My top ten scenes in The Wheel of Time

Needless to say that I am too bored now and hence this post. I am not really in the mood for explaining my reasons here for this list. I will get to it if I find time sometime later. So here goes:

1. Egwene-al-vera fighting against the Seanchan marath-damane captors in The Gathering Storm
2. Galad Damodred defeating Eamon Valda in the most awesome sword-fight scenes in sf & fantasy in the prologue in Knife of Dreams. I was awake for more than 24 hours by then and I was reading the book while lying down. But that scene made me sit up and sweat.
3. Dumai's Wells battle scene between the abductor Tower Aes Sedai, younglings, the Shaido and Perrin Aybara's company and the Ashaman in Lord of Chaos.
4. Rand-al-Thor's unbelievable display of channeling to almost wipe out the entire Trollocks and Dragkhar army in Maradon in Towers of Midnight. 
5. Rodel Ituralde's awesome attack on the Seanchan army in Knife of Dreams Prologue. Matrim Caouthon maybe the best general the pattern ever created, but those guerilla tactics of Rodel Ituralde brought sheer joy to me. (maybe because they were against the Seanchan?).
6. Nynaeve-al-Meara's healing of the gentled Logain Abler and stilled Siuan Sanche and Leane Sharif in Lord of Chaos. Nynaeve-al-Meara is my favourite character in WOT and she has so many awesome scenes, but I could only fit this scene in the top ten.
7. Perrin's fight with Luc/Isam and Egwene's simultaneous attack on the Black Ajah and Mesanna in Telaranrhiod in Towers of Midnight. So finally Perrrin gets the chance to be awesome while not being thick. Especially where he just dispelled balefire. Also Gawyn Trakand has the chance to redeem himself in my eyes.
8. The final battle between the heroes of the horn, the Children of Light and the Seanchan, with Rand-al-Thor battling Ba'alzamon in the skies of Falme and the simultaneous rescue of Egwene by Nynaeve and Elayne from the Seanchan in The Great Hunt.
9. Now comes the skirmishes of Matrim Cauthon's Band of the Red Hand with the Seanchan while trying to escape Altara in Knife of Dreams
10. Cleansing of Saidin in Winter's Heart. Well no point explaining this scene. I am sure everybody is a fan.

So many scenes missed out,and among them these stand out: The interactions between Mat and Tuon over Winter's Heart, A Crossroad of Twilight and Knife of Dreams, the awesome scene between the trio of  Egwene, Mat and Elayne in Lord of Chaos, and again in A Crossroad of Twilight, the scene between Birgitte Silverbow and Mat in A Crossroad of Twilight, Nynaeve-al-Meara's numerous hilarious antics, Rand's exasperation with Dais Daemer scene with Hurin and Loial in Cairhien in The Great Hunt, Mat's other antics (the Robert Jordan written ones. I think Brandon Sanderson failed in this one bit), Eqwene's standing up to the Tower Aes Sedai after capture in Knife of Dreams and The Gathering Storm, Siuan Sanche's interactions with Gareth Bryne, Mat's trapping of the Gholam in Towers of Midnight and lots of others I can't recall right now.

RIP IITJEE......But what next?

Everyone I meet, (by everyone I mean IITians of course) are mourning. They are mourning the end of their precious IITJEE. They mourned when the pattern was changed from subjective to objective. They mourned when the standard of the objective examination fell below that of AIEEE. Now they are mourning the end of that very thing altogether. Yes, unsurprisingly I am one of them. But this post is not another nostalgic bout about those JEE days, nor it is how the politicians erred in scrapping JEE. This post is about what to do next, now that the ultimate sieve which selected the best and the brightest, pushed them to such intellectual limits has been done away with.

