Social Media Visibility @ZERO!

Well! What the heck! Invisibility is infinite because our own God Himself is invisible! Some scientists say that even ZERO is a concept akin to being infinite! Therefore, both ways, it’s only great to be invisible! While God hides Himself behind whatever you don’t need to know, He has created the humans that are immensely visible; once you’re born as one you cannot hide anywhere in the universe until you drop dead in which case you’re either burnt to ashes or buried under, making you finally invisible as far as the ‘real you’ is concerned, because you continue to exist virtually in family albums and the social media, and if you happen to be a huge celebrity you continue to have an extremely dominant virtual existence till perhaps when earth itself gets obliterated. However, problems are more obnoxious when you and other ordinary mortals like us are kicking alive! Even if you wish to disappear instantly from all human views, like Sita in Ramayana did, you fail to accomplish that. In this digital world God has given us the great gift of the virtual existence like the one where He perhaps exists too, not for nothing. Here, you are empowered to do what you wish to do with your unwelcome physical appearance and other related attributes, not instantly, of course, but over a very short period of time. Yes! You can really make yourself disappear!

Now the question comes as to why you should want to disappear yourself from your very own fellow human beings! In mean virtually! Well, for that you’re quick to blame only them, because actually your fellow human beings is the primal cause. Moving on with the modern times and to keep yourself in circulation you do join the virtual world—the social media platforms you know. There you show your face, pen down your thoughts and tagging along other virtual creatures too. And most of you do quite well. But alas! Other fellas cannot tolerate your getting noticed and so, they turn themselves into fraudsters, hackers, cheats or whatever of that ilk to steal your profile from no one else than you only, steal everything possible of your enriching virtual existence and move on as perfect parasites, at times, achieving much more than the real you ever did! And then there come the dangers—looming insecurity for all your material wealth, for your pace of mind or for your possible loss of reputation, apart from the identity theft.

It is indeed hard to understand why God has gifted the Artificial Intelligence or AI tools to humankind at this vulnerable juncture, because, apparently, it immediately helps the fraudsters, cheats or whatever of that ilk to make your life worse! They can now be the real you, for all surreal and virtual purposes! Perhaps He wants to make your proposed ‘disappearance’ act fast-tracked. Obviously, the IT giants, the top CEOs or the industry tycoons would only sing hoarsely in praise of His gift! Why would they bother themselves for ordinary mortals like you? They wouldn’t stand to lose any of the customers either, because the real you will have to go on purchasing the essentials for your physical mortal cocktail existence! A bit complicated, you know!

Anyway, we can really fast-track ourselves too in the disappearance act thanks to all the gifts! Virtually, mind you! Maybe, God had sent the Pandemic to get us involved more intimately in the virtual world so that when the time comes we should be ready for the all-important act. Following your tragic example, this namesake writer has also decided to disappear himself from the virtual world—instantly from the main social media platforms and gradually from the other related terrains. Of course, he will always stick to his books or writings even if those are suffering from as much loss of visibility as his invisible self, and for that simple reason only he continues to write today here, particularly for you! The writer has still kept one platform, because there he has just a solitary follower there which fact would greatly discourage antagonistic-fellas from adopting, adapting, impersonating, taking over or whatever as well as safeguarding him from related dangers.

Let there be light, and there was light. Let them disappear, and they disappeared. God can be omniscient, omnipresent and so on, but He too has to adapt Himself to the changing times. Right? 

Two Memorable Tests and Two Young Matchwinners: Joseph and Hartley!

Shamar Joseph, 7/68

We have been treated to two nail-biting test matches on the same day (yesterday being the fourth day of each), the 27^th of January 2024, which is, to say the least, is terrific news for the future of Test Cricket, coming right after the two-day humdinger between India and South Africa in Cape Town. In both the Tests the host nations, Australia and India respectively, lost to the visitors on the day as mentioned, largely thanks to the captivating bowling performances of two young bowlers—fast bowler Shamar Joseph for the West Indies and orthodox spinner Tom Hartley for England. While Joseph was playing only his second Test, Hartley made his Test debut; both of the age of around 24, being born in 1999. Both of them captured 7 wickets each on the fourth day as the host nations were chasing the targets set. The Australia-West Indies test match was the second and last of the two-match Series played in Brisbane with the Aussies leading 1-0 while the India-England match was the first of the five-match Test Series in Hyderabad. In both the matches the first three days witnessed ups and downs. Electing to bat first at the Gabba the West Indies batted fairly well putting up 311 runs in the first innings with Starc and Hazlewood capturing six scalps; Australia replied with 289/9 conceding a marginal lead, thanks to Alzarri Joseph and Roach taking 7 of the wickets; known for their historical batting collapses the West Indies fell for just 193/9 in the second innings, setting a moderate target of 216 runs for the Aussies to get. As a further setback for the visitors Shamar Joseph got injured while batting after Tea on the third day; while no fracture was detected in his toe he was in great pain and was nearly ruled out for the fourth day.

Australia resumed batting at overnight 60/2 on the fourth day and seemed to be cruising at 113/2, needing just 103 runs to get with Steve Smith in full command and 8 wickets standing. And in came the limping Shamar Joseph and created history. Despite his injury he bowled mightily, reaching 150km per hour. Immediately he uprooted the stumps of a set Cameron Green for 42, then he clean bowled Travis Head for a duck, and then Marsh, Carey, Starc and Cummins on the trot. After Alzarri Joseph captured the 9^th Aussie wicket in the form of Lyon, Shamar crafted a historic win for his nation by dislodging the stumps of Hazlewood as Smith remained not out at 91, unable to force the winning runs. The West Indies won by 8 runs and delivered another Gabba defeat to the mighty hosts since India did to them in 2021. This is also a tremendous boost for a struggling cricket-nation, the West Indies, to stage a revival. Matchwinner Shamar Joseph ended the Series with a total of 13 wickets, helping his team to share equal Series honors with the hosts.

Tom Hartley, 7/62

The fourth-day drama, meanwhile, continued in Hyderabad as India started chasing the rather tricky target of 231 runs, set by England who defied the Indian spinners in the second innings to amass 420 runs, thus overcoming a huge deficit of 190 runs. Electing to bat first England made only 246 thanks mainly to the Indian spinner trio—Ashwin, Jadeja and Patel. India replied majestically with 436 runs. In fact, the hosts enjoyed the upper-hand and were in command of the match throughout the first three days. The morning session of the fourth day changed that with the England sheet-anchor Ollie Pope going on rollicking to amass 196 invaluable runs and also managing to get good contributions from the tail-enders including a sound 34 by Tom Hartley. In view of the fact that the pitch was deteriorating with the ball turning, bouncing and yet keeping low, the failure of the Indian spinners to utilize it fully was a bit perplexing, and this gave some sort of hope too for the Indian chase of 231 runs with the home crowds roaring in support. Besides, the England bowling was not much to write home about—Hartley punished heavily in the first innings, Wood and Leach not remarkably effective and only Root was showing some spin promise. However, the England spinners had different ideas this time around and were raring to go, Hartley in particular.

Joe Root opened the bowling attack as his spin was quite impressive in the first innings. Since the first over, the Indian batsmen, the supposed masters of spin, got hooked and intrigued, unable to take advantage against any of the spinners. After a relatively good start of 42 runs with Rohit stroking well the phenomenon of Tom Hartley emerged on the scene. First, he had Jaiswal (15) caught behind by Pope and then he consumed India’s expected mainstay Shubman Gill for a duck, reducing India to 42/2 now. Rohit fell next at 39 to Hartley and India at 69/3. Root then joined the show and captured the prize scalp of KL Rahul (22) while Hartley took Patel at India 107/5. The run-out of Jadeja, arguably the best fielder of the team, was a disaster for India and Leach made it worse by taking the scalp of the last recognized Indian batsman Shreya Iyer. India were tottering at 119/7 then, and it was all but over. Hartley proved consistently heartless for India as he cut short the growing partnership between Bharat and Ashwin, the last hope for the frustrated fans, by consuming both of them. Nine down now, Mohammed Siraj suddenly enlivened up the fans by making a few lusty shots around. Hartley ended that too having his 7^th catch in form of Siraj. England won by 28 runs as India folded up at 202 runs—a sensational win beating India in India and being the first visiting team to reverse a deficit of 190 or more.

Under the aggressive captaincy of Ben Stokes and with his team leading 1-0, the five-match Test Series is set to be gripping and absorbing. The next Test starts from 2^nd February in Visakhapatnam. In the remaining Tests too, there are no big metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai or Bengaluru as venues, and this, I think, further heightens the unpredictability and excitement of the Series. It could be anybody’s game in Visakhapatnam, Rajkot, Ranchi or in Dharmsala. Again, good for Test Cricket. More than hundred thousand people enjoyed the match at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad.

Web Series IPF: Disappointing and Just A Simplified Time Pass!

Rohit Shetty’s directorial abilities are at stake, as far as the supposed OTT version of his famed police franchise is concerned. The first and the best movie of the franchise continues to remain to be Singham (2011); even though the Singham sequels and other movies like Simmba (2018) and Suryavanshi (2021) are fairly gripping and absorbing. But Indian Police Force-Season 1 (IPF)  that release on Amazon Prime Video recently is not. Obviously, the ebullient director has not properly concentrated on developing the plot and the script. His favorite scenes of cars crashing and blasting in air, punchy fights and elaborate gun-fights and chases are all there; but he should’ve understood that such scenes, though very well shot, do not create the desired effect on the small screen as these do on the big screens of PVRs, INOXs, Cinepolis’s and so on. Even if we overlook this particular aspect, we’re in for further disappointment as the action drama unfolds.

There’s just no suspense in the cop saga as it goes on with the most predictable turns and twists. The main characters of the IPF—all cops—looked promising with Sidharth Malhotra, Vivek Oberoi and Shilpa Shetty carrying the story with élan and a likeable and endearing rapport between them as well as with the Chief cop played by Mukesh Rishi. But in a perplexing development of the script the character of Vivek Oberoi was knocked off, barely into the third episode, which knocked us off too as we were getting excited at having the trio with the tough cop Sharad Kelkar joining later (in fact, he came in the last episode) in the Seasons to follow, and the act also put paid to our hopes of watching Vivek’s wife Shweta Tiwari’s future exploits. One more similar casualty unfolded too—the dead wife of the hero cop Siddharth played by Isha Talwar putting up lovely flashback scenes with Sidharth, leaving us perplexed as to why she should be dead, because Kabir, the character played by Sidharth, doesn’t at all look like a frustrated, depressed and consequently a trigger-happy cop. I think the knocking off of Vivek and presenting a dead Isha Talwar are the two cardinal mistakes of Rohit, pushing a building-up lively drama to the dead wall. More resultant woe is still in store.

The killing of Vikram, played by Vivek Oberoi, has somehow deadlocked the story itself, because it led to the transfer of Kabir to an insignificant department thanks to some politics in the highest circles we are led to believe, and this has created a most unnecessary time-interval in the drama that was actually building up through the first three episodes. The sleeper-cell leader terrorist played by Mayyank Taandon has become triumphant and taken his time to reappear in a different city for another round of serial blasts as our hero Kabir keeps on struggling to join the investigations, even clandestinely.

Apart from the goings-on in the police circles the simplification antics are all there to watch: the kids with the time bomb and another kid helping to draw a sketch of the dreaded terrorist; one ominous-looking drug lord of Goa wanting to kill both Kabir and Tara Shetty (Shilpa Shetty) in his den, but not going for the guns at all, and finally escaping from his own den after the exhaustive fist-fighting utterly exhausts his army of goons; the dreadful-looking elderly woman who turns up with the main terrorist wherever be it and whatever be the situation; the main aide of terrorist captured alive is kept in an unguarded police van from where he simply runs away while the cops didn’t even bother to find out if the aide had any information about another bomb; almost all of the operations against the terrorist hideouts, ostensibly in collaboration of police and ATS, look simplified too by being devoid of any strong strategy and the terrorists keep on winning. Notwithstanding the patriotic fervor that never ceases to singe the proceedings throughout.

While we cannot escape from the rather obvious fact that the IPF is basically aimed at boosting the sagging image of Delhi Police, we also smell an elitist bias in the Series as all the hero-cops shown are from IPF (read Indian Police Service) with the possible exception of the tough bulky cop Nikitin Dheer whose affiliation was never clear, and all other non-IPF junior cops shown only manage to get the bullets from the terrorists. Maybe this bias is to be taken care of in the coming Seasons.

However, I don’t quite agree to the general criticism that the terrorist doesn’t look inhibiting and deadly. I think the character is very much in sync with the modern-day terrorists who are always highly educated, civilized, suave and just like the next-door boy. And Zarar alias Haidar does look ominous and chilling as he nonchalantly handles the time bombs and equally impassively places them at the crowded junctions. But again, what harms the script hard is his romantic angle built-up in unnecessary elaboration with his love, the innocent Nafisa played by Vaidehi Parshurami.

Rohit Shetty would do well to come up with much more gripping and mature Seasons in the future. With a stellar cast, though rather diminished, at his full command and with an explosive subject like this anything is possible for the better.