps are an integral part of the Indian culture. Cricket is perhaps the only thing that can supersede naps in terms of uniting the national spirit. Here in smaller towns and cities, it is not uncommon at all to find shops and stores locked up for the oppressive afternoon as their owners go home for a couple hours of delightful sleep. Some of my fondest childhood memories is watching my dad take his naps. He used to come home around 1:30 and sleep till about 4:30 and go back to work. His naps were pretty legendary around our house. He followed a pretty fixed routine after waking up - after sitting up on his bed groggily for a few minutes he would drink a glass of water, wash his face and get ready to leave.

I never understood the allure of sleeping and wasting a couple hours of your day like that. Whenever I asked dad about his sleeping habits, he spoke wistfully about the redeeming qualities of it, as if it was the elixir of life or something. I used to shake my head in bewilderment, thoroughly not convinced.

Until yesterday.

I am not really a nap person , but there is something intoxicating about the potent combination of the hot afternoon air and the cool oasis underneath the ceiling fan. Before I knew it, I was out. I woke up a good two hours later, and that was when I understood every freakin' word I was told about these naps before.  Although I have taken afternoon siestas in the states quite a few times, this was quite different. Richer, more fulfilling, and certainly more satisfying. Like trading in instant coffee for premium Colombian brew.

An Indian summer - 2

Let's play a game. The name of this game is Where in the world is your favorite blogger?

Thank you for playing. Your favorite blogger is currently in a quaint little town called (read twice to memorize; there will be a quiz later) Vallabh Vidyanagar in the western Indian state of Gujarat. But I am sure that's like me saying that white dwarf WD 1620-26 is located alongside pulsar PSR 1620-26 A in the constellation Scorpius some 13000 light years away. (It's true. Look it up.)

Be happy, then, that I spent some time tinkering with Google Maps and GIMP (a free photo manipulation software, if you must know - sorta like photoshop for the poor) to demystify my location.

First, here is the good state of Gujarat. As you can see, it sits happily on the western edge of India, bordering the Arabian sea on the west and the south and Pakistan to the north.

Here is Vallabh Vidyanagar (if you are too tired of the long name, you can call it - as many locals do - V.V. Nagar), roughly 50 km (did I mention everything here is in kilometers, liters and kilograms?) from the coast.

An Indian summer - 1

A warm (and I mean that literally - it's hovering in the high 90's here) hello to our very loyal readers, followers, feed readers, lurkers et al. from India. I haven't written much on these pages for a long, long time and that's because I had other oh-so-slightly important things to attend. Like finalizing on a medical school. And graduation.

But now that I am on a glorious three-week long vacation in India, I have bucketloads of free time. What better way to spend it than churning out blog posts (some of which will, inevitably, be of dubious quality)?

The Flight: The prospect of flying to India from the states is frightening. Total flying time is routinely around 16-20 hours. Unless you are flying to and from a major airport (e.g. Los Angeles to Mumbai), add a few more hours to that flying time for connecting flights, layovers and road transportation. In my case, I flew Emirates airlines from LAX to Dubai and from Dubai to Ahmedabad, a comfortably sized city in the western state of Gujarat. From there, my destination is about 90 km. Emirates is one of the handful of airlines that treats its economy-class passengers as more than worthless cargo. In-flight service is generous and courteous.

I wasted a good two hours trying to like the Adam Sandler-driven trash vehicle "Just go with it", also starring Jennifer Aniston and, inexplicably, Nicole Kidman, finally settling down to watch reruns of my favorite TV show "Mad Men." Dubai's airport is large enough to house an entire eastern European nation or one of those trendy enclaves like Monaco. There I spend a whole $6 on a tiny cup of Haagen-Dazs ice-cream.

After clearing immigration and customs at Ahmedabad airport, I arrived at my destination (a small town called Vallabh Vidyanagar) at 6 in the morning, local time on Wednesday. I had left LA at 1 pm local time on Monday. In all, I spent about 30 hours in flights, layovers and other miscellany.

As I am writing this, the ceiling fan is groaning at top speed, desperately trying to generate enough cool air to ward the heat away. My friends and grandparents told me it was a lot hotter last week. Should I be glad, then?

That's it for this first installment. In the next part, I will talk a bit more about the place I am at (history, customs, what's life like here and so on), but in the meantime, say hello to my little friend that allows me to communicate with the outside world:

It's a series of tubes!

Next stop: Mumbai!!

A very thrilling India-Pakistan semifinal that absolutely lived up to its enormous pre-game hype. So much so that even ESPN's main page was forced to take notice of this puny sport I love and cherish. This is a fairly long piece, but very insightful and manages to capture the essence of cricket and its place in India very accurately.

