Book review : The Player by Boris Becker

Boris Becker has always been my favourite tennis player. Those childhood days of following Becker and Steffi Graf, that too, in the non-internet days, were the best days of my life. So, have always been curious about what is this guy made of - A champion tennis player, a polarizing personality in his home country Germany, a womanizer, a family man, a tax evader, a multi-millionaire?

It was wonderful to get a glimpse of his mind through this autobiography. He has been quite honest and hasn't shied away from talking about the controversial parts of his life. Enjoyed reading this one, though I wish he had talked more in detail about how it was to play those 7 Wimbledon finals, what exactly went through his mind in critical moments during those matches, because in his own words, losing 4 Wimbledon finals was four too much.

A very interesting read from a champion player!

#Bookreview #Theplayer #BorisBecker

Book review : Imperfect by Sanjay Manjarekar

To most Indian cricket fans, Sanjay Manjarekar remains a player who couldn't quite do justice to his potential. Dravid eventually became what many believed Manjarekar was meant to be. It's a refreshingly candid and breezy autobiography. 

He talks frankly about everything that was wrong with Indian cricket in the late 1980s and through most of the 90s - the culture of seniority and fear in the team, the (absolute lack of) captaincy skills(?) of Azaruddin, a passing mention of the arrogant attitude with which Kapil Dev used to conduct himself, the fun Sanjay used to have seeing some arrogant seniors quake on their boots on the bouncy pitches abroad and the terrible administration by bcci back then. 

In contrast, he talks with great respect about Imran Khan, the captain and feels his career would have been completely different if he had a mentor like Imran.

Manjarekar also writes in detail about the difficult relationship he shared with his father, the great Vijay Manjarekar, his personal struggles as a player, with temperament and technique. In present times, he's thoroughly kicked about his commentary stint, though I'm not sure how much viewers enjoy it. I for one, don't 😀

All in all, a nice read for a cricket buff. #Imperfect #bookreview

Film review : Gulabjaam (Marathi film)

Gulabjaam.......The marathi film, is almost as delicious as the Indian desert it is named after, though, it has more than a couple of spoonful of bitter to go with its sweet parts.    A young banker, who's a chef at heart, dreams dumping his 9-5 corporate job and opening a restaurant serving maharashtrian dishes in London. His search for a guru who can teach him authentic maharashtrian cooking lands him at amche pune and at the door, of an eccentric dabbevali. The film takes an intimate look at relationships and, peels them layer by layer, like an onion. It’s like a dish cooked over a slow flame and so, if you are in the mood to have instant noodles, this one may not suit your palate. Sonali Kulkarni has a role .that can easily go astray. She puts in a restrained performance and Sidharth Chandekar is suitably earnest. I haven't liked Director Sachin Kundalkar's previous works (for instance "happy journey"), but he gets the dish just about right this time.

The magic of leadership and clarity behind CSK's IPL success

Identifying and nurturing top class leadership, sticking to your core team, clarity and conviction about your own strategy, going against the trend, knowing your limitations well, overcoming those limitations by punting on your primary skills with a willingness to take a calculated loss on the secondary ones, and to top it all, flawless execution on court – That in summary is how I feel CSK ended up winning the IPL 2018. Sports many times provides more lessons than training programs ever will. So much to learn there for corporate strategists and indeed, any of us corporate citizens. For the record, CSK picked a team with the highest average age in the tournament. When teams were outdoing each other to bid for younger, fitter and athletic players, CSK went after players on the wrong side of their 30s during the IPL auction, all with an eye on retaining their core team from earlier years. During matches, they were already accounting for the extra runs they will leak on the field and for the runs they will lose due to their slower running between the wickets. They backed their players to compensate for this through their primary skills (batting and bowling). They were lucky too, as they won 4 of their matches, by scoring 40+ runs in the last 3 overs. With a leader like captain cool MSD on board, they won the trophy with minimum fuss and maximum execution. Clarity, simplicity and confidence did it for them. Begs a question, if in trying to be high tech, do we sometimes lose our core and the essence of simplicity?

#Leadership #Clarity #Simplicity

Film review : Raazi

Raazi...........At the height of impending 1971 war, a kashmiri girl is married off to a Pakistani army officer.......She succeeds in her mission as an Indian spy but is destroyed as a person in the process................It's a reminder that a war never leaves any victors............The film trusts its audiences' intelligence to figure out certain things..............Even as one or two twists in the story appear too convenient, Meghana Guljar's direction is extremely sure footed and she ensures that the film stays true to its core throughout......Alia Bhat has outdone herself while playing Sehmat, though one or two scenes towards the end of the film, take her to the brink of her acting limits. Vicky Kaushal as the sensitive and loving husband, brings conviction to his part...........Good spy stories are  a rarity in hindi films and those with a female protagonist are even rarer to come by.....Go and savor Raazi! 

