A billion dreams come true!

The time was about 10:55pm and as I stepped out onto the streets I realised that I wasn’t alone. I could see several others equally delirious with joy and unable to believe that their long cherished dream had finally come true. The moment I hit the street a couple of complete strangers ran towards me, gave me a high-fi. They were screaming INDIAA INDIAAAA!! at the top of their lungs to ensure that they were heard over the then ubiquitous and incredible loud din of firecrackers being lit in almost every single housing colony in my area. More and more people kept pouring out into the street till it became a huge procession. Out of nowhere, there materialised a set of drums and two huge Indian flags and we set out to the nearest important thoroughfare, Vile Parle's Hanuman Road where a kind cricket loving shop owner had put up a large screen at a crossroad.

In the less than 2 mins that it took us to get there, I must have seen at least about fifty other people pass us in their vehicles and as far as I could make out no one apart from the driver was bothering to sit 'inside' any of them. Every SUV had men sitting on top and shouting slogans, many others had their torsos out of the windows and were waving flags. Every single motorcycle around was carrying 3 or more people and almost every other one had a flag. The big screen had become a gathering point and almost everyone from Vile Parle assembled in front of it. By the time I reached the place, the sound of fire crackers was dying down and the drums took over. Almost a hundred delirious fans were already dancing in front of the screen in jubilation and the crowed continued to swell because every person witnessing the scene called up and exhorted his friends to join. Men, women and children from all around converged in front of the screen. While most just came shouting 'INDIAAA!!!' others had grabbed their whistles and IPL horns which were being blown loudly. Everybody was congratulating everybody else as if all of us had hit the winning six ourselves.

The numbers multiplied till there were about thirty to forty Indian flags and I estimate probably more than five hundred people.The big screen began to look rather small compared to the crowd in front of it. Some creative genius then brought a styroform replica of the world cup and placed it atop an Innova car at the centre of the crowd. The crowd danced with renewed vigour at the sight (albeit a replica) of what the country had gained on the historic night. It was delightful to see the senior citizens, old men and women break a leg and do a jig as well. The world cup is a matter of national pride in our cricket crazy land and the fans dancing were of all ages, various communities and both genders. The unity and national pride (and the number of flags as well) on display was greater than I have ever seen before. Greater definitely than even that of 15th August and 26th January.

Then the presentation ceremony began. We cheered as loudly as possible every time an Indian player stepped up to take his medal. Just when it seemed that everyone had lost their voices by shouting till they were hoarse, the city-boy was called to the podium and chants of SACHINNN SAAACHIN!!!! became so loud that the sound of the drums was momentarily drowned out. The moment the presentation ceremony ended the dancing began anew as if it had never stopped. We, the under-30 generation which had never witnessed a world cup triumph were high on joy and energy seemed limitless. Almost an hour after the big crowd had first gathered, dancing and flag waving was continuing unabated with only the chants varying between BHARAT MATA KI JAI!, INDIA INDIAA!! and the all time favourite  SACHINNN SAAACHIN!!!! 

Only after much efforts and requests from the police did the crowd disperse enough to let the traffic flow again. However, most fans were only moving to other places rather than returning home and most of the traffic was jubilant fans going on a victory lap of the city. I am told that the scene I witnessed was replicated across Mumbai and probably all over India as well.

It is a night that I will never forgot the passion on the street was something that I had only read about before. A person unfamiliar with cricket could be forgiven for thinking that it was something like a revolution that Egypt saw a few days ago with streets overflowing with people and people riding atop cars and waving massive flags out of the windows.

To say that this post paints an exact picture would be utterly wrong. My writing skills fall woefully short and are completely inadequate to accurately describe the passion on the streets. I wish that most of my beloved friends who were unfortunately away from Bombay were here with me to witness the night of extraordinary celebrations. I hope that the Indian team will give us more cause for such wild celebration again when all my friends are in Bombay. So now begins the wait for the third one...

The big match on Twitter!!

The frenzy which swept the nation on Wednesday was also on display on Twitter. Here is a compilation of some of the most interesting tweets in case you missed them.

Poonam Pandey’s announcement (in the news here and here) that she would shed her clothes if India wins the match and Dhoni’s controversial selection of Ashish Nehra was the fodder for some of the most funny tweets.

The celebrities attending the match were also at the receiving end of many taunts. The best was J&K CM Abdullah Omar (who was at Jammu) chiding famous reporter Barkha Dutt for being at Mohali and paying attention to politics instead of cricket.

As the match began, the onfield events became the focus:

Seems like J&K CM also realised that the voters wont be too happy if they miss out on the big match, so when the J&K grid started tripping he made an appeal to conserve energy so that more TVs work!

When India won, apart from the expected cries of joy and tears on the other side, Afridi was showered with much appreciation and praise from both sides of the border.

