Ajith Nair

As a child I harboured dreams about playing for India, I soon realized that playing for the building team was much easier and less pressured. All arguments about the perks of the job apart, I think it’s a tough life. Sad that it took a foreign coach’s death to nail that one home, for now at least. As a youngster when one hits the International cricket scene, the curtains in your bedroom are drawn wide open and a thousand cameras start following you like the Truman Show. Your privacy exists only when other cricketers or issues become more important, else its a day night game. Everything that you don’t do is also news, people would pay to have your shadow pass them by. You sign on big endorsements like Nike the smaller ones will keep queueing up... You’ll cut many ribbons and even lanes, no one will stop you. Every morning the papers will have you reading things that happened to you while you were sleeping, or while you were looking the other way. At award functions, you’ll sit next to p...

muezzin calls for the aft prayer a solitary shirt hangs to dry an expectant crow peeps from the window a still life afternoon slowly goes by The summers not hot yet but its stillness is here to stay the stuble on my cheek feel full remains of a lazy sunday soon the sun will laze too and the shadows will dominate the dogs will remain idle and the cows will ruminate The muezzin will call again and the sun might relent by then a small breeze might twirl the solitary shirt a summer day shall pass by then

Ah the budget, gets blockbuster status even though the guy in the lead role has remained the same for the last four years…he wears a loin cloth that inspired India when wrapped around some other thinner legs half a century ago but now is a symbol of a conservative south….PC wears a Harvard accent on a Chidambaram surname. He wears a progressive veil on a Pandi bandwagon. After that rather controversial beginning (sorry that one didn’t end in the previous paragraph), let me begin. My biggest problem with the budget, well a big problem that I have with the budget, or let me just say…well should I just not say. What the hell!!!! It’s the jargon, men! (as my petite East Indian receptionist might tell you). What’s a fiscal deficit, is it what we generally call being kangaal. Imagine the street corner beggar go “Sir can you contribute to reducing my fiscal deficit” (A certain World Bank does hear that from us, maybe used to). Or for that matter what the hell is capital ACOUNT CONVERTIBILITY....