There have been many “facts” flowing through all sorts of media regarding who owned Kashmir when, who was kicked out when, who is suffering now and who has suffered for long. So much of this information seems self contradictory and you don’t even know if the “facts” are real or have been fabricated. In the meanwhile, however, this chant of “Azadi – the only way” has been going around for a long time, millions have lost their homes, their lives, their everything and nothing has come out of it.

So let’s put the history aside, let’s leave our emotions behind and let’s think logically on behalf of the people of Kashmir, whoever they may be, Muslim or Hindu.

Let’s say you separated Kashmir from India. NOW WHAT?? What’s the future of Kashmir and the Kashmiri people? They no longer belong to India so what are their options?

I think there are only 2 options:

a. Become an Independent Nation or

b. Become a part of Pakistan.

Let’s explore these options: Do you really think Kashmir can first of all survive as an Independent Nation? Do you think the economy of the Kashmir Nation can be strong enough to support its people, given its geography? And the most important question do you think Pakistan will ever leave them alone? Do you really think Pakistan is interested in an independent country of Kashmir?

Already the leaders of these so called freedom movements call for celebrations on 14^th of August which is the Pakistani Independence Day and want Kashmiris to observe a black day on India’s Independence Day on the 15^th. The freedom of Kashmir rallies are decorated with Pakistani flags and these leaders encourage people to chant anti-India and pro-Pakistan slogans.

So what if Kashmir became a part of Pakistan? Do you think that could be better for the Kashmiri people? For the past decade, if not more, Pakistan has been the epicenter of terrorism in the world. Forget about Hindu-Muslim riots, in Pakistan Shiites and Sunnis are killing each other. India may be suffering from cross border terrorism, Pakistan is fueling it inside. Not a week goes by when u don’t hear the news of a few bomb blasts in Pakistan. The Pakistani economy is in complete disarray and that country is already unable to feed and look after its current population. Do you really think people of Kashmir can get better life prospects in Pakistan than what they could get in India?

Arundhati Roy made one more comment about how “British imperialism was replaced with Indian colonialism in 1947 which has continued to subjugate the people of India”. I agree with that statement and even Bhagat Singh had feared that this might happen to the Independent India. But now more than 60 years later Arundhati is on the path of committing the same mistake.

Even if she thinks Kashmiris are suffering in India, is handing them over to Pakistan a good solution for them? I don’t think so. Arundhati, while “it’s a pity that the nation has to silence its writers for speaking their minds”, it’s a much bigger shame that even people like you are being so short sighted on the issues facing a common Kashmiri.

Jai Hind!!!

Mayur Jain

Co-Founder: Bharat Votes

Twitter: @TheDesiDevil

So I started watching starting the first WC game between South Africa and Mexico and the first thing that struck me was that the game was not all that slow after all. I had seen a few games before this one a long time ago and the perception was that it was very slow. It seemed like, for 90 minutes, people dribbled the ball along and they hardly scored while the ball kept going out of bounds constantly.

While it is true that the ball does go outside the playing field quite a few times, the thing that I noticed this time around was that the clock kept running. So it didn’t matter if the ball was in play or not, the play time was ticking.

Even during injuries they didn’t waste much time as when the USA goalie got injured, the clock stopped for about a minute but while that guy was still holding on to his stuff on the ground, the clock started rolling again. There was no sign of play whatsoever but the game clock was still ticking…They did extend the half by 3 minutes but it was just 3 minutes. And the 45 minute half didn’t take more than 50 minutes to end, which was the most amazing thing for me.

But while the games have been pretty fast and pretty much uninterrupted, I am trying to figure out how are people making money in this game? In all the sports that I regularly watch, like Cricket, American Football and Golf, the biggest revenue comes from advertisements on TV. And if in a soccer game, there are no stoppages, and they hardly show like 2 ads that too during half time, how the hell are they making any money?

Is that the reason this sport is not developing in countries like India where hardly 10% of the governments’ allotted funds reach the right place and the only way to bring money in is through outside sources? I have seen so many of my Soccer fan friends blame Cricket for the failure of this sport to reach the masses in India but I think it may not actually be Cricket but lack of a big revenue generating source (like TV Ads) which might be behind it.

So my soccer fan friends please help me understand the financial aspect of this game while I keep my new found enjoyment in Soccer (Football) going.

Cheers,

…a young, charismatic, arrogant leader has just taken over the reins of Indian Cricket who threatens to throw away half a century old culture of Indian Cricket and talks as loud as his majestic on the up cover drive.

