16th of November. That day. That man.

It has been my dream for twenty five years to step onto the Chepauk cricket ground. Every time I have gone there to watch a match, I would secretly pray that they would have left one of the gates open or unguarded, so I could rush into the ground and fall on the grass there. That they would shoot me down with a rifle is a separate story, but I always prayed I would feel a single blade of grass there someday and suddenly my life would gather some meaning.

Yesterday, a friend of mine took me to the MCC club for dinner. I sat in the pavilion and had dinner and then decided that I had had one too many bottles of water and decided to use the restroom. The waiter walked me into the restroom and wait-for-it, it was the restroom inside the player's changing room. This was the place where Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman would have sat and changed and stared at themselves in the mirror. The feeling was surreal.

I simply sat down on one of the chairs for a minute to feel the excitement brimming within me. When I walked out, the friend who had brought me for dinner dragged me to a gate and led me out of it. On. To. The. Ground.

I was walking On the cricket ground that Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar had fielded. His four had probably brushed the blade of grass under my foot. This was on the 16th of November. The last day of the last test Sachin had played. Slowly it struck me that Sachin would never step on this ground again. And I rushed back to the restroom and silently wept.

I am not some knowledgeable cricket writer. I am not a guy who can quote every innings of Sachin or remember his pet dog's name. I don't know his life by-heart. I am like one of you. I just love him. I just wholeheartedly love Sachin because that is who he was to me - A complete Indian cricketer. Every time he came to bat, I watched with amazement. I looked at his shot selection, at his ability to soak pressure and his at humility when someone mentioned his greatness.

I have seen enough interpretations of one in movies. Enough actors have tried giving me an enacted representation of it. But in real life, as a man of flesh and blood, Sachin Tendulkar is my hero. He will always inspire me. This is a man who when 40 years old, still played for Mumbai and single-handedly took them to victory. I shall never watch his farewell speech again because it has the word 'farewell' in it. It will remind me that Sachin will never play again. And every time I get reminded of that, I will weep like a baby. For when a hero hangs up his boots, who are we going to look up to again?

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The Magnetic Bum

Your post was supposed to be written four months ago, with a different title and different content as well. That post never got written. Your house has not been vacuumed in weeks. Your pants are still unwashed. Remember that girl you wanted to speak to? Well, she got engaged, married and her second son already is in jail for making #YoRahulSoDumb jokes.

Ever wondered why none of the above actually got done? Because, you forgot to get off your ass and do it!

Get off your ass!

Your ass has magnetic features. It simply attaches itself to certain areas and you just cannot get off, unless of course, if you tried. The problem is, we got older. (Yes, I meant you too. Just because you use Fair and Handsome does not make you any younger. Try Fair and Teens.) While getting older, we just became that much more lazier. We. just. stopped. caring.

"GMAT? Nah, I'll take it. This year. Or next year. Or sometime soon. Maybe. If I'm alive."

"Change the floor-mats in the car? Sure. I'll do it one of the coming weeks."

But do you know what the problem is, with doing it in 'one of the coming weeks'? Every frickin' week from now until your death are all 'coming weeks'. So, do you ever do it? Nope!

Get off your ass!

Every day I told myself that I should write. But I never wrote a single line. I tweeted instead. (And no, it is not the same. In fact, it is much worse.) I had a watch that stopped working on April 23rd 2013. A regular human being would've repaired it at least by May. What did smart little me do? Stopped wearing watches instead. We are so comfortably curled on our beds watching Breaking Bad or Miley Cyrus twerking (Okay, that was just me.), that we fail to realize the things that we should actually be doing that make our lives better. Psst. Here's a quick tip.

Get off your ass!

The only times we actually do something, is when we are pushed to it.

"Damn, Amma wants me to get married. Need to move out. I should quickly write GMAT, get a pathetic score, pay all my father's wealth to study in a college in the Sahara desert, so I can come back to India unemployed, but proudly with a Masters degree in Sand management from 'foreign'. Yay!"

