Category: Blog

I love watching cricket and reading about cricket. I’ve played the sport, and enjoyed that too. Hopefully I get back to playing it soon, but in the meanwhile, I satiate my thirst for the sport by watching as many matches and highlights as I can, and reading everything I can find about it on the internet. In several ways, my relationship with cricket perfectly encapsulates my relationship with all sport: I’m thrown into it as a child by an adult, I play it, I fall in love with it, I play it to a particular level and give up, but keep in touch by playing occasionally, and end up reading/following the sport like a madman. More crucially: I follow it to learn the statistics.

I don’t know what it is about statistics that make me go crazy. I love knowing how players perform mathematically. It’s why one of my favourite subreddits is dataisbeautiful, which posts these amazing statistical expositions presented beautifully.

I’ve rediscovered my love for cricket in recent years. ESPNCricinfo has helped, as has the rise of rival websites which offer different commentary features and featured statistics to latch on to. Aside from that, I think the sheer nostalgia of learning the stories behind matches I enjoyed as a child has really fueled the passion. Nothing, however, has made me more committed to following the sport than my cricket-crazy roommate, who lives and breathes 2003/04 cricket like its nobody’s business.

This quest to follow cricket more played a pivotal role in my life when I got to University. I used to follow the global edition of ESPNCricinfo, but switched over to the Indian website after entering campus. Karnataka performed ridiculously well in my first-year, and as someone who is a Kannadiga who was separated from Bangalore and everything he associated with his Kannadiga identity, I found Ranji Trophy cricket becoming something I could latch on to. It became something I found comfort in. The worst feeling has become reading about Karnataka losing a non-televised match. It’s truly awful.

Of course, I’m joyful at this season so far. The team has won the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and the Vijay Hazare Trophy. They enter the Ranji Trophy season with a lot of confidence. But as with every year, this competition is relentless, long, and challenging. I’m hopeful that we will win. And then win the Irani Cup. But you can never tell.

I’ll be following along intently.

However, what I will be following along more for, are the stories. The Ranji Trophy season, because it’s spread over a larger time-frame than competitions like the IPL, provides an opportunity to better get to know about players’ temperaments and players’ stories. It also allows cricket journalists to go beyond players: into the governance structures and association office-bearers, into profiling support staff and curators. It is in this journalism that I find the most joy, for it tells stories of those who are ignored often in the entire spectacle that is cricket.

In players too, there’s so much to know – because there’s such a range of experiences competing against each other.

The Ranji Trophy is one of the most beautiful tournaments I have seen. I love the format, though I think there is room for improvement. I enjoy the opportunity it provides for the Indian public to get to know players who may never don the Indian cap, but are successes for their State.

Most of all, I love that it helps us identify and enjoy cricketing stories and cultures, and how distinct they are from State-to-State. For me, that makes watching the Indian cricket team play a test match more enjoyable, because you see strategies and cultures merging together into one dressing room to represent the nation. Selection is based on a number of factors, but the Ranji Trophy performance is right up there, and often, I’ve marvelled at a players’ numbers leading up to a Test position rather than the Test performance itself.

There’s a tenacity to the tournament that is now promoting a return to the competition for players who are on national-duty. You see more players representing India and their State on back-to-back days, which says a lot about how competitive team selection is, but also how dedicated players are becoming to proving themselves day-in, day-out.

That’s helpful for the sport.

There’s a lot to critique about the tournament, and enough has been written about that. For me, though, there’s a lot more to enjoy about it.

Today’s been an interesting day, with some interesting adventures in the kitchen. I was pretty hellbent on baking some lasagne for my parents this evening, despite the fact that we ate a pizza only two days ago. And despite my best effort, all I could think about was the lasagne, all day. Lasagne always reminds me about Garfield, a piece of associative memory I’ve held on to since my childhood.

We messed up with the oven.

It’s the most unfortunate thing, but after painstakingly making sauce and getting proportions right and stacking up layers of lasagne sheets and putting in the right amount of cheese for my parents and I to consume,

We messed up with the oven.

What I mean by messing up is the fact that we didn’t check how hot the oven is capable of getting. I’m sure there’s a flaw in the machinery/equipment, because we preheated it for 20 minutes and then let the lasagne cook for about 40 at 220, but the darned thing didn’t cook at all. The most surprising part was that the lasagne sheets softened, a sign of its “cookedness”, but something I put down to the heat from the pasta sauce than much else.

These errors later, we ended up moving the lasagne to a microwavable dish and microwaving the thing.

It tasted bloody good. I just wish we figured out the oven properly. To make things worse, I dreamed of cake while the lasagne was supposedly baking in the oven – and hoped to bake some before leaving, to leave for my parents to consume.

Alas, that is not to be. Unless we figure out the oven.

I cooked sambhar this afternoon for my parents, and subsequently convinced them to take me out to eat pizza. In the evening, I watched Manchester United beat Manchester City, which brought me a lot of joy. Now I’m off to work – and hopefully I’ll complete a bunch of things I have lined up before I sleep.

I’ve noticed that I eat more snacks at night, rather than during the day. I’m not sure how the habit’s developed, but the craving for good food (especially the sugary kind) grows exponentially as time passes. Maybe it’s science. A quick Google search revealed the possibility of that link. It’s not a habit I loathe, but it is something that merits some watching – especially given the number of cookies we’ve purchased in the last 10 days.

This year has been a rollercoaster. You’ll learn more about this in twenty-five days, when I write the annual year in review post on this blog.

Today, I participated, ran in and completed a 5 kilometer run. With this participation, and the medal (very shiny, see below), I have now completed the last of my pending 2019 Resolutions.

I hadn’t prepared at all for this recently. I run as much as I can daily in University, but there are several days I don’t, and I’ve only ever run 5 kilometers twice before. I haven’t run in the last three months at all, so I wasn’t exactly in any shape going into this. The only thing I knew was that I definitely wanted to run the entire distance, complete this thing, and collect the medal. As I’ve highlighted before, medals mean a lot to me.

My parents and I registered for this event together. They’ve run events previously when I haven’t been around, and take great pleasure in participating and letting themselves loose – just enjoying the atmosphere. I told them fairly early on that I’d be running ahead and waiting for them at the finish line.

It was bloody difficult. The adrenaline rush at the start made it incredibly tough to control my pace and not run too quickly (because I would have collapsed at that pace). The Corniche winds in the middle made it difficult to continue running, because all I wanted to do was to stop and spend some time enjoying the view and taking photographs of the beautiful blue coastline and the boats that were docked there. My own limitations meant I struggled with motivation in the last 2 kilometres. I had some discomfort in my foot for some time too, given that I had scalded myself while cooking just last week.

But I persevered. This isn’t some great accomplishment, and I really don’t want to celebrate it like one. It is, however, another thing I have done now. I really didn’t expect that I’d be able to cross this off the list this year, and I genuinely became comfortable with the idea that I’d go into 2020 with one resolution carrying forward. I’m happy that isn’t the case.

This running thing has been an obsession over the past three years. I’ve literally had “run a 10km/half marathon” on the list for 2017, 2018, and 2019. This year it was phrased at “cross the finish line at some organized run”, because I didn’t have a distance goal in mind at all, and I literally just wanted to do the bare minimum – I wanted to push myself to go, register, and actually participate. There’s a reason for the obsession. I’m interested in fitness and staying fit. I know how much I’ve benefited from it in the past, especially in Grades 9 and 10, when I was arguably at the peak of my sporting prowess (if any). Except, I found myself enjoying contact sports lesser and lesser in subsequent years. And then I became lazy, incredibly. I have a great deal of inertia generally, but when it comes to physical exercise, I find it a little tougher to get out and do something. This is especially because it’s something I’m doing entirely for myself, and its been very difficult to “see” any real progress (there’s a circularity here – I haven’t invested enough time to see any progress in myself). But I’ve been obsessed: I’ve read, and thought, and reframed my objectives. I’ve spoken to runners. I’ve listened to running podcasts and videos. It’s been crazy.

A large part of this obsession has also been because I was surrounded by people who run. My community, the one I reside in in India, is filled with inspiration people who participate in this running craze – all for different reasons, with different distances they’re good at. All of them train really hard. They manage to do so alongside incredibly demanding jobs. And they travel – for running. I’ve been surrounded by these people since I was in Grade 6. My own Uncle has been running for the last 4 years (I think – it could be more/less), and has been participating in runs, and traveling, and making his own progress – but more importantly, just been enjoying it. He tried pushing me a couple of times, but my inertia came in the way (a lot).