Even the “Faking News” which generally talks rubbish, got serious about this…

I wholeheartedly agree with the final sentiment on twitter. Pakistan really played exceptionally well during this world cup and Afridi’s leadership in making men out of his young boys must be praised. Though they lost yesterday, they played rather well and Riaz was exceptional. I hope that at least the cricketing ties will get back to normal after this and I’d like to see an Ind-Pak series soon, atleast at a neutral venue if not India or Pakistan.

Do comment and let me know if you found this tweet collection interesting and also if you are or planning to get active on twitter! Last, but not the least, remember to cheer your heart out during the World Cup final on Saturday.

INDIAAAA!! INDIAAAA!!!!!

NOTE: All the pictures in this post are screenshots taken from the website http://www.twitter.com. All the posts are the intellectual property of the people who posted them on twitter.

Internal Party Elections should be made mandatory!

Here are the stats that author Patrick French unearthed while researching his book India: A Portrait – published in January 2011 by Penguin -

• All MPs whose age is less than 30 years have other family members in politics.
• More than two-thirds of MPs aged under 40 have other family members in politics.
• An alarming 69.5% of women MPs have other family members in politics.

Browser Wars! Is Chrome winning?

Just as the launch of iPhone suddenly heated up the smartphone sector, the launch of Google Chrome greatly heated up the browser war which till then was simply a competition between IE and Firefox with IE having a massive lead.

I was one of the first ones to download Google Chrome when it was released on 2nd September 2008. It was love at first sight. I never went back to IE after using Chrome for just one day. What pleased me the most back then was the ultra minimal interface. I simply loved the fact that there were no space wasting toolbars and that there was a single box for both search and address bar.

While stats from http://j.mp/usageshare indicate that IE still leads with 45% and is followed by Firefox 36% and Google Chrome 16%, I am pleased to know that most of my friends prefer Chrome like me. Here are the browser stats of my blog:

English is an Indian Language!

New York Times recently published a letter titled  “India Faces a Linguistic Truth: English Spoken Here” which succinctly makes the case for how English is the de-facto national language of India. I couldn’t agree more. All around India you can see signs of how English is omnipresent in every walk of life and only politicians and extremist activists portray English as an undesirable colonial imposition on the people of India.

The much lauded 9% growth rate of India is driven mostly by growth in knowledge intensive sectors like IT and the services sector in which knowledge of English is the most basic prerequisite. Even in small towns and villages, there is much demand for English language education and English medium schools as well as private English tuition centres are raking in huge amounts of money.  English is the route to every aspiration that the common man of India.

English is as Indian as Mehendi, Cricket or Tea

The most common and often the only argument against usage of English is that it is a “foreign” language. But how do you define what is ‘Indian’? The tradition of applying mehendi or heena, seen at almost every Indian wedding (both Hindu & Muslim) was brought to India by Persian invaders. Cricket, also a British import, is now an integral part of contemporary Indian culture. It is played, watched and discussed in the smallest of the Indian villages. Any suggestion of Cricket being an undesirable foreign import would sound absurd to any average Indian who has grown up watching and playing it. Tea, the afternoon drink of choice for most office workers in India is always served the British way, with milk and sugar but hardly any one on protests this British influence in Indian lifestyle.

The last but most telling sign of English being as much an Indian language as any other is that most Indians liberally use several English words while speaking their own mother tongues even when local alternatives exist. For example while discussing cricket in Hindi, most people (including the ones who have never learnt English) will still use the words ‘batsman’, ‘bowler’ and ‘boundary’ instead of the Hindi words बल्लेबाज़, गेंदबाज़ and चौका. As far as I know, there are no widely used Hindi/Marathi synonyms at all for words like ‘table’, ‘railway’ and ‘camera’. The practise of using English words for modern tools is specific to India because we feel comfortable with using English. Other languages like Chinese and Korean have developed local words for these modern inventions.

Culture evolves

So, I think that the criticism that English is a foreign and alien language is completely unfounded and wrong. Something that has been a part of Indian culture for atleast a hundred and fifty years cannot be called an alien language. Today, English has has assimilated into our culture to become a part of it just the same way that mehendi did over the years. So English belongs to India as much as it does to Britain, America or Australia.

While whether English should be adopted as the only official language and/or the national language is another different debate altogether, I hope politicians accept the reality and instead of promoting regionalist pride, take steps to use to use and enhance India’s advantage of being comfortable with English. While Indian government schools continue to educate only in unmarketable local languages, surprisingly enough, our neighbour has realised the advantage of English and is leading the way!

Article from Pakistani newspaper - http://bit.ly/pakenglish

Image source : Amazon.co.uk - Front Cover of the book, Indian English Language and Culture (Lonely Planet Language Reference)