Is it going to be any good now that students who excel in their board examinations through sheer hard work and rote learning, will come to join these premier Institutes of India. Let us analyze that first. Some of the people think the hard earned reputation of the IIT alumni that ropes in hundreds of companies during the first few weeks of placement will take a hit. The placements will take a hit because the companies won't want these "substandard" student. This argument has no merit whatsoever because firstly, there are hardly any job these companies offer that require above average intellect. Anybody who has passed higher secondary can be trained to do these jobs. In fact all IITians who join these companies regularly complain about how mundane the jobs are, how anybody can do them and how bored they wanted to have more challenging jobs. So if anybody can do them they why not the future batch of students. One thing, I think everybody agrees on is that whoever comes out of the new system will possess one particular attribute. He/She will be hardworking. And that is all you need to be successful in the company you join. Secondly, most of the IITians leave their first job after four-five years for greener pasture. Because, if you are good enough, and IITians in general are, then there will always be another company willing to hire you for a better salary. But if the new batch students aren't that good, then they won't have another company waiting for them. So they will stick to their old jobs, which the companies recruiting from IITs will actually prefer. They don't want their training to go down the drain when the employee leaves them for a better package. They want to suck every last bit the employee can offer. Therefore the placements won't suffer. In fact these days companies who are suddenly preferring M.Techs to B.Techs at IITs because undergraduates simply don't stay put, will be back hiring the undergraduates by hordes.
The other issue that concerns the IIT alumni is that the quality of research will fall. By research they mean post graduate research. Ans since all of the IITians who are inclined towards research leave India for foreign Universities, even if the quality of research suffers, it would not affect India. Obviously the charm that the IIT degree exudes to the foreign universities will fade with time if the quality of students coming out of IIT falls, but ideally that should not affect the students individually. If you are good enough you can do it from an ordinary Indian Institution. You don't need the push that the IIT Degree gives you. To be established among the best and the brightest one needs to pass through a rigorous examination, If it is not JEE then it will be the one after your graduation when these elite foreign universities will examine all aspects of your life- your projects, your grades, your GRE score, etc because the weightage given to the IIT degree would not be given any more.

Overall I think the system will self-heal. Those who are concerned that the students who are actually skilled in analysis and problem solving won't get into IITs can be rest assured. They will find a way to get in. You ask how can I be sure? I can be sure of it because most of my fellow IIT students that I have met have been school toppers. And personally, I have the confidence of clearing any exam in the world given six months of solid hard work. So I believe the deserving students will find a way to clear the board examinations with distinctions. I won't be surprised if the top marks in the various board examinations climbs a few notch or two because of the competition it is attracting.

So relax guys. Let our juniors enjoy a better college life because one thing is sure to happen. The abysmal sex ratio at IITs is going to change overnight. And after all is said and done, life is supposed to be fun. Its sure going to be more fun for the juniors in this aspect. If they don't discuss the fine nuances of chaos, fractals and relativistic mechanics, so what? As long as the company remains uniform, (uniformly dull or uniformly bright) it is not going to matter.

Reliving a few moments of the past-I

The debates on the pros and cons of social networking are never going to stop. I was introduced to this concept by the mighty SDM. He won the KVPY scholarship in 2004. And as a part of the scholarship scheme went to do a project at one of the IITs. When he came back, he returned wide-eyed (being the only one in contact with real IITians) with the knowledge of Orkut, supposedly the next coolest thing. One fine evening he says, "Do you do social networking?" Me being the proud puppy then promptly say, "Nope". But I refuse to divulge anymore lest he knows that until that day I haven't even heard those words together. A few days letter I find his mail inviting me to Orkut. It didn't take much time after that to engage in the well-known battle of "who's got more scraps in their scrapbook". And orkut being the place where one could send friend request to girls and actually talk to them normally, quickly it became the favourite past time. The talking to the girl thing is important because even though we studied at a co-educational school, that talking to a girl thing never really happened. Girls weren't friends of the boys, except for the cases of a few studs who turned out to be duds later in life (but that's another issue). For us nerds however, who pretended to be brahmacharis at school, so as to avoid being ridiculed by other similar pretenders, Orkut was the cool multiplex to hang out at, meet girls and get the testosterone flowing just thinking about the fact that, "Oh yeah. I am so cool. I am talking to a girl right now". Never mind the fact that everything's in the virtual world.

