Majestic at Madjeski - Reading 5 - Arsenal 7 !!!

The mid-week game against Reading was a no-brainer for me. I was more focussed on the weekend Man Utd game. You know the facing off with RVP, the hoopla with the referees and all. So when I over-confidently shot off a prediction email talking about an 'easy-peasy' 0-2 win for the Gunners, little did I know what a show the Gunners were gonna put up tonight (UK time).

I logged onto the live feed to follow the match and continued with my work. Yeah I was at office and thanks to the epic game I really had a long day at work ;) 

20 mins on, I forgot about the live feed until a friend's email saying '3-0 in reading's favour so much for a capital one cup run'. I am stunned. Frantically I refresh the feed only to see that 17mins later we are a whole 4-0 down. Really did I have to refresh the feed!!! 

I understand that it is only a Cup game and that it is a grooming ground for our young gunners, but 4 goals down inside of 20mins is blasphemy!!! When I send out an email asking whether this game is being played on an XBOX or PS3, I get a reply saying that if it would have been, even then Arsenal would have won as there is a bias towards 'stronger' teams. Following this I get a sinking feeling which I am sure every Arsenal fan has had quite a few times in the past so many trophy-less years. I give up hope when just at the stroke of half time Theo pulls one back as the as the score reads 4-1.

I make a comment then which by the end of the game the Gunners strip off its sarcasm and make it sound like a prophecy : "Arsene still has a chance to glorify the character of the team. We just need to get 5 goals and ofcourse stop further damage!!!" 

I can only imagine what the dressing room would have been like at half-time. We were not staring at a defeat but if the score would have remained the same it was humiliation. It might be only a Cup game but for Arsene its a philosophy which he has adhered to steadfastly. The philosophy of using this competition as a training ground for new talent as well as for rotation. He has faced massive criticism especially in the wake of the 'trophyless' seasons to show intent where ever possible, but he has not budged. If the score wouldnt have changed I am sure it would have dented his confidence in the young wards and given munition to his detractors. I am not sure if that is what the youngsters wearing the Arsenal colors realized but they took the field in the second half trying to pull this one back.

Giroud was introduced just after half time. Not to forget he got his first Arsenal goal in this competition last time around against Coventry and mid way through the second half he scored. The score read 4-2. Eisfield came on for Frimpong and I was again positive. Eisfeld had a great preseason and is one to watch out for. As the clock showed 89 mins and frankly speaking I had given up, Kos fires in a third. Bloody hell the score reads 4-3 and I dont want it to end this way. Memories of the AC Milan game came back when we were there but not quite. 

Then it happened. I dont know how or why but Jenkinson got the ball inside the Reading goal literally on the last second of the added injury time. It can be argued as to how the referee allowed play till the fag end of the added time, but then I would say it was 'divine' intervention and nothing else. At the end of regulation time the score was all squared up. They had pulled this one back. But the drama was far from over.

13 mins into the first period of extra time, Arsenal scored through the most unlikely source. No, it was not a OG from a Reading player but it was our very own Moroccan 'striker' Chamakh. The fact that Chamakh got one past the goalkeeper was indication enough that God was on our side today and we were gonna win this one way or the other!!! Even now it was not a cake-walk. In the first few minutes of the second period of extra time, Reading got one through only to level the score at 5-5. Penalties now seemed a reality and that sinking feeling returned to me. Penalties are unfair, for the simple reason that far too many times, I have seen teams who deserved to win, lose on penalties.

Finally and be-fittingly so, Theo broke the dead-lock in the last minute of extra time, yes it was that close and the score read 5-6. It was now well and truly in the bag, but the gel-haired boy Chamakh, scored another one just to be sure and the match ended 5-7 in Arsenal's favour. 

It was a roller-coaster even while I was following it on the live-feed. I must have refreshed the feed countless times in those dying minutes. Ofcourse on the chat I was being appraised of what was transpiring. This one sure is an Arsenal Classic in the post 'Invincibles' era. 

There will be many changes before the weekend Man Utd game, but a win like this goes a lot deeper than just the playing squad!!!

As the Arsenal.com match report says: Winning, losing it and winning again was very, very, very special!!!!

The Sardars in My Life: A Tribute to the Flop Show

The part of India from which I hail there are not many Sardars. When I say Sardar, I mean the turban wearing ones. I still remember how my father narrated to me the fact that it had taken him all of 21+ years of his life to even lay eyes on one and that to, when he be-friended a Sardar pursuing a degree in English literature, he couldn't hold back his curiosity and enquire as to why his friend had not been in the Army!!! Ofcourse no offense was meant and needless to say none was taken and the Sardar as you would have guessed laughed it off with a twinkle in his eye!!!

In my life however cosmopolitan I may proclaim to be, I must confess that I never really got around being buddies with Sardars. Well I can say there were 2-3 at school and maybe 1 at work back in Pune, but thats all. Now I find it weird that I couldn't get around making friends with some of the friendliest folks in India and I will definitely say it was a lack of opportunity more than anything else. To this day I fondly remember my father enquiring if there were any Sardars at the engg collg I attended and to this day I remember just seeing one on campus and he too was in the Masters program. 

All the above blabbering apart, I did grow up watching quite a few Sardars in my lifetime. Notable among those being : Navjot Singh Sindhu, Harbhajan Singh, Sunny Deol (his characther in Border ;)) and last but not the least Jaspal Bhatti. 

