Karnavati Express

28th October 2008

Its 7.15 am, Diwali here it is. I am still about 45 minutes away from home, I got down at Vadodara in Shanti Express from Indore and ran like hell to catch my train from Vadodara to Bharuch. Oh god I cant wait any more. Just had one of the best and the most sumptuous cutlet a man can have on train. This is Karnavati Express, Ahmedabad to Mumbai, if there is any train trail in India that has the best and more importantly serves the biggest variety of foods than it is this corridor. The Western Railway trains serve anything and everything. Now now don’t you think that they serve alcohol you culprit !!!!

Ohh here comes the idli wala “IDLI CHUTNEY ! LELO !! GARMA GARAM” , along with him is the guy with colddrinks “ THANDA COLDRINKS, PEPSI, SPRITE, LIMCA, SEVEN UP, MAAZA, DOODH (MILK)” All along making a shrill noise with the bottle opener being grazed on the bottles….

Ever since I was a kid and used to travel from Jamnagar to Mumbai for all summer holidays, we three brothers loved traveling in the train and enjoying the food that we brought from home, whatever was available on route and buying toys being sold. I truly am a train man should I say. I even did updown from Bharuch to Vadodara in college for 3 years, it was on this 3 years of train transit that I found my wife. Now now this is not supposed to be a romantic story. So bout my wife later.

There comes the guy with Dhokla “Idla, garma garam”(the white ones we in gujarati call it Idla), Mineral water fellow trailing him “ THANDA PAAAANI” he is using only his nose to say that. We have competition for Himesh Reshamiya… no no its diwali and I shoud stay away from crude jokes.

The frequency with which these pantry guys are moving around is unbelievable, causing trouble to the unreserved passengers who have to stand in the passage.

Here comes the guy with Peanuts (Sing… Kharii Sing… )

I must mention this that on the three years when I was finding my wife and doing up down from Bharuch to Vadodara for college I have atleast eaten 2 truck loads of peanuts. In Bharuch Truly SING (peanut) is KING.

The family across me is now particularly interested in the toy selling guy and their son is making a racket if they don’t buy him anything my 30 mins of traveling will be difficult. This guy is gonna scream and loud… Where’s my IPOD.

When kids we three brothers used to sit at the windows and keep firing on one and all. Men and animal and women too… birds as well. We probably have more imaginary murders than any man, movie or novel even talks about. As silly as it sounds there always was a competition among us that who shot the guy, beast or bird first. Than when we would get bored of it there would be cards, or chess or ludo.

Here comes the Samosa Wala.. aaahh.. “Samosa Samosa”

Just wondering where the cutlet coffee and tea fellows got lost and where in the world did the soup serving fellow go… The tomato soups in the trains are best, my favourite being the one served in Paschim Express. They are as good as any restaurant.

Thank god that kid has been given his share of toys and he is now busy playing with them, some peace and I can put the IPOD away.

Now comes the next lure for the kid I can see the candy man coming (selling chocolates, chewing gums and a whole lot of kids stuff… Boy being parents is tough especially on trains where there are so many distractions. Even I myself at this age can hardly resist the foods that are served, so how can you even expect that the kid would resist the temptations of toys and chocolates.

Successfully the candyman has passed the kid was too engrossed in his toy.

Here… “Coffee, Coffee… Nescoffee… Garma Garam..” finally my coffee wala has come.

I will have to stop at the moment I cant drink this hot coffee and also write… While I am on diwali I hope not to find any time to write, I hope I stay so busy with friends and family that I have no time to collect my thoughts or pen down anything. Hope the diwali goes in a blast when I meet all my friends and their folks and have a wonderful time at home together.

Happy Diwali & Happy New Year to you and your family!!!! Cheers!!!

Jack of all, Master of none !!!

By : Tim Ferris

Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than master of one!

1. Boredom is failure.
2. It’s more fun, in the most serious existential sense.
3. Diversity of intellectual playgrounds breeds confidence instead of fear of the unknown.
4. In a world of dogmatic specialists, it’s the generalist who ends up running the show.
5. “Jack of all trades, master of none” is an artificial pairing.

I truly am a jack of all and master of none, and i never took a lot of pride into this. Just while nonchalantly mentioning it to my cousin on chat she sent me the above lines written by TIM FERRIS. I had no clue who this guy was but the lines gave me a lot of joy. Sort of redemption for me i guess. Understand from google now that he is a blogger himself.. I am using this TIM without your permission and i hope i am forgiven.

Truly this adage jack of all is suitable for most, but master of none haunts me at times. But when i read the above lines i was really feeling a whole lot better. I hope and totally want to agree that the pairing is artificial.

