The Prologue

The urge to write this post has been derived from the most recent India-Pakistan match, held on last Friday, as part of the ongoing T20 World Cup. I do not wish to review it, or put it my *expert* comments on the same. But the match reminded me of another match that was played about 10 odd years ago.

Since I want to describe the incident in its true detail, I have decided to split it into 3 parts :-).

Disclaimer:

This story is *not* a figment of my imagination. All characters and incidents in this story are real (I have put in links to people's orkut profiles wherever possible), and there is no question about the characters having any resemblance to characters living or dead, since as I said, all this is true !!

The Prologue:

Mumbai, about 10 odd years ago. There is a craze in Mumbai for under-arm cricket, which is for some reason, looked down upon by the rest of India (as far as I have known). They have tournaments (under lights as well, nowadays) at various levels of expertise. I will not get into the rules of the game, but believe me when I tell you, it requires the exact same set of skills you need to do well at over-arm cricket, and a lot more !!

We (the team of our building) had been a bunch of underdogs for the last 2-3 years that we'd been participating, but this year we were actually well prepared and kind of looked upon as a strong contender by the other teams. We called ourselves "Six Squares" (the number of our building was 36 :-p). In fact, we were so well prepared, that we had enough people to form 2 teams of our own - namely 36A, comprising of the senior members (though all were below 16, cause it was a U-16 event), and 36B, comprising of the relatively junior (read kachchaa) players.

Another interesting fact, was that the captains of both our teams, were brothers. And also the junior-most members of the respective teams, meaning that all strategic decisions were made by everybody other than the captain, and if things were to go wrong, the captain would be the one to blame :-). Newyz, each team comprsed of 8 players. I don't think I remember the composition of the teams exactly, but here is what I recollect:

36A - Akhil (c), Arun, Ajith, Lovely, Pathak, Takla, Amit, Chikara
36B - Abhishek (c), Mota, Bantu, Pranav, Alan, Guy from Ajith's building, Nalwaya, Varun

Both teams started off well. 36A did very well (as expected), and 36B did exceptionally well, mainly because of the bowling exploits of their captain, arguably the most prodigious under-arm leg-spinner in the tournament, and some high spirited team management by Mota.

Both teams registered very crucial (and memorable) wins in their respective league matches, which were supposed to be followed by the Semis.
36A got the better of 35, arch rivals, seperated by just a wall (complete with India-Pakistan like hostility, on and off the field. We, of course, were India :-)). 35 had players like Gaggu, Zaid, Lotsy, etc. who were part of their over-arm teams as well, which had no age-limit. We, for that matter, also were part of our over-arm team, but that was because none of the seniors from our building were ever interested (which is why we never took part in the over-arm tournament :-p). I think I would attribute that win to some excellent batting by Lovely and Arun, and a blinder of a catch that Ajith took, to dismiss Gaggu. We were heroes when we went back to the building in the break :-D
36B, not to left behind, and riding on luck big time, got the better out of 47, who called themselves the "Fighting Tigers". They were very strong contenders themselves, with Deepak as the captain, and Amit (tailor) as the hard-hitting all-rounder. 36B actually won because of Nalwaya's hanuman style hitting, and more importantly a second last ball 6 hit by the guy from Ajth's building, which travelled all along the ground at a height of not more than 6 inches.

The camaraderie between both our teams uptill this point in the tournament had been enviable, with the seniors guiding the game plan of the juniors, and the juniors shouting their hearts out to support the seniors. And then it dawned upon the 16 involved. The second semi-final to be played was 36A Vs. 36B !!!!!

Nastik (Sandeep Khare)

Okay, I realise 2 things as I start writing this post:
a) I have not written in a long time, but I have managed to make a comeback of sorts, and not doing exactly what I did not want to do here.
b) As the title suggests, this post is about the famed कविता by the same name by Sandeep Khare.
(it took me about 3 minutes to type in that piece in देवनागरी , which is why I skipped writing the name of the poem or the poet again :-p).

I know that this poem has been talked about as well as posted on *n* number of blogs, websites, as well as communities. So it makes no sense for me to put it up over here. But the extent to which I have been able to identify with this piece of prose, I could not *not* put this up here (maybe for no one else's reading pleasure, but my own :-)).

So here goes ......

एक खराखुरा नास्तिक जेव्हा देवळा बाहेर थांबतो
तेव्हा खरे तर गाभार्यातच भर पडत असते
की कोणीतरी आपआपल्या पुर्ता सत्याशी का होइना
पण प्रामाणिक पणे चिक्टून राहील्याच्या पुण्याइची !

(When a true atheist stands outside a temple
Some offering is actually being made to the altar
Of the goodwill, that at least someone, loyally stands behind his belief,
Even if it is a selfish one)

एक खराखुरा नास्तिक जेव्हा देवळा बाहेर थांबतो
तेव्हा होते निर्माण
देवाने आपला आळस झटकून देवळा बाहेर येण्याची !

(When a true atheist stands outside a temple
It generates a need for God to shirk his sluggishness
And step outside the temple)

एक खराखुरा नास्तिक जेव्हा देवळा बाहेर थांबतो
तेव्हा कोर्या नाजरेने पाहत राहतो
सभोवतालच्या हाल चाली, भाविकांच्या जात्रा.......
कोणितरी स्वतःचे ओझे , स्वतःच्या पायांवर
सांभाळत असल्याचे समाधान लाभते देवालाच !

(When a true atheist stands outside the temple
He listlessly looks upon the happenings in his surroundings,
hordes of believers.......
God Himself feels the satisfaction
that somebody is bearing his onus on his own shoulders !)

म्हणून तर एक खराखुरा नास्तिक जेव्हा देवळा बाहेर थांबतो
तेव्हा देवाला एक भक्त कमी मिळत असेल कदाचित !
पण मिळते अकंठ समाधान एक सहकारी लाभल्याच

(Which is why when an atheist stands outside the temple
Maybe God gets deprived of a follower
But He feels the enormous satisfaction
of having gained a colleague)

देेऊळ बंद झाल्यावर एक मरट आळस देऊन
बाहेर तातकाळलेल्या नास्तिकाशी गप्पा मारता मारता
देव म्हणतो, "दर्शन देत जा अधून मधून...............
तुमचा नसेल विश्वास आमच्यावर,
पण आमचा तर आहे ना !"

(When the temple closes down,
As God has a lazy chat with the atheist stranded outside,
God says to him, "Keep visiting...............
You might not believe in me,
But I believe in you !")

देवळा बाहेर थांबलेला एक खराखुरा नास्तिक
कंटाळलेल्या देवाला मोठ्या मिन्नत्वरिने पाठवतो देवळात
तेव्हा कुठे अनंत वर्षे आपण घेऊ शकतो दर्शन
आस्तिकवातच्या भर्जरी शालित गुद्मरलेल्या देवाचे.................

(The atheist standing outside the temple finally sends the
weary God back into the temple with much persuasion
Which is when, for countless years to come, we can pay homage to
the God, who is smothered in the expensive shawl
showered upon Him by theists.................)

True Sandeep Khare fans, please excuse me if I have not been able to translate the words so as to hold true the exact meeting intended, but this is what I understood and related too :-)

Also, I have very desperately wanted to put the actual stanzas in the देवनागरी script, but believe me that is a hell of a tedious job. However, I intend to keep converting it into the देवनागरी script as I get time.

Be spiritual, not religious !!! :-)

Update: Thanks to Google (and Salil), I have been able to convert the text into the देवनागरी script in almost no time (compared to what it took for me to write कविता using KDE Keyboard Map :-p). I know there are still a few mistakes, which will be sorted out soon. :-)