Well I must say that Jaspal Bhatti remains the first Sardar whom I saw and remember seeing on TV. It had to be 1990-91 and I was visiting my uncle in Ahmedabad for Diwali. On his black-n-white TV I remember coming face to face with this guy. I was too young to appreciate his satire at that point in time (I was only 6-7 yrs old then) but then his image has stayed with me since. I think the fact that his show was called Flop Show was one reason why I remembered the name and got around seeing it again when I was old enough to understand. Since then I have run and rerun every episode of that epic show.

Flop Show arguably still remains the only satirical show to be run on Indian television. Even the gamut of cable channels which invaded the TV soon after could not deliver a single satirical show in my knowledge and for that I salute the genius of Jaspal Bhatti.

His death in a road mishap was both sudden and most unfortunate. However he has been more than immortalized in our minds and hearts!!! Jaspal Bhatti you were the first friend I made from across the CRT of our TV. RIP!!!

As an afterthought I still feel that he will have a satirical joke to crack through his garlanded photo hanging up on the wall. You will be missed!!!

P.S : Aadi's tribute : http://skewed-random-thoughtlessness.blogspot.com/2012/10/flop-showflop-show.html

Here...There...Everywhere - A Oct 2012 Story

The October of this year has been all over the place, or if I would have been Mr Obama and you Mr Romney in the last presidential debate I would have said : The October of this year has been 'all over the map'!!!

What else can you expect from a month which started off by boarding the AA flight back to Des Moines from Austin? A week after that I went to watch a NFL game - KC Chiefs v/s Baltimore Ravens. I know the Chiefs suck and that I prefer the Patriots to the Ravens when it comes to the AFC, but then for purely logistical reasons this was the game to watch. Keep in mind that Kansas City is a 3hr drive from Des Moines. I did have this inkling that somehow the Chiefs would sneak past the Ravens but then let me leave it at that. The fans gave the Chiefs QB more than an earful not to mention the cheers he got when he left the field injured which later was labelled inhuman both by the players and reporters alike. Though what exactly was I doing at that moment I cannot recollect as I write this but in all probability I would not have cheered :) It was a game of FG's which the Ravens won and I narrowly missed seeing two TD's. The first TD attempt was fumbled by the Chief's QB as he tried to rush to the endzone and the second was pulled back after a flag was thrown on the play. It is an entirely different matter that on the field I was not able to make sense what the flag was all about, neither did I pursue it later. All said and done, it was surely a good experience. One I would want to do again albiet on a bigger stage, say a Pats v/s Jets or a Packers game.

A week later I was off to San Diego on a self proclaimed long weekend. I took leave from work on the Monday. Though later I had to run my mouth dry trying to explain to quite a few folks the rationale behind me spending 3 days visiting a single city I must say I had a great time. Thanks to the 3 days the trip was unhurried and relaxing in the true sense. For once I shunned the Indian inside me and didnt rush to see those 6 places I had marked as must see in half a day!!! Must mention that the San Diego Sea World was awesome and so were the beaches of Mission Bay, Conorado and La Jolla.

By now I was enjoying the whole 'being on the run' thing and so I planned to spend a weekend with friends down in Minneapolis. It was more of visiting them than seeing the place, though I did get quite a few good clicks at Fort Snelling (which was closed for the season) and Minnehaha Falls (which was awesome but for the falls, which I couldn't locate). Had great home cooked food and a lot of old office gossip to make the visit memorable. Apart from that the Jefferson Lines bus which I took both to and fro impressed me to no end. The on-time performance for a 6 hr journey was impeccable. I surely will travel with them again in the near future.

This weekend is the last weekend of this month and I am thankful that I am going to be home. Somebody has to do the laundry and what about the Sunday NFL games which I have missing, not to mention that I am yet to get a win in my fantasy league but hell I do enjoy it!!!

The upside of the travelling has been the pics on FB, the mega points I gathered on 4sq all this in the social media sense. The downside : the feeling that I should this more often :P

905 days too early!!!

This post is early, way too early. Well to be precise it is exactly 905 days early, but I think it has to be said now like all other things in my life which I have said not when they were supposed to be said but when I wanted them to be said. Some turned out for the good, some could have turned out a lot worse but didn’t whereas a major chuck just didn’t matter to anyone or anything.

It has been years since I came off the ‘coming of age’ phase of my life and I do feel a bit disappointed that it had to come to this but then I guess I am getting into the ‘growing old’ phase of my life and let me tell you finding that first gray hair on my head has nothing to do with it.

For quite a few months I feel this change in mean, its weird, but I feel the sense of responsibility creeping into me - be it doing things that need to be done on time, like taking out the garbage, worrying about from where my next meal is going to come – my own kitchen or a burger place, and the best of them all, the nagging dilemma that will a 6inch suffice or should I order the footlong?

I thought the metabolic manifestation of the growing old phenomenon would be more or less connected only to my appetite, but this past week I realized much to my discomfort that it has quickly engulfed my ‘fluid’ intake as well. The days when I went on binges are well and truly in the past. The time has come when I will be ‘holding my drink’ for more than monetary considerations. Two days to get out of an hangover that too when the second day involved sleeping for 14hours straight is not at all something I would want to repeat add to that a small incident where I just started crying for no apparent reason and I cut a really embarrassing figure. So the next time you see me cradling that beer bottle for a moment longer than you expected me to then just let me be!!!

I am not sure what I will be like at the end of the 905^th day from today. But atleast now I am sure that the journey has definitely begun.

P.S: 905 days from today the date will read 26th March 2015, I would be 30 years old then!!!