“Kavitha! My marriage has got fixed”
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“Hey! Congratulation Prakash! But why are you so sad for that. You are supposed to be happy. Are n’t  you”

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“Had I told it to someone else, I would have told it happily,kavi! But I am not able to pretend to be happy to you”

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“hm.. You have not forgotten anything I suppose..”

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“How kavitha?  How can I forget it so easily.. forget me.. what about you? Have you forgotten everything?”

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“Forgetting and not forgetting are all beyond the discussion Prakash. I am pretty clear. Moreover, thinking about the past I am not ready to lose a good friend like you”

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“Friend? Pease do not use the word “friend” any more kavita! I am not so cheap to claim my lover as my friend”

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“But I ve never thought you so!”

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“You are lying”

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“If you think so.. That’s not my mistake”

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“for argument sake you are telling it”

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“huh, In that case, You do not know the difference between truth and argument”

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“No, you do not the difference between love and friendship”

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“c mon. This is going crazy”

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“… You are cheating yourself kavitha! Tell me frankly, from the bottom of your heart, Don’t you love me? For heaven sake accept it kavi! I ll spend the rest of my life by hearing those words”

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“I ve alredy told whatever I wanted to tell you Prakash! There is no point in asking it again and again. Just for your happiness I don’t want to lie and I don’t need to do so also”

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“Sh*t! why the hell all the girls are so tough-hearted?”

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“No! Boys only confuse themselves without exactly knowing what is love and what is not”

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“Sick! Boys are all stupid and girls are the most intelligent creatures on the earth. Aren’t they?”

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“I didn’t mean it”

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“Then? What else did you mean?”

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“Cool down prakash! I guess you are little confused! Take a breadth! You are going to get married soon. A new angel is going to enter your life to bring you all the success under….”

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“F**k off, you and your bloody philosophies.  Please do not advise me; rather you kill me with a sword!”

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“Ok. Leave it! What do you want me to do?”

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“Don’t do anything. Keep quiet for some time”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

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“Kavitha!”

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“Hmm!”

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“Over these eight years, as I ve felt, did you not feel anything? To tell in your words, have you not ever thought about taking our friendship to the next level?”

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“..”

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“why are you silent? Answer me kavitha?”

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“No Prakash! Honestly speaking I ve never thought so.. you believe it or not, I have always seen you as a good friend only”

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“But I am not able to think so kavi!”

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“That’s not your mistake Prakash! You like me. You believe that I will be a good wife to you. I am not able to think about it wrongly from any angle and you have never made me feel uncomfortable with you”

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“Then you can agree to me”

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“See Prakash! Again I am telling, I like you so much. This eight years you have taken care of me like nobody else in the earth can! You have proposed very decently. Starting from exams to the interviews, in all simple things you helped me largely. But..”

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“But what..?”

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“But that does not necessarily mean that we should become life partners. There is nothing that you do not know. I do have certain limitations. Some family and societal restrictions. Fortunately or unfortunately, I ve  been brought up in that culture”

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”I am ready to come and talk to your parents also right.. why aren’t you accepting it..”

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“No Prakash! They believe so much that we are only friends. We should not disappoint them at any cost.”

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“How kavitha! For all questions you have a ready-made answer”

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“If there is a question there is supposed to be an answer too Prakash”

“…”

“…”

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“Ok what are you telling finally?”

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“I am telling that I ll come as the first guest for your marriage”

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“I am not ask…”

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“”Prakash! If we talk like this we would keep on talking like this forever. Leave it! Forget everything and enjoy your married life. Where am I going to go? I am going to be here only, with you always”

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“..”

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“even If you ignore me, I ll not hate you. I ll always be there to hear your philosophies. I ll pat on your head, whenever you do small mischievous things. I am going to be the first reader of all your articles. For all your birthdays I am going to be the first wisher. Ok?”

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“hmm.. ok”

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“why are you making a disgusting face dear?! look here! Bring the Prakash-only-trademark-smile in your face”

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“ee..eee”

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“Yes! That’s my boy! Then, give your fiancé’s phone number. I ll have to tease her for some time”

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“9036131410”

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“K Prakash! I am leaving… I ll go home and SMS you”

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“..hei!”

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“..hmm.. tell me!”

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“…”

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“..”

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“You are a wonderful article kavitha! (long pause)

Take care and I mean it, really”

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“…Th... Thanks Prakash! Bye!”

This time he did not pump his fists, this time he did not jump in the air, this time he did not utter any unparliamentary words to the crowd. It was a serene, unfazed celebration from Virat kohli as he reached yet another century against Srilanka last Saturday. He is making it a habit now