Friday, May 22, 2009

IPL and BOLLYWOOD...

How long will the Marriage last ?...after the fall and fall of the famous and mighty.

With the Indian Premier League-IPL (Cricket’s equivalent to Soccer's English Premier League) Season-Two currently in its final stages in South Africa, for cricket fanatics what mattered most was an exciting game of cricket accompanied with a chilled bottle of suds every evening during the month long duration of the championship and hopefully they got it that way. In my opinion both the fanatics and connoisseurs of cricket alike are nonchalant about the owners (or their antecedents) of the teams participating in the league. I also give a damn…..and rightly so, it should be the least of our concerns. But cricket having been catapulted to a status of religion in India, when some of the team owners represent our top bollywood brigade then an eyebrow or two are bound to be raised alongwith a multitude of media hypes and glares. Two of our very famous bollywood actors, Shahrukh Khan and Preiti Zinta embraced the league as major investors last year in its first season played in India and the third being Shilpa Shetty, a never so popular Bollywood actress unlike the other two (who merely became famous in the last year or so, courtesy a British reality TV programme called ‘Big Brother’) also jumped on the bandwagon this year by investing alongwith his rich UK-based boyfriend in the last year’s tournament winners, the Rajasthan Royals (RR). There are no two questions about the fact that the actors and the firangi (a term used for foreigners) cheerleaders have brought along with them a lot of glamour in the T-20 format of the gentleman’s game, but in my opinion it is only the quality of cricket played on the twenty-two yard strip which emerges the victor in the end. Sorry to say, but their teams, particularly SRK's Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have hardly indulged in that kind of play. It’s been a morbid and sordid tale of horrors for SRK and his men who couldn’t qualify for the last four stage, second time in succession. And Preiti’s and Shilpa’s teams too met with a similar fate in the current season.


I feel empathetic towards King Khan whose team, KKR finished last on the points table with a very disappointing performance to say the least. Even worst than the first season.They only won three out of their fourteen league matches, the worst in the short history of the league and thereby discovered new and bizarre ways of ‘How to lose a match’ or more aptly put, 'How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory' particularly in the last over. Their last two victories, I guess came a little too late when they had already been bludgeoned out of the tournament like a brutal sixer off Yusuf Pathan's bat. However, they would atleast take pride in the fact that they shattered the dreams of defending champions, Rajasthan Royals (Shilpa’s team) of reaching the semi-finals. Shilpa would definitely brand them as party poopers. For a second, let’s cut from real to reel and I can vividly remember that scene from a hit bollywood movie named ‘Baazigar’ in which SRK pushed Shilpa from the rooftop to her end. Sometimes life and fate can be so cruel that they imitate art. It would be a repeat act for SRK who would be dancing in the aisles crooning, “ Sanam, hum doobenge to tumhe saath lekar doobenge” meaning, “Dear, If I drown, I'll make you drown with me” .


Neither did SRK’s energized (despite the actor’s fashionable sling) and refurbished promotional video nor did his charisma work wonders as it does on the silver screen. Even the young female cheerleaders selected by him through a heavily promoted talent hunt show on TV, were not allowed to perform in South Africa. Such horrendous has been his luck with the IPL venture in both seasons that he would be so dismayed and cursing himself for making such a rash business decision. I am sure he would soon like to forget it as his worst nightmare. Shahrukh maybe the king of the bollywood box-office but ultimately it is not the seventy mm screen on which he has to perform as a superstar but the cricket field on which his pack of eleven players have to mesmerize the fans with their performance. The team’s performance has severely deteriorated as compared to the last season despite a highly publicized change in team policies a’la the controversial multiple captain theory and their subsequent defence by Shahrukh. But no amount of Shahrukh can save a non-performing, under-confident and demotivated bunch of cricketers. Same goes with Preiti Zinta’s team, Kings XI Punjab and Shilpa’s RR, being last year’s loosing semi-finalists and champions respectively. Both have not performed any better and could not even surpass or score past measly totals of hundred odd in their all important last league matches, when it mattered the most to ensure a last four berth. The actors ought to know by now that there are no re-takes in cricket unlike their films.


It’s very difficult to assign any one reason for the unflagging failures of the three teams. Or are the actors just jinxed for their teams ? Particularly in the case of KKR, the sacking of Ganguly (first season’s skipper), the multiple captain theory, the foreign coach’s emphasis on foreign players in the playing eleven put the team on a backfoot even before the start of the championship. Recently, there have also been overtures of racism within the team. And in the case of Kings XI Punjab, has the team been affected by the Preiti-Ness Wadia rumored break-up ? Well this is anybody’s guess. It appears that gossipmongers have been in good business all throughout the IPL. But all this grapevine in the media combined with the immense pressure of belonging to a famous actor’s team could have definitely buried the players under the burden and anxiety of non-performance.


