Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

 4 of us watched the final, and pretty much ball by ball, till Australia started coasting. Well, one might say- where's the cricket fan- why aren't you watching a great cricketing knock by Travis Head - but well, ball by ball ODI for the full length of the innings is not doable. 

Anyway, my thoughts on what helped Aus get ahead: 

1. Australia getting the better of the conditions. They called the toss smartly, taking the counter intuitive decision to bowl first based on the 'black soil' as Ravichandran Ashwin put it in his vlog, which cricinfo also picked.  The decision bucked the common trend of 'putting up runs on the board' in a big match
2. Brilliant fielding of Australia vs Slightly below par by India. Travis Head's catch of Rohit was electric. And Warner, Head and Labuscagne were throwing themselves around. They looked fast on telly, and this was confirmed by a colleague who watched the match live in Ahmedabad.  India has fielders who have to be hidden, which is not the case with Australia. I am not even talking about errors here. 
3. Reliable tail of Australia, which includes Starc and Cummins, vs unreliable tail of India. The worry of the unreliable tail is probably what caused VK and Rahul to bat overcautiously and take very few risks. Hardi Pandya's injury hurt us here, but we have had ample notice of this defeciency.
4. Shreyas and Gill failing on the big day. Shreyas' technique when he was hopping against a length ball, was suspect. My friend said- was he expecting the short ball?    
5. On the day, their bowling was also outstanding while ours was good. They had a great strategy which is also described by Ravi Ashwin, who mentioned how Pat Cummins bowled without a mid off and bowled lot of cutters. He bowled only 3 out of his 60 balls in 6 meter mark or further up on the pitch. And apparently 50% cutters. (Ashwin's article)  He did not have a mid off in place and had a 5-4 legside field .

Anyhow, Olympics is coming, and we had a glorious Asian Games. FIFA WC qualifying campaign in full swing. Lots of other sports area currently heating up, and can shift focus there.   

Labels: Esprit de sports

# posted by Ashwin Ravikumar @ 5:33 PM 0 Comments

Yesterday was my 2nd time on the spanking new Mysore - Bangalore expressway. In addition , last October, I had driven on the partially completed version, so it's satisfying to be part of the journey (of the journey). 

It's an enjoyable ride. 3 lanes on each side with the road surface shiny and smooth. The skeptic might sandpaper that gloss by attributing it to the newness of the road, but it has been through one monsoon and the surface has survived that. The entry and exit toll plazas look grand, the tool booths domed by cream-colored conical structures like those atop Cricket stadium stands. Thankfully there are clear lane markings, for navigating such a wide road at high speeds is impossible without those. There are very few entries and exits to the expressway, which reduces interruptions from vehicles entering or exiting. The other aspect that enables high speed travel is that 2 wheelers and 3 wheelers are not allowed. Now the owners of Cruisers and Speed bikes (like K) might bristle at that statement, but they have to accept that the median 2-wheeler on the streets of the country is unlikely to hold 100+ speeds. The downside of this is that a vast majority of the citizens cannot access this road. The expressway enables one to bypass the towns of Ramanagaram (mountains and Sholay shooting site), Channapatna (hub of traditional toys and home to S), Maddur (home of the Maddur vadas), Mandya (sugar city- lot of Sugarcane) and Srirangapatna (site of the Kaveri trail run, our destination yesterday)

The goodness of the road is justified by us hitting 150 kmph yesterday with T at the wheel, while not realizing for quite some time that we were at that landmark speed. The car alarm starts continuously beeping at 120, but then over the course of the ride you get to ignore it to some extent. 120 is a speed limit, and seems like a logical limit to have (unlike the 80 which I've seen on some highways). Thankfully this blog is not popular enough that some Karnataka Transport official reads this post and enraged, finds out my Vehicle number and promptly dispatches a challan, adding a link to challan in the Blog comments. The expressway got inaugurated in March, and the new car came in June- so nice co-incidence there. The Red-Venue, aka Revenue, drew compliments from T who found it holding up well beyond 120 kmph, and N for its boot space. Oh important point to note: Yesterday, T was the revenue-driver.  

