ChinmayC Blog

If you fly Air India out of the long-standing loyalty for the national airline or out of compulsion being employed by the Government of India you must be acutely aware of the ‘Regrets’ service. The deadliest manifestation of this ‘service’ comes usually in the dead of the night when you are desperate to get at least 2/3 hours’ sleep for your early morning flight and suddenly all sleep is robbed away most inhumanely making you wonder if you are going to reach your destination the next day at all. Once you are booked into one of the flights of Air India you cannot escape from this persistent service. For the period from one day before to minutes before the departure of the flight you will definitely get flooded with text messages on your mobile or emails announcing that ‘Air India Regrets Rescheduling of You Flight AI__ on ___   to ____ hours…’. The ‘Regrets’ content is very unpredictable with ‘regretted’ delays ranging from 20 minutes to over 5 hours. Short-term-delay ‘regrets’ get...

An alien lands on planet earth in that roundish kind of spacecraft we are used to watching in Hollywood and to some extent in Bollywood movies too. First thing that happens to him on earth is that his round blipping tracking system hung on his neck gets stolen and the alien loses all contact with his planet. If you are geared up for a sci-fi movie it ends just there. After that he is like a stark naked new-born baby (not exactly!) about to discover the ways of life on earth—mind you, essentially the Indian way of life. His intensely focused eyes display the heart-rending innocence and insatiable curiosity. He is perplexed at every step—being astounded by the dresses and costumes people wear, being piqued by the languages people speak and thoroughly confused by the religious practices and rituals people believe and indulge in. His innocently meaningful and hard-hitting questions make the people around him laugh or mock or get intrigued or get angry or even get violent.   The divine...

Australia The Deserving Winners of Border-Gavaskar Trophy Overcoming a mini batting collapse in the middle India have clung on to saving the fourth and final Test match against Australia in Sydney today and have finally settled for a nail-biting draw. In the first Test in Adelaide India were 2 down needing 159 runs for victory at Tea with Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay at the crease. From there they crashed to a 48 run defeat while not giving up the chase. It was similar in Sydney today as India were 160 for 2 at the Tea interval again with Murali Vijay and Virat Kohli at the crease needing another 189 runs for victory. Rahane Holds Firm India looked to be sitting pretty at Tea in Sydney today for a safe draw while not going for the chase outright since the morning session. At that moment draw was the most likely result and an Australian win was least expected. However, with a superior bowling attack and a never-say-die attitude Australia triggered a mini Indian collapse from 160/2 to 2...

I n the very first cricket Test post-Dhoni the Indian tail wagged somewhat against Australia on the fourth day of the fourth and last cricket Test at Sydney today! After the two brilliant hundreds by new opener Lokesh Rahul (110) and captain Virat Kohli (147—his fourth in the four-test series) India were still not out of the woods at 352/6 when Kohli fell. At that stage India were trailing by more than two hundred runs. With new wicketkeeper Saha getting on Ashwin (50) settled in for his fourth half century adding 31 runs between them. Then with Bubhaneshwar Kumar (30), Aswhin added more than 60 runs. Mohammed Shami too helped the team by a few lusty hits to the fence, but Umesh Yadav could not give him long enough support. Anyway, the Indian tail-enders reduced the Australian lead to less than 100 run and we can still maintain that taking the total score to 475 from 352 the Indian tail did wag. However, with normal woes associated with the Indian bowling Team India could not apply pr...