Ashes remembered

The Ashes lived upto their promise fantastically - it was not for vain that I waited for two years how Australia would fare against a full-strength English team. And England has won hands down.

All the matches were very hard fought, and Australia ran England to the close in three of the five matches. It could have been easily 2-1 for the Aussies had not Kasprowicz run into a Flintoff bouncer, and could have been 3-1 for the Poms had not rain stifled out a certain English victory in the third Test match. So everything was always intriguingly poised. Yet I feel that England were and came out more superior than the results show.

Australia were without McGrath in two of the matches, two that they lost, and also McGrath probably not at the top of his pace in the third and fifth matches. But then McGrath is not getting younger, and its a worry now for arrogant Australians to find somebody quick quick. "Arrogant" I say here since not long ago Australians used to follow rotation policies in one-dayers, thus implying to other teams that their bench strength was also better than other teams playing elevens. The real trump for Aussies was Warney again , but more importantly not due much to his magic as to the psychological hold that he possesses over England, even though half the players of the English team were playing for the first time against Australia. The only magic that he could really bring into the game was occasional bowls to left-handers outside their off-stump with the ball pitching on the rough and zipping into the batsman almost at right angles, the ones that used to get Strauss out. Rest was all bluff, and pity that the English succumbed to it. And still they won! Whoa!

England's main problems were simply a how-did-he-come-in-the-side Ian Bell and the lack of zip from Harmison ( and Hoggard's slumbering form for much of the series). Bell was simply boring, frustrating, liable to get out any time, very slow and thus liable to break the momentum of all other batsmen (maybe not Hoggard) , and to top it all having no clues to any of the bowlers, least of all to Warne. In fact when he used to get out , I used to be happy mostly since otherwise I feared that he will break the momentum of others. If Butcher and Key were unavailable, maybe Solanki should have been tried instead of Bell or somebody young,raw and exciting from a county side.

To talk of others, Geraint Jones probably was the most abused of all, but his courageous batting was refreshing . Still will have to bat for a lot more time on the field to make up for his certain lapses on the field. Pietersen was too arrogant, and usually paid the price of it, but his batting's brilliant. Hope he remains level-headed and does not go too much the way of becoming a fashion icon( if he wants to, then he better look up Sharapova instead of Kournikova).

England has come out with a lot of positives out of this encounter, I feel. First, the confidence that they have after beating the Aussies will make them feel that they can do anything hereafter. And they can do it, provided they remain level-headed and most of the unit remains reasonably fit, especially Flintoff and Simon Jones. Talking of the latter, he is now maturing fast and in two years time could be the most dangerous bowler in contemporary cricket, provided of course he does not tread on balls and jump on boundary boards ( maybe not keep him standing near boundaries would be an option !!!) Strauss's game will improve much, especially after having coped with Warney against whom he was much at sea yet kept bravely trying to read and defy him. Flintoff continues to be par excellence , and Vaughan may come back into form after a very long time. Trescothick will have to learn keeping level-headed and not go to soft dismissals, and Harmison a little more of Flintoff's zest in everything on the field.

Lastly, if only Geraint Jones would improve his wicket-keeping skills...

Things I hate about Ayn Rand

It feels like it would be better to get off the load of some things off my chest while starting to blog. And one of them is Ayn Rand. Of course her books look to me too silly to get to be a load , but the adulation and hype surrounding her seems to me too dangerous, and also quite puzzling. Knowing that most of the young people are not the ones to cause a July revolution, it becomes still more puzzling to me that what can attract them to Rand ? I can easily understand them being not attracted by Ibsen or Dickens and swearing by Sheldons and Agathas, but what hip do they find in Rand ?

So I come necessarily to the conclusion that to believe in Rand is fashionable for most and only serious for some, as many things are fated to be in this world, good or bad. A more comforting thought to me that people are not behind a Toohey en masse. Since that's what I see Rand as, through her writings she seems to me quite manipulative (and successful at that) and domineering, imposing her opinions on everyone else. Now for a more serious tone.

The first time I encountered her was reading The Fountainhead. I was very thrilled by Roark and dismayed by the fact that somebody as cruel and cold as Roark, Dominique , and Wynand were being put upon a pedestal. The whole novel is about a hate of incompetence , but leaving aside the first question that darts through the mind at this stage that how competent is the writer herself and who is she to judge others, the biggest question that arises is that whether incompetence is something evil ? For Rand has not simply despised incompetence, she has not merely showed the evil effects that incompetent people can have on earth but she has equated the incompetent with evil. I cannot, for the life of me, agree with this. What if I say that Roark and other heroes of the novel are themselves incompetent, incompetent socially, dysfunctional to an extreme degree - is incompetence limited to the sphere of one's profession only.

Of course, there are Tooheys, of course there are missionaries mostly because they have either been disillusioned of life or they had had never the illusion of life. So you will find many lifeless or cruel sort of people in theological activities, but Maugham tackles them better than Rand here. The shallow sincerity of most of the missionaries has always been brilliantly exposed by Maugham , but leaving him aside , Rand has really tackled the shrewd, public characters like Toohey and the hyped-up dummies like Keating or the female writer(I again forget her name too) very well. But what Rand conveys is that every missionary is like that, every person is in fact like that , everyone is selfish.