One challenge on the road is that vehicles don't respect the fast-lane slow-lane logic. In fact, I don't even think there is an effort from the powers that be to inculcate this habit, because I did not see any communication about it on the roadside information displays. Ideally, slow traffic (eg: lorries) should ride on the leftmost lanes, and fast (close to 120) should ride on the rightmost lane. This will reduce stress on drivers, and accidents. Currently, due to non adherence or non existence of fast-lane slow-lane logic, there are lot of perilous lane switches at high speed. As the number of the such quality highways grow in India, speeds of vehicles will increase, and therefore implementing this logic becomes critical to road safety.     

The road, at a height of 10 odd meters for most of the trip, overlooks green fields, mainly paddy and  sugarcane, on both sides. Both water intensive crops are fed by the Kaveri river, which runs through Srirangapatna, and many canals emanate from it. No wonder the Mandya district is at the heart of the Cauvery agitations, which led to two bandhs just a month ago. We make close contact with the Kaveri during our hotel stay beside the river, and further during our trail that ran along a canal. 

The most beautiful spot on the expressway for me is near Ramanagara, when huge monolith rocks loom on both sides of the road. The road rises, and we see the sky in front, framed by the monoliths on either side. To the left and right is the greenery of forest and farms. The green vegetation, brown-black rocks and blue sky dotted with white clouds, with the grey road cutting through, makes for an alluring sight. This is further beautified if the sun is setting, when the sky develops hues of pink and orange. Nothing like a big panaromic view imbued with many natural colors, to make the heart soar!       

One section that saddens not gladdens, is when you clearly see the walls of cut rock on both sides. The natural landscape has been demolished to make way for this road. Another downside has been that many restaurants dotting the older National Highway have seen business plummet, with commuters preferring to zip through the expressway. Scant compensation to the thousands employed along the highway, but there is one restaurant that has benefited immensely. Kadamba Veg is located in the half-km stretch after the NICE road exit to Kengeri and before the start of the expressway. Bengalureans heading towards Mysore, esepcially from Eastern and Northern parts of the city, will wipe their brow after getting out of the city through Nice road and would like a small break before entering the expressway. Kadamba veg is located at that exact spot, and no wonder we had difficulty in finding a parking spot. We eventually did, and enjoyed a hot cuppa tea /coffee. 

The Bengaluru-Chennai expressway is coming up next. Apparently Bengaluru Hyderabad highway, which I already heard praises of, is also getting an upgrade to 6-lane. The transition periods of road construction will be painful, as I heard from T and S, who recently drove to Chennai. Hoping to experience those completed roads sometime soon.  

# posted by Ashwin Ravikumar @ 10:13 AM 0 Comments

Watched the hilarious play 'Relatively Speaking' at BIC, on Thursday evening. It was a play that only aimed to be funny, and did not mean to convey any 'deeper' message. The past 2- 3 plays which I watched have been embedded with deep message and meaning. The last I watched, 'Walk in the woods' starring Nasseruddin Shah, a deep conversation between an India and a Pakistani spy, was at NCPA in Mumbai in 2017, a good 6 years ago.  

Relatively Speaking had funny dialogues and deliveries. It was also remarkable how the plot is allowed to build by taking some obvious dramatic liberties. There are 4 characters in the play, and 2 conveniently keep disappearing for some odd job or the other (cooking, gardening, etc), so that a solid head of confusion can be built up on miscommunication and misinterpretation . If the missing characters were present on stage, they would have clarified the confusing situation immediately. The humor is based on this built-up confusion. This dramatic element is a trope, though, but it (mostly) did not get grating. Due to its repetition it made itself obvious and therefore demanded the audience for its 'willing suspension of disbelief'. My favorite comic moment is when one of the bemused characters, just back from the garden and therefore not being onto the latest on-stage developments, is admonished thus: 'Do wear a hat when you go out in the sun '.  

That's what's humor (building on what I had read somewhere)- you suspend your disbelief and allow an alternate reality to get created, and then a set of improbable or outlandish circumstances get built on top of that alternate reality, such that the entire reality is fragile, and then some last straw is kept on top of this fragile structure. This last straw your mind can't handle, and it bursts into laughter, as a 'system breakdown'.  

