Where I Cry

So I woke up late today, after a night of disturbed sleep. With eyes still closed, and mind still half asleep, I involuntarily reached for my phone, wanting to read the news for the day. Eyes slightly opening, I touched the familiar blue icon and logged on to Facebook. A friend had tagged me on a link to a newspaper article, with the headline that Dravid had retired. I cried.

I cried because I was happy for him, and because I was sad for him. I cried because the part of me that longed to see him play all these years had died. I cried mostly due to a fond remembrance and longing for the days gone by. 

I never got excited by Indian cricket before Rahul Dravid. A team filled with Azhar, Sachin etc. never caught the attention of a girl in her tweens. Not when there were men like Jonty Rhodes and Mark Waugh around. So when I tuned into watching a test match in which England was playing, and out walked an Indian lad by the name of Rahul Dravid, my heart skipped a beat. An in him, and Ganguly, and later Laxman, I found a reason to watch and be excited by Indian cricket.

And follow his matches I did. When it seemed that every time I was watching him play, he seemed to be getting out fast, I stopped switching on the TV and also stopped following his scores on Cricinfo. But I had great friends, who’d let me know if he scored a century or if had gotten out. Never did I watch any of his great innings live. I was lucky though to see him play at three places, Rawalpindi, Chennai and Johannesburg. Only at Rawalpindi did he go on to make a half century. At Chennai, I did not get to see him bat, and at Joburg he got out in single digits.

It used to hurt when I read articles which indulge in Dravid bashing, or ridicule from friends about his low strike rate. But I stopped getting into arguments about it. I never did see the reason to defend Dravid. He was much more capable of defending himself through his performances.

I loved Dravid. Not as a star stuck fan, who would know when his birthday was and rattle of his statistics, but as a person who valued and respected the traits Dravid stood for - sincerity, hard work, dedication, someone who does not talk too much but lets his performance speak for itself, and a honest love for what he was doing. He played with Sachin and still managed to thrive under that pressure, and not get into a jealous state of comparisons and debates about who is better. All those spoke to me so much during my teenage years. In school, you would always have someone who would seem to be good at everything, but the key is to find what you like to do and keep at it. Avoid the comparisons.

When my niece plasters her FB page with pictures of Kohli and Raina, and I am thinking to myself, kids these days, I know, the time has come – to cry for one’s lost youth and to find happiness in the journey that you still get to go on.

Brevity? Not my cup of tea.

People no longer seem to be blogging. Most of the people I know have a blog, but have hardly posted anything over the past few months. Most of the people include me as well.

This got me thinking. Have we become incapable of writing more than 140 characters or a single phrase?

Facebook has recently revealed a feature where if you press Enter while commenting on something, it is submitted. I guess Facebook does not like paragraphs, or line spacing.

Why has it become so wrong to write? It is bad enough that I can't write one paragraph, on paper, without my hands aching. When I write using a pen I feel like I am trying to subdue an alien creature, and rather unsuccessfully that too. Handwriting? More like funny shapes clubbed together. There is now no greater punishment than banks and other institutions asking you to submit written requests or forms.

To an extent this is all fine. At least I could write on Word, and on blogs. And now they say the blog is dying.

Where is the problem? Is it that now no one has the time or mental prowess to write more than a sentence? Or is that no one has the time or mental prowess to read and grasp what someone is trying to say. Either way, this is a pretty messed up situation. It is not even like reading/writing some academic papers, with references and jargons, which can be painful. It is a blog. While some people do write on serious topics, for most of us it is an exercise on how we in a society observe other people and our personal take on things happening around us.

If you can't read and write a paragraph, how does it reflect on our social interactions? Would we be patient in hearing someone out? Will our words be just momentary one liners? Will conversations of the type you'd remember forever happen?

I am married. Cooking, but not really enjoying it most of the time. Not really liking my job, but stuck because I don't know what else to do, and scared to take the plunge to figure it out. Confused most of time. Not content, but somehow happy and getting by.

I am not important, but I can read and write. At least a paragraph.