No body knows what the future holds and which way Indian Cricket is going…

Soon enough the world has an answer as he beats Steve Waugh first at the war of the words then in the gladiators’ ring at the Eden Gardens and dawns a new era which will change the face of Indian Cricket. If that shocked the Test Cricket world, he rocked the Mecca of Cricket by leading a young Indian ODI side to chase an improbable 325 and snatch one of the biggest in your face victories from the jaws of an equally pompous Nasser Hussain.

Fast forward some of the best, followed by the worst roller coaster years of Indian Cricket, which revolved around this ever cocky yet adorable leader, and stop just after the disasters of world cup 2007.

The Indian south paw at the top of the order is back…

the thread-a-needle cover drive is back…

the waltz down the wicket is back…

gone are the 2 minute Maggie noodle innings and the prince of Kolkata is back…

Now fast forward again to his retirement and the dawn of yet another era in the Indian & in fact the World Cricket…Indian Premier League has just been announced and no surprises as arguably the most cheered son of Bengal has been given the reins of the Kolkata Knight Riders. After he made his way back to the Indian Cricket team everyone got to see Ganguly, the batsman of the old, and now was the time to see Dada, the captain of the old.

KKR begin their journey on a positive note but lose their way…they lose it so badly that the entire leadership under the dugout changes…and then after yet another miserable IPL, Ganguly is back at the helm but…

…the sting is still missing…that self confidence is still missing…that in your face attitude is still missing…that Dada, the captain of the old is still missing…

Now go back and visit the good old times and you will probably find the biggest difference staring at you…it was Ganguly who grew the new crop of Indian Players…it was him who showed the VIRUs, the UVs, the Bhajjis, the Zaks the light of International Cricket…it was him who gave them the confidence to be themselves…it was him who mentored the young guns to leap out of the old, conservative culture of Indian Cricket and it was him who provoked them to go forth and seek the glory…

But today it seems like he has forgotten all those glory days…back is the conservative approach, back is the over reliance on superstars, back is the small steps for the young and that’s what’s most disheartening for his fans.

Why I am writing this today? Because today during the game between KKR and MI, I couldn’t understand the strategy that KKR were batting with…play unbelievably cautiously, conserve your wicket and don’t even try to take a risk until you have practically lost the game…

Today when I watched one of the most explosive batsmen in the game, Chris Gayle, not even trying to get quick runs and his captain, Saurav Ganguly, playing a Test match special during a T20 game for some unimaginable reason, I was completely baffled.

The strategy obviously didn’t work and how could it? It was totally un-Dada like…

I think Ganguly needs to bring that old carefree approach to the KKR camp for their and their fans’ sake, he needs to create new Virus and new Dhonis from the Tiwaris and the Sahas, he needs to go down the memory lane, start over and be the Dada that we have known him to be.

Cheers,

Mayur

The first step: Setting up my Ubuntu box with all the required software, and gems, and what not…

Well we installed all the necessary items (Ruby 1.8.6, Rails 2.0.2 etc) on my box and started the backgroundrb, got a few errors, read a few blogs, corrected those errors and this cycle continued for about two days. Finally when everything seemed ok, as suspected, got another error, the error text as follows:

/usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require': no such file to load -- log_worker (LoadError)
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/packet-0.1.10/bin/packet_worker_runner:35:in `load_worker'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/packet-0.1.10/bin/packet_worker_runner:26:in `initialize'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/packet-0.1.10/bin/packet_worker_runner:47:in `new'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/packet-0.1.10/bin/packet_worker_runner:47
from /usr/bin/packet_worker_runner:19:in `load'
from /usr/bin/packet_worker_runner:19

/home/mjain/work/code/leadserver/trunk/nqc-engine/lib/workers/cache_refresh_worker.rb:9: uninitialized constant BackgrounDRb (NameError)
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require'
from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/packet-0.1.10/bin/packet_worker_runner:31:in `load_worker'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/packet-0.1.10/bin/packet_worker_runner:26:in `initialize'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/packet-0.1.10/bin/packet_worker_runner:47:in `new'
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/packet-0.1.10/bin/packet_worker_runner:47
from /usr/bin/packet_worker_runner:19:in `load'
from /usr/bin/packet_worker_runner:19

What the what?? everything works perfectly fine on others’ machines why it wont work on mine???

so I googled it and sure enough not enough info about what this error meant and how to correct it. Late on the second day my seniors and I tried everything (almost) possible to try to get rid of this error. Nothing seemed to work and we finally went home…Next day I found a note on my desk:

uninstall Packet 0.1.10 and install Packet 0.1.5

and it worked…thanks to Aaron Hawkins who compared his gem versions with mine and figured it out.