"Cha, my so-called girlfriend said the car smelled so bad, it was like riding in an air-conditioned armpit. Damn. Should change car floor-mats immediately!"

It's amazing how we suddenly become the doers from being the no-gooders, the minute we know we have no choice. Maybe life would be so much more awesome if we decided to do things by ourselves. No, don't read this post and go back to your wretched Onida TV so you can continue on F.R.I.E.N.D.S reruns. (And FRIENDS? For Christ's sake, Grow up already!)

Just pick up that pant and soak it. Walk straight to your car and throw the floor-mats out. Call her. Just call her. Once you start the activity, you'll at least get somewhere with it. I somehow started, and wrote this blog. Your turn to, well, uh..

Get off your ass!

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The Hair and the Tortoise

Note: In between, when you find statements in italics, it is my alter ego responding to my writing. Really? And you thought this was a cool way of writing, why?

The title is not a spelling mistake. This is not the usual children's story, but a gripping tale of a struggling man from downtown Meghalaya, an effervescent Brahmin boy from Madras and a pair of scissors. Basically, you got a haircut.

Yes, I did. As a man, I have always wondered why men go to expensive saloons. When I was 9 years old, my dad religiously took me to the same Malabar saloon every time he thought my hair was too long. Your dad thought that every month. He is your dad too. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Every month, my dad used to leave me at the saloon, tell the guy 'Summer cut, pa. Clean cut.' and walk off. There were the same set of people with disheveled hair, reading a Tamil crime novel or staring at the then new Tamil heroine's 'hot picture' which was on the cover, while I innocently sat outside and read Young World. No, you didn't. You were trying to peek at the cover.

Okay, maybe I did. But I at least looked like I was reading Young World. A haircut then costed 9 Rupees. I was given 10, and was never asked for accounts for the gargantuan balance that remained. You bought Caramilk! Whoever buys Caramilk? Caramilk was the second suckiest chocolate ever after Nutrine Mahalacto. Mahalacto wins hands down because they could have decoratively packed a pebble instead of the chocolate and Nobody would have known the difference.

You're making me digress. When I got to college, all the girls were going to Bounce or Studio Profile or Naturals. I am sure all the boys went to a Malabar Saloon or a Dhanush Saloon, but nobody had the balls to admit it. When I heard stories from these girls, I swear I heard my wallet sob. They paid 900 Rupees and all for a haircut! You paid 900 once. No, that was including the price of the Philips hair-dryer I broke.

How can you pay 900 bucks to lose hair? In Tirupati, they cut it all for free; and you get blessings from Balaji too. Some girls paid this 900 to cut the bottom-most part of their tresses alone, which aren't even noticeable, and that's called Step Cut it seems. 

Anyway, now I go to this other famous saloon called Green Trends. They employ these Manipuri/Nepali barbers who have such ridiculous hairstyles. How can I trust my hair with a man who has an electric blue streak in the middle of his head? Some have gelled it and spiked it up like the shocked guy in the Anchor Switches advertisement. You should stop cracking jokes. Actually, on second thought, Good one, bro. *fist bump*

Why do they always ask me 'Sir, what hair style yoo freefer?'. Every boy in Tamilnadu prefers and knows only 2 styles. Summer cut and Medium!

If I say medium cut, these guys always go snip-snip for hours like a tortoise and finally show me the same amount of hair I had before I started. Always. Then I say 'Summer cut' and he cuts nearly all of it off, and then I come back home looking like Tom Cruise from Top Gun. No, you Feel like Tom Cruise from Top Gun. What you Look like, is a man whose head got caught under a lawn mower. 

So, yes. That is my debate about expensive salons. Then again, I know there's hygiene, standards, style and everything else in all these fancy salons. But Malabar Saloon had Vividh Bharati. I guess I just miss Malabar Saloon. And the front covers of some magazines. 

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