The Day Cricket Retired! - A note on Sachin

I was too young to understand the rules. I was too young to be interested in a game played by grown up, matured men. But every body else at home would switch on the TV and spend hours watching 22 men running, jumping, hitting a ball on a packed stadium, in a game of cricket. I grew up watching the same, I grew up watching "Sachin". It was always an unseen euphoria, when ever that "big" to me, tiny to others padded up guy walked out of the dressing room holding that bat onto the field. And the next few ours were pure bliss. I slowly started understanding the rules, admiring the shorts and infallibly became a fan, admirer and follower of Sachin. There was something about him beyond cricket, his presence on field was always mesmerizing and no matter how worse the state the game was in, his presence was always reassuring. Never felt the same for any other cricketer. Ever! For me soon, cricket and Sachin became synonymous. I can't image one with out the other. I can't imagine a day when he would not be playing and I am watching the game. His charm, charisma and talent were addictive! Equally. When ever he used to bat down the order, I used pray for the bats man to get out, so I can watch sachin playing. I do not know what sachin means to Indian cricket, but for me Indian cricket means Sachin.
           I skipped classes, exam preparation and dinner invites to see him play. Each time he drives that white ball beyond that extra cover, leaving a six shadowed man chasing it under that flood light uselessly, I would smile. Involuntarily! And like an action replay, he wold repeat it, nonetheless. He would make the greatest and more fearsome bowlers the world has to offer look silly. Loved by all, admired by each, respected by everyone, probably he is the only Baadshah who never had an enemy, yet concurred every single man.

           Today Sachin retired. For me it meant either cricket as a game ended in the world or the world does not exist anymore for it to be played. But he retired. A man of his character, determination, charm and talent may not ever will be playing the game again. His absence will create an un-fillable void in the cricket lovers. Cricket now will be like a Rasagolla, that dried, it might still taste sweet, look white but can never be a Rasogolla again. With Sachin, I announced my retirement as an ODI viewer, and will never watch a game of ODI again. For me the the Rasgulla is not only dry but it cant taste sweet anymore. I am lucky to have grown up watching this maestro and his humble character.
            Probably he is the only man in cricket whom even Rajnikath can't dare to bowl to. I am proud, I grew up watching cricket, I grew up watching Sachin!

P.S. I hate Dhoni! My friend Shantanu made me realize, I should not hate Dhoni.

Truly
Abinash

An immortal woman

She has been a working woman. Working ever since I know her, day in day out. And she is happy. She hides her sorrow behind smiles, behind the warmth she springs. Complains she never had, demands she never made. Ready to compromise her comfort, willing to work that extra hour. Still she carried that sparkle in her eyes, inspiring all the time. She has been working this way since she was a child. Happiness for her wore a different definition. Meeting others expectations, giving her best on the behest of her own judgment. A moment here and there in my memory lane I could see her crying, a few drops of tears would roll down her face but she has always been prompt to wipe them out leaving no marks. Still she would not complain. She would work. Work like a machine, the best machine. Days fly. Signs of aging shows up, unfazed she was never worried for aging. For her beauty wore a different definition, the smiling faces around her, the joyous yells and charismatic disposition. And she is ever beautiful. Her mornings have always preceded that of Sun's. And night late. She would pick her nagging child up in her arm yet  deliver flawless precision with one hand. No complains. A story teller, a creative director of unseen imagery, a guide, a benevolent human and above all  a teacher. Her embrace always meant comfort. A truest friend in lowest of time, a cheer leader in the happy ones. She has always been there. Always. I have only one image of hers. As if she froze in my memory, and no matter how far back in time I see, I see her that way. Working, smiling, inspiring! She never aged beyond that, like the universe she has been been this way ever. A thousand complains she would listen to and solve each of them, asking in return just smile not even care, attention or affection. She makes food taste better, clothes smell sweeter. Her presence made the house, a home. Time has taken a toll on her body, a wrinkle here and there, hair grayed and eyes can't read with out specs. But that's about the body and she is beyond that. For her time has only strengthened her determination, ability to inspire and affection for everyone. Even now as the time strikes at her, making body weak, legs tremble, she stands undeterred. Firmer than ever, refueled with energy, there to guide, teach and inspire. She is an ever working woman, she is a mother. She is my mother. We call her "Maa".

