Passing the ultimate test

I’d assumed I was the central character in my story till it occurred to me that I might, infact, could be a minor character in someone else’s story..

So I forgot to mention that much to my delight, I could watch all the big WC matches on a big screen while I was on my first ever vacation at home. Funny :). Whilst I was busy watching the games, there were these analysts who just read the papers and could understand if the team would win or not. Sheer brilliance I say! Anyways, the Zidane issue went way out of hand and I don’t know how could they grant him a punishment as severe as a 3 match suspension after his retirement. Haha…world full dumbfucks and their cronies! All smart asses gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict. Bah! Lets get back to the point which this post is about to highlight.

People have been talking about Zizou and his exploits during the cup but as far as these skanky plagiarists are concerned, (they mug the whole newspaper off or what?!) it begins with the customary head-butt incident. The discussion goes on and on and it becomes a treat for the people who are in it and for those who are enjoying the odd mug of beer in vicinity. Gossiping is fucking gay man! Bitching is one more thing, which is almost to the levels of wallowing with pigs. Good for us yokels who are least interested. Gasp! Why not talk about Zidane as a person and what he has achieved rather than the ‘greatness’ of the head-butt incident.

    People say that the English are obsessed with the idea of greatness. That’s not such a bad thing to be obsessed with in my view. Put the very, very good here and the great there – and ponder. What divides them? Who do we withhold greatness from one end and bestow it so willingly on another?

   When it comes to football, atleast I think I have the answer. Scan a player for possible greatness and ask: does he score goals? Good. Does he make goals? Good again. Now for the question that actually matters – Does he make teams? Has he created a great international team in his own image by the brilliance of his play and force of his mind.

   If the answer is yes, then we are very rare company – the rarest of the rare. Pele, obviously, Franz Beckenbauer, Diego Maradona. Me…I’d throw Johan Cryuff in there. I know he hasn’t got a World Cup on his CV, but should have. But that’s the level at which we are arguing.

  On, then, to Zinedine Zidane. And no argument, none whatsoever. A great footballer. If anyone has been in doubt about that, this last hurrah at his last World Cup, in which every game he plays might be his last, has destroyed it, reminding us all the ways in which his greatness was expressed. As ever, his presence on the pitch makes the team as a whole better and also makes every individual on his own, play better.

   Many of Zidane’s moves would have looked flash if performed by anyone else. But they were never performed for his own self but, always in context of the search for victory. Zidane was a player with an immense sense of style, but style was remorselessly subjected to content. He never played virtuoso for the sake of it, it was a temptation he was immune to.

   Always severe and serious, but with that strange sense of detachment. It was as if he were well aware of the absurdity of football and, for that matter, of life. All the same, he could still see no point in giving these absurdities anything less than his best. He played with a wonderfully Gallic sense of cool, as if he had a Gitanes in his mouth even as he turned, swiveled, and passed.

   But it was not what he did that was the key to his greatness, it was what he was. It was his presence  that made the fin de siecle France team, the greatest in the world, one of the greatest ever. They began their exuberant charge to World Cup glory in ’98 with a 4-0 victory so they’ve got no chance, I remember saying. Peaked too soon, haven’t they? And anyway you cant win the WC without a proper striker.

  You can if you have Zidane in your team, with his conductor’s baton and his slide rule and his falconine profile and his Gitanes ablaze. And just to prove that it was no fluke, he led the France team to victory in the European Championships two years later.

   I remember the defining picture of the triumph of 1998 – the hands holding aloft that monumentally ugly trophy, hands of every shade of colour that human pigment can come up with. It was a victory for a nation unified by un sang impur and at the heart of it, Zidane, with his North African blood and his hooked bill of a nose and an almost ecclesiastical air about him, with his widow’s peak of stubble and tonsure.

  Martin Johnson, the England rugby union captain in the World Cup Triumph of 2003, said that he never set himself up to be a leader. It was just that people tended to follow him, demonstrating that the true gift of leadership is to inspire ‘follow ship’ in everyone else. That was something that Zizou was able to do. Zidane was what David Beckham aspired to be but fell short of. No shame for Beckham there. Both reached for the stars; Zidane got there, Beckham dint but I’ve always got more time for the over-reachers than the giver-uppers. But alas, poor David, Zizou really was the best footballer in the world. Zidane really did function as the heart, soul and inspiration of a great team. Zidane really did win the World Cup. Draw a line between Beck and Zizou, then, on one side you have the very, very good, on the other you have the indisputably great
  
   See it’s easy to tell the difference when you know how, isn’t it?
On that note I shall set my books ablaze and start the disillusionment process of many a top rung studs as they call them.
Damn! Did I just talk about mugging? Worst ok? Go die you idiot!
Bah!

The second cut is the deepest

I wake up in her bed for the first time in almost ten years. Looking over, I think about how much I had always loved to make love to her in the morning.

I would awaken and lie beside her, listening to her breathe, watching her lithe body rise and fall like an ocean swell. Like a panther for its prey, I would lie in wait until I could no longer stand it and then, only then would I slowly slide my hand under the covers, so painfully slow so as not to wake her, that I sometimes wondered if I would ever reach her. So long, that my hand would warm itself and she would barely feel it, only beginning to lightly stir as it came to rest on my favorite spot--her taut, sensuous stomach that begged to be touched. And so I would, lightly tickling and dragging the tips of my fingers in elaborate hieroglyphs. She would be just awake enough to begin lightly caressing my arm, and we would go on like that until I would give in and go for the coup de grace--her neck. Slender and tan, sweet like a ripened peach, I knew I would regain some balance with her when I got to her neck. When I would roll over and begin softly kissing her there, the change in her breathing was palpable, like the eye of a hurricane. Deep and calm, but building, always building.