Then the most uncool thing happened. We went to college. Being an IITian gave us the feeling that now that we are the best of the best, the smartest of the people, we won't have to chase THEM. They will chase us. It never happened. Though the occasional congrats and the regular praise kept coming in, it finally became too awkward to even reply because after a year or so everybody had landed rather badly on the real grounds. The hope of finding the best looking girlfriend never died though. We had resorted to sending friend requests in orkut to random girls of nearby locations, and once we had struck a conversation (read scrapping) we continued that to our newly discovered gtalk. Sometime the lucky ones found it was possible to continue the conversation on phones. The result was catastrophic in certain cases. I remember a particular case vividly. There was one girl (let her remain unnamed) who somehow got into the friendlist of everybody in our wing in first year (Mostly the guys added her and in a few cases she added the guys). All the guys were excited about her, never mind the fact that nobody knew her or seen her. (Those days indian girls from small towns never posted their photos). But everywhere ranging from the mess-table to the DC main chat was abuzz with her. Finally, I don't know exactly how it happened, but three of my friends ended up meeting her at a nearby place (a previously arranged rendezvous). One had a camera and we had our first look at the photos. Our reactions were summarized by one fellow who promptly said, "emma e to kajer mashi re!" (looks like the maid). So that put an end to things there..............except I never actually stopped replying to her scraps. But I didn't have a personal computer then. So being the addict that I was I used my neighbour's machine. And one day the inevitable happened. I forgot to logout. My neighbour julie invited a few others to defile my account and fulfill his lifelong desire of having a proper no holds barred sex-chat with the girl through my account. (Yes, to my surprise she responded. Till then I thought sex was only pleasurable for men in India. For women it was just the thing to do to reproduce and get it over with. And no amount hollywood movies would change the notion, because it was hollywood. Even now I just can't believe that is entirely false). So when I found out about all that, it put an end to my adventures in orkut temporarily. No harm in recognizing that I was immature to be embarrassed enough to remove her from my friendlist.

In the meantime the smarter guys around me had somehow already acquired girlfriends. And suddenly the rest of us were finding the old Murphy's law coming true, "All the good ones are taken". Naive that we were we decided to wait and watch, for we were sure or degrees would attract the best and the brightest of the flock. However we were wrong. Now even the bad ones were taken and none were left. Suddenly I was finding even the guy who could hardly utter one sentence in a group was chatting animatedly on his phone through the night. Even though the chats were highly audible and entertaining ("How do you find the moon tonight?" or "I forgot to wish you good night yesterday") they quickly got irritating.

Soon that chapter was ignored and life went on. Though the idea never really died. Then with a bang arrived Facebook..............Lets continue the story some other time. I am feeling way too tired to type anymore........Too many papers to write

PS: Excuse the English please
PPS: Because this post is only for me...a legible photograph of a long gone time.

The Campus Placement story

Imagine the plight of a child (say its a boy) in India, born to a middle-class family. Now I hate this fucking middle class mentality but that story is oft told and let us put it away for the moment. Now the child is told stories about heroes and achievers of the world. Nope Vivekanandas, Gandhis and the Kalams aren't the heroes in those stories. The heroes are the second cousins twice removed who made it big after they obtained a "highly coveted" engineering degree from a "reputed" institute. And by making it big, I mean, either he works at Goldman Sachs or at TCS depending upon which end of the spectra his family belongs to. Or he might have passed out of an IIT and become some never to be heard of professor at a US University. So the child starts to dream big. "Dude, I am going to crack JEE, get a 50 lpa job at an MNC (or win the noble prize in the case of the class prodigy), marry the most beautiful girl, spend money on anything and everything ( like ride an Audi A8 W12, wear Breguet watches and saville row suits, live in a farmhouse), in short enjoy the life......" or some variant of this dialogue. Somebody (the media, the second cousins, the parents, the all-knowing neighbours and teachers) puts it in their brains that the "khul ja sim sim" to this treasure trove is IIT. Therefore JEE......... Now how to crack jee? Why? They have all the answers "Practice makes a man perfect" "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" So the youth (no longer a child) practices, perspires until he has solved some 20,000 different problems from various books to get into the treasure trove called IIT. Now what happens next?

"Dude, before I came in here I thought everybody got 70 lpa jobs in companies like facebook. At the end of 4 years I can hardly find a company willing to part with 6 lpa without a 3-year bond. On top of that, some 4 lpa company comes in conducts 3 levels of tests, then GDs and then 2 levels of interviews to select students. Seriously WTF is going on?.................And its been 15 days. I am still not placed yet." So the sympathetic (actually apathetic) friend says "What the hell are you talking about? So many companies with the most lucrative packages have come and gone. Why can't you get a job?"