"A mother is the best pain killer ever created by Dr. God"

Truly
Abinash

Saaraansh

Zindagi ki bheed main aise na khojao
ki parchayi to hai par tum na nazar aao

kuch yaadein lekar tum chale jaoge
kuch yaadein yuhin piche chor jaoge

beeta kal na palat ke wapas ayega
na ye aaj kabhi khud ko dohrayega

zindagi ke kore panno pe shyahee kyun chidakna
wo safed panna bhi ek din yaadon main gujar jayega

yaadon ki kashti main sawar palon ko samet te chalo
kyun ki pattjhad ke baad vasant fir ayega

cheezon ko jakad ke kyun bhaari karte ho bojh
inko peeche chor ke dekho zindagi ka matlab samajh main ayega

Intezaar hai kiska, hai udashi kis baatki
kuch pal beet gaye hain, aur kuch bas lamhein hai baaki

tum bhi gujar jaoge, ye pal bhi beet jayega
aaj tum jahan khadeho, wahan koi aur khel dikhane ayega

is manzar ko samjho, yehi hai saaransh iska
ek pal main tum ho, ek pal main ye khel khatam ho jayega!

- Truly
Abinash

The thing

Prologue: I was smiling, and the laptop played the song.. "Teri keh ke lungaa.." from GoW at its highest volume. Holding a weapon in hand Looking at the burnt remnants, I was smiling.

(30 minutes earlier)
It was not a bad evening at all. The cold breeze and the aroma of flowers were enticing.  "Khoya khoya chaand.." playing in the background would change its pitch with the flow of wind. I was engulfed by the whole moment. like a pinch of salt dissolved in its solvent of water. The music stopped playing and unaware I was in dream. A dream where the music was still playing and my warm breath would resonate with the breeze. The couch never felt any better! Body gave in to its own weight and I was soon in sleep. No sooner I slowly opened my eyes in a slow motion, frowning involuntarily. The music had stopped playing even in my head, I realized. It wasn't the music.. but it was a sound noise I was well aware. "guuuuuuunnnnnnn,,....." and it would die away. I would close my eyes and it was back again.. "guuuunnnnnnnnnnn". Like the music makes you sleep, this one wakes you up. With equal force! Lying on the couch I could see that damn thing moving over my head, in a swift maneuver it would go past my ear taking a sharp turn back over my face. I was helpless. Trying in vain to rescue myself. Struggling with immense frustration, drowsy eyes and a sense of self pity taking over my reasoning. But then not too far.. not real too far... with in my hand's reach I had the weapon of mass destruction! My reasoning took over pity, frustration turned int anger and I grabbed it. The weapon in hand I laid unfazed, determined and my brain went into calculations. It was a sight that thing was coming in with brutal force at me and the noise getting stronger with every passing fraction of the moment. I wanted to make the sight into a scene, a deadly scene. It came close enough and the weapon struck it. I smiled but it faded away as the thing was over my head. Again. It had survived the attack. I failed! All those motivating quotes ran through my mind and I gathered myself up. With an hurt ego, sense of defeat, determination of vengeance I fixed my eyes on it. And there it was in the reach of my long arms (I realized not kanoon only who has long arms), In an matrix style scene it was tried to defy my strike. but this time the moment belonged to me. The mosquito was dead, burning in its electrocuted pier. The weapon of mass destruction had proven itself yet again. The zapper, mosquito killing badminton rocks! Teri kehke leli.

Ek savere ke talaash main

Insano ki ya Insaniyat ki talaash main

aaj nikal pada hun wapas ek savere ki talash main

Khamosiyon main cheekhein gunjti hai ab

Insaniyat ko kahan dhundun, zinda main ya laash main

kisse puchun, kaun bataaye

kaise laun andhere se prakaash main?

Shab ki laalima odhe uss raat main jo khogaye

kahaan dhundu wo chehre, kamjori ya kamjoron main?

Sayad insano ki talaash main
aaj nikal pada hun wapas ek savere ki talaash main.

Truly
Abinash

Is there a thing called a stable marriage and relation ?? - Part 1

Disclaimer: This is more of a mathematical and logical analysis of marriage. This is for rational audience who can enjoy a piece of logic with out any involvement of emotion. Or rather some logical analysis of how relations, trust etc involuntarily get biased by numbers and probability. Normal (non engneer, non scientific-mathematical audience might find it a boring read. But even others might find it as boring! :D )
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Assumptions:

1.  All men and woman are straight
2. all men and woman appear in the "desired" list of each other with some weight. e.g. Some men may be 99% desirable for woman X and some may be just 0.001% for X and vice versa. But every one appears on the desirable list of each other.
3. We have not taken into account the possibility of preference change after they are coupled. (this will over complicate the situation :P) (this will be covered in part 2 of this research.)

