Saturday, August 18, 2007

Quotable "Quotes"

I'm proud to present a selection of some of the famous quotes (usually by famous people; but some of them may be the not-so-famous) compiled by me. Maybe the sequential order in which the quotes appear could've been sorted, somewhat (which I didn't feel the need to do, the lazy pig that I'm). Nevertheless, all of them are quite thought provoking, and some of them may even change the way you think, if I may say so (there are some that certainly changed my perception of certain things; and if the same thing happens to you, do let me know through your comments). Ok, the preamble ends here.


i> "Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles" (Charlie Chaplin).

ii> "A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults" (Don Corleone, taken from the novel "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo)

iii> "Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invented the plane and the pessimist the parachute" (Gil Stern).

iv> "The nice part about being a pessimist is that you're constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised" (George Will).

v> "The biggest enemy of future success is past success" (picked up this one from an Azim Premji interview).

vi> "People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first" (David H. Comins)
(this is precisely the reason why I've made it a point to mention the source of every quote that I've put down here :-)

vii> "You'll never achieve 100% if 99% is okay" (Will Smith).

viii> "Whatever level you reach, getting better never stops" (Sachin Tendulkar, in the adidas advertisement).

ix> "There are low moments in every player's (read person's) career. That doesn't mean I'll lock myself in and brood" (Sourav Ganguly, in a times of india interview)

x> (this is the wittiest of the lot) "They say marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightning" (Clint Eastwood).

xi> "I'm always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it" (Pablo Picasso).

xii> "There is no greatness where there is no simplicity" (Leo Tolstoy).

xiii> "Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy" (Cynthia Nelms).

xiv> "Whether you think you can, or think you can't, you're usually right" (Henry Ford).

xv> "Temptation usually comes in from a door that has been deliberately left open" ( Arnold Glasow).

xvi> "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong" (Edward Gibbon).

xvii> (one of my favourites)"If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?" (Sydney J. Harris).

xviii> "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear" (Mark Twain).

xix> "To get profit without risk, experience without danger, and reward without work, is as impossible as it is to live without being born" (AP Gouthev).

xx> "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed" (T. Roosevelt).

Well....the list ends here but I've a few more of these up my sleeve; and I'll keep my eyes and ears open (as I seldom do) so that I can pounce on any more quotable quotes (of good quality; and they also have to undergo the arduous task of trying to get my approval, or meeting with international standards....it's the same thing actually:-). As soon as I successfully compile another list, the first thing I'm going to do is post it here, so don't you guys worry :-)


Friday, August 17, 2007

What ails Indian sports?

Being a sports buff that I'm, I felt the urgent necessity to put forward my views and opinions on this extensively debated topic. Embarking on this topic, the first question that springs up is- "Is Indian sports ailing?". And my answer to that would be a resounding 'yes'. Unless you are not an Indian and (quite rightfully) take no interest in the affairs of this country, or even if you are an Indian and still cultivate an equivalent amount of indifference towards the country (there are quite a few of them, millions actually), chances are that you'd agree with me. And the fact that our sports is seriously ailing is not the only frightening thing. Two other points are to be kept in mind:
i> Indian sports had been ailing since time immemorial, i.e. history suggests we were never good as a sporting nation. Which tells us that this ill-health of our sports is not a transient phenomena or a passing phase, rather this has been the trend forever. Indian sports was born in the ICU, in critical condition, and has remained there ever since; which brings me to my next point-
ii> the future doesn't look too rosy either. There is little evidence to suggest that we're going to be a formidable sporting nation in the near future.
Now I'd request you to shift your focus briefly to the other sectors in this country. The Indian economy is booming, and going by the barrage of different views, opinions and ideas put forward by an army of experts (or so they claim themselves to be), there is reason to believe that this economic boom can be sustained for at least some more time in the future. Progress is all too blatant wherever we look (well.......almost wherever we look....and that too preferably in an urban area......but I guess I shouldn't digress from the topic). In the education sector, the IITs, the IIMs and other leading educational institutions in the country are churning out world-class professionals-to-be, most of whom are taking up important positions in the leading organizations of the world. A feel-good factor is no-doubt prevailing in this country.
So it is quite intriguing as well as enigmatic to note that although progress (of varying degree) is happening in most of the sectors of this country, Indian sports does not suffer from any such symptom. It continues to be static, as it had been since time immemorial. Anyone trying to do some research on Indian sports would be, no-doubt, flabbergasted. Well I, in my own little way, have tried to dig up some reasons behind this immobility of our sports which is, also, quite disconcerting to me as it is to other sports enthusiasts. I'd have them keyed in one after the other.......

I welcome myself to the blogosphere!!!!!!

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to blogging. And the concept instantly clicked with me. I thought it was quite a cool thing to do; creating my very own ridiculously minuscule space in this vast....well.....space namely- the world wide web. Just imagining the various things i could do with my blog set my mind spinning. In my blog I can post absolutely anything under the sun and i mean ANYTHING; from raunchy pics of playboy models to hardcore articles(preferably written by me) on the ways to counter global warming. And so here I am, churning out the very first post of my brand new 'blog'. And if you are somewhat intelligent,(obviously which u aren't otherwise you wouldn't have stumbled upon this blog when there are many trillions of other blogs to choose from :-) you may have realized that the time lag between planning and execution of the idea(of creating my own blog) is (just)around two years. Well....if you are reading this and you don't know me, you'd get a fair idea about the kind of person I'm from the previous sentence:-)