Why the hell can't I get a job then?

1. Because my department isn't Computer Science. Select few get the chance to study computer science in IIT. But most companies with the lucrative packages come for CS guys. So why the fuck would the authority keep increasing the mechanical engineering seats and not computer science seats?

2. Because after wasting the whole of my youth in this treasure trove locked behind the doors of freedom, I wanted out so desperately I thought just give me a job and I will leave this place, never look back. Never did it occur to me to go for higher studies. Therefore I thought why the hell practice for CAT, GRE, CFA, etc when I am not going to do it?

Then comes our companies:

Day 1: All finance companies with the 10 lpa jobs..........question: What are options?

Me: Beg your pardon..

Q: options??? never heard of it?

Me: (what I should have said) Motherfucker, have you heard of the term herringbone gear or Bell-Coleman Cycle? What the hell do you think I was doing these 4 years in here? If you don't even know which subject I did my majors in, why the hell come in here to recruit people like us? And If you think we are talented enough that a training program at your company will make horses out of us donkeys, then why the hell ask this question even before recruitment?

And the show goes on.........

Day 7: The time of the consulting companies........

Its the written test... I am finding the aptitude questions easy enough. Any high school student should be able to solve them. The point however isn't if you are able to solve them. Its whether you can do it in time. Now who does that? Only those guys who have practiced rigorously for CAT, GRE, etc. Now, what does it tell you about their intentions? That they are never going to join the companies even if they are selected or even if they join they are going to leave as soon as they find greener pastures.

So can the genius recruiters say why the fuck people like me who are going to remain faithful to the job can't clear the test?

And the show goes on.........

Day 15: The time of the IT Companies.........

Me: "Dude, Seriously? After all the hard work in high school to get into IIT, then all the boring work of hammering and filing through the mechanical engineering classes, I am going to join a 6 lpa software firm, that too after I have already forgotten the syntax of the scanf statement?"

Nevertheless I sit for the test which comprises of mostly botany questions like how many leaves in a tree, which I can make neither head or tail of. However I do solve the puzzles part. Lo and Behold! I get shortlisted for interviews. The first interview is HR interview......

Interviewer: Take me through your CV

Me: blah blah blah....

Interviewer: What is your aim in life?

Me: (what I should have said) Dammit! The aim right now is to get out of this hellhole and yes it includes this particular room

Interviewer: where do you see yourself 5 years from now?

Me: (what everyone should say) Listen asshole! Today I am giving an interview for a job at a software firm. This morning I was sitting for a test in a core company Yesterday I appeared for a GD in a consulting firm. A few days back I was updating my knowledge in derivatives which no longer seem to involve my beloved greek letters, because the finance guy was offering 15 lpa behind the interview table. Nobody knows where I am going to get a job or what kind of job I am going to do? I don't even know what will happen tomorrow. So how the fuck would I know where I would be 5 years from now?

Interviewer: So tell me about your strengths.....

Me: (If I was desperate I should have said this) You tell me what kind of characteristics you are looking for in the candidate who is essentially going to write and correct codes all day in front of a desktop inside a cubicle. Name them and I guarantee that you will find them in me.

And the show goes on......

Day n (I forget the count now......) Some core company comes to recruit.

They say that they are the foremost manufacturing company in India and they are looking for talented, knowledgeable people for their R & D.

By now you must be wondering what the hell is wrong this time? Surely I, who have been complaining about lack of preparation in finance or aptitude will ace the tests based on core subject.

Except the greatest manufacturing company suddenly doesn't allow the manufacturing science specialization of mechanical engg. They say that they are only looking for thermal science specialization students. One of our guys who happened to do his industrial intern at the very same company approaches the recruiters with his CV to explain how he has studied all the subjects in thermal science and how his projects are totally related to the work they are doing (as explained in their pre-placement talk). But what do they say?

"Sorry, but its against company policy"

What we should have said:

"Alright jokers! just explain this: Do you want the degree or the guy? Who is going to do your job? The piece of paper or the brains of the guy you are going to recruit? And as you said that you are recruiting us because you want the best quality brains so that you can grow in the international market as well, then why hide behind something like "policy"? Just get the best person for the job!"