The marriage of IPL and Bollywood and the subsequent honeymoon extended well into the second season but the extended honeymoon period seems to be fizzling out by now. So I won’t be astounded if any or all of them sell their stakes before the third season (the murmurs have already been heard in the media, as Shahrukh after excersing his franchise in India didn’t even return back to South Africa to motivate his devastated team). As per 'The Economic Times' dated 21st May'09, many private equity funds are envincing interest for a stake sale in KKR. The same report also carries a story stating that KKR is the most valued team in the IPL (a UK based valuation company has given it a brand value of 42.1 million dollars) despite all the controversies and lacklustre performance. But I totally fail to comprehend this. If you ask me, the value should be put on team performance and not on the star value of the owners or underperforming star cricketers. Anyway, having burnt their fingers twice over, the actors would have definitely realized that they should now concentrate in the craft which made them famous in the first place rather than making a mockery of themselves on the cricket field which is the least of their forte. So friends, I would suggest that the next time an actor thinks of investing in an IPL team it should be a win-win situation for all of us. The actor ought to think twice about the impending doom but you and me would fortunately know on whom to put our money on :-).

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

THE FACEBOOK GENERATION...

...love them or loathe them but you cannot ignore them.

Hi ! Are you on FB ? Are you on FB ? Aren't you on FB ? What the heck, how LS :-( [short for low society]. That's how a youngster will greet you in today's times. And I am not fibbing if I tell you that I am thoroughly enjoying being part of the Facebook (FB) generation. For the uninitiated, Facebook is an extremely popular social networking website on the world wide web. It is my fifteen year old daughter who introduced me to the medium last year sometime in March, 2008…..and I considered myself to be very net savvy :-). As of now I find FB better suited to my tastes and sensibilities like its ever growing 200 million users around the world and more enjoyable than Twitter which is mainly a real time short messaging service akin to micro-blogging. Twitter, though is trying to catch up fast but is still laggards behind FB. Hence I am restricting my experiences mainly to FB though I have a twitter account too. FB is a great idea to stay connected with hundreds and thousands of friends and relatives all around the world ranging from children to adults to the young at heart and that too in real time without draining your pocket on international calls. But beware, your very own children will never want you as their friends on FB for reasons which would become obvious once you read further ;-).

I love and so does the entire FB generation, the way you can post all kinds of messages (except the ones hinting at profanity) on the walls (a space on each user’s profile) of your friends for them to see instantly and send them virtual gifts in the form of icons alongwith messages. Also the fact that whenever you log on to your home page on FB it highlights what your friends have been upto on FB alongwith the 'Top Stories' of the day. However, if you want to be a little private then you can send your friends an email, only for them to read. The best part is I can do most of this stuff from my iphone without ever logging on to my computer. The ‘Looking For’…dating or ...a relationship and the ‘Relationship Status’ are quite interesting aspects of each user's personal profile. The latter may range from 'single' to 'married' to 'in an open relationship with…….' or 'in a complicated relationship with…….' . This info pretty well generates a lot of curiosity among friends about the user’s intentions :-). Incidentally, you can chat too and upload your profile photo (what’s facebook without a user’s face), family photos and videos on your wall to share with your friends.The 'Poke' feature which is often referred to as Facebook flirting and a little controversial is something I would rather refrain from so as not to offend my friends of the opposite sex :-). After using the medium for over a year, I applaud the creators for initiating a great social networking tool which has brought me so very close to my cross-country friends and relatives. I have been able to locate my long lost school friends (through the extremely helpful friend finder tool in FB) whom I first knew as toddlers but had lost track of after passing out from school a good 25 years ago. It seems the entire world is on FB today. The connection with my school friends through FB has been extremely gratifying to say the least and pretty nostalgic too. Some of us even met over dinner at my house last Christmas. The friends you make later in life may be very good but nothing can beat the bonhomie and banter of friends who have grown up with you since kindergarten. I love and thank FB for that and we will soon be having a silver jubilee reunion of our class of '84 in December this year.