Of course that's true to me. A person who gives two pence to the beggar does not give them for the beggar's sake really, it is only that he is getting enjoyment out of his charity. Different people take pleasure in different ways, the charming child through caresses and the perverse,wilful child through more taunts being levelled at him, through more scorn being heaped upon him. Some people get a more enjoyment out of thinking of eternal life, so they keep washing themselves in holy waters and sacraments ; some like to think of themselves being remembered by posterity, so they keep trying to do great things ( great may not necessarily be good). But does it matter ? The point is simply that the real heroes are those whose selfish pleasures lie in doing good to others. I do not care that when a mother is sacrificing her only morsels to her unaware child she is doing so only for a selfish pleasure, I only care that it touches my heart. Of course, it is preposterous that anybody should do anything unselfishly, but it is not preposterous that a person, always selfish, yet does something for the other ( maybe due to his selfishness only). The problem with Rand is that she simply does not try to clear the misconception that people are unselfish, but she goes further on imply that no person can do anything for the other unless there is some ulterior, ugly actions or feelings of disillusionment or frustration behind those. It is as if she herself is now not believing in selfishness - why can't she simply believe that there are good actions done in this world for the sole purpose of goodness, that is for the sole selfish purpose of "easing of conscience" and a "feel good factor" for the do-gooder. The do-gooder need not be a Toohey.

As for characters like Roark, very thrilling, very strong mentally , but dismaying. He is cold, ruthless. He has only his assertions to back him that whatever he is making is the best, but should he not understand the types of people, their psychologies, and in what sort of a house would they want to live in. It is like that he's forcibly invading the privacy of people whose houses he is designing ( not simply Dominique's when living with Wynand). Although I admired in fact the astute mental makeup of the man who refuses to see anything beyond himself, yet I did not see the resulting ruthlessness as very admirable.

By the way, I then bought Atlas Shrugged and could read it only halfway through, too disgusting and not even a realistic story. Worse than The Fountainhead easily, strange that the former is more famous. But an interesting new element, brilliantly tackled, is Rearden's wife who looks her husband sort of dirty if he demands passion, who looks upon sex as only something to formalize completely and solemnize completely the rituals of marriage, and nothing more.Rand has always been very good at attacking some of society's conventionalities and ideals, its only that she writes with a propaganda , and no propagandist ever becomes a good writer.

Tragedy - simply coffee for some ?

I was in fact struck forcibly by this when the tsunami happened. Eyewitness accounts started pouring out onto television and Net, instant fame was there to be earned by all and sundry, all sorts of people from all over the world started into discussions , mainly about advance warning systems and were the developed countries forewarned, and then about those "exciting" fresh statistics of number of dead and injured. People who had never heard of a tsunami before were very quick in bringing all sorts of rigmarole about nature's revenge and God's hand as the causes. In India it is usual to blame mankind's iniquities in the present age for everything tragic on a big scale , as if people used not to procreate in the past( going by the Indian logic that sex is something bad).

Well, I'm veering from my topic. The thing that struck me was that most of the people were so easily discussing it, seeing visuals of people bleeding and dying even as they were taking their breakfasts in front of a TV, discussing over coffee table all the facts, views and opinions that they gathered from news channels and newspapers - was it not sort of a cruel indifference ? People are dying and you enjoy that sight, you find it something exciting in the routine humdrum of life, the ratings of news channels shoot up(which means that many of the people, seeking some change from their daily soap operas, have now turned to these tragic soaps) - how can somebody enjoy this ? And is reporting of hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis also not voyeuristic by many channels - most want to show compelling scenes of damage done, of the power of the natural element , rather than transform the news into a simple, sober , matter-of-factly and humanitarian capsule.

Sensationalism , if not curbed by the channels and if the public itself is being carried away by it, should be curbed by then what, the government? A broadcasting policy, uniform for all ?

An Introduction

Blogs, I sometimes read in the newspapers around, are partly vanity and partly an introvert's escape. While I do agree with the former, I do not think that the latter would apply to more than the usual quota of exceptions. I am now starting this blog, not to simply idiotically imagine that a million around the world would know me and would read my thoughts, would interpret my actions, and hence I would have a claim on the sympathy of a million, but simply as a means to offer a glimpse of the world that I live in.

"the world that I live in" doesn't mean of course the whole periphery of the globe - it is the world that surrounds me, it only means the well that is around this humble frog. The country in which I was born, in which I am living, the people around me, the climate which may affect my moods and mood swings, the books that I get to read, the close people among whom I share my warmth, the erotic photograph that excites me and more importantly,which fails to excite me, the films from which I do not want to get out, the indefinable "myself" , all this is the world that I live in. And to know of different people around the world, of different cities, of different climates , is so exciting.... that is why I ever presumed to trouble anybody with a blog.

Now for some introductions. I am an Indian, born and bred up in India and still there. Thankfully, this one country itself is such a mosiac that I can survive yet... My characteristic trait has always been to take off-beaten paths, something which I myself cannot exactly give a reason to. Presently I am a 3D animator beginning out, but I also continue to search for some avenue where I can write freelance articles, movie reviews, or short stories for newspapers/journals. But since I have not any journalist's degree I do not know that whether anybody would take me in (and what testimonials would I show the editor), and neither do I know any of intellectual property rules.

And with that, my blog starts. Also, if so far you have been with me, then see a companion blog (only for reviews by me of movies that I've seen - both contemporary and classics, from Hollywood and Indian cinema) on http://indmoviereview.blogspot.com