And why on earth after such a heavy buttering of "you people are the cream of the crop, etc etc" would you recruit all 2 yr M. Techs? (No offence to the M.Tech students but we did beat you fair and square during JEE, exceptions not withstanding)

I will tell you why? Because the best undergrad students in thermal science and engineering who actually have good knowledge of the core subjects have already been placed in banks and trading firms within the first few days. yeah! The irony of it all!

Not to mention that even the core companies conduct only aptitude tests in first rounds.........Somebody should ask them why.

And the no show goes on............

So there you go.............

If you have a dream like the one mentioned right at the beginning of this post, either crush it now or try to do it without the JEE part. Or if you want to do the JEE part specifically please ensure that you have some higher aim, so that you work constantly towards that and not get satisfied that you belong to the top 0.5% of the population in intellectual acumen.

NOTE: No I am not suicidal. I have got a job. How I got it is another funny story. Maybe I will tell you sometime. However to clarify things I am NOT suicidal not because I have got a job finally. Its because I have already been through it all...........This post has come much much later. I was already enlightened by my 3rd year.

And if you are laughing after reading this post because you think the IITians are losers, thinkagain.......because you see as Tyler Durden would have said, everybody is a loser. The only difference between you and me is that I am smart enough to know that, while you need to be told that.

A List of fictitious funny titles for books and movies related to cricket players and officials

During this world cup, Cricinfo introduced the chatterbox in its live scorecard and commentary. In one of those inconsequential boring matches involving a superpower an a superminnow, a nice idea took root in the chatterbox. How about we think up funny titles for books or movies that could be made for cricketers and cricket officials? And the idea spread like wildfire and could not be contained by any of the moderators until very late in the match, when they refused to publish any more comments on this. It was such a fun task, that I decided to keep a record of all the titles people came up with and share them in my blog. So here is the list.....Many of the titles are ideas of yours truly..

So start laughing:

• "DROP Dead Gorgeous" - Kamran Akmal
• "Kill Ball": Robin Peterson to Ashish Nehra
• "Four Drops and a Birthday" - Kamran Akmal and Ross Taylor
• "Taken" - Not written by Kamran Akmal
• "Mr & Mr Smith" - Steven & Graeme
• "The Dark Night" - World Cup 2007 final is more like it.
• "A shot in the dark" - Last world cup final.
• "The Namesake" - Ross and Brendan Taylor
• "The wrestler" starring Andrew Symonds
• "How I met Your Wife" - Shane Warne to Arun Nayar
• "Pulp Fiction"- Batting Powerplays
• "Much Ado About Nothing" - Batting Powerplays
• "Damn Good Batting"- Ashish Bagai
• "The Day the Score Stood Still" - Rahul Dravid
• "King Bong" - The Bangladesh team against England
•  "Flight Club" - Graeme Swann and Murali
• "The day it spun" - Jason Krejza
• "Lost in translation" - DRS reviews
• "Star Wars" - Murali vs SRT
• "The Singh's Speech" - Harbhajan on the pitch
• "The Great Gambler" - MS Dhoni
• "Face off" - Balaji Rao & Romesh Powar
• "Match me if you can" - Muthiah Muralitharan & Sachin Tendulkar
• "little red riding hood" - Tatenda Taibu
• "Tu Chal Main Aaya" - Indian batsmen after Tendulkar
• "Closed Eyes" - cricinfo on comments of some guy who tried repeatedly and failed!
• "Unbreakable" - SRT's Dirty Bat
• "Phas gaya re Odoyo" - Kenyan team
• "Gold Finger" - starring ajantha mendis
• "Up in the Air" - Tim Southee (He caused an uproar by kissing some passenger in his flight to India)
• "Paranormal Activity" - by Indian batsmen after Tendulkar got out against South Africa in the league stage.
• "honey, we shrunk the total" - Indian team to Sachin Tendulkar
• "how to train your dragon" - Andrew Symond's Coach
• "Ballman Begins" - Shahid Afridi on randomly becoming a bowler from a batsman
• "Who's line (and length) is it anyway" - Ashish Nehra
• "Karthik calling Karthik" - Murali to Dinesh
• "Bend it like Bowden"
• "The last fingerbender" - Billy Bowden
• "The Blair witch project" - India playing Australia in WC2003 final
• "Scent of a Woman" - Shane Warne
• "Psycho" - Sreesanth
• "Scream" - Sreesanth, "Scream II" - Harbhajan, "Scream III" - Kohli
• "The Da Vinci Code" - Batting Powerplay for India
• "I am legend" - SRT
• "ek ruka hua faisla" - decision on publishing comments by cricinfo!
• "The Curious Case of Bangladesh Batsmen" - BCB after the debacle against West Indies
• "how to lose friends and alienate people" - Cricinfo commenatators for not publishing the last 99999 comments
• "Dead spin society" - Harbhajan and Piyush Chawla
• "A walk to remember" - Virender Sehwag on the art of running between the wickets
• "The Shashank Manohar Redemption" - Lalit Modi
• The Hangover - Andrew Symonds
• Munaf Patel's fielding:- Dead Man walking
• Bend it like Waqar - PCB
• The Invisible - My Comments :'(
• 12 Angry men - Indian team
• How did the chicken cross the road? - Trent Johnston
• Gone Baby Gone - Zulqarnain Haider
• "The fastest Indian in the world" - Zaheer Khan?
• Confessions of a Dropaholic- Kamran Akmal
• Striptease - Saurav Ganguly & Andrew Flintoff
• Jab We met - Bhajji and Sreesanth
• dirty dancing - sreesanth
• The Expendables - Associate Cricketing Nations
• Eyes Wide Shut - starring k akmal and m van wyk
• "Swing is king" by Dale Steyn
• The last hairbender - Lasith Malinga
• Legally Blonde- All Pakistani players with blonde highlights.
• Clockwork Orange- Ryan ten Doeschate
• Hair Color for dummies - Kevin O Brien, Zaheer Khan
• "serendipity" - bollinger - hussey / KP - morgan
• Dude, where is my spin? Harbhajan
• Signs - Piyush Chawla's leg spin.
• The (tv) Mechanic - Ricky Ponting.
• The Replacements - Mike Hussey and eoin Morgan.
• Flubber - Kamran Akmal.
• When to end a topic - cricinfo commentator.
• Disaster movie - Kamran Akmal.
• "Lord of the swing" by Wasim Akram.
• Black Swan-Gramae Swann.
• 'The English Patient'- Kevin Petersen. 
• Total Recall - by Murali. 
• Once Upon a Time in India - Balaji Rao.
• "ab tak chappan" Hashim Amla's avg. 
• definitely,maybe- england team." 
• I Know what you did last Summer " Salman butt, Muhammad Aamir, Muhammad Asif! 
• Gone with the wind - Sultan Zarawani.
• True Grit - Irish Team.
• M.S. I Love you - Piyush Chawla.
• There Will Be Blood- Razzaq, (Pak vs SA 2nd ODI).
• Cast Away - Lalit Modi.
• Love actually - Imran Tahir.
• Bees Saal Baad - SRT.
• "The Battle of the Bulge" Inzy & Ryder, Foreword by Dwayne Leverock.
• SlumpForm Millionaire - Irfan Pathan ( $1,900,000 in IPL).
• "No country for Old men" - Sourav Ganguly.
• "Dude where is my swing" by Irfan Pathan.
• "Who moved my Crease" - Inzy.
• My Name is Khan - by Zaheer Khan.
• Big Momma - Leverock.
• "To kill a mocking press" - MSD.
• Gone in 60 Seconds- Indian Lower Middle Order.
• Scary Movie (Dhoni's batting).
• "The twister" - by Murali.
• "Two Thousand Splendid Runs" - SRT.
• Jaws - by Shahid Afridi.
• 127 hours (of doing nothing) - Gautam Gambhir.
• Stumped!- M.S. Dhoni.
• One Flew Over Kamran's Gloves.
• How to squabble but still get away with it - Stuart Broad.
• How to make people believe you are a batsman BY Afridi.
• How to play a World-cup with no native players in the team - Canada.
• "How to play test cricket for england" - Irish Cricket Team.
• "Staying Focused" by Sreesanth.
• "How to get into the Indian team" by Piyush Chawla.
• How to create a list of totally useless and hilarious books that we would liked published, by yours trulies. 
• a tale of two countries..by ed joyce and eoin morgan.
• "Facing bouncers" By Suresh Raina & Rohit sharma, Inspiration Sultan Zarawani.
• "How to win in a T20 final" by Misbah Ul Haq.
• "Playing for the country" -MS Dhoni.
• "still seventeen"-afridi.
• How to make Two referrals insufficient - By Mr. Asoka di silva.
• How to name IPL teams - By the Kochi Tuskers.
• The Social Network by Kevin Peitersen.
• "how to change names, get banned, retire and still continue to play"- Mohammad Yousuf.
• How to Hug-Priety Zinta. Foreword by Yuvraj Singh.
• "My Experiments with Chawla" - MSD.
• "Staying Calm when 22 required of 1 Ball" by B.Mac.
• How to Retire Young - Zulqarnain Haider.
• How to hit hundreds that dont win you matches - Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.
• "Why are we here?" by the Kenyan team.
• "How to make friends" - Kevin Pietersen.
• "Being great 12th Man" - Raina.
• "How to carry on an online discussion during a match without talking about it at all" - Foreword by guess who.
• "Art of Ball Changing" by G Swann.
• "How to be fat and fit- Jesse Ryder.
• "How to forget about Camera's on field" - by Afridi.
• "DRS wars- The Umpire Strikes Back" - By Asoka de Silva
• "Having a doosra without a pehla" - Harbhajan Singh.
• The art of using the batting powerplay - Team India.
• "HAIR apparent" by kallis,strauss,bhogle.foreword by warne.
• "Topic is over" - exasperated cricinfo commentator..
• "Spoiling the fun by being uptight" - in reply to above!
• "The art of disappearing" by zulqairnan haidar.
• How to get a decent haircut by Ramiz Raja.
• "how to hit 150 K's an hour" Praveen kumar.
• Using the Commentator's Curse to good effect By Ravi Shastri.
• The Heimlich Maneuver- By the South African team.
• "how to celebrate" - Gibbs.
• "the art of great death bowling" by every indian bowler.
• Being Robin Hood- The English Team.
• "Stretching a joke too far" - Chatterbox participants @ cricinfo.fr the online commentators..
• " How about looking foolish in front of millions by ridiculous commentary".
• "How to be a Notout Batsman in an ODI" by Dhoni.
• "world cup semi finals" by Alan Donald. Foreword by Lance Klusener.
• "100 tips to become team mate's favorite" by S. Sreesanth.
• "No country for old men" by dada.
• "the art of sharing the joys of winning" by eng cricketers.
• "The art of praising SRT" by SMG ??.
• How to ban players by PCB chairman Ijaz Butt.
• "Ashwin - The Egg Layer" by Dhoni.
• Why I Am The Best There Has Ever Been by Justin Green.
• Dutch Pronunciation- By Eric Szwarczynski.
• "How to change fast bowlers into medium pacers within a year"...by BCCI.
• inception to implosion. by indian middle order.  
• Salman Butt "Betting 101".
• "How to win friends and influence people" by Bangladesh cricketers!."
• Appropriate Behavior for Modern Technologies such as phones and Twitter" by Shane Warne.
• how to keep hands clean' by punter.
• "How to increase your tolerance levels" by Sidhu.
• "Experiments with a Winning Combination" By Dhoni.
• The Curious Case of Pakistani Wicketkeepers by Z Haider.
• Chris Martin - "Batting 101".
• "Blood Brothers" by Umar akmal dedicated to Kamran Akmal.
• "How to lose a commercial on last ball" By Nehra ;)
• 'The Art of Destroying Bowling Lineups' by Ross Taylor with help from Kamran Akmal
• "how to bat"-chris martin.
• "The Handy Manual of Fix-it-all" by Salman Butt
• When to get injured by Umar Akmal.  
• "A Slap from the TurbanMan" by Sreesanth ;)
• "Catch Me If you Can" by Salman Butt forward by Kamran Akmal  
• "Commentary for Dummies" must have a foreword by Ranjith Fernando!
• "How to not get in trouble" by Andrew Symonds 
• Biting the Cherry... by Shahid Afridi!
• Commentary for Dummies .. A better book wud be written by Sidhu !!!
• How to try to bowl yorkers and screw up..By Agarkar, Nehra and Munaf.
• "Enigma of the last over" by Dhoni ;)" 
• DANCING IN THE PITCH " BY SREESANTH  
• "Commentary for Dummies" by Ravi Shastri?  
• Ricky Ponting has been signed up to write "Clean hands and Personal Hygiene".
• Targeting flies around the cricket field...by Van wyk..foreword by Kamran Akmal
• " Unraveling the UDRS" by the ICC
• "How to use the 12th man at all times" by Team India
• "Brilliant Glovework" The art of keeping from Kamran Akmal.
• "How to increase mental bench strength" foreword by MSD?
• How to play the batting poweplay. Foreward by MSD.

