go, score a goal.

Twenty three years ago it was on the same day (June 25th) that the underdogs had made history and since then cricket has been "THE GAME" for us, Indians. We have been watching, eating, drinking, talking and walking cricket since then and this, by no means, is an exaggeration. Any product starting from a fairness cream to a car, if endorsed by a cricketer is supposed to fetch more market. Cricket is our religion and cricketers our Gods. Streets are named, tattoos printed, strikes held in the names of these men. And the game has become one of the top grossers in terms of business.

But what suddenly happened to us? Nobody cares if Laxman made a century at St. Kitts. Nobody realizes India was headed for a follow on. It is as if suddenly all the cricket-fever in our brains has been erased by some unknown virus. And the virus, yes, you can guess, is Football, or is it called Soccer! Football has become "THE GAME" replacing cricket, at least temporarily ( until the news of Sachin making a 155 in some match is not yet out ;) ). Questions have changed. From "How much did Dravid score" to "What’s an off-side? How many yellow cards equal a red card?". Topics have changed from Greg Chappell to the Scolaris and the Klinsmanns. And people fearing being left out of discussions involving football have started a 2 day course on football, trying to memorize the player-country table and even gone as far as picking a favorite team and a favorite player and cheer their teams :).

Why would I write all this? If it were not for the hoarding of a star hotel in Hyderabad showing a fork dug into a football offering soccer-dinners( or whatever they are called), I would have not written all this. Not only this one hoarding but every other shop/business you see has something related to football. From T-shirts to TVs, nothing is left out without a trace of soccer in it.

And the immediate question that comes to any mind - Are businesses trying to capture the craze of the people? Or are these guys the ones who are inducing this craze.

Reminds of something I heard about "Rose Days" and "Daffodil days" being popularized by greeting-card publishing companies trying to boost their business.

I guess by the next world cup, we will have chicken footballs like the drumsticks, to savor, while watching the so-called favorite team sweating out in a penalty shoot-out( er, what’s a penalty shoot-out! ). :)

Till then, peace.

look around, we are lucky !!

I am talking about the generation born in the early 80's and have now seen slightly more than 20 years of this world.And what a transition it has been. Technology innovation hit its peak during these 20 years and the leaps in innovation are byfar amazing.Looking at the surroundings then and now, I feel we are lucky to see so much of development in so less a time, at least in this part of the world, an average town in India.

Lets start with the television. This piece of technology was unheard of in my early years. The common man was happy listening to songs, cricket commentary and even movies in the then famous transistor. Suddenly the idea of seeing a picture besides listening to voices amazed many. Well, I should say, the flip side of this was that it subdued the imagination of the listeners. People would have imagined readers on radios to be as beautiful as their voices sounded. Not sure how it turned out to be after the innovation of TV ;). It did not stop there. Colors came in. Monochrome became a thing of the old-stone age. Channels grew. We did not have to be content with the single channel broadcasting an alien-language movie in the afternoon, every weekend. Slowly choices multiplied with the cable TV revolution. We had an unlimited range to select from. But then, earlier, people listened to news on the national channel and had their own opinions. And now, with the explosion of news channels, people's perceptions and opinions are dictated by the source of news they opt for. Biased !

There were many innovations and discoveries before the 80's but the ones I am talking about are the ones that are of interest to the common man. Things that only could be imagined earlier became, in this period, part of the day-to-day life of a common man and now, at the end of these 20 years, we cannot imagine life without these, TV being one of them.
Then comes the telephone. Hand-written letters are a thing of the past. How many of you now write letters by hand when you can talk to the person you want to on this fancy thing called the telephone. Though the telephone was invented way before our period, it is during this period that it became the essential part of the common man's life. This too had its own share of evolution. From the hard-to-execute trunk calls, to optical fiber transmission to the now in-place mobile phones, there has been radical development in the way people communicate. And all of this in so short a period as 20 years :). Seems like every year, we had something new to see. How lucky were we!! And now, mobiles with cameras, GPRS, 2.5G etc etc and by the time I finish writing this post, a patent would have been filed about the high-end-TV-cum-mobile-cum-what-not !! How fast can we adapt to these things?? Seems like the technology is outnumbering the growth percentage our brain can handle ;). If only our lessons of the Grahambell's innovation did not have to be replaced so soon with the 3G and 4G mobile technologies !!

There could be so many generations witnessing these developments. But it is a prize for our generations to have grown and understood things as they evolved and changed.
And the next one, is right before you. Sitting like a rock before you, it is slowly replacing your brain. It is called the Computer. Unlike the TV which had a radio and the telephone which had snail-mail, this thing does not have a predecessor. Some say it is calculator++, but we all know it is more than that. And words wont suffice to describe how much this thing has changed the way life goes. From a mere calculator, to a word processor, to the latest high-end super computers, added with the all-powerful "internet" this thing has grown by leaps and bounds, amazing even its own inventors! People managed every task without the help of things like the computers before they came into picture. But now it has so woven into the lives of every other person that imagining life without them is impossible. And thanks to this particular innovation, I have a job now!

Enough of reporting technology innovations over the past two decades. I can go on and on with the list. The point of this discussion is not that. To have seen so many things, which were completely unimaginable earlier and now have become part of our daily life, in such short period of 20 years makes our generation the ideal one to have born in.:) No generation earlier and later could have had this privilege. Lucky, that we are ....

Lucky that we are !Lazy that we've become !!