ChinmayC Blog

It was the COVID-19 scare in the Indian camp that led to the postponement of the 5 th Test between India and England to be played in Manchester back in September, 2021; and it’s again COVID-19 that’s led to ruling out India captain Rohit Sharma of this Test which begins Friday, the 1 st of July 2022 at Edgbaston, Birmingham. Jasprit Bumrah, the existing Tests vice-captain is given the charge to lead India as the stand-in captain. The phenomenon of a ‘stand-in captain’ for Team India has become the rule rather than an exception in recent times, at times leading to double stand-ins. Anyway, the debutant captain Bumrah thus becomes only the second pacer, after Kapil Dev, to captain India in tests. In the absence of both the regular openers, KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma, the flown-in Mayank Agarwal is likely to join opener Shubman Gill.   There are significant changes that have taken place in the past 9 months. England has now a new captain Ben Stokes, one of the most successful all-ro...

If the national ruling party BJP, through the bizarre turns and twists of the tale, wants the citizens of the country, irrespective of being their supporters or not, to believe that the party was not behind what unfolded in Maharashtra over the last 9 days the party leadership is under a delusion and totally on the wrong track; because everybody has been getting used to their games over the last few years, from Arunachal Pradesh to Goa. It had been a forgone conclusion that the waiting-in-queue former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis was set to become the CM after a lapse of two and half years, till the last few hours in the afternoon of Thursday, the 30 th of June 2022 when the rebel group leader Eknath Shinde arrived in Mumbai to talk and negotiate with Fadnavis for the formation of the new government, still leaving his 49 or 50 supporters behind in Goa. As per the script both the leaders met the Governor and staked their claims. Again as per the script the oath-taki...

Ahead of the trust vote ordered by the Supreme Court that is to be carried out on the floor of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by 5pm on Thursday, the30 th June 2022 Uddhav Thackeray has resigned from the post of Chief Minister on his Facebook Live address at 9.30pm today which was taken live on the television news channels across the country. The emotions of Uddhav Thackeray hardly mattered now as his resignation signified the end of his government and the trust vote tomorrow has become redundant. He has also resigned from his elected post of the Maharashtra Legislative Council. What had been billed as the ideal opposition alliance for the country to counter the growth of BJP the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has come to an end too. News of the formation of a new government led by the former CM Devendra Fadnavis is circulating at the moment with some news channels predicting a new government on July 1, 2022. The Governor, after accepting Uddhav’s resignation officially, may invi...

The South West Monsoon has always been the mainstay of Indian agriculture, being the main source of rainfall accounting for more than 75% of total rainfall in the country every year. Most often than not, the IMD (Indian Meteorological Department) forecasts a normal or near-normal monsoon with about -/+ 5% margin of error, and this year (2022) too it had predicted a normal monsoon which, in fact, was supposed to arrive at least a week in advance. And, it did indeed arrive early hitting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by middle of May, and then advancing to Kerala, to Maharashtra and gradually the whole country. Unfortunately, its early arrival hasn’t benefited even Kerala and Maharashtra, patiently queuing up for the early-bird offers,  while venting its wrath in the North East, particularly in the state of Assam creating unprecedented floods in the main city of Guwahati and many other districts. In a few days the monsoon had exceeded its monthly quota of rains in Assam by more than...

In all my Bollywood , read Hindi movies , viewing experience this should be the first movie with a serious attempt to deal with an air disaster or a possible air disaster, a genre that the commercial Hindi films never really tried to explore barring a few on plane hijack, most prominently the intense drama of Neerja (2016) based on a real-life brave air hostess. The movie Runway 34 , also loosely based on true incidents and released on the occasion of Eid in April-end this year, tells the story of a flight from Dubai to Cochin that entered the vortex of a raging cyclone nearly crash-landing in the Trivandrum airport with 150 passengers on board, and then followed by the grueling investigation into the near-crash. The first half of the film dwells entirely on the flight starting at the wee hours from Dubai and is a gripping saga of what happened on its course from the takeoff onward, told with the required details and intensity that are always missing in most commercial Bollywood m...

We’ve been liberally treated with political thrillers like that is happening in Maharashtra at the moment across the country since the last few years, thanks to the aggressive power-politics of the national ruling dispensation ( BJP ) which fittingly matches its aggressive Hindutva nationalism. However, the present game has been inevitable since the year 2019 when Shiv Sena ( SS ) parted ways with the BJP after jointly fighting and winning the assembly elections, and after a landslide victory for the alliance in 2014, on the CM post issue, and forming a coalition government Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (Maharashtra Development Front or MVA ) with the Congress and the nationalist Congress ( NCP ). For the last two and half years the state BJP has been a grumpy lot, alleging a great betrayal by the SS and wanting desperately to avenge it; in fact, they’d tried at least three times to derail the coalition so far. This last one, even though the party has continued to be in denial about any...

No doubt, we cannot question the fundamental rights of people, particularly the ebullient young generation, of loving short and sweet but highly entertaining cricket games like movies. Add to it the digital revolution taking place all over the world as well as in India, even penetrating the rural areas thanks to the initiatives of the government. Now everyone, young or older, wants to enjoy whatever they love on their mobiles or tabs or laptops from wherever they happen to be. For what do you think the streaming platforms are becoming so popular? The digital experience is always unique, as it is very personal, independent and not location-dependent as we’ve already mentioned. In such a scenario what the Indian Premiere League (IPL) has achieved in its 3-day e-auction for TV and Digital broadcasting rights is mindboggling indeed, but not entirely unexpected. The four packages of media rights, A, B, C and D, fetched the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) a record-breaking figur...