The best batting innings of the world cups......

I am a fortunate man to have witnessed the best batting innings in the World Cups so far, and I have not missed a single cricket match since the 1996 Cup. Yes, it may be unfathomable to certain people, but this innings bettered, Sir Vivian Isaac Alexander Richards' 181, Kapil Dev's phenomenal 175, Stephen Fleming's 134, Aravinda De Silva's 107, Sachin Tendulkar's 98, not withstanding numerous cameos by legendary match winners like Lance Klusener, Sanath Jayasuriya, Adam Gilchrist, etc. Yes, I am talking about the gem of an innings Andrew Strauss played today at the Chinnaswamy Stadium at Bengaluru- an innings of 158 runs off 145 balls, studded with 18 boundaries and a massive sixer, an innings that threatened to pull off an immense chase of 339 runs and helped pull off a tie......a far better result considering the fact that none of the teams deserved to lose this match. Today Strauss batted like God. He simply could not be ruffled by the Indian bowlers. He virtually got the requisite boundary every over during the improbable run chase and kept milking the rest of the balls for singles and doubles. Such was the awesome form of the man that only a delivery that even a God would fear to play could get him out. And he got out to the best delivery of the match by a fair distance- a toe crushing reverse swinging yorker from Zaheer Khan. What more can a foreign player expect than a standing ovation from the most devoted fans of the opposing team, when he takes the long walk back to the pavilion and he deservedly got that. Perhaps he is right in saying that today he played the innings of his life. I salute to the man who provided such wondrous entertainment amidst the mundane matches till date in this world cup. I will keep this innings right there in my top shelf along with Herschelle Gibbs' 175 in that mother of all ODI matches.

Andrew Strauss came to silence the Indian spectators and won their cheering praise instead......grudging respect but respect all the same.

The Bucket List

Making the bucket list is the new fashion, the "in-thing" and for once the cynic in me finds no fault in making a bucket list. So here I am compiling a list of "must-do" items which I am going to attempt to complete before I die. Its a good thing that I am preparing this list right at the moment when I am about to pass out of university and start earning for myself. My advice to you people would be to follow suit and start doing exactly what you have dreamed of doing since childhood.......doesn't matter if it was inspired by the silliest of moves of Sunny Deol.

My list is as following (no particular order):

• A tour of all famous and historical places of India (yes with a backpack, a couple of friends and all the romanticism of Bollywood)
• A tour of most of the worth visiting places of the world, especially, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, Samarkhand, Jerusalem, Damascus, Egypt, Switzerland, Netherlands, Spain, Great Britain, France, Germany, a safari in South Africa and some of other forest reserves of Africa, the great rift valley and Victoria falls of Africa, Alaska, the Grand Canyon, Machchu Pichchu, the dense Amazonian rainforests........I can't stop counting these places once I start.
• Learn guitar
• Learn Urdu, Telugu and spanish
• Earn a bachelors degree in mathematics
• Publish a paper
• Watch an Olympics, the four grand slam tournaments in Lawn Tennis, the soccer World Cup, the cricket World Cup, an India-Pakistan, India-Australia and India-South Africa test
• Meet a pornstar, while in Hollywood
• Skydive, Parasail, Paraglide, Bungee jump, Raft, Ice-climb, rock-climb, ski, skate, scuba-dive, wing-suit fly at least once
• Do a cross-country road trip on a bike with a group of friends
• Collect as many as possible hard copies of popular novels, stories, non-fiction and build a library out of it (I already have a sizeable ebook collection)
• Go to Jail for a few days/weeks
• Own a Ducati or an Aprilia bike
• Attend a Linkin Park and AR Rahman concert 
• Travel somewhere in a ship

Seems like I have lost interest in writing this post. So I will update this list later when I feel interested again.