And so the IPL is finally finished. Who would have thought at the start of the tournament that Chennai Super Kings would win it. I certainly didn’t. Not when the auction rules were changed “suddenly” at the last minute with only one team owner being given notice, not when the “home” pitch for Rajasthan was changed at the last minute while playing against ahem…Chennai Super Kings. The final result was thus very surprising, something as unexpected as, let’s see, the geography teacher’s son getting highest marks in geography on the class test.
I might deny saying this later but I actually felt bad for Shahrukh Khan and his team. They did a lot of things right but when you have your star bowler painting balls on woman’s hands, the star maverick going “Brrrrr” (if Lalit Modi was in charge, it would have been “Burrr”), Sanjay Kapoor rubbing off his charisma on the team as a celebrity supporter, their dud buy for three seasons going on to become pure platinum and a Trojan horse in the team, there is not much you can do. That they got to the fourth position was creditable. Though what many have forgotten is that this time they won just one more match from what they did last disaster season. Food for thought.
It was a few months ago that I realized that I have totally lost the stomach for today’s mainstream commercial Bollywood. I remember the exact moment when I “turned”—- 25 minutes into the assault on the senses that is “Tees Mar Khan”. “No more” I told myself ” Am too old for this shit.” A line has been crossed and as the tag-line for the Emran Hashmi thriller “The Train” goes “Some lines should not be crossed.” [Yes I have seen that too]. So I stayed off Hindi movies (with some exceptions like “Dhobi Ghat”) using the time saved to revise my next book—”The Mine.” [publisher: Westland]