Film review : Veere Di Wedding

Veere Di Wedding........a girls' buddy flick, which is an uncommon choice for a hindi film and the producers have upped their bet, by not signing a mainstream hero. Kareena Kapoor plays Kalindi, who's in a steady relationship with Sumit Vyas' Rishabh. Rishabh proposes marriage and all hell breaks loose for the commitment phobic Kalindi. Enter her 3 friends who have enough problems of their own, and you have a recipe for a lot of smoking, drinking, swearing, sex jokes and a trip to phuket by the gang of four. Get the drift?

It's a breezy ride while it lasts and  you don't care for any character in particular. Everyone in the film is rich, wears designer clothes, drives swanky cars and all transactions happen in crores. There is even a joke thrown in about someone being below the poverty line :(

Swara Bhasker's Sakshi gets to say the best and most fun lines in the film. Sumut Vyas puts in a very restrained performance and brings conviction to his part. A special word on Sonam Kapoor' acting : If you have ever acted in a school play, trust me, you won't have done much worse than her. Alas, I'm sure, neither is your sister a film producer, nor is your father a successful film hero :) So, your acting ambitions will have to take a backseat unlike Sonam's.

Ending note: The only relationship that seems to work in the film is a same sex one 😂

If you have time to kill over the weekend, go and watch this one. You will have fun and that's about it.

Sacred cows make the best burgers

“Don’t angry me” can be a perfectly legitimate response to the article’s title, if like majority of Hindus (me included), you see godliness in a cow. (For the uninitiated, “Don’t angry me” is a dialogue made world famous in India by our own Rowdy Rathore.) But the action hero/heroine in you can relax, in spite of the urge to the contrary, since neither am I a beef eater, nor am I in the business of promoting beef eating. The title is borrowed from a quote that was given to me as a topic for a group discussion, years ago. I couldn't make sense of it back then and needless to say, was promptly shown the exit door after the GD. Came across a good equivalent of the same while reading the book "The art of thinking clearly" - "Murder your darlings". Now, don’t take the author literally here, in case, god forbid, you are tempted to do exactly that at times.

The idea is to challenge our most cherished beliefs, biggest fears, fixated positions and strongly held opinions. The views that we hold so dear to our heart, the biases that we carry for years together, all of our “has to be, must be, should be”. How about becoming aware of them, challenging them and verifying them? Except laws of pure physics, of course. It’s obviously not advisable to jump from the top of a building to verify the “law of gravity” J

Problem is, we don’t even consciously choose most of these beliefs. They have been drilled into us over the years, through our education, or by our parents/elders/friends or worse, by the media. Unknown to us, such beliefs impact our choices in life at crucial moments and cost us our chance of success and happiness.

These unverified beliefs lead us to what’s called “confirmation bias”. We are naturally programmed to filter out evidence which is contrary to our world views. Equally, any evidence that’s in line with our belief system always registers. For instance, Rahul Gandhi believes that Coca-Cola founder started as a shikanji seller. A quick visit to Coca-Cola’s corporate website will tell RG that the founder was actually a pharmacist named Dr. John S. Pemberton. But, Rahul’s confirmation bias is his confirmation bias and none of Coca-Cola’s facts.

Sports presents innumerable examples of challenging confirmation bias. Unconventional tactics by sportsmen (and women too) usually end up surprising opponents and result in improbable wins. As a captain, Martin Crowe challenged the belief that a spinner should always bowl with an old ball and achieved great success for his team in the process, in the 1992 cricket world cup.

Corporates aren’t behind in this either. To anyone of us, born in India, on the wrong side of the new millennium, a scooter always meant “hamara bajaj”. But, when Bajaj’s very survival was threatened, it took a Rajiv Bajaj to challenge the belief that Bajaj is primarily a scooter making company. Under his leadership, Bajaj successfully transformed itself into a motorcycle manufacturer and today, it produces nearly 20% of annual motorcycles volume produced in the world.

If you are wondering why the picture of Aamir and Kareena with this article, blame it on a kiss. Well, in 3 Idiots, the “know it all” Rancho does carry an unverified belief. He thinks a nose obstructs a kiss. It took Kareena’s Priya to challenge and destroy that belief for Rancho. So…….