It was like the feeling I had now. As long as I had waited for this moment, as perfect as it seemed, all I have to do is slide my hand over...and again make love to her in the morning. But the eye is fleeting, and my confused thoughts are swirling. I am desperate for clarity, so I close my eyes. A sinking feeling drowns me as I think of her sleeping next to me.

She was always so beautiful as she slept. Pure and free--like a wild mustang thundering across a lush prairie--only quiet, still, peaceful. How I had loved that girl! And even so, the best thing we ever did together was to take a nap. The Nap. A golden moment that lasted an entire afternoon. We laid in each other's arms on a couch in my room, a CD we both loved playing over and over, and it was perfect. There was no awareness of anything. I simply held the sun and moon in my arms, loved, and was loved.

I have never in my life been more in love than I was that afternoon. Back then, I thought that simply loving would always be enough. It's not, because when you love, whether you know it or not, you better understand loss and pain. She lies besides me now. I know she will wake up soon, and I am filled with dread. I am angry at her for putting me in this position. For the second time in our lives it is over between us, and this time it hurts more, because this time it was over before it began. And so, angry at her, I am angrier at myself because I knew all of this and still I fell for it. I know I have to leave her and not come back. She is awake now. I hear her roll over, and now her hand is on my stomach...

Lascivious side of me :)
First real attempt hehe
Being high helps…really does.

Perils of the freshie invasion

This has been the most lame of all the first weeks I have had in college. No music, no gaming at the levels, which I have been used to, and to add to that I have frustration as my best friend as I am still to register myself for the semester. BAH! Too much of a responsibility on us jobless ones. Taking that last post as a warm up exercise for some mindless drivel, I can very well imagine what is in store for me for the rest of the sem. ULTRA BULL CRAP! Sets up the tone doesn't it?Therefore, I thought I might try a hand at ragging and believe me when I say this… I have not ragged a single freshie till date. Summer was ok types apart from the fact that I saw all the WC matches and the big ones on a big screen at HHI with old friends and lots of beer. Did I say CRV by any chance? Man…what a drive! Dad showered some mercy by handing me the keys at the right times. Put the overdrive on, on a flyover and omg what a feeling! Sans reality, I say.

Everyone has been discussing about opiates like codeine, heroin etc, a topic, which doesn’t interest me at all. The schizophrenic hallucinations associated with them are enough to cause consternation. They might call it the ultimate feeling, but very frankly, I am scared to say the least. Which is why I can call it schizophrenic, a term that cannot be associated with it at all. This is all due to a very bad experience with magic mushrooms last summer when I was in Michigan where these idiots played a bad trick of putting some inside a burger. Morons…I started hallucinating. I found myself in a cave with polar bears and all. MUMMY! *shudders*The down trip was also very painful and it was, very frankly, an event, which scared the living daylights out of me for any further psilocybin or the next level of opiates. At the same time, those who are stuck up with this, only they can help themselves. Mormons are there everywhere but then who am I to go on preaching around. But what the hell? I am digressing excessively.

So it goes like this. Good boy Blunt gets up very early on a fine Friday morning, puts his running shoes on and is about to go for jogging when it suddenly strikes him that he forgot to brush his teeth. So he brushes his teeth and happily starts off for his room. “I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise” is what he told himself when he saw some stranger in his room who was flirting with the beloved acoustic bass. His countenance, in plain and simple words, was like that of a monkey who was left free to unleash the beast inside him. His sharp, pointing, and protruding ears helped the cause. Therefore, it was decided that this stranger needed to be informed that it was not his room, so he could not fiddle around with the stuff, which is kept inside, especially the bass. I mean, what the fuck man! How can someone generally enter a room in the first place and that too when it is latched outside? So Blunt enters the room and is about to inform the guy about certain facts, before which he is bombarded by a set of questions, the funniest of the lot being “Who are you and where were you da?”.

Blunt wanted to say “I’m fucking Lou…who the fuck are you?”. Instead, he informed him of the fact that he was in perilous territory and anything could happen. That is when the heart breaking cannon ball landed. He looked at me from top to bottom as if he were ‘analyzing’ to say the least, a chick. Bah! He was very confident when he said this… “How can you possibly relate yourself to perilous territory?” I was angry now and before I could actually unleash the beast, the fellow very matter-of-factly asked, “Is this your room?” and before I could manage to open my mouth he says, “Hey before that, do you mind telling me which course is this (pointing towards ID110)? I had to now, it was a now or never situation. So, I went inside the room sat on the bed an asked him whether I looked like a freshie? He was smirking. Can you even believe the audacity with which he was treating a final year student! Again very matter-of-factly, he said “Hehe obviously man…which branch are you in?” I asked him if he was allotted a single room or something to which he again said yes!!! I could not believe it. How can these first year dweebs be allotted single rooms? As freshies all of us supposed to be tykes and a triple sharing room is allotted so that we can morally support each other and all. However, looking at this monkey, it could very easily be inferred that he not at all a tyke. Maybe when he comes to know that I am in my Final year, he might come and apologize after being ragged the other seniors in the hostel. Yeah right, high hopes without doubts. I should have shoved him there itself. However,much to my chagrin, I could not do much as I had to leave for a presentation. Yet again I will become the laughing stock of them wingmates who tend to pounce on the silliest of the news. Sacrilege! Utter and complete. Embarrassing as it will be, it can be compared to something which was like this "Go get a real girl whose name doesn't end with .jpg" LOL. Reason enough for beer and celebration as stewie would point out... if not then you can as well go porrrk yourself. Did I hear someone asking what is porrrk? Oh..It's nothing but another one of them thought provoking words thought of by the ostensibly hardworking anand. It's easy, just an acronym; Pitch Forrrk! Extreme fart!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee