Sunday, May 17, 2009

6 + 4 = 10 dulkar

Given this topic, thousands of people can write long essays, others will have a lot to say and few will be simply speechless.

Whenever someone asks me who's the role model according to me, there are only two people I can think of; one, my father (of course :-)) and other, Sachin Tendulkar.

Sachin Tendulkar = Cricket and Cricket = Sachin Tendulkar. The kind of feelings that I have for him are beyond any definable ones. It is far beyond respect, love, craze, admiration..... It is something beyond these and something very different. Everyone has an extremely special place in heart and mind for him. Everyone prays for him, everyone wishes the best for him, everyone respects him, everyone wants him to be at the top position, everyone wants him to break all possible cricket records, everyone wants his records to not be beaten by anyone else. Whenever any issue related to cricket controversies comes up, I always feel glad and wonder that Sachin is never involved in any of such issues. All cricket players, be it from the Indian team or be it from any other team, respect Sachin. All top sportsmen from various sports are his fans. I have read several articles and forwards about Sachin, and with each the trust and pride just grows exponentially.

I still remember a foolscap book which I had during my school days. It had a face cover with Sachin Tendulkar's picture on it and it read "6 + 4 = 10 dulkar". As a child I didn't pay much attention or consideration to it, but I think it was definitely carved in my brain somewhere. That's why I still remember it. Sachin is simply the best and he rocks.

To end with, I remember a few lines which I read elsewhere - "Cricket was just another sport, Sachin made it a religion" :).

Friday, May 1, 2009

Un-detachable attachments

I know the title of my post is so weird that one can think about 1000 things before reading the actual content. I am trying to write this post to put forth about the most strange part of human life, which I always admire and like - attachments with people/places/things..... I am going to talk about such an attachment.
It was somewhere in winters (2 months after monsoons got over). I went to bed at night at usual time. After sometime, I woke up suddenly because it was heavily raining outside. I have never liked heavy rains and thunders at night. They give me a scary feeling. I tried to sleep back and didn't realize when I went to sleep again. When I woke up next morning, I went to the balcony to look at the trees and birds as usual. And to my shock, the tree, which stood next to our balcony since 15-20 years (that's since before we moved to this house), had fallen off due to the heavy rains previous night. I really felt as if someone pushed me off from a tall building. I lost my breath for a moment. All the birds, who had nests on this tree, were crying n flying from here and there. They had become homeless in no time. For all these years, I had seen all kinds of birds playfully chirping on this tree. This tree bore pretty pink flowers in summers which I have never seen elsewhere. Laborers' kids tied swings to this tree and there when our building was being constructed. In all, this tree was a shelter and a reason for joy for many including me. I felt very bad, most importantly because I had got attached to this tree. It was like a close friend for me. It was a weekday and I didn't even feel like going to office, but had to go :(.
Throughout the day, I couldn't keep thinking about this tree. At noon, suddenly something clicked my mind. The tree had not fallen completely and the trunk was partially intact and could have been erected again. And then I started with all that I could have done to save this tree. I called up my mom and asked her if she could ask someone for help. She had to go to her work and couldn't help me much. I tried to get hold of contacts of various nurseries but couldn't find anyone who could have helped me. I came home early in the evening and contacted all these nurseries. Sadly, I couldn't get any assistance from anyone. I went to office next day but kept trying to get hold of the contact information for the municipal department which looked after such things. I called up a neighbor of mine and asked him for assistance since he has a lot of contacts with various people. He showed reluctance in helping me with this. And then in the evening, when I called up my mom again, she told me that municipality people came and cut all the wood and took it away. When my mom asked them if they could erect it, they started asking her for unfair charges and didn't cooperate with her. They were going to make good money out of all the wood that they were to obtain, so there was no reason why they would cooperate. I came home a little early that day cause I really was feeling very uneasy. When I reached home, the tree was all gone. There was just the semi erupted trunk in place and a heap of leaves besides it. All the branches and wood was cut and taken away. I was very depressed to see this painful end. Till 2-3 days, the birds came and kept crying since they had lost their home. But after that even they stopped coming. Things are forgotten so easily.!!
Every morning I woke up, I was disappointed to see that my tree was gone. I kept remembering all the good moments I had in the presence of the tree. I made up mind to plant a new tree there now.
On a Saturday, I was standing in the balcony and looking at the trunk as usual, and to my surprise, I could see something similar to a sapling near the trunk. I was over-joyed to see that. I ran downstairs to check what I saw, and I was right. The tree had not lost its existence completely and a small branch was trying to grow on the trunk. It was as if the tree had gained life back . Since that day, I started watering the trunk regularly. And now, there are multiple branches that have come out of the tree and they are growing well. I am just hoping to get back my tree and also the birds, flowers too.
The whole motto of writing this article was to ponder about how humans get attached to various things and how they kinda relate their joy and lives to it. Human psychology is indeed something to be researched and I sometimes feel that I should have studied psychology instead of computers :).