Pyare Pyare Boys

When ITC announced a nationwide talent search competition a-la America's Got Talent, the usual inertia led right upto the last date. There was not much inspiration for a solo act and so we decided in favour of a team effort. The 'we' came almost instinctively from a close circle of colleagues who are also close friends.

About 2-3 topics came up when we decided on a skit. There was immediate excitement when we thought we'll go for a 'Plan Review by CMC' as the theme. The first hurdle was the quarteers - as we started putting together songs from Bollywood, little improvisations came along the way and a 10 minute skit script was ready. When the date for the quarters was announced, it was a shocker that it coincided with a crucial DMC meeting to be held on the same date. The initial thought was to give the event a skip and face the DMC. With some support from a few quarters, we managed to slip out to the venue for an early morning event. What a surprise it was to find out that Sudha Raghunathan and Srekala Bharat were to be the judges for this event. The performance went so smoothly that we sailed easily into the semis.

For the semis, it was necessary that we follow the rules and cut the script down to 5 mins. Once again, some creative thinking helped chop a few numbers, make alterations here and there and get ready. For this event held at Park Sheraton, the entire top brass from the region were invited and it was bound to be tough to present such a tongue-firmly-in-cheek skit to them. With 12 such teams participating from the Chennai-Mumbai cluster comprising of Chennai, Kovai, Ernakulam, Mumbai and Nagpur, it was clear that the competition would be tough. Once again, we clearly did better than any of our rehearsals on the Big day and it was a relief to see that the top brass more than enjoyed the show. In true ITC style, the event was organised in a grand manner and it was very satisfying to emerge on top in the team category.

Now for the Grand Finale! Here's where it got really BIG!! We felt straightaway that many in the audience would have seen or heard about our semi final performance and since the skit only had a novelty value, we better do something different. There were divided opinions on this - some clearly felt that it is better to stick to the winning performance and repeat it in the Finals. I was quite keen to develop something different and abort at a later stage if we didn't feel it came out right. The theme was retained - only the contents needed to be thought out afresh. Once the contents were developed, with improvisations right till the last moment, we knew we'll go with the new version at the finals, whatever the consequences.

There were hiccups - practice schedules couldn't be kept up as some of the team members needed to travel on work.

Corporate Communications team made a pre-event publicity like nothing before. Everyday there were exciting mailers with sneek previews that it got the entire company excited. We were sponsored to travel to Kolkata and stay at Sonar (even if it was the Company's own property, there was the opportunity gain of having other guests staying at the same time to be taken into account).

With everyone coming together for the final rehearsals only at Kolkata, the initial practice sessions gave rise to serious doubts whether we would be able to compete. There were varying levels of enthusiasm - one jet-lagged colleague was hardly in the mood for such puerile rehearsals, quietly confident that he would be able to pull it off at the final. God gave us patience and there were thankfully reasonable levels of tolerance and understanding within the team.
The final day. Somehow the team decided to practice in the lawns of the Sonar! This practice session which lasted all of 45 mins was really the turning point. Everything went according to plan - there was good enthusiastic participation. We knew then, that even if we didn't win, we'll truly have enjoyed ourselves. Much to our surprise, one of the guests of the hotel came to the lawns, saw our performance and gave a few tips on how it might be improved - which we took note of.

For the Big Event, the entire ITC top brass from all over ITC were invited. Chairman, Executive Directors, Corporate Management Committee members, CEOs, Corporate functional heads, the whole setting was one that the Company had never seen before. To add to it, the webcast went right round the country with a special webcast on Facebook for the families to catch up.

I wouldn't be writing this if it hadn't come out very well in the end. We put up a wonderful show and had the whole gathering in splits ! There was immediate feedback and we knew we could finish amongst the winners with some luck. Sure enough, we finished second - there were several others who perhaps felt more deserving, but then judges clearly felt otherwise!

It was wonderful to shake hands with Chairman, Mr. Deveshwar and two of our Executive Directors, Mr. Vaidyanath and Mr. Grant along with ace danseuse Tanushree Shankar and actor Ananya Chatterjee who were the other judges when accepting the trophy along with the team. It was even more dramatic to arrive at Tiruvottiyur factory the next day to a hero's welcome what with garlands and sweets from none other than the CEO himself who is normally quite restrained in his emotions.

What an event ! Never thought I'll be a part of such an event in my corporate life !

Evergreen Classics : Sachin, Tughlaq and Mylapore

While the first Test was a cliffhanger, the second one was largely dominated by India. Sachin's double century in the first innings was one of his best - one in which he took minimum risks, played aggressively and with purpose. The calculated assault on Hauritz exposed Australia's fragile spin attack. While Hilfenhaus and Johnson will certainly be a handful in Australian conditions, here, where the pitches hardly assisted their type of bowling, they were played relatively easily. They are not in the league of Mcgraths or the McDermotts of this world - atleast not yet.