The same week I tried to login to my company’s network, from home, through VPN and it wouldn’t work. I would login, the VPN client software will start, say it’s connected but nothing would work. Then this last Saturday I called the tech support and after about an hour and half worth of trying this and that and restarting my windows box umpteen times, the tech support guy asked me if I had downloaded iTunes recently.

Surprised I acted at this, seemingly, unrelated question and asked the guy what’d that have to do with it. And his response pissed me off, not at him but at iTunes, he said he read a note in his system that “Bonjour”, a software that gets installed with iTunes, conflicts with some VPN software and hence my VPN was not working.

I uninstalled “bonjour” and the VPN worked perfectly fine. So if you are facing issues with your VPN client and have iTunes installed, try removing or disabling the bonjour service and it might just do the trick for you. To read more about “bonjour” and see if you really need it or you don’t, try this link.

cheers

I am someone who hardly likes to miss a cricket match, be it an India game or not, be it a T20 or an ODI or a Test. I try to observe many aspects of the game closely while I am watching and noticed a very interesting point in this ongoing CB series, among India, Australia, and Sri Lanka, which is that the bowlers are enjoying the game much more than the batsmen now and I think the T20 internationals are the ones to blame (or thank) for this. How?? Read on…

For the T20 world cup, the bowlers had had to come up with new strategies to bowl given the batsmen friendly South African pitches, small boundaries, and no time to settle in any sort of rhythm once the game started. The bowlers accepted the challenge, developed new skills (like Harbhajan’s Yorkers) and bowled much better then someone would have expected and now they are applying those newly developed skills to the one day cricket.

On the other hand in a T20 game, the batsmen were not afraid of getting out cheaply because there were only 20 overs for the whole team to bat (or survive) so they were happy to play however they wanted to get quick runs but now having played a few T20s and seen teams get out within 20 overs, the 50 over span looks much bigger and much harder to survive. I think now the 50 over game seems much longer not only to the spectators but to the batsmen as well.

Batting Teams have started to think of survival much sooner then they used to, the batsmen have been confused as to when to up the ante, and the bowlers have enjoyed the batting dilemmas with their new skills.

Blend the last 376 words with your Protein shake tonight and drink it. I am sure this thought would cross your mind that the growing popularity of T20 internationals is what’s making ODIs more of a bowlers’ game. Ironic isn’t it?

The New Year Sydney cricket test, the second of the 2007-2008 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons related to poor umpiring but if on the second day we witnessed yet another special from VVS Laxman, on the third we watched Sachin Tendulkar remind the world why he is still one of the best in the business. This time though he wasn’t shy of showing the world how to ridicule a bowling attack that Australia boast about even in their sleep.

Tendulkar was on 69 and India were trailing by 89 when Kumble got out and Harbhajan joined him. I thought Tendulkar was going to start hitting now as he was running out of partners but he didn’t do that. Harbhajan grew in confidence, made 63, and the two added 129 when Harbhajan departed.

I thought for sure Tendulkar was going to hit now but he didn’t do that. RP Singh came, added 27 with him, and went and I thought (no prizes for the correct guess) Tendulkar was going to hit now but again he didn’t do that. On the contrary he kept taking a single on the first ball of the over and let Ishant Sharma play the rest. I was baffled at first to see that, I forgot about all the good work that Tendulkar had done prior to that, and even went on to term Tendulkar selfish for trying to be not out at the end of the Indian innings.

But after a little bit I saw Ishant hit a few good strokes against Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson and found Tendulkar laughing mid pitch with his partner. It was then that I realized the mentally genius fighter inside him. He had worked hard to get to his 38^th test hundred, with Ganguly he had taken India out of danger, and with Harbhajan he had brought India in front for the first time in this series. And now was the time to have some fun and embarrass the over rated Australian fast bowling attack at such a grand venue.

Watching Tendulkar do that again after that thought made me laugh and hail the master for showing this day which I had never even dreamt off, “Indian tail making a mockery of the ever bragging Australian bowling attack”.

When you think about it, it is possible that he would have got a few more runs than RP and Ishant did, may be he would have gone on to get a double hundred but it is also possible that he would have got out trying to be a savior of the tail. But just as they say “Champions don’t do different things but do them differently”, the little master did the unthinkable and as always is the case with him, it came out in style.