Another interesting but at times frustrating (when I don’t understand the acronym or emoticon) is the chat lingo or dialect the FB generation has created to interact with each other. It’s basically a mélange of acronyms, characters, emoticons and abbreviations. When I started, the concept was a little alien to me and I had to take classes from my daughter :D. I hope you get this :D sign right the next time you read it elsewhere as it symbolises that I am smiling big while writing this sentence. You have others like :P which means sticking out your tongue to tease, :S meaning the person is confused, :O signifying a shocked face, :@ signifying a very angry face and so on. And then there is my sister (she'll kill me for this) in the US who starts or ends almost every sentence on FB with LOL !, short for laughing out loud. Another very common acronym used is OMG!, short for Oh my God. Many users casually use acronyms specifying the F-word in a very blatant and unabashed fashion without a tad bit of remorse and definitely not for the prudish. Writing complete words and sentences is totally out of sync and uncool for this gen-next. Write complete words on FB and you are murdering their lingo. So Beware :-). Every word in the thesaurus has been abbreviated for sake of brevity and paucity of time to type. My daughter interestingly calls them and herself the "Phataphat Generation”. They are always in a hurry to do things. So my dear friends better catch up with this lingo if you want to survive the FB generation or be part of it and I pride in the fact that I have caught up with it sooner than later, though still gasping for breath. To be a cool parent, be as cool as your kid and speak their language and I bet they will love you for that. However, I still get infuriated at times though, of what have we made of the conservative Queen's English we were taught in our formative years. Particularly so when I see my daughter jotting down her notes in school in FB lingo, I get flustered. In my opinion, the parents should caution their kids to restrict this lingo only on the net and not carry it to their classrooms and examination halls. But you never know, maybe ten….twenty years from now this disease would have communicated and multiplied across generations, that I foresee even exams being written in this dialect. Also by that time, many out of this FB lot would have become teachers and examiners and be well equipped in handling their new mother tongue. Currently, the fall back of all this is that many people open a FB account out of curiousity but never come back again or their status updates are very intermittent. Now don’t tell me you’re soooo... overloaded with work to update your status.They don't or maybe can't even upload their profile photo. My due sympathies are with the lot. But alas this lot was never meant to be on FB in the first place.Or they rather pull up their socks like me:-)

Let's finally talk about the very hilarious ‘Status Updates’ which the users give on FB on a daily basis or any time they feel like. These are a way to convey to their friends, what they are upto or are feeling at that point of time or about their current whereabouts. On FB they ask you, “What’s on your mind ?" and on Twitter they ask you, “What are you doing ?“. I have one very interesting friend (no offence please) whose several status updates are mainly by way of Hindi poetry and lyrics written in English making his updates very philosophical. It’s so difficult to understand his state of mind. Then there are others who post updates as funny, nonsensical and cheesy as ‘I am in the loo’, ‘F*** my life’ or 'What the F***'. The way you can publicly advertise on your profile that you are a fan of some famous personality, celebrity, company, brand or something as uncanny as the 'smell of petrol' is not only incredible but maybe brings a sense of fulfillment to the user's wishes. FB has special pages dedicated to the famous. In a way, being a fan of something or somebody highlights one's characteristics and an insight of the user's personal profile to others. You will also find many social groups and networks who form a community to address any matter of public interest or voice a concern and accordingly any FB user can become its member if he feels for that cause. For example, the “Pink Chaddi” group ( 'Chaddi' being a term for undergarments) formed on FB to muster support for the freedom of women and retaliate against the beating up of young girls in a Mangalore pub by members of Sri Ram Sene in January this year. I see users being totally immersed in the numerous fun applications and quizzes on FB to whale away their free time and the quiz results once posted on their walls are really intriguing to say the least.

Though this generation has become so addicted to the Facebook way of life but when there was a recent poll amongst its users on whether they would like to pay to use FB, then millions of users came together to form a group venting their ire. FB was started as a free site and should remain one. What say guys 'n' gals ? Also when FB recently announced major changes in its terms and conditions of service there was a major hue and cry by its users and FB had to revert back to the previous terms. That’s the strength of this generation. This is also the same generation which is least hesitant to announce private matters like divorce or separation on their walls and many a times posts fake and multiple identities on these sites.You either hate them or love them or better still, be a part of them as you cannot ignore them. I decided the latter. For better or for worse....you decide. But it definitely keeps me vibrant and in sync with my kids ;-). However, a word of caution for the young girls and women on FB, Twitter & other sites would not be out of place : Never add strangers to your friend lists even if they pop up as mutual friends, as would be evident from a south delhi based rich and educated young man recently arrested for raping girls and videotaping the acts. He had lured his victims from social networking sites of FB and others only. But honestly my idea is not to frighten you away from FB and the like :-).