IPL is not for me

I just came back from a Bangalore-Pune IPL match. Bangalore won. Being a stern Bangalore fan, I should feel very happy right? I did not even feel like standing up and appreciating the team's effort after we won. The culprit, I never thought, was capitalism.

Vijay Mallya owns the Royal Challengers Bangalore cricket team. He wanted a winning team. He had a lot of money. He thought he would go out and buy as many established foreign and Indian  players as the salary cap would allow him to do. In doing so, he screwed around with the local players that were already playing in the RCB team in the first 3 seasons. Not that they were bad. RCB in fact ended up as runners up last season. But, he did it to do this so that he could be certain his team will not have a problem with talent and experience. Did he do anything wrong in doing this? A capitalist would say, "Of course not. How else would YOU run YOUR business?"

Here is my problem. IPL was in theory about getting the local talent to play in a sensationalized version of Cricket, see if they can perform, see if they can be selected into the national team etc. Cricket was, if not central, an important theme in the bigger scheme of things in IPL. Or so I thought.

I completely think that this is not true anymore. Its all about cheerleaders, celebrity owners, lots of black money, scandals and my favorite from Pooja - lots of drunken men falling on women while walking out of the stadium. I do not honestly think people come to the stadiums for the game either. They just want to see a lot of drama on the ground - sixes, hat tricks etc. They are spending a lot on merchandise in turn helping RCB build its brand and franchise. However, this has got nothing to do with helping the local talent do better. None of this money is going into making the infrastructure of local academies better. Its purely a privately held firm that is working for its gains.

I am thoroughly disappointed at this. Of course, I am complaining about RCB more from a philosophical stand point. I am sure no one - RCB owners, players or the fans, give a damn as long as everyone get their money's worth. I am not sure if I would ever go to an RCB match again just because its RCB.

If you really have to go

If you are on Vittal Mallya road on a 2 wheeler and really have to pee, what would you do? As any Bangalore male with self respect, I instinctively started thinking of an open area/wall where I could pee. The first and the only place that came to my mind was Cubbon Park. However, there are multiple reasons why you cannot pee in Cubbon park.

• You cannot trust anyone these days - Gone are the days when adult males would stop their scooters/mopeds without turn turning them off, go to the wall adjacent to the road and pee in peace. That (supposedly funny) cliched movie scene in almost every Indian language in the climax where the hero steals one such scooter is not so unimaginable anymore. Of course, the chain of larceny that follows is still, luckily, bullshit.
• Cops hide in random places - Ever since that new commissioner dude made the rule that cops cannot stop anyone who has not broken a law, cops have started hiding in the weirdest of places. Now, they are not only hunting for offending drivers, but also for unsuspecting couples with no money to go to a hotel for the night, unemployed/lazy people who cannot think of a better place to sleep than the park, Vataal Nagraj supporters and sometimes, people who are half done peeing. In the event that you get caught, however, do not pay more than 50 bucks. That is the standard bribe rate for most petty offences. Also, do not forget to say "Saar, student saar. Please saar" irrespective of how old you are.
• Dogs have a tendency to bite - There aren't that many dogs in Cubbon park, but I have seen an odd dog here and there behaving, well, odd. And of course, snakes bite too and there are plenty of them in the park. But, I would say, be more careful of the dogs. Snakes bite you, you die. Dogs bite you, you take a lot of painful injections and not die.
• It gets windy sometimes - Most men who have been to windy places can tell their experience about peeing there. Its not fun if you are not into having pee all over your legs. Murphy likes playing cruel jokes as well. Things would be completely calm and still and the moment you start, so does he and the wind blows right into you. Its not fun.
• People apparently care - Last but not the least, there are people who apparently do not approve of this right of men being able pee anywhere in public. They, apparently, also have a habit of hanging around in Cubbon Park protesting one thing or the other. They as well tend to work with the hiding cops sometimes. Only, they do not get a cut in the (hopefully) 50 bucks. Sad bunch really, but pretty dangerous. They sweat these simple things. 

Anyway, given these constraints and the fact that there was no other option within 3 KM range, I went to Mocha, ordered a coffee and used their restroom.

Now, why was I there on Vittal Mallya Road and what happened in Mocha is a different post. The question Why did I want to pee might come up in the more curious reader. The curious reader might want to try out drinking 2 liters of water just before leaving her house.

PS: 12.34% of people who read this blog actually thought I pee against trees and walls in the city whenever I get a chance

Lets take a trip

It had been a long time since I had been to a wildlife sanctuary. 5 years to be exact. When I was in college, I typically went to one at least once every 6 months. Ever since I started working disappearing into forests without knowing how long we would be gone for is, well, a  luxury that I couldn't afford.

Recently I ended up going to Kudremukh and Bhadra with her. I was there only for a couple of days. An outside observer who listens to the incidents on the trip would call it a disaster. But we had a lot of fun. We sat in a reclining chair and read for most part of the trip (or were driving which was a little tiring), listening to hundreds of birds making their distinctive calls. We could identify a few, others we decided were birds which were just being boisterous and having a hell of a time during that warm March daylight.

This trip made me realize how much I missed the starlit sky of a western ghats forest, the myriads of sounds one hears in a forest, how exciting it is to investigate things that seems out of the ordinary or how it feels to not have any artificial ambient noise. When was the last time you experienced all these and more? My last time had been a little too long ago. I am hoping my next trip would be sooner.