ChinmayC Blog

  First thing in that nondescript morning, sometime in the late 1980s, as I entered my office room there was a letter from home waiting for me on the desk. I tore open the Indian inland letter eagerly. There’d been no news from my village home in more than a fortnight which was not normal, because my mother used to write me a letter every week, unfailingly. I got worried as I read through: my father had taken ill and it was to be decided if he needed to be taken to a hospital in the nearest city depending on the treating doctor’s advice. My mother wrote that she’d inform me at the earliest, and since that didn’t happen, I got restless, fearing the worst, knowing that even if the worst had indeed happened it was going to take days to inform me, because I had no direct telephone number either in office or at home or at any friend’s or at any neighbor’s place, they could possibly ring up from a post office. Apart from the hassles of various office extension numbers to reach me and the...

Powered by an incredible surge of the rising Indian fast bowler Mohammed Siraj India have crushed Sri Lanka by 10 wickets in the Asia Cup-2023 Final played in Colombo today,  winning their 8 th title of the tournament, followed by Sri Lanka with 5 and Pakistan with 2 title wins . The hosts won the toss and as expected chose to bat first. So far in the tournament, all matches were won by teams batting first; however, in the Final today things took a different turn. The match was also delayed by rainy weather and the Indian pacers smelt some swing in the pitch of which they took full advantage. After Jasprit Bumrah removed Kusal Perera in the very first over of the match, Mohammed Siraj achieved the rarest of rare feats by taking four scalps in just one over or in just six balls—his second and only the fourth over of the match. Four wickets in the Lankan top order reducing the hosts to a sorry 12/5. And the slide did not stop there. Siraj fired on to his fifer in just 16 balls and t...

  I don’t really know why they do it. Perhaps they too adhere to the belief or the superstition that when one prepares too well for something, nothing really happens. The autorickshaw or the cab drivers may thus think that when they fill their tanks or cylinders with fuel first thing in the morning and wait for the customers none would come up or that it would take the best part of the day for the first customer. Therefore, they may accede to a ‘Let’s fill up only after I get a customer’ kind of behavioral psychology. I’ve often been the victim of such driver-psychology exploits in the city of Guwahati—called the gateway of the North East region. Let it be the autorickshaws or even the app cabs, the drivers thereof would invariably move the vehicle into a petrol pump on the way thus severely impinging on my allotted time for the ride and then for the possible meetings or appointments to keep. Annoyance pumped up by inconvenience and anger would always take full possession of my hap...

  Dunith Wellalage Just when this writer expressed his extreme disillusionment with the cricket of Team India thanks to the haphazard style of player selection cum mindless experimentation in the run-ups to all possible international tournaments, and even threatened to permanently lose interest in the matches India play or is going to play, Team India had bounced back to the winning habit by first bamboozling Pakistan into one of its most crushing defeats of all time in the reserve-day yesterday, the 11 th of September 2023 and then defeated the hosts Sri Lanka in a low-scoring match today, the 12 th of September 2023, thus making way to the Asia Cup-2023 Final to be played on Sunday, September 17. India have now 4 points from 2 matches continuing to top the points table with a formidable net run-rate (NRR) and either Pakistan or Sri Lanka can join them in the Final depending on their virtual semi-final clash on Thursday, September 14. Conceding two defeats from their two matches...

  The cricket matches in all three formats of the game between the arch-rivals India and Pakistan have become a rare variety in the recent years with the ardent discerning cricket lovers waiting for their matches at neutral venues. The matches between them in the one-day World Cup, the T-20 World Cup, and the Asia Cup have always been eagerly awaited. However, in the last two years the fan enthusiasm seems to be dwindling with a sense of listlessness seeping in as regards both Team India and their matches. And risking being rough or grossly unjust I have to point the finger at the Head Coach Rahul Dravid who was appointed in the job in November, 2021. No doubt, he had taken over with the ripe legacies of India—not able to break the jinx of not winning a single ICC title since 2011; India’s group-stage exit in the T20 World Cup played in 2021; Team India management blinded by too many choices of young cricketers (courtesy IPL) thus ushering in the mindless and endless experimentatio...

Aberrations do occur, in any field of activity or operation or management, the airport operations mid-air or at ground level being no exceptions. But unfortunately, such aberrations seem to be the rule at the Guwahati LGBI Airport, even after a complete revamp of the busiest airport of North East India that was done by one of the top-rated industrialists of the     country. As fairly regular passengers over the years in the domestic air routes to Guwahati we’d experienced or had witnessed such aberrations, the horrors, regularly too at this airport, occurring mostly at the Security zone. No doubt, security is the topmost priority in our insurgency-infested country; but there are justifiable ways of doing it and not going berserk and nearly attacking/harassing/shaming normal passengers. The security forces should possess some level of intelligence to be able to detect suspicious passengers instead of intimidating every Tom, Dick and Harry. There have been some news reports...