Ban them Safricans

Dear Balasaheb,

Please to ban the South African cricket team from India. Especially, that Dale Steyn fellow. Who does he think he is, bowling so fast to Wriddhiman Saha? Unlike the noble Bangladeshi bowlers he has no respect for our national heroes and what's more he doesn't speak Marathi.

Just like you banned Pakistan and Australia, please to ban South Africa and England and West Indies also. Please to ban any bowler who can bowl faster than Madan Lal from visiting this country and scaring our great batsmen.

I suggest that only Mongolia and Cambodia be allowed to play against our World Number 1 team.

Jai Shivaji! Jai Sahaji!

Sherlock, stock and two smoking barrels

Guy Ritchie takes Conan Doyle's gumshoe by the neck and scruffs him up a bit. If you have grown up watching Jeremy Brett's Brylcreemed turn in the BBC series, Ritchie's dark art can startle you. It's an unwashed, cage-fighting Holmes, all sharp tongued and bare knuckled. The brain still ticks like a metrnonome but there is an unmistakable edginess to Ritchie's Holmes. And England never looks a more dangerous shade of grey than in a Guy Ritchie frame. Go watch Sherlock Holmes and listen carefully ... you can hear Sir Arthur Conan Doyle roll below the floorboards.

PS: Robert Downey Jr. was born to play rogue. Can't wait for Downey as Moses in Ritchie's Ten Commandments.

Time in a bottle

Time, locked in a bottle, wrapped in brown twine. Fragile, don't shake.

No ice in my water please

I live far away from home. In a strange country, amidst strangers. I don't fit in and yet I fit in. Funnily enough, I am comfortable with strangers, it is the vaguely familiar that makes me nervous.
Indians who have been here longer than me constantly remind me that I have just gotten off the boat ... just because I don't drink my water with ice and lemon like they do. "Oh, that's so Indian," someone remarked. After I stopped throwing up into my ice-less water, I smiled. "Funny how Indian I am, considering I am one."
But yet I fit in. Because I am part of a cosmpolitan world. And I am cosmopolitan not because I bought myself an accent, it's largely because I had an education. And there is a difference, you see, ice in water lady.

Open

Agassi's autobiography Open is way more exciting than his tennis. It's done so rare you can almost taste the blood. Read it. Now.

Morocco Memoirs - II

Essaouiran legend has it that Jimi Hendrix wrote Castles in the Sand on the beaches of this gorgeous town. Ignore the fact that Hendrix wrote the song a few years before he visited Morocco and it's a great story to tell your grandkids.
Essaouira considers Hendrix her own. And it's hard not to see why he fell in love with this Moroccan beauty. It breathes music and colour and there is an endless supply of weed. You can escape the steaming kettles in the souk but there is no running away from the pot.
In recent times, Essaouira has found a new love. The Moroccans can't get enough of Shah Rukh Khan. They sing his songs, they know his lines, they even know Kajol. It's quite unsettling to be in a strange land many moons away from your own and be serenaded with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. It's so wrong, I tell you.

Morocco Memoirs - I

I am in love with Essaouira, totally and unconditionally.
Anchored daintily on the Moroccan coast, this little town of winding alleys, sunshine smiles and Gnaoua music is a throwback to a lost era. A time when you didn't need to tell time, when you still had time to smile.
Many have fought and died for the love of Essaouira ... the Dutch, the Spanish, the English. But she has repelled every advance and instead welcomed a legion of artistes and poets to embrace her riches. Essaouira is a joyous burst of colours and smells. Art galleries joust for space with cafes, Bob Marley with Jimi Hendrix. I would happily be a lotus eater in Essaouira, eh Odysseus.