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#HappyBoredDay 13. (August 13, 2008 - :))
Showing posts with label Sunny Narang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunny Narang. Show all posts
NDTV 24X7 Debut of Bored Cricket Crazy Indians (BCC!)
Earlier this year, NDTV 24X7 featured us. If you can get your hands on a better quality video, we won't say no.
BORED CRICKET CRAZY INDIANS from Yash Chawla on Vimeo.
Better quality video minus the NDTV credits though
BORED CRICKET CRAZY INDIANS from Yash Chawla on Vimeo.
Better quality video minus the NDTV credits though
DDCA: Married to the mob.
Hat tip Sunny's fb comment: Do you think the DDCA realised there was much more money to be made renting out Feroz Shah Kotla for weddings than having these cricket matches ? There is an extreme shortage of open spaces in central Delhi and huge traffic jams on the MG road to all those farmhouses!
Laugh more on DDCA's expense - Revealed: What went into the Kotla pitch
Cricket: from sport to religion- Maha-kirkit-ayana!
Bread and Circus. That's what the junta needs.Animal rights have put the Circus to seed and hence the reinvented adage is Bread and TV!
In India it would be roti/chawal aur TV ( depending on your palate type!).For many of us educated types it has changed to beer and internet!
And in India where there is TV, electricity or not (Tractor batteries can be used to run TV), there is Bollywood (or Bhoj-jywood,or Ahomiya-wood etc. etc.) and there is Cricket ( many activists may oppose this monopolising statement against the "Unity in Diversity" politically correct definition of India, but really which company is paying big money to kabaddi,football,hockey or chuppan-chupai!).
Who would have thought that Cricket , a five day game for supremely bored British gentlemen, who became Cricket Crazy would inject Desis with this virus without some "tyohar"(festival) affecting it in the middle of its long duration. In rural India there is a saying "Saat vaar,nau tyohar" which means seven days,nine festivals!
So we went out and made Cricket into a "tyohar", five days of chutti, GDP loss go to hell! We just added the cricketing calendar to the Hindu calendar (which hindu one,you ask,among the hundreds,from Saka to the Bengali one, you go figure!) .
Along with Ganesh,Shiva,Jesus,Buddha,Guru Nanak,Sai Baba (of Shirdi), we can add photos of Sunny or Tendulkar,Dhoni or Viv to our little space on the wall, or to our mandirs!
I always think that if minor starlets in South India can have fan associations make temples to their names, how come the Cricket greats are left out.How come no one has exploited the market opportunity to sell marble or reconstituted granite dust idols of these cricket stars.Agarbattis to go with their favourite perfumes, laddoos which look like cricket balls as prasadam. We could make garlands with 4's and 6's figures made of wood or acrylic (imported from China!).
Bhagvad Gita talks of various pathways we can attain God/spiritual liberation/Moksha , the four main ones being Bhakti,Gyan,Yog,and Karm.
The Karma Cricket ones are those who actually blood and sweat on the game, play to win and can go into depression if they are not in the team.The Gyan Criket ones are the bloggers,twitterers,writers,facebookers and PhD researchers. The Yog Cricket ones could be the ones who play it for exercise, its surprising how no one has come out with books like "The one season Cricket Diet", "How to bat,not run between wickets and still win the weight game" and the most popular one ever "Bat for size zero"- young women would make Cricket the hottest game on the planet. The Cricket Bhakts are those who would sing Cricket-bhajanams and wear the locket,bracelet or earings of their favouritist player.There is a huge merchandising operation waiting to happen.
India has always been known to innovate with faith.Mahavir,Buddha,Aurobindo, then Osho. This is the time to say that Cricket-Leela is the deepest metaphor of life.Just imagine we could go a step further than Kabir and Nanak who wanted to bridge the Hindu-Muslim divide, we could bridge the Christian-Hindu-Muslim-Atheist Existentialist divide ( just need to get Jews into it, and the Palestine problem is solved!). If we just created mixed teams (women and men), and had solar-powered night Cricket, we would be gender fair and ecologically sustainable.