Sachin Tendulkar is master at batting but he too is a jack of all, he plays lovely table tennis, golf and badminton. Me too!! i play tennis, cricket, table tennis, badminton and can do my stuff but unfortunately i m master of none… but who cares now. It seriously is fun to play and compete, sweat, burn calories and try to win all the times, whether you win or lose it really infuses ‘life’ into my so called life.

I have a view on almost everything and i am not a specialist, be it cricket, tennis, politics, films, life, society, religion… the list can go on… But i am no professor to be preaching. Thanks to the invention of blogging i can now even keep on harping about what ever i feel.

At times i thought i could be a cricketer, at times i thought i could be a commentator, at times i think i can be a very good coach to the cricket team, i could be a good host in one of national geographic or travel and livings programme, i thought i could be a good chief minister or even prime minister… lol. But am a cotton trader currently and dont see any chance of doing anything else at the moment.

Now when i come to think of it, i guess we all are jack of all arent we??? whether we are masters at anything i dont know but we surely are jack of all and guess that explains that the pairing is really artificial. For the minute i m glad to be jack of all… truly celebrating…

Sachin Returns !!!!

17th October 2008

The day started at 6.45 am as I struggled out of bed. With no good news coming from the stock markets I turned my attention to cricket as the second test match was about to begin. The best thing that happened today morning was that on a ‘patta’ of a pitch MSD won the toss and elected to bat.

The start by Sehwag & Gambhir was fast and furious but too good to last long. Eventually Sehwag got out and would probably have been kicking himself in the dressing room for missing out on such a flat track. The track was so good for batting no one would like to get out early. Especially after getting to 30, but he was not alone as Rahul gave him company getting out in the 30’s too. Gambhir got a 60 odd but again gave his wicket away at the wrong time to almost give the Aussies a sniff of bowling India out. Laxman followed tickling a innocuous delivery on the leg side to be taken by the keeper.

The moment was here, the master short of a few runs of Brian Lara’s record. Our entire country which is statistics crazy and mad about records was at the tenterhooks, me included. I usually don’t like these records, I would rather see all world records not come our way but all the victories instead. However for this moment I thought it was fitting that Sachin Tendulkar reach this peak which he thoroughly deserved to reach.

Here is the most loved Indian, he has just gone past Brian Lara and is now the highest run getter in both Test Cricket and One day Cricket. Truly there is no one more deserving than him. The joy he brings to us Indians is immeasurable.

The sensex had gone below 10000 for the first time since 2006 but who cared. For the moment Sachin had made me forget every thing. All I wanted to do was catch as much as I could of the highlights and I was enjoying to see that all the news media doing a U-turn since they wanted these champions to retire and today two of them just scored good runs to get India out of trouble.

The man is hurting, like the other four. Like Kumble lashed out, Sachin also had his version, “In such a long journey of 19years there are some stones thrown at you, it is your job to convert them into milestones.”

I was so bitter with the media, if I were in his place I wouldn’t give any interviews to any channel today. But the humbleness of the man after a fighting days test cricket still willing to give out the interviews was evident.

As the series keeps progressing, more and more media people and critics will be made to eat their words. You criticize champions at your own peril, as they can lay low for a while but will always bounce back.

Well coming back to Sachin, it was great to see his first interview done by Tom Alter at the age of 15. NDTV had managed to get Tom Alter to speak about his interview and really when you saw the 15 year old say that he likes fast bowling because the ball comes straight to the bat really warmed my heart.

Even as I write this he brings tears of joys in my eyes. The man who started his career in Pakistan as a 16 year old has come a long way. The man always showed he was special. The first time he batted he had a nose broken and blood on his shirt against the arch rival Pakistan as Waqar Younis bounced him. But the grit of this young kid at 16 was evident when he told Sidhu, who was asking him if he wanted to go off the field and get treatment, ‘ paaji mein khelenga.’

Kya khela Sachin… You have given us hope at times of despair. You made us forget our woes and taught us to smile. You gave nightmares to the Shane Warne who has been selected as the bowler of the century. The amount of joy that Sachin has given us Indians is immeasurable, you are truly deserving of all the accolades you are getting and probably they aren’t enough. There aren’t enough adjectives to describe this man.

However the celebrations need to hold back a little. We have a job at hand, we have to score over 450 runs, and hope to bowl well. However the pitch is so flat I doubt if we can also bowl the opposition out cheaply. Time will tell though.

We bow today to Sachin, the cricket god. This is a new beginning for him, if you know the man he will go from strength to strength from here on. There are many more victories to be won, many more runs to be scored, many more bowlers to be penalized, many more joys to bring to us and most of all many more days where you keep on playing cricket as we know that is the one thing that you love the most. Like the movie titles of remakes… This is SACHIN RETURNS……