I stayed up all night to watch this (let me remind you that a one-day game lasts ~9 hours) and this picture summarizes all the emotions and thrill:

Lanka calling [source: cricinfo.com]

Friday night, co-hosts Sri Lanka and India will battle it out in Mumbai. I cannot wait. I am sure a billion plus Indians will agree with me as well.

UG Sports - 14: Cricket world cup round up

Boy oh boy. What a world England's been having. Normally, watching England play is like watching paint dry - dull, boring and cliched. But something has happened to the team this world cup. Maybe it's the fresh, sparkling Indian water they are drinking.

First came their thrilling match against India. The harsh lights of Bangalore, a rabidly partisan home crowd, and a century by Sachin Tendulkar - perfect recipe for a disaster of colossal proportions. And yet, the English fought back in style. The target was seemingly unreachable - 338. But Andrew Strauss played a captain's knock and England made it....just. They tied. A last ball tie. That night, hospitals across India and England were flooded with cardio patients, I bet.

Whew, that was a close game [bbc.co.uk]

Next they played their cross-channel rivals, Ireland. The Irish are newbies to cricket and on an island obsessed with rugby, cricketers usually get second billing, if at all. An easy match practice for England, right? Wrong. England chose the wrong day to take it easy. They amassed 327 runs and took the rest of the day off. Minnows Ireland were floundering at 115-5 when a flamboyantly pink-haired Kevin O'Brien decided to take matters into his own hands. A frighteningly powerful pair of arms, those. Clearly thinking this was just another net practice session, KO clobbered every English bowler all across the park with utter ruthlessness and dangerous ease. He scored his half century in just 20 balls and his century in 50. And just like that, the Irish engineered one of the greatest upsets of cricket. As England were left cursing "Oh Brien", the handful of Irish fans who dared to attend the match went wild. Accolades poured in from the home island, congratulating the team. KO has arrived.

Showed those pesky English a thing or two, didn't we?[perthnow.com.au]

You'd think a team beaten that badly would be demoralized and deflated like a day-old balloon. Judging by their performance against formidable South Africa, England is an exception. Although South Africa got them out cheaply for just 171 runs, England's bowlers won them yet another thriller. The proteas were in a very commanding position at 123-3, but over the next few overs, their middle order collapsed like the financial markets of 2008. James Anderson and Stuart Broad went on a rampage, a venture in which they were ably supported by slower bowlers like Swann. In the end, South Africa fell short by 6 runs. Hats off to these resilient English.

Yeah that's the way home, buddy. [stuff.co.nz]

That's it for this week. More next week.

UG Sports - 12: Cricket! (part dos)

So last post we looked at the general aspect of the noble sport of cricket and its three forms. In this post, we will go over what the heck actually happens during the game.

The objective:Like all sports, there are two sides. One side elects to bat, the other side elects to bowl. The order is decided by a coin toss. The objective of the game is to outscore your opponent to win. If you are batting first, you want to post a high-enough total so you can defend it. If you are batting second, you want to chase the target. Unlike baseball, a one-day game has only one inning a side. Test matches function a little bit differently, but we will not worry about them in this post. Every thing said in this post will implicitly assume we are talking about one-day games. Simple so far?

As the diamond is to baseball, the pitch is to cricket. The pitch is a rectangular patch of soil/mud/grass in the middle of a stadium. On two ends of the pitch are three wooden stakes driven into the ground, called stumps. The bastsman's goal is to protect these stumps; the bowler's to blow them away. Since a picture says a thousand words (or whatever), here is a graphical representation

 

 

A bunch of old fogies playing cricket on a pitch

Dramatis personae: Two batsmen, one bowler, and a bunch of fielders. The bowlers bowl overs (each over is six balls) and each side gets 50 overs an inning. Their job is to get outs. The bastmen's job is to outfox these wily rascals and score runs. Oh, and umpires. I guess they are pretty important. Two on-field umpires, one TV umpire. There is also someone called the match referee but I don't think anyone (including the said official) knows what his job actually is. There is some suspicion the job is entirely made-up. Moving on.

How to score: Every time the batsman reaches the other side (and correspondingly, his partner at the other end reaches his end), a run is scored. Other ways to score runs are to hit the ball to the boundary (the edge of the field). If the ball goes into the stands (like a home run), that's six runs. If it crosses the boundary any other way, that's four runs.

How to out: Each side has 11 wickets (or outs, if you will) and a batsman is out if any of the following things happen:
1. The stumps get knocked out
2. The ball he hits is caught (by any player on the field)
3. He is trying to run a run and fails to reach the other end safely

There are  few other ways as well, but they are not as important.

A bit haphazard I realize (let's blame my smashing birthday party last night for this disorganization), but I think the information is all solid.

More parts to follow, as I feel like it.

Now I am off to enjoy the kickoff of an absolutely awesome and spectacular world cup opener and co-hosts India and Bangladesh clash in Dhaka. Woot Woot.