Definition:

An unstable marriage: When given a married pair, X-a and Y-b, if man X prefers another woman 'b' more than his current wife 'a' and woman b prefers X more than her current man Y, then X-b is called a unstable pair. 

Any pair (X-Y) when not an element of the "unstable" set is said to be a stable pair.
Lets see:
Assume we have a sample set of 26 males marked as A,B,C,D....Z and a sample of 26 females marked as a,b,c,d....z.
Ask each of the man and woman to form a list desired partner in the order of precedence.
For example the list may look something like this:
Male                                             Female
-----                                             --------
A: b,s,d,c....                                 a: C,D,B,Z....
B: b,a,c,t....                                  b: A,P,C,W...
C:a,b,c,r....                                  c: B,D,S,T....   
(This just an example combination shown here)

Now our job is to find how many "stable pair" can be formed which can result in a happy and trustworthy marriage. One of such approach as it would occur to mind first is to  go on forming pairs based on the preference list. Call a pair when a mutual inclusion of male,female exist in their preference list high on precedence. And swap it when encounter a yet higher mutual precedence. Example: Initially (B-c) will be paired but later their partners can be swapped and they may form a more stable pair like (C-a) and (B-c)
This seems working here but it may lead to re-swap and hence form an infinite loop on a bigger data set.
So lets first solve the problem at hand to form stable couples set:
pick an unpaired male X and the list female x on his list(first preference)
remove x from his list and check if x is already paired
if already paired then check if X appeared on a higher precedence then x's current partner in her list (if x is unpaired then pair up X-x for now)
          if yes then pair up x with X and continue with the next male.
else if X does not appear on a higher precedence on x's list as compared to her current partner then pick next female on X's preference list.
Now so far so good! We feel we can actually form a stable marriage and stay happy(works for an arranged marriage). But in a real world we don't run such an exercise while considering to get married. So I tried to just have some data around it and apply for game theory to see what might be the trend look like if we consider married people or people newly in love and assign a weight to their trust and relation how would it look like. I asked a few people to answer a few questions:
1. What their dream partner attributes look like
2. How often they end up admiring some one from opposite gender cause he/she matched with some of the attributes they admire are present in them?
3. How many such people are around them in acquaintance circle who can match their criteria?
4. What is the attribute precedence list look like for them?
and few other question which were little private and optional for them to answer like their sexual behavior and compromising point of "more-moral-ego-based-attribute" to a "more-materialistic-based-attribute" Like a happy charming fellow's charm compromised to someone else's salary etc.

One I had the answers to these questions. My job was to do a little research to find out from their Facebook behavior what they tend to like + how many guys at least I think match their criteria. And once let us say paired, what are the emotional, geographical exposure they will have to the other potential matches we had found earlier. All these taken into consideration with the futuristic projection of the change in the "desired attributes" in the partner and other potential candidates makes a recipe for stable and trustworthy relation! Lets take an example first of Male A and female 'c':

Male A say is paired with female 'c'. Male A's criteria looked like
- Good looks, decently educated, fair skinned, lovable, belonging to a reputed family background, easy going, working
- With these criteria he got married to female 'c'.  Attributes female c had in reality - good looks, fair skin, a well earning day job, higher educated, independent mind and lifestyle, easy going.
- 'c' had criteria of a match as - presentable, tall, secure job, good sense of humor, dependable background with handsome earnings, extrovert.
Attributes male A had in reality - Good looks, tall, handsome earning, not that dependable background, extrovert with a big friend circle, high educated, secure but frequently travelling job.
Female 'c' has exposure to matching criteria males in job, from past friends, in society she lives.
Male A has exposure to matching criteria females in cities he travels to, from past friends, in society he lives, in parties etc (as he is extrovert and has a huge friend group).

Let us say these criteria changed in both partner's after few years the female stopped working or male lost job, male/female or both deteriorated in looks, easy going became tough given social complexities.

In such a situation the probability of choosing another partner becomes prominent. Lets see how prominent by applying some game theory to it. And lets see should one break the trust in a situation like above?