This obsession has now seen the first of its action. I’m hopeful of one thing only: that I don’t stop running. That next year sees more of these medals, and more stories to come with it. It’s going to be really tough, I know that now. But I know I can do it, so do it I will. The inertia is something that will take a lot of warding off, but I’ll ward it off each day, and get this done.

Today (and my parents will read this for the first time on this blog), I broke down at the finish. They gave us a towel for us to wipe off the sweat. Mine helped me wipe off some tears. I literally just sat down on the side of the finish and dabbed my eyes. I don’t know why it happened. I can hypothesize several reasons: the relief of finishing, the joy in being able to trust your feet with your weight are two of them. My system clearly needed to get those emotions out, whatever they were.

This is probably the only reason I want to cry again. Doing something I’ve wanted to do terribly badly, and then having those emotions pour out. Literally.

Today’s been one of those chill-days. I don’t think I’ve “done” too much per se, but some days are like this. I spent today reading and catching up on stuff that I was interested in reading about. That’s technically doing a fair amount, but I did all of it from the comfort of my couch, and subsequently my bed. I also persuaded my parents not to go out for grocery shopping, and instead, utilized that time to nap on the couch, covered by a blanket. It’s been an all-round positive experience for me.

It has now become pyjama weather here. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to go back to the hostel if I’m feeling cold in this kind of weather (it’s around 24-25 degrees Celsius). It’s going to be crazy, especially given the broken window that greets me in my room. I’ll probably resort to my age-old warm-up technique of switching on the kettle and holding it to warm up my hands, apart from enjoying a hot glass of water.

I sent out my first e-mail newsletter today. I’m not entirely pleased with the design of it, but it’s a start, and it’ll only get better design-wise from here. The content is entirely dependent on how much time I spend on the internet and how many nice things I find in a given day, so if you want a good newsletter tomorrow, tell the internet Gods to be kind to me. You can see the newsletter here, if you’d like.

The rest of the day was spent scanning and digitizing my library of certificates and various academic records which I may need access to in the future. My dad suggested this to me earlier in the summer, because I requested a neighbor of ours to help me out when I needed my board exam certificates. I was dismissive at first, but I’m learning how helpful it is to have access to documents that are important to you all the time. I ventured forth into my dad’s office clutching all my certificates with me, hoping that the process of scanning would be quick and not emotion-laden: because I was quite worried about how long it would take.

It was the exact opposite. It was slow, and an extremely emotion-filled day.

I’ve learned two things today, things I’m extremely grateful for. The first is the amount of work xeroxing and scanning things is. I’ve always been thankful to have individuals to help with all the printing and scanning we do in law school, in particular when we have moot memorial submissions, or we have projects to hand-in. Rashmibhai is a blessing on campus. I know how difficult the task can be, because my dad’s worked in printer sales for some time, which means I’m aware of how goofy the technology can be sometimes. But I’ve never fully immersed myself in experiencing it first-hand. I goofed-up multiple times today: once absentmindedly inserting a stapled document into the scanning feeder tray. I’m lucky nothing happened to the multifunction tool I was using, but it was a stupid mistake that set me back about 10 minutes till we resolved all the misfeeds. I’ve printed a lot of stuff at one of my law firm internships, but that doesn’t compare to scanning at all. I’m more aware of the kind of concentration the activity takes – and how much you need to pay attention to the process now. As a result, I’m very grateful for all the books I’ve xeroxed over the years in law school.

The second takeaway was the emotion-laden bit. Digitizing and archiving your own certificates means you have legitimate reason to look at pieces of paper marking various things you’ve accomplished in the eyes of an authority in the past. I’ve looked at my certificates to ask my parents stories about the day I received them: my dad usually remembers most of them, but today, I was looking at them alone. It was admittedly very difficult to recall some of them, like my kindergarten report, which describes me as being ‘social’. Others, however, led to a lot of nostalgia.

