The sixty seventh independence day - as no one else is counting

Just got this off my fb page: This happens to be the 67^th Independence day of India. Disclaimer: this was an Economic Times update on my fb – so buyer beware.

Truly we are running out of numbers. Last I remembered, people were going crazy about the half century figure but India is batting faster than Sachin after he completes his fifty. Wait, what’s my age now? Never mind.

So I was thinking why so much fuss about Independence day and its celebration. It’s quite funny to see people upload flags to their profiles to convince themselves that they still are patriotic. I could point it out to them, but then I’ll have no one to laugh at. When I think that the concept of nation is about its geography and borders as I read in the inaccurate geography text books in my high school, the illogical social text books in my high school correct me to say that the concept of a nation is its people and culmination of all the cultures it has accumulated when it was in slavery of the kings or whites, or bureaucrats later (I made that up, the text book doesn’t have the wisdom to say it).

Well, if it’s only about borders and spaces, there is no point in feeling sentimental about it. If it is about people, culture and all the crap that it comes with, the bottom line is the same. It’s more hypocritical than foolish and either ways, no need to feel attached and sentimental about it. I, for one, am starting to get allergic to  people and their stupid notions specifically because they restrict MY independence for the sake of something they are not sure they believe in.

The only good thing is that it is a public holiday. But even that’s got an angle. It’s a dry day (again, this info is not from an accurate source and I am too uninterested to google)

You want us to celebrate by holding it dry? I repeat: hypocrites.

By-line

Well, I am yet to write about Sachin’s best Innings but tonight a great match is scheduled too. Tonight, at 1 am, technically tomorrow is Football, FC Barcelona.

I, too, wasn’t aware that football is also a sport until Sachin played less and less and no more. Look up Wikipedia if you doubt me, but cricket is lame without Sachin. Never mind all the people still watching it, they actually know the schedule of the World T20.

 And one can’t play Chess for weeks together. To be simple, entertain as many hobbies as you can with whatever little talent you think you have and chances are you won’t be much bored.  Not to talk about the no-talenters but they can go and vote for BJP for all I care.

Because you can take only so much torture of talking to other human beings just for the sake of talking. (And by other human beings and talking, I mean the people who are your friends but not good enough, your relatives, but blood enough. Otherwise, you can talk to your good friends and blood relatives to the tune of 10-15 words per week without running the risk of dying of an infection spread by words)  

Perfection

I look up to perfection. That’s the reason why I idealized Howard Roark of The Fountainhead

That’s the reason why I am a FC Barcelona football style fanatic

That’s why Sachin matters

That’s the reason why my blog has few posts. I post here only what I feel is worth. When I want to write an article for my blog, I go back and read my previous posts to get that feel. That is my inspiration for a new article. I am no writer, this place is not an object of motivation or stimulus for anyone else - not even of admiration I guess. But what’s up here is the best I can come up with.

There was a boy in my school. In what I remember, he was the cleanest mind around. He was sincere and humble and straight, at the age of 12-14. Looking back, I wonder what he would be if he had the opportunities to achieve his potential. I lost him in school. Wonder what the world has done to him.

The footballing style of Barcelona depicts perfectness. It’s smooth; it is free flowing game with skillful passes, smooth touches, rigorous efforts and great tactics. It needs and uses the best players in the world. It is totally dominating. It’s totally obsessive. Hard to not follow the team when they play as if the games are designed by technicians and programmed into an animation. Except this is real. Recently, they have lost the match of the season because they did not play any other way. They played the beautiful game. It was worth it. Again as the fountainhead says, work is its own reward.

Once you start looking for and understanding perfection, it becomes an obsession really. You can’t take anything less. Like, when Sachin retires, I’ll not follow cricket anymore – not that I follow it now. My generation made cricket rich because Sachin was in it. Many moved on with the game. But I stick to Sachin. Not to all his glory, just the glory of a well judged shot or let-go.

Not the hundreds of hundreds, just the couple of sessions he faced against Dale Steyn at CapeTown in January of 2011. This contest was the best of Cricket for me. And the very best of batsmen and bowlers had to come together to make it happen. Of course I am writing a fresh article dedicated to this special play.

The Fountainhead. It simply tells the basic form of a thinking human being. How simple and truthful a man can be. And should be. No bias towards anyone/ thing. How he should exist for himself. And why only that makes sense.

When I measured my real life with the same basic rules, I started to understand people though their bones. I felt a bit of pride as I was objective in little ways. But also, realities hit me hard. For I wasn’t close to being the ‘man as he should be’ I idealized, and I am never going to be. My world is too complicated for that. Many need me to be diplomatic. Hell, I’ll not survive if I say what I have to. Am I man enough to say what I want to if I was allowed to, is a hypothetical question. But I try keeping my variables as close to the answer, within these constants. The equation doesn’t tally, but it isn’t meant to.