N.B. (I will post a follow up on this today. Either will update the same blog or post a new one on top of this. As its growing big, am breaking it into two. :) till then keep wondering and let me know your guess to the above question in the comments.

Truly
Abinash

Why me?

"Why this has to happen at all.." he sniffed. "I have been a loving father, a caring husband and a hardworking man. Then why me? So many people in the world overlook their fundamental family and social responsibilities. So many people breach rules, behave violently posing a threat to others comfort and life!" he said in a rather drab voice.
It calls for a serious probe as to why by any chance a sane and "moral" man has to suffer when there are more (suffering) deserving people living out there happy and healthy lives? Deep within I could relate to it. The feeling I mean! It did not take me long to realize its not the pain of the suffering alone. Its more about self condemnation. When ever we see a man suffering the first thought that strikes involuntarily is the sense of relief , of course we feel compassion, a strong desire to help etc. but these more 'moral' feelings follow because we are relieved that we are not in that situation! Its built into our genes, coded into the very nature of intelligent life. And when we fall prey to one such disease or trauma our sense of relief  goes through turmoil and we find it hard to accept, how come we could be hit when we sailed un-hit so many other times?
By the law of religion: 
If we see what answer religion may have to offer or why we feel more pain, fascinates me!
Religion (all of them) teaches us to be moral, self controller, compassionate and charitable. It says the bad must suffer, the sinful must burn in hell and the selfish must bear the pain. And living by this code we every moment struggle to self-justify that we are righteous, selfless and helpful. This eternal struggle is but a friction to the very nature of our gene. Our genes are coded to be most selfish for survival. They affect out thoughts and behavior. We give up being ration and try to be a religious man not cause we know we should be more cause we are afraid of being the victim. And when we are the victim our trauma magnifies by many folds. To console, religion did an amendment with multiple birth theory and karma being calculated and carried over to next births etc. But that hardly explains why some one has to suffer while other get away with ill doing.
Law of Nature:
There are laws of nature which are universally the same for every one. does not discern people over money, sex, religion, dead, living or anything. If you exist in this universe the laws apply on you! Its a random choice. A random selection that one encounters a fortune or a misfortune. For example 10 people went for a hike, 9 survived but just one toppled over the peak to a fatal fall. Now what caused him fall? Gravity! and gravity was working on each individual out there on the top. But why only one has too fall? Its a random event if we look just by the law of nature.
              But if you take a bottom up approach and connect the dots we may figure out a reasoning why he had to fall and why he had a bigger chance of falling then others. The choices we make at any moment they affect the yield of the next moment. There ain't anything called completely random. Things are biased in a smaller sample, adding to a bigger pattern and each bigger pattern summing up to form another. However these patterns as of today can only be understood looking back, once the events have already occurred. So for us the why me part of the problem does not really going to help. If we think rationally we already knew why me.
Game theory explains:
Let us assume all beings in the universe are rational. Life is a variety of game. Where we make choices to maximize pay-offs. Pay offs like a better lifestyle, success, happiness, relations, social status etc. We deal with fellow competitors(humans). Now if we look at it we can find we spend maximum energy calculating and comparing the relative pay off. Comparison we make with other competitors. This nature tempts us to bias our decisions and hence we choose non optimized strategies just to land on a much less pay off than what we should have got. But over all prize in the whole game is constant so when some one looses because of a choice some one else must with on that move. And that's how exactly it all works.  So the best way to play life would be to device a strategy which is indifferent of other loss or gain and we always choose to maximize our own pay offs and make honest decision. This will improve the over all game condition.


Why me?
You cause you are a 'random' choice of the laws of nature
You cause your decision biased nature's random choice making your selection slightly more probabilistic
You cause religion does not really help neither being religious in defying nature's laws

Truly
Abinash

Anjaan

Tanha mushafir ki tarah chalna gavaraa nahin
khaamosi main jo gunjtaa hai wo dil hai mera, koi aawara nahin
kabhi to pehchaan le in nazron ko e-zaaaleem
main bheed main shameel ek chehra anjaanaa nahin.

Truly
Abinash

How

how some one's smile can bring me tear?
some one's happiness, piercing the heart like a spear.

How it really feels to see the cause of your sorrow
may bring smile to some one tomorrow.

What I flinged as nothing,
it was but some one's everything!

And thats how some one's smile can bring me tear
and you never really understand, cause you were never there!