If you’ve read the blog for long enough, you are aware that I have a tendency to live in the past and feel the nostalgia fully. I believe this is because I enjoy stories, and I enjoy history a lot (my 4th Grade report says I had an “affinity for the subject and must be encouraged to do extra reading”). A piece of paper evoking a complex, vivid picture of the past is therefore, easy to imagine – and so it was. As I caressed each page, taking it out of the folder it was meticulously placed in by my parents, examining it, and flipping it over to scan, it felt like I was flipping through a scrapbook in my own head. As the lightbeam produced the image on the USB drive, an exact replica of the paper I placed in the scanning bay, so too did my brain produce an image of that paper. Except, it was a moving image surrounded with a cacophony of sound – a video snapshot of what transpired.

I remembered, for example, that I had completed my music theory examination – in 2009, at the Bishop Cottons Girls School, in Bangalore, and gone to visit my grandparents because my grandfather was hosting a small exhibition of his artwork. I remembered my grandparents accompanying me to my first (and only) piano concert till date, the pride on their faces (and mine) evident in the beaming smiles. I recalled breaking down when I received my 11 AS results, because my Physics score was particularly awful. I broke down outside my school’s main gate, on the phone with my father, because I didn’t know what to tell him. I had tried so hard, and done so poorly – it was something I couldn’t register properly for some time. He cried too.

I saw myself bawling into my beanbag when I found out the University of Oxford rejected my application in Grade 12, and deciding not to go to school the next day. I must’ve cried for a good 10 minutes. In equal detail, I remembered how much joy I experienced when we were runners-up at a basketball tournament, and got certificates for that. I finally felt like we had done something relevant as a basketball team – despite the fact that we had byes in two rounds, and I only played one quarter in the entire tournament. Collecting that certificate meant so much to me.

It was odd, that all of these pieces of paper produced such a variance of emotions, such an extreme range. What was odder, perhaps, was that I was able to experience all of them in a few hours.

Certificates meant a lot to me as a child. Trophies and medals did too. They were signs that I was doing things that my school, my society viewed as being worthy of noticing and commending. I was really lucky my school credited non-traditional accomplishments by giving out Awards to everybody on Awards Day – with small badges on a cap.

But looking back now, those experiences mean a lot more to me. The struggles and the joys those pieces of paper brought. They shape me more than the paper ever has. The paper’s merely a record, a recognition that something transpired – and I don’t think I’m going to let it mean more than that. I’d rather choose to remember how something happened, rather than the mere fact that it did. It’s clear that my brain remembers these things today. I’m hopeful that it’ll never forget.

This is the first post I’m writing exclusively on this website, without having to rely on cross-posting from my old blog at curdricedaily.wordpress.com. It’s a seminal moment for me, but I’ve deliberately chosen not to wait for the New Year to do it. I’ve realized I’ve wasted a lot of time looking for landmark dates or times or moments to do stuff, rather than just doing them. Often, this has led to an endless cycle of postponing things. I’ll end up missing one landmark date, and then the next one never quite feels good enough. If I had waited till New Years’, for example, and then forgotten to migrate over, I would have waited till New Years Day 2021 to get stuff done. Which is far too long. I’m sure you agree too.

Today’s been a really joyous day. My work went on till quite late last night, despite the fact that I didn’t really want it to – which led to me missing out on this morning’s activities, unfortunately.

Subsequently however, we’ve been binge-watching The Crown’s new season as a family, and eating some fun food. My dad’s eaten one of my chocolate chip cookies too – a rare, and thus treasured moment.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/21/up-and-then-down

I went Bowling after absolute ages, which was enjoyable. It got my mind off things for a while, which I’m grateful for. I genuinely can’t recall my last Bowling outing, but I’m very, very certain it involved my chikamma and Uncle. Our WhatsApp group is named Pizza Hut + Bowling because of a tradition we’ve had for years now. I should really ensure we actually do the whole Bowling followed by Pizza Hut experience before I graduate. Or as a graduation celebration, perhaps. Let’s see how things pan out. 

After that I hung out with my dad. We bought him new chappals to use at home, and then I got to buy him a kinder bueno. Now the best part of this, undoubtedly, is that I’ve gotten to eat kinder bueno two times in four days.

Then I submitted some of my masters applications. Which was good, but I’m going to be cautious about how optimistic I get. I’m just so happy I have the chance to apply, and to think about the kind of stuff I really want to be working with and studying further. It’s weird, but it’s motivating me to get into that stuff as soon as possible, so I’m scouting around for opportunities right now. More on that some other time.

Onto the next set.