On this beginning of second season of Bored Cricket Crazy Indians, I say "Om Tendulkar Namah ! "
Sunny Narang also writes at www.anandolan.net
Disconnected in head, joined at heart
Mera baap jo Chenab se Jamuna aaya,
Mujh ko bola- hum dono ek jaise hain,
Baal ki khaal nikalne wale,
Kabhie shanti se saath nahin rehe sakte,
Hot-blooded sentimental fools both,
The siamese twins,
Disconnected in head, joined at heart,
Bollywood,Kirkit aur Nusrat,
Saath sapne dekhna,saath khelna,saath jhoomna,
We fly or sink together,
Better ball and bat,
Than nuke and all that.
by Sunny Narang
Bored Quickie! Live! Bored Cricket Crazy Indians...and Pakistanis today - 10:00 pm (IST)
Age of Nano Pornography!
Indian Premier League is the latest lesson for understanding post modern economics and politics. Oxford University has a course called PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) , but now I would like to institute a course called CPE , replacing Philosophy with Cricket theory. Philosophy is too time consuming and boring for understanding the nature of reality, we need a metaphor, a language that can be more relevant in the context of life as it is lived now.
Five day cricket belonged to a time when institutions lived for a long time, you lived and died in the same company or organisation and had ideologies that you clung onto for your whole life. Then came one day cricket, when you had the coming of frequent divorces and you needed to shift companies to grow your career and hype was getting more important than function. We talked about instant coffee and instant cricket. From timelessness we had reached the age of the instant. With the coming of the internet even a day was filled with too many nano-seconds, with a click you changed what you wanted, even an instant seemed too long. We have divided the moment too, along with our day into various slots. Serial monogamy feels dated, now we want the freedom of multiple choices in every instant. T20 belongs to this age. And IPL is the chapter which Indians have written.
Not that it is an origonal invention but as a great painter said , art is about making it your own, so Indians have taken T20 to a combination of play, colours, sexuality with their own "tadka" and made it international. They have learnt the great ecological activist's lesson "Think Global,Act Local". Some might call it "pornographic" cricket, the origin of the word meant "depiction of prostitutes", today all, each and everyone of us are available for a price to the right bidder. Our jobs our talents are part of the market. Market has replaced society, we value ourselves as much as our net wealth (not including the value of our residence , "Fortune" magazine says so).So we live in the Age of Nano Pornography.
Also nationalism is a decaying concept, whether we like it or not. It’s either extreme localisation. We belong (if we are modern and careerists) to Infosys, Google, Microsoft or if vernacular to Tamils, Baluch, Bosnians, Zulus etc. etc.. So obviously a format in which some belong to the city, some to the nation and some international is like a coalition of interests like our political coalitions. From regional parties, to national parties with international players like Sonia Gandhi we in India now are looking to a democracy like T20. Day is not far when governments will last for few months only, we already had a 13 day government once. Our companies are local and have expats too, same with Silicon valley where H1B visas flood ventures of the software kind. So the Age of Nano Pornography is about some being auctioned off every year and some stuck to their local geographies.
There might be purists and moralists who hate this age and want like various fundamentalists to go back to the haloed past, but I believe that is not possible. I believe that this is the coming of the boundary-less world, which mirrors Facebook. You can choose your Groups, and leave them when you want. So also with your fluid personal identities which are a combination of local, national and global. No one will kill you for being a traitor or apostate. It will be a seamless exchange society.
All we need to care about is about Climate Change. If we all get our kicks from playing games that are carbon neutral and have passion and flavour, we will obviously use less material resources.
T20 and IPL are signposts to a better world, believe me you, its another page in the evolution of humankind to a harmonious society. It was not predicted in the Bible, Koran or Gita but that is the whole big excitement of true adventure. We can never predict till the last bowl is bowled.
by Sunny Narang
Cricket, Life, Art.
In reaction to Michael Vaughan's painting
by Sunny NarangReminds me of throwing water balloons for target practice for Holi ! Lovely sir, after combining cricket and films, its time someone mashed up cricket and art. Nowadays it would mean videos, installations- imagine a big bowl served with red scoop of ice-cream and a spoon like a bat or colourful chess pieces on a green and white chess board- limitless metaphors possible. Even a philosophical XI is possible- how we bat to all the balls destiny throws at us or how as a bunch we trap the game. Cricket, Life, Art its time the art galleries and seminar halls were flooded. Why leave out theatre, no good plays yet written on what happens hidden from the public eye- fake IPL player could be approached! If Madonna can inspire a 100 PhD's how come no one is writing the sociology, semiotics of the gentleman's ( now gali gali mein shor hai,bina kirkit duniya bore hai ) game!!!
