“The end of July will bring forth the child who has the power to kill you, my Lord. This child has been prophesized to be the one”.

The Dark Lord stood pale as death, drawing his breath in a hiss that sent shivers down Snape’s spine. “My killer…”, he whispered. “Let’s see how well the slayer does at the hands of his prey at the powerful age of 1”. It had been a year since the prophecy had been made. Now was the time to strike.

“ We leave now. Snape, with me.”

“My Lord, you promised…to spare…the child’s mother…” spoke Snape hesitantly. “I remember, Severus”, replied the Dark Lord with a touch of irritation “The Mudblood will be left for you. Now leave.”

In a whirl of wind, they were gone. Simultaneously, in a village called Godric’s Hollow 200 miles away, two cloaked figures appeared at the doorway of Number 31. It was a quiet evening but for the birds chirping. The Dark Lord flicked his wand casually and the door blasted open. A meoment later, James Potter came running out from an inner doorway, spells bursting froth from his wand. Snape hesitated, then stepped beside the Dark Lord and fired a curse at Potter. As things went crashing around the house, he watched as a framed picture of the Potters fell to the floor, as if in slow motion. It shattered to pieces as Snape said, “He’s dead, my Lord”.

They moved to the bedroom off the living room. There she stood. Lily Evans stood defiantly in front of her son, shielding him from them as golden sparks erupted from her drawn wand. She shot Snape a disgusted look before turning to The Dark Lord. “Step away girl”, said the Dark Lord. At least he was keeping his promise, Snape thought.

Lily wasn’t playing, though “Not Harry, please no don’t kill him, take me, kill me instead —”
“This is my last warning —”

“Okay, take him”, she gave in!

The Dark Lord, with eyes furrowed, uttered a curse that would shoot a stream of green light at the babe and kill the prophecy. It blew up into smithereens. James Potter turned into Rudolfus and Lily into Bellatrix as everyone yelled “SURPRISE” and a banner streamed from the ceiling “HAPPY BIRTHDAY LORD VOLDEMORT- From your Death Eaters”.

—————–

Disclaimer: None of this is mine (as if!), it’s all JK Rowling’s.

I entered (via crumbly staircases) to find Viru and Ganbhir going about their business. Bombay made up for Kolkata’s absconding- the openers’ solidity was rewarded by the vociferous chants we reserve for our own…till the administrators at the Wankhede flashed His face onto the giant screen. All alse was promptly forgotten.

How much love can a person receive? It was ‘Sachin, Sachin’ on every lip again, and Viru and Gambhir went about their work, forgotten. We were waiting, and our urgency was beginning to be palpable. Ask anyone at the grounds how Gambhir got out. Chances are they won’t know. What they will remember is that awkward moment when the finger went up, when the second of obligatory silence was followed by a deafening roar that erupted without thought, straight from the heart. How much happiness can a person spread by his mere presence? We were united, heart and soul, from that moment on. Sachin might be India’s son, but Wankhede is his home ground. Our ‘moriya!’s made sure he remembered. His arrival brought on a pandemonium that lasted every ball and reached a crescendo at 94 not out. How can a person infuse so much energy into so many?

And then, a sheer drop into sheer silence. Stunned faces. Despair. A thousand hearts stopped simultaneously, the carnival was suddenly a funeral. He wasn’t to reach his pinnacle at home, we were to be denied, but our spirits would be with him in Australia, where surely it would come. Perhaps this was retribution for the booing of 2006? So close, yet so far…as we stood to applaud him back to the pavilion, we wondered, how can one person break so many hearts? The silence settled around us as we let the pain sink in. But we are not the raucous, unsporting Wankhede for nothing and we are not to be beaten. We had a renewed chant for our hero- “We Want Follow-on!”, as we half-heartedly cheered every Indian wicket that fell, clinging on to the last embers of hope.

Anything for Tendlya. Anything.

Just a neighbourly heart-to-heart
About our rickety building lift
It’s been a little…redolent of late
Of urea, if you catch my drift.

Your darling child is an angel, now
So young, his bladder so wayward
We love him, and bear no ill-will
When he leaves the lift smelling like turd.

You, dear friend, are an angel too
We know you’re brimming with empathy
Always looking to help us out
What else could explain your apathy?

All you needed was a dirty rag
(that shirt of yours would have done too)
And cleaned the mess off the lift floor
But no, you had nobler things to do.

Only you would think about
(and then, cunningly devise)
A plan to keep us fit, despite
Our complete lack of exercise

So now we trudge up the stairs
Cursing your name along the way
But deep in our hearts,we know
Your kind deed we cannot repay

But dear friend, I must tell you,
YOU don’t live on the 6th floor
Me? I’m left, everyday,
Trembling before the lift door.

I invoke all my ancient Gods
To take away the acrid reek
But they fail, and I’m left panting
Every tiring day this week.

Next time, dear friend, don’t bother
For while we love your largesse so
our poor lungs are overworked
Just clean your bloody mess and go!

• Every newspaper has an ‘editorial’ section to distinguish that part of the newspaper that publishes opinion, not fact. Now the opinions of the esteemed editors at the Times are clearly too far-reaching to be relegated to the Editorials. Accompanying every major news item on the front page, thus, is an insert called the ‘Times View’. I’d be very interested to know how the few thousand staff at the country’s largest publishing house come up with a consensus unanimous enough to be labelled ‘Times View’. SMS vote? Daily poll? Again, we must applaud the Times for their honesty, which publication would unabashedly declare its bias in reporting news stories? And on the cover (albeit second cover) page?

• I always thought the only reason people buy the Times anymore (well, besides pictures of Maria Sharapova on the sports page) is because of its classy, well-loved supplement The Bombay Times (BT). I was wrong. The newspaper waala at the station now has two stacks- one for the Times+Bombay Times package and one for BT alone. Though the second stack is always smaller than the first, people do buy the Times after all (this is prior to testing the alternate hypothesis that it is used to shield one’s clothes from the dirty train seats because BT is too sacred to be yielded to this cause).

• This is a personal gripe with the Times. The Sudoku in the Chennai Times is always set to ‘Medium’ and the one in BT is always set to ‘Easy’. Hello, what is that supposed to mean!

2. Any confidence you might have gained by managing things perfectly well in Singapore disappears as soon as you witness your cousin bargain her way into buying a 400 Rupee book for 150. Especially when you know you’d have parted with 350 rupees for the very same thing.

3. Singapore without an umbrella is not equivalent to Mumbai without an umbrella. If you find a surgeon versed in the art of affixing umbrellas to one’s body parts permanently, do it.

4. Staring at Indian faces is accepted (by said Indian faces) in Singapore. It might do you well to realise that you’re in India, and that finding an Indian face in your immediate surroundings is not an unusual occurrence. The Indian faces in this part of the world might be a trifle disturbed by the sudden interest evinced from your side.

5. What you eat in Bombay is no longer your own business. Neither are the details of your digestive functions.

6. After a while, you get used to the idea of sounding like an NRI-snob who puts up blog posts called “Retrospective pointers for a Singapore-Mumbai transition”.

Sports unite, they forge us to a cause greater than ourselves. Ask my friend, who, on the night of April 2 2011, felt compelled to rush out into the streets of Bombay to celebrate India’s World Cup victory with strangers he would have otherwise been wary of on the local trains. And sport inspires. I only have to look at Rafa Nadal to learn to handle failure with grace, and his face is what pops up when I have to jog that extra mile.

And then sport brings out the worst. Biases so ingrained they meld into the truth, racism and jingoism at their extremes, and sometimes a tendency to lose sight of a game’s beauty for a team’s pride.

And then, there are times when none of that matters. When all you do is sit back and sigh, and watch. I had prepared myself, on the night of 28th May, for a painful 90 minutes of agony as I settled to watch the Champions League final. The pain was delivered in waves of anesthetizing beauty. Really, there was nothing you could do but shrug and pick your jaw off the floor. Barcelona stamped their masterclass over their sport, and they made us forget what sport has turned us into. Instead, they reminded us of why we turned to sport.

Rule 2. Badminton doubles is not a ‘team sport’. If you sit back and try acting inconspicuous while your teammate scurries across court, chances are that your teammate is now your ex-teammate. Also ex-friend.

Rule 3. As my friend Yingling says, this is the Golden Rule. “Act like you are running behind the ball when you’re actually doing your best to dodge it”. She’s a pro and has perfected it down to an art form. The only time she touched the ball over 30 minutes of ‘football’ was when she was daydreaming on the field and the ball bounced off her as she yelped in fear. Yingling, I bow to thee.

Rule 4: (Alternative to Strategy 3) Football, if you’re a novice, isn’t really football. It’s ‘Massage Therapy’. Since your feet turn to jelly as soon as you get within two feet of the ball, kicking it is clearly not the strategy to employ. Which is why you follow my favourite line from football commentary- “get as many bodies behind the ball as possible”. If the opposing team is anywhere close to scoring a goal, just stand in the way of the ball. The ball usually ends up hitting you at various parts of your body that aren’t your foot and you get your free massage!
Note 1: Do NOT stand waiting for the ball to come flying to your head. Headers aren’t as cool as they look when it’s your head that’s on the line. Also keep spectacles out the way.
Note 2: Try ensure that your body doesn’t become a buffer off which the ball bounces right to the opposing team’s players. Somehow that tends to happen all the time.
Note 3: Yes, Rule 3 is a much better idea than Rule 4, especially when the opposing team sends balls shooting like cannonballs.

Rule 5: Basketball. Otherwise called ‘Running-and-Chasing Ball’.
The basket’s too high. The ball’s too heavy. When you bounce it, it refuses to return into your hand. And everyone around you is at least half a foot taller. Go fish.
If all your captain tells you in his pep talk is to “try make yourself useful, ok?”, go sit outside court. Trust me, that is where you will be the most useful (else follow Rule 3). If, however, you are stuck with a more encouraging captain, pick the weakest person on the opposing team and run behind him as he runs away from you. If you run close enough (and if you’re a girl the referee will forgive you your indiscretions), he will be so busy avoiding you he can’t get to the ball. Send him a friendly wave in front of his face. Again, if you’re a girl, he won’t smack you back. And remember to avoid said player for the rest of your life.

Happy Playing!

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

I read this yesterday (read it first to understand the rest of this post). A fleeting AWWW moment later, I promptly came up with better reasons for people to ‘date a girl who reads’.

Date a girl who reads. The one who always has a book in hand. If you’re a poor conversationalist, as most people tend to be, you’ll always have a topic to start with. She’s the one with the glasses, the one whose face you usually find buried in her latest literary acquisition. She’ll either be too short-sighted or too preoccupied to notice the details of your unsightly face. Date a girl who reads. All her idols are fictional and she sets low standards for real people. She won’t dump you; she’ll accept your numerous shortcomings with resignation rather than disappointment. Date a girl who reads. You’ll never be able to match up to Mr. Darcy or James Potter or George Kirrin. You don’t have to work on impressing her, she won’t expect to be impressed.

When you’re showering her with the inanities of your life, she’ll be drifting away into beautiful imagined worlds within her head. She’ll look forward to such opportunities and not tire of your chatter as most people are, I’m sure, wont to do. Date a girl who reads. She is, in all likelihood, sufficiently intelligent to earn a living of her own and might even support you when your inadequacies lead you to bankruptcy. Find the mousy creature ignoring the crowd at the bus-stop. She won’t bother you during the football world cup because she’ll be on her couch, grabbing the little bit of quality nuisance-free reading time that has come her way.

Even better, date a girl who cooks.

that three awesome singers practising together makes for great listening, as does three singers practising individually. I can now nod intelligently pretending to understand when classical music is being discussed instead of the blank stare that was my earlier expression of choice.

that living with three cooks is the best thing that could happen to a person. Every ounce of karma I’ve accumulated over 21 years of existence has been used up in gaining this boon, I’m sure.

that living with three cooks also turns you into maamis. Our favourite dinner table conversation is what to cook for our next meal (besides college gossip banter, of course, but well of course, we don’t gossip).

that it is perfectly acceptable to invite people for dinner based on the number needed to play a game of cards. If Bilbo Baggins can do it, why can’t we?

that living with people your age can really bring things into perspective. You stop fretting about your lax days in lab when people have 14-hour days filled with office politics.

that friends do tolerate what parents do. Two a burnt plate, a broken rice cooker and several tantrums later, I haven’t been thrown out into the cold!

And there is beauty in the mundane. The 9 to 6 job that shrouds a dream within- even if that dream is little more than an iPhone or a car. That’s what you see on an 8.15 188 from Choa Chu Kang to Harbour Front Interchange. A collective people working for individual dreams. And now that I’ve added my dream university to this gigantic wishlist, I think I’ll finally change the ‘Location’ on all my internet accounts from Mumbai to a little red dot.