10 lessons to be learnt from Sachin Tendulkar’s success !

You can be a child prodigy and yet not be a spoilt brat
Even if you are blessed with enormous talent, there is no substitute to hard work, dedication and discipline
Nobody can be successful all the time, but if you do the basics right, success will follow sooner than later
If you are a person of unquestionable integrity, even your rivals will admire you
Even if you are super successful at what you do, you will always have some detractors around. Learn to ignore them
Let your performance do the talking
Try to fulfill your own expectations and not the world’s expectations from you
Having passion for what you do is the surest way to success
In a long journey, you will have phases where everything seems to be going against you, but you have to keep the faith and carry on doing the hard work
You may be brilliant individually, but you need a good team to be successful

My take on life :)

We live in technologically exciting times, the world is constantly evolving and at express speed. The internet and the mobile technology has really altered our lives. Things we never thought of earlier are happening at the click of a button. We are light years ahead of the lifestyle of the last century. The TV screens have become bigger and light weight, a digital camera costs only a few thousand rupees, washing machines are automatic, we can talk to persons sitting in another continent, almost free of cost, even kids today carry mobile phones. We can easily connect our laptops to TVs, a small pen drive easily stores few GB data. We don’t need to carry huge photo albums to share snaps with our friends. The era of cassettes is long gone. Today, music of latest movies is easily available online.

The practice of writing letters is almost extinct now, people have switched to writing e-mails. That’s not to say, writing letters was boring. It had its own wonderful charm, but fact is not many do that anymore. I don’t remember the last time I walked into a bank. ATMs almost do everything we need with banking.

So, what am I coming to, you will ask. My point there is still so much more to be invented. There is still so much more possible to be done. There is something new introduced almost every day. Products are becoming obsolete in a matter of few years. Sky is the limit to where we can go. So, it’s of utmost importance for people of our generation to stay on top of every emerging technology and trend, else we will be left behind, even before we realize it. So, let’s invest our energies on learning new products, new technologies and earning knowledge. That’s the only sound investment.

We must be totally ethical in the way we live life. This gives a lot of mental peace to us and to our families.

Also, it’s important to dream big. Do not be blinded by your past or present. If you have a dream, the only way to move forward is to try to realize that dream. Not many are successful all the time, not even Sachin Tendulkar. But if you keep putting in the efforts and do the basics right, success will follow sooner than later. So, be persistent in your efforts.

It’s important to have a vision in life. You need to visualize life 5 years, 10 years, 20 years and more down the line. Don’t just live life as it comes. Have some goals. List down things you want to accomplish in life. And go for them with everything you have got.

And above all else, don’t be too serious about life. Ultimately, we are on this planet only for a few years. So, why not enjoy life to the fullest, till it lasts :)

Spectacular Vs Effective

Ricky Ponting recently said something very interesting – “I am past my best as a player, but so is Sachin Tendulkar”

To put things into perspective, this year, Sachin has scored 9 test hundreds, averages 60+, has a 200 in a one day match and the ICC player of the year award in his kitty. So, can Ponting’s words be dismissed as just a jealous opponent’s frustration or is there really some truth in what he says?

One thing is certain. The Sachin of 1998 was very different from Sachin of 2010. While then, he used to charge down the track to the fastest bowlers in the world, today, he stays within his crease, but scores as many runs. If earlier, he used to decimate the opposition’s bowling with relentless attack, today he tires them out by playing more quietly. He used to hit even the good balls to the boundary earlier, but now he plays the bowling on merit. One thing has remained constant though, he is still the prized scalp for the opposition and he still scores runs with absolute consistency.

The point is, which Tendulkar will you pay to watch? Personally, I would any day prefer to watch the Tendulkar of 90s, who used to get even the commentators all excited with his breath taking shots! Remember Tony Graig going totally berserk doing commentary in that famous Sharjah match against Australia? This is the Tendulkar, who used to scare the bowlers and who would be their worst nightmare, ask Shane Warne!

Guess the same applies to life! Don’t we all love the spectacular more than the effective? That’s why superstars are more popular than good actors. That’s why Shahrukh’s films will always make more money than a Naseer’s.

Being spectacular has a lot to do with the ability to take risks and to think big. These are people who disturb the status quo and raise their game, when the situation demands it.

That’s not to say that being effective has no place in the world. But if one is to progress fast, he needs to be spectacular and not just effective.