Relatively Speaking is an old British play, written in 1965, so it has some elements of that time and place such as land line phones and travel from London to Kent. Those got a wee bit jarring. It was performed at BIC by Madras Players, which I read is India's oldest English theater group. Girish Karnad is its most famous alumnus. The acting was excellent, albeit somewhat exaggerated as the genre and the plot demands.  

Two sidenotes: I finally got to watch a good play at BIC, one of the best (if not the best) venues for performance art in Bangalore. I have been eyeing it for long. We reached the venue 2 minutes late and all seats were taken, so had to do some calisthenics to squeeze into one of the aisles. Secondly, it was a day dedicated to 'play' - I played cricket in the morning after a gap of 6 months from rotator cuff muscle, waited 1 hour to get to see Mohammed Shami at the PUMA office, and lastly went and watched the play.   

# posted by Ashwin Ravikumar @ 11:49 AM 0 Comments

The notes that follow do have some spoilers. They are unlikely to impair the reading experience, but if you are absolutely averse to spoilers and are definitely going to read the book, then give this a skip.   

The deeply researched book, set in the late 19th century when the first Indian Lady Doctors entered hospitals, talks about the pressures faced by the first few women doctors of India. The idea of women going out of the home and 'breaking' the traditional mould of mothers and homemakers was alien to society. Balancing profession with motherhood and homemaking remain contemporary concerns - but the biggest barrier back then was : overcoming the hurdles placed by child marriage. Females would get married by age 12, and after that there was little interest from the new 'guardians' in the kid's long term development and growth. The other hurdle back then was menfolk feeling threatened by competent women. 

On a sidenote, some of the above hurdles are probably common in other contexts too (beyond just the rise of professional women); habits such as sticking to tradition, insecurity of one group with the rise of other. 

Doctors aside, the book also casts light on the deplorable state of women. In the absence of birth control and family planning, women would give birth to double-digit number of children, which would necessitate medical attention. However, women patients would not get adequate treatment because they would not be taken to the male doctors, and most of the doctors were male. This situation existed even after medical science had advanced to the extent that vaccines were available (eg: Small pox vaccine was invented in 1796). There was an important section early in Salman's Rushdie's celebrated novel Midnight's Children, which exploited this situation to dramatic effect in creating a romance between Doctor and elusive woman patient, who he was not allowed to see. 

It struck me as remarkable that all these hurdles faced by women doctors was in the second half of 19th century, which is barely 150 years ago- just 3 generations before today.  

The author's presentation of her subjects is balanced. The book is not what is called a 'hagiography', where the biography or autobiography is extremely positive about the subject person and the mistakes or wrongs of the subject are not talked about. There is indepth analysis of one of the ideological stands taken by one of the subjects which has a negative outcome on a strata of society.     

The author Kavitha Rao's context setting notes are nice. She enters the narrative gently, adding some historical context or her own perspective. For example, when talking about Khulna (in present day Bangladesh) where one of the Doctors was born, she talks about the past (building of the 60 dome mosque) and the future (massacres of the Bangladesh war) of Khulna. The tales of Lady Doctors are told over the backdrop of the freedom struggle, and Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gandhiji both make an appearance.  

The first women doctor had a slave driver husband, who forced her to study. Beatings were also administered. Was her life better off due the slave driving? Perhaps. However, she was a torch bearer for future generations of lady doctors. So, most people like her husband, even if they have some overwhelmingly negative trait, might also have some positive trait which might help society. So the situation is a bit like the Dominican republic dictator, who is talked about in the book Collapse. He was authoritarian and ruled with an iron fist, but then he was very protective of the environment. Today, although Haiti and Dominican Republic are small countries on the same island, Dominican Republic is one of the largest economies of the region while Haiti is one of the poorest. So, people have both positive and negative.  

However, these women , especially Haimatbai, led difficult lives. Haimabati lived a life of utter poverty throughout. Hats off to them for creating the trail through the thicket, braving all the thorns, and making it easier for the future generations to walk.  

Labels: Books

# posted by Ashwin Ravikumar @ 12:21 PM 0 Comments