NRIPL
I just couldn't resist this - ipl becomes nripl! just like shah rukh and karan johar movies now even spectacle cricket moves out of the country. no more problems over cheerleaders' skimpy outfits.
by Sunny Narang
Kirkit ke gyarah fayde!
by Sunny Narang
Me and my wife have been visiting and working in a village called Kaladera, in Rajasthan, since the last 15 years, with traditional hand block textile printers, a caste known as “Chippa”. The family we were working with had three sons whom two were school going age when we started visiting in 1994. There was no regular electricity , and in the neighbourhood they had a tiny black and white TV which all the neighbouring kids came over to watch in the evening. The closest phone was in a small town ten km away. There was not much craze about cricket or anything urban, the kids watched films but could not differentiate between stars. Then somehow regular electricity happened with better infrastructure. People started buying fridges, motorcycles and colour TVs. Programs were beamed through the day. STD,ISD booths came up. Live cricket matches were seen and pirated VCD’s of the latest Bollywood releases were seen the very next day. Kirkit happened in a big way. Local school matches, matches between teams made of different neighbourhoods, even gully cricket. All ages of boys, even some village girls, a young 20 something girl who was our assistant used to be called by all the neighbouring boys to play cricket too, as she was a huge fan and loved encouraging cricket across caste and creed.
We thought we would use cricket and do some “progressive” movement by sponsoring a cricket trophy and prize money, but with one rule. No team would be allowed more than six members of one caste, as we wanted kids of all castes to play together in a team. We were told its not possible in a village. Its funny, we are in the 21st century, rural India leaves its villages and works together, eats together, plays together in its big cities but in its villages and small towns it clings desperately to its caste equations. We have counted more than 20 castes, both Hindus and Muslims, among a population of ten thousand, strict vegetarians in the village will eat meat as if there is no tomorrow the moment they get to the big city. The women never watched the movies as they were rarely taken to the city or a cinema hall, but the TV came into the homes. So came in Saas Bahu serials and Kirkit! We in cities do not realise the seismic shift that has happened in the last ten years in rural India with TV and the mobile phone. Young are growing up with urban aspirations in a largely rural country.
The thing about films is that they exist within the desi framework. Song, story, predictability. Cricket is international , its a global language which is accessible to everyone, its not lost in translation , its about fingers , about the wrist , about raw talent, about hard work. It goes beyond caste, religion, region, nationality, language, and its “pure male” like the Greek Gods, so it gives a space to the most feudal . Taliban can play kirkit, even a Beckham with his thong.
In India from my maid who comes to clean my flat, who has a son aspiring to be a pace bowler, to my mother who is as upper class Delhi Punjabi as it gets, “ Sabko kirkit ka kraze hai”. Baccha baccha energy drink peeta hai because Dhoni says so- a grandfather complained to me about his 4 year old grandson, “TV is their parent now” he continues.
So I decided to make a list of big and small things Kirkit does for our Bored Cricket Crazy !ndian society.
1. Teaches most Indians better geography ( South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc. )
2. Pronunciation skills are made better ( you will understand when you hear a Haryanvi saying names like Symonds and Shane Warne, imagine if we had Russian cricketers!)
3. National Integration, players from all regions(North-East still left out)
4. Religious tolerance(Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai, Parsi sab Bhai Bhai )
5. Gives us bored of film programming couch surfers some choice.
6. Makes math skills better ( batting average, runs per over etc. etc. provided me good childhood training for my IIT entrance exams!)
7. Social mobility ( Irfan Pathan, Dhoni- bhai without college degree how many jobs will make you crores)
8. Meritocracy ( some illusion in our “teri kya pull hai” culture that raw talent and hard work takes you somewhere)
9. Bollywood heroines find husbands ( Sharmila Tagore, Sangeeta Bijlani)
10. Our huge Black money reserves can find an outlet to have some fun on the satta bazaar.It does give employment to so many people like bookies , matchfixers etc
11. Pakistan ke saath dosti
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