On my last visit to the Landmark store, I picked up VCDs of two evergreen plays in Tamil - Cho's Mohammed Bin Tughlaq and Mouli's Flight 172. Of this, I grew up listening to Cho's wonderfully written Tughlaq over the gramophone and knew almost all the dialogues by-heart. Catching up with the play over a leisurely weekend was one of the highpoints of the year for me.

After much delay, I could finally tie up a visit to the Kapaleeswarar temple at Mylapore this morning. Somehow those 45 mins in the temple gave me a feeling of immense peace and pride in our traditions. Unlike several other temples, this one was very neat and clean and one could focus on worship rather than watch one's step every now and then.

To round it up, I could follow up that visit to a nearby Saravana Bhavan for a nice breakfast. While on Saravana's, they have drastically reduced their portion sizes and made sure that the customer goes for a second helping to fill his stomach. This was the first time in my life that I had a Onion Uttappam and felt I needed something else to round up the breakfast. Restaurants must be profit-oriented, but surely they can give more generous helpings on the plates! What followed was a spoonful of Pongal for a bomb - this time, even if it still didn't appease the hunger, I had to beat the retreat out of the place to prevent digging a hole into the pocket!

It was a week of classics and was thoroughly delightful. But more was to come! Sholay!! I must have seen the movie atleast 25 times, but I ended up watching it twice today - once on Zee Cinema and again on Zee TV. I still find that movie immensely enjoyable - something which I can't say for most of the other movies of today, even for one viewing.

..This week was Laxman's

What a time to fall sick! Quarterly closing, loads of work to do and here I was, down with viral and severe cold - the kind not experienced in well over a year. Monday and tuesday I was completely bed-ridden. I missed a major part of the 4th day as I drifted between sleep and drowsiness. However, on tuesday I was much better and went live with the cricket from ball 1.

A friend sent in an entry on facebook : 'Last week was Ram's (referring to the Ayodhya verdict) this week is Laxman's'. You bet it was ! Still with over 90 runs to get and just Ishant and Pragyan for company, I thought it would be curtains before India got 150 runs. I was already cursing Raina for running him out before the third umpire, after umpteen number of replays, decided he was just in. Laxman was always grace - cajoling the short pitched delivery through mid-wicket when other lesser batsmen use their power to get the same result. Never seen him as agitated as he was when Pragyan was ball-watching and refused an easy single. In the end, he and Ishant for the most part and Pragyan for the last part, made sure India scraped home with one wicket to spare. The fever stopped just there and I was immediately feeling much better thereafter.

The second test will not be quite the same; such finishes come but rarely in history...

Flowing like a river...

I've read that good pieces to read flow like rivers, smooth at most places, gushing at a few bends and finally, effortless in its flow into the ocean. Good books and good pieces also are similar - you seldom realise where and when you started and before you know, the piece is already over and you are left craving for more. Lucky that I could lay my hands on a few of them this week.

Landmark is offering attractive discounts on books (and a lot more) this month. I got quite a bargain and picked up 8 books this sunday. First up to read, I picked up Grandmother's tale by RK Narayan. I started only at 9 pm sunday night and in about 3 hours' read before I went to office the next morning, I'd read through the book. Simple story, wonderfully told, stories you can relate to... RK Narayan's legacy will continue to delight readers for decades to come.

Then, I picked up Ruskin Bond's Omnibus edition on Crime and Suspense stories. Half way through a working week, over half of the book has already been read - I've been looking forward to non-working hours to catch up with the book, morning and evening, - quite an unputdownable volume.

Talking about 'unputdownables', landed at the land of the Telegraph last night, for years my daily newspaper. The daily from Kolkata vascillates between sensationalism and class to reach the masses and stay ahead of competition. I read a piece on Bengalis touring America called 'Chalo America' which was a great destresser first thing this morning. Short satirical piece, but crisply written and one that every Bengali and every Indian who knows Bengalis would have identified with. Kudos to the author, Mir.

There is a common thread in all this - if you think simple subjects and focus on communication in unpretentious english, you can write delightful pieces. Unfortunately, living simply and thinking simply is a complicated business for most - it's the age of complications !

Kal ki Oar..

Every now and then, we all need a little boost. A pat, a word-of-praise, a rare word of appreciation can spur us onto better performance. These days a quick kick-up-the-backside achieves the same purpose, but doesn't do a whole lot of good to self-esteem.

