Is this love?

Who is the Kid?

And finally we have seen India win the World Cup

The bell rang. It was the pizza guy from Dominos. I got up to remove money find my wallet.  Suddenly on the TV screen, the ball was up in the air and out into the stands. Dhoni had hit a six and India had won the 2011 World Cup.

Hurray! Yipee! We did it! I hugged my friends and we were on top of the world just as we had cracked something big all by ourselves.

The firework had started around 5-6 overs and now it had reached deafening proportions with one house competing with the other to celebrate more. If we as fans could feel so much, it was not surprising to see some of the Indian players burst into tears on the ground.

What is with this passion that we Indians have for cricket? Why are we so attached to this sport? I can’t speak for the whole country, but I guess there will be many who will have the same story as me and my friends.

Classy Jayawardene takes SL to 274. I wouldn't blame the Indian bowlers too much, Jayawardene was too good. Tough chase for India. Will they make it? Come on India. Didn't know what cricket was in 1983. Win it guys for me and many others like me!

This was my status message on Facebook after the Sri Lankan innings. Ever since I started following cricket in 1992 (India’s tour to South Africa), India’s World cup win in 1983 was often discussed as The Moment for Indian cricket.

I was barely 1.5 years old when this happened and don’t know what happened. Yeah I have heard about the Balwinder Singh Sandhu’s ball to bowl Greenidge and  about Kapil Dev’s catch to dismiss Viv Richards a million times on TV . But then I never experienced it firsthand.

Like many others of my age, I went berserk celebrating India’s victory over Pakistan in the World Cup quarterfinals in 1996. But then many of us also cried a couple of days later when India lost at Kolkata in the semi-finals. That perhaps was the saddest day that we had watching cricket.

1999 wasn’t any better. India’s loss to Zimbabwe messed it up for us and we weren’t good enough to go to the semis.

The 2003 World Cup was great for us till we ran into Ricky Ponting’s men in the finals. We still aren’t good enough we thought.  2007 ended with the first match defeat to Bangladesh and then Sri Lanka crushed whatever little hopes we had. ‘When are we going to be the World Cup champions? ‘, we all wondered.

‘Sachin is God and Cricket is a religion in India’.

For all of us born in the eighties Sachin Tendulkar is not just The God but a human force who symbolizes our hope and aspirations. A World Cup win was eluding him time and again although he usually is at his best in the World Cups.

Life can’t be so unfair. Not at least to The God of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar and his billion Indian devotees.

To call cricket a religion would be an understatement in this modern era. Cricket for people like us is a way of life.

We take inspiration in our studies and our daily jobs watching the cricket matches. We have archetypes of cricketers in our minds and understand a lot of things in our daily lives and careers based on these self-constructed archetypes.

India winning a series or a cup is usually an inspiration for us to turn a corner in our lives. India’s win over Australia in the 2001 series especially that stand between Dravid and Laxman is what we look up to when we are down in the dumps in our careers.

India’s loss of Zimbabwe in the 1999 World Cup is what flashes across our mind and reminds us how important it is not to slip in an easy assignment. 

We all know that it is essential to have different qualities while doing different kinds of tasks. Sometimes you need to things fast at a scorching pace like a Virender Sehwag often does while at times it is essential to buckle down and set the house in proper shape like a Rahul Dravid. When we mess up things and have nowhere to hide, we still hope we get lucky like Joginder Sharma did in the 2007 World T20 final.

So the innings that Dhoni played yesterday, promoting himself up the order to counter the off spinners is going to inspire us for the rest of our lives. That six that he hit to win us the cup will remain etched in our memory.

Yesterday when I reached home at 12:30 am, I got a call from one of my crazy cricket friends.

‘Buddy, we have won! We are the World Cup champions. I don’t care how we perform going ahead. This is a victory for our generation, those born in the eighties. We now have a story to tell our children’.

Oh yeah! I couldn’t agree more. And what an awesome story.

My name is ...

There is this blogger who added me to some group on facebook the other day.  I was glad about this and thanked her. ' You are very welcome, Raghu'  she said.

I was not comfortable with this. No, it was not about what she said but there was something that sounded different and I was not too happy about this. I gave it a thought and I realized what it was. 

I often used to comment on her blog posts where my screen name is Kidoredo.  So she usually replied calling me Kido which I was used to.  Now I was uncomfortable when someone called me by my own name - Raghu.

Well, now that I have brought this topic about my name , let me go on with the whole story.

As a kid, I never liked the name ' Raghu' ( neither do I like it now.. but more on that later). It was so old fashioned even at the time when I was a kid.  My full name when I was admitted to school was K. Raghu Chaitanya and I always liked the name 'Chaitanya' more than the name 'Raghu'.

Being a devotee of a saint Raghvendra, my mom gave me the name 'Raghu'. Thanks to my Dad I was Raghu Chaitanya and not Raghavendra or Raghupathi. Ah.. how boring would those names be ! Why couldn't she christen me as Venu, Vamsi or any of those cooler names of Lord Krishna? Well, she was never a fan of Gods who practiced polygamy.

As a kid, I adored megastar Chiranjeevi/Chiru and his movies. In most of his movies, he was called Raja or Raju. Ha...my parents got the first two letters right and why 'ghu' instead of a 'ja' or 'ju'.? Raja/Raju appeared so cool.  Even heroes like Venkatesh and Nagarjuna had better names in their movies.

Raghu sounded so old fashioned and cliched even at the time when I did not know what 'cliche' meant. Added to that, Telugu family heroes like Sobhan babu  and Murali Mohan often had the name 'Raghu' in the movies those days.  'How uncool is that?' , I often wondered. The fact that I never had a 'pet name' like a Munna or a Bunny at home never helped my cause.

When I was in class 8, I decided to do something about my name. I started using K.R. Chaitanya and even Chaitan on all the labels of my books. Chaitanya to me was cool and I sooo loved the very few friends, cousins who called me by that name. 

At that time, I also went to a tuition where I shed my image of an 'Yes mam/Yes Sir'  student and instead start pulling everyone's leg including the guy who taught me. When I was in Class 9, studies became more important and I moved to a more serious tuition where there was more study.

Somehow all the K.R Chaitanya hype and hoopla fell apart and it was back to K.Raghu Chaitanya on all the labels on my books.  Good things never last long. The next 3 -4 years were as boring as they could. 'The name 'Raghu' is so synonymous with all the seriousness and boredom of the world',  I wondered.

The year 2000 and I was in IIIT. There were 3 guys with the name 'Raghu 'and 3  with the name 'Chaitanya' in our batch. Here is my chance to get rid of this name 'Raghu' I thought.  I thought of many cool names starting with R. 

'Rocky, Ricky, Rags!' I thought Ricky was the best of them and so self-christened myself by that name.

Ricky sounded so cool. Ricky was so contemporary. Ricky Ponting was also coming of age during that time. Ricky Martin wasn't doing too bad either. 'It can't get any better', I thought. It felt so good when all of the IIIT junta was calling me Ricky. 'There you go Raghu',  I said it myself.

However once I was out of IIIT into the big bad world, doing a job, the name 'Ricky' disappeared into the oblivion. I made an effort to retain the name 'Ricky', but somehow couldn't.  

And then one day  one of my blushes ( my name for a crush) said '

' Ricky is so unlike you.  The name Raghu suits you more.'  

Damn. I thought.  Am I so boring and old fashioned :P ?

And her words still echo in  my ears. Sob! Sob!

Perhaps Shakespeare was right. What's in a name? A guy called 'Raghu' would remain the same even when called by some other name :D

Who is THE ONE?

Chicken or the Egg

Content or Marketing? This is the question that usually stumped me whenever I thought of marketing my blog. I always had this feeling that I will start marketing my blog once I write very well and have a great layout.  

Although the thought had its own merits, the problem that I faced was the 'ideal layout or content' on my blog never happened. It was usually one good or may be an ordinary post followed by a hiatus. I happened to show my old blog to someone who was interviewing me for a social media role and he was like WTF! 

The interviewer thought that it was random ramblings of a bored soul which I agree it is :). But what screwed me was the fact that I did not any social gadgets on my page not even a counter on my page. And yeah I was waiting for the perfect blog site with the perfect layout to happen.

It's a chicken or egg problem because I wanted a good number people to read my blog and then perhaps I thought I would start marketing it. But then people don't come to know about your blog unless you market it.  So then I started putting my blog links on facebook and gtalk since about a year.

I also realized the fact that I do need more interaction on blogosphere and I can keep improving the blog and its layout.  So yeah this interaction bid made me join Indiblogger and yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting so many bloggers in the Bangalore Indiblogger meet. 

I totally loved it and felt at my one day trip to Bangalore from Hyderabad was more than worth it.

As a part of my marketing my blog, I made a card for my blog and distributed it to around 50-60 bloggers. Here you go

 

I know I know ! It is a pain to type the silly URL  from a physical copy. But then you get know the other person a lot better through a  face to face interaction. Once that is done, the social networking can always be done later. What say?

Now moving on to the card. Movie reviews? Design? Typography? Well well..I don't do all of these. 

For example, I wrote quite a few Telugu movie reviews on the ibnlive site. I haven't written anything since I was tired of writing cliched reviews criticizing the movies in the same way every time.  The Telugu directors were never bored but then I was.  May be with 4 movies releasing this Sankranti, I just might get back to it.

And yeah I do have immediate plans of starting Bollywood reviews on my blog.

Comics! Yeah, I have done a few of them.

Blogging? Yeah yeah I do  it :)

Marketing? Advertising? That's my job ya !

Photography? I use a regular digital camera and my photos very very ordinary. Any photos which appear otherwise are courtesy the ladies in the pic or the location.

Design? Yeah, seems to be one of those many things that interests me!

Typography? My latest crush :D

Ogling at a font on any kind of text on the hoardings, buses, bikes and figuring out if it is a Serif or a Sans Serif font is what I have been doing of late!

So all these are things that I have on my card interest me and I believe they are the touch points for me to connect with the talented ones in each of those fields.

I have always had this fear that a marketing/promotional effort should not create high expectations that the product cannot match. But then this one for me I thought  is the way to inspire me to create a better blog and a better experience. 

So then if you are one of those whom I met yesterday and is reading this,  STAY with me( The follower tab I say :P) and I'll make things better :)

Tees Maar Khan - Heroine

 

Find the comic on the idea of Tees Maar Khan here