From the Deccan Plateau to the Diamond Mines

What a story it has been! The true example of a Phoenix rising from its ashes, more beautiful than ever.. the Deccan Chargers of the IPL!

A team that finished last inspite of having a great line-up was shameful. But all it took was an year to rubbish all that. I was hooked on to the IPL the moment it began last year. Infact I was hooked on to 20-20 cricket. Being Indian, cricket is infused into the blood, into the genes. Even a hater of the sport would know all the rules and have a clear understanding of all the stuff during the game. Such is the craze I observed. For a few years I completely avoided cricket, but with the 20-20 format suddenly catching attention I had a peek at it and wasn't it great? It was! The similarity to Football was striking and especially after the IPL started, that almost sounds like EPL.

Last year I was obviously supporting the 'Home' team Deccan Chargers, but for some reason they had a harrowing time. It was entertaining to watch them but somehow they almost always ended up on the losing side. The unit didn't look like a unit. But maybe that was the silence before the storm.

This year, DC came out with a new logo and some new attitude. The most important thing for them was, they had nothing to lose, nothing to prove to anybody. There were no expectations but only a little hope. Like a re-charged unit they took the beginning of the IPL II by the neck and were sitting happily at the top. But a few losses and a few close games brought them down and they just about managed to scrape through to the semis. That itself was an achievement after last years poor show. I personally had no hope in the semis with a fixture against Delhi. But Gilly's hurricane sent Delhi back to Delhi. Into the finals now! This was least expected.

On the other side, Bangalore had a similar story. 7th last year, and a poor start almost sealed their fate like last year, but a sudden comeback pushed them even ahead of the Deccan team. Then, looking unstoppable, they walked over Chennai and entered the finals.

The 20-20 format is unpredictable. But so much? Last years bottom 2 coming to the finals this year was a bit too unreal. And yet they were deserving. Both teams had nothing to prove and they never tried to overdo or showoff. The other teams owned by Bollywood superstars had more cameras focusing on the stars than on the field. Some teams had huge expectations and they buckled under their self-created pressure. Some teams were always in the news but never for the right reasons. It looked fitting to see these 2 teams who were silently going past everybody and keeping away from controversies, in the final.

I was already pretty tired and actually forgot about the match, and ended up missing half of the match. I luckily caught up when RCB started their innings and watched the entire match after that. It was a bumpy ride. Some times sixes and some times wickets. The game went up and down and even when 2 balls were left, it still looked gettable. But finally the DC players' nerves payed off and they got a chance to grab the cup. Both team owners were so straight-faced, it was hard to make out what was going on in their minds, but both of them were calm, silently backing their team. This was another contrast to the other team owners who either jumped up and down when the team won, or sat with a burned face when the team lost, or were in some kind of fervor saying prayers loudly during close games.

Judging by last year's performances, both the teams had a welcome break this year. In fact, though there's only one winner, both teams deserved the cup (technically not possible). When DC lifted the cup thousands of miles away, I could hear the resonating bursts of firecrackers around my house. I am sure most of the city wasn't sleeping. And their sleep was killed by that extra long closing ceremony whose highlight performances were bad, especially Akon's that sounded too monotonous. The releasing of those lamps into the air was awesome and the Fire dance was good, and the speeches were too long.

With my eyes almost shutting close, I kept washing my face to stay awake and watch DC lift the cup. After it seemed like years passed, the presentation ceremony came and the moment arrived. Who would have expected a team finishing at the bottom to grab the cup the very next year. Turnaround of the year!

The journey must have been amazing, from the rocky Deccan Plateau to the Diamond Mines and the Diamond studded trophy, all because of one man, Gilly and ofcourse the rest of the team too..

P.S: Some times it makes me wonder if guys like Gilly, Hayden, Jayasurya, etc ever need to retire! They seem ageless at the moment. Moreover, the dedication they put into their respective teams is way too much to praise. It definitely didn't look like they were doing it for money!