When we prepared for our team performance on ITC's Claim2Fame show, we had honest expectations of doing well; even if we didn't we were prepared to simply enjoy ourselves. It wasn't a very hotly contested event. Even so, the show had a couple of celebrity judges in Her Mellifluous Sudha Raghunathan and Danseuse Srekala Bharath. Our team comprising of Amit, Aman, Gaurav, Rajan, Probal and self put up a sterling flawless performance, even better than our rehearsals and in doing so thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Sure enough, we got a pass to the next round. The theme had something to do with the Company looking to the future with drive and passion. We'd all gone through a tough week, living through unnecessary pressure. The show certainly did that for us - spur us on 'Kal Ki Oar'.

Spot fixing : Who fixed what ?

It's exactly a week since recorded images of Mohammed Amir's and Asif's noballs started getting beamed on our TVs. They still do. They must be the most replayed shots in cricket and that must be a new world record.

Are there actually so many people willing to bet on what is likely to happen on a particularly delivery in cricket? Seems really stupid to me... I mean, are there predictions for leg byes, straight drives, changes in field placings, offering no stroke etc.?

Be that as it may, it seems that Pak players simply have no unity amongst themselves. As soon as those 3 got questioned, everyone else distanced themselves from the controversy. Smart move - but what about dressing room bonhomie while on tour?

And whenever cricket betting comes under the scanner, one finds Indian bookies involved somewhere. There's immense scepticism all round - for cricket addicts like me, I only wish we are not left pondering about which delivery may have been fixed by whom for what...

Security at airports

I read in the Hindu today that at last one lady had the courage to take up cudgels with the inhuman security checks at airports. She was traveling to Tel Aviv on Israel's national carrier El Al and their security had put her through their infamous security check at Mumbai airport. Brought back memories from my own experience a little over 3 years ago.

I was then in Singapore and was traveling to Tel Aviv via Bangkok. It was a late night flight and I'd read enough about the security checks to be on my guard but nothing could actually prepare me. To their credit, the security men themselves were always polite, answered nothing, just went through a thorough physical check of my entire person and my hand baggage. The hand baggage was actually checked in another room, so I don't know what exactly they did. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion and one couldn't see anyone else at that point of time. I figured I was a 'special' passenger.

I reached Ben Gurion airport the next morning and found out that my luggage hadn't arrived. El Al gave me a nice little kit bag with plenty of goodies and told me that my luggage hadn't connected from Singapore. I spent the sunday (a working day in Israel) moving about in a T-shirt and jeans from my travel. The luggage arrived on monday and was delivered to the Hotel. My clothes weren't in their set position and the little food pouch (I'd carried vegetarian ready-to-eat microwaveable food from Singapore) had been specially repacked. I found that each little pack had a tiny hole which didn't disturb any of the ingredients.

The trip to Israel was thoroughly enjoyable. I had a wonderful time visiting the historic places - Jerusalem, Nazareth, sea of Galilee, Haifa et al. But El Al was a different matter. The nation has surely gone through several travails and assaults on their internal security, but still there seemed to be excessive caution. To see teenagers carry guns in their backpacks was certainly not inspirational. The week rounded off with sabbath and for a foreigner like me, it was unusual, in this day and age,to see the entire country - people, machines and everything else just switching off! Everything upto that point was enjoyable but then when it was time to leave the country, one came back to the airport and the security guys and gals got going again. And how! They took the luggage apart with their plastic gloves and shook each little piece of underwear before putting it neatly back in. No complaints with them, they were only doing their job ... only it took hours for the queue to move ahead. Is this kind of security check going to continue for posterity? I definitely hope, for the world around us, that it's got to do with the difficult times that we are in, and more human ways of security checks can be implemented. Subject each person and their baggage to the severest security checks by all means but let's use hawk-eye technology and get the job done swiftly without the passenger having to regret undertaking the travel. World tourism needs all of us ! I might add that I had a little bonanza back in Singapore - Singapore Airlines, which did the entire scheduling and were partnering El Al, gave me a generous allowance for delayed delivery of baggage as per their rules !!!

Let this not discourage anyone from traveling to Israel - it is the land of milk and honey and has great places to see; and worth the wait on the long security lines in and out !

Landmark Quiz

Surprised to see my blog still there?! Me too! Visiting this site after nearly 20 months!!

Went to attend the Landmark Quiz at Chennai this evening. It was a humbling experience to say the least. Didn't make the cut by a long distance and getting further hammered every passing year. The grey cells are not working too well - we grassed some sitters.

Well, it's never too late! There are 2 more quizzes coming this month and there's nothing to lose!

Amit / Sarfraz : buck up guys; we have the Madras day quiz and Tata Crucibles in the next 2 weeks!