Mission Road Trip: Completed

Well, it was over a few days back, but some kind of a crazy lethargy set over me not allowing me to post for atleast a week. The road trip to Bangalore was finally completed and our sub-mission was to complete the distance in less than 10 hrs, something that would give us a a good average speed.



We kicked off our journey early on 14th at about 5 am and took off at a mighty speed. The initial 120KM were way too good to believe and we covered a great amount of distance in no time even after traveling a little cautiously.



By 8:30 we were in Kurnool and we stopped to have breakfast. The traffic in the town was terrible and a simple breakfast took an hour to finish. The entire average was killed here, but we made an attempt to make up for the lost time. The roads from here on were just not on our side and we had to keep taking detours every few kilometers, sometimes driving on the opposite lane and sometimes having vehicles coming from the opposite direction in our lane. A whole stretch of about 400KM was just this. There were 2 separate lanes everywhere but the whole thing was under construction. Bypasses are under construction around most of the towns and villages, something that would save even more time in the future. Some hilly parts had very narrow roads and constant rail-road crossings, all of which contributed to loss of time.



This journey to be completed in less than 10 hours was looking like a distant dream. Finally a stretch in Karnataka was again well built and we went back to hitting speeds of about 140-150 Kmph and covered up a little for the lost time.



After a long travel which didn't really feel that long thanks to Srikar's Linea that tricked us into assuming we were sitting in an aircraft, we arrived at Bangalore exactly at 5:00 PM. The whole thing took us 12 hours of which we wasted nearly 90 minutes for breakfast, water and occasional flexing of muscles. The travel time came down to 10.5 hours which we thought was a good achievement. The funny thing though, was, after entering Bangalore, we took more than an hour to reach Karthik's house maneuvering through all the traffic and one-way roads.

Our stay at Bangalore was supposed to be for a single day but we extended it to 3 days for some relaxation. That night we slept like logs, as we forcefully kept ourselves awake during the travel cuz sleep is so highly contagious. Though we did roam about a bit in The Forum and stuff, we didn't really do anything much. The last 2 days were washed away with heavy rain and power cuts and all we could do was sit at home, watching the cats and dogs..



Finally came the return journey to Hyderabad. We started off similarly at around 5:00Am and took off at a great pace again. This time we were travelling more aggressively taking detours at almost 80Kmph, and Sanjeev came close to losing his mind, though he kept it up with some funny memory games and stupid jokes which we willingly laughed at to keep the atmosphere active. The Linea was performing like a beast, rubbishing all those claims of 'being under-powered'. It was accelerating madly and reaching speeds of over 120 with no effort and we were doing this dangerously on the roads filled with detours and oncoming traffic. We dared not to stop anywhere, and the whole journey we survived with a tiny cup of coffee and and a packet of chips. We stopped at Kurnool for lunch when we got there at 11:30, but it was only time waste as lunch would start only at 12:00. Determined not to waste time, we took off immediately though the whole thing wasted 1/2 hour and we still had no food. We thought, "..let's hold our hunger and reach Shamshabad and dig in on the Hyderabad House Biryani". And we did just that. We cruised away from Kurnool and stayed over 100 most of the time though there was considerably more traffic than last time. We finally hit the good roads and let loose all the horses, touching 160 though we could've attempted more. In no time, we reached the airport and the time was only 2:45 PM. It was a feat successfully accomplished. And throwing aside the 1/2 hour we wasted, we were travelling for only 9.5 hours. We finally did 600 Km in less than 10 hours and 1200 Km in about 20 hours.. We ate greedily at Hyderabad House and started for home. It was a bit not-so-exciting to be coming back home after all the fun we had on road..

Unfortunately such a thing can be possible only in a few cases as most of the other Highways in India are yet to be constructed, including huge parts of NH 7. A few years' wait could turn things around but if the newly-elected govt is too lazy thinking, "hey we have another 5 years to chill out", then the connectivity in India may always remain to be a thing of the future. Vision 2020 anyone? India might take the 20-20 Cup a second time or even more but I don't see good connectivity by then..

But for once, we were the true Roadies, skipping breakfast, lunch and every possible break just to clock those miles and achieve 600KM in less than 10 hours, judging by the condition of the roads and traffic..


Long Road to Ruin...

Road Trip in the Heat?

The temperature outside must be scaling new records this year. With Concrete houses boiling like they were placed near lava, I am stepping out into the open (which would obviously be hotter) for a road trip to Bangalore. A distance of about 550 KM according to my guess by road is something that I don't travel generally. But the good thing is we'll do it in Srikar's Linea, so hopefully the journey will be comfy. The roads are said to be in pretty good shape except at stretches where it narrows down to a single lane and where flyovers are under construction. Constant diversions all over the way I guess.

Leaving a city that's brimming with problems and entering another city with its own bunch of problems is like taking a big circle and coming back to where we started. But then the journey should be a welcome change from these four walls around me.

On a leaving note, I am uploading a pic of the extreme pollution in Hyderabad. I snapped the panorama at around 10 in the night when I was forced to go to the terrace searching for a whisper of cool breeze which I definitely didn't find. Instead I had this sight in front of me where most of the city was in darkness because of a power cut and there were layered formations in the atmosphere. I am guessing that's probably because of dust and smoke. The big lights accentuated the view by scattering within the layers and lost beyond it. It looked like a thick bottom layer and a thin clear layer (??) and back into a thick fading layer that gradually merged into the night sky. I could almost feel dust in my breath and most of the nearby places were hazy looking. Don't know why or how but something strange was hanging over the city...

Live for the sake of Living

Atleast that's the case for my blog that's on the verge of extinction. I am hardly able to keep it alive in spite of have all the time in the world to post about anything. As of now, I've kept myself engaged with nothing. Only an occasional attempt to stretch my fingers on the guitar, a little Flash actionscript and long hours of meaningless television watching. The heat of the summer is forcing me to look away from food. Its just water and water that's keeping me active.

And by water, I just remembered how horrible the city is in this matter. Hundreds of people falling sick with cholera and an assortment of diseases by drinking polluted contaminated water? The stories of contamination run through the area that I am living in too. And that scares the hell out me. How is it that a city that calls itself a Metropolis and positioned about 5th in the country can't manage such trivial issues? How is it that they can't learn from the mistakes previously made by other big cities in India? Well, I can't give the answer coz I have no idea why the hell the sewer pipes and drinking water pipes are neighbours and occasionally plan to meet up at some place called Bholakpur and send the city into a disease-hit tizzy.

Yesterday I had to drive about 25KM from home to some new relations we made recently and was astonished to say the least! The place was Shaikpet. The non-stop development area. Not knowing the exact route, I had to refer to the maps. The imagery was pretty old and the development wasn't much. It looked like a scattered array of houses in a desert, and a nearby place marked Lanco Hills in Bold. When I actually drove to that place, I couldn't make out an inch of it. The lanes were so narrow that 2 cars couldn't pass a tiny bridge at once. And I had to reverse out and wait till an auto carrying bricks cleared the way. Almost every inch of the entire area is 'under-construction' and almost every construction project has come to a grinding halt, thanks to the big software fallout. These over-smart guys converted roads into plots to make more space for housing and created a situation where 5000 families have only a narrow 2 meter wide road to go anywhere else in the world. In the background are those majestic buildings, also halfway through, and nobody know when they can get completed. So what's going on in a city that's trying to grow up? It's choking! Under its own self-created dust. Just those few hours there I could sense how miserable life can soon be within the next few years in an area that is said to be booming!

So these 2 weeks have been pretty boring, with sports (Manchester United in UCL finals and close to winning the EPL, Watching Deccan Chargers on a roller-coaster ride in the IPL) giving some respite. Some eye-openers like yesterday are still in store. Let's see what all I can learn from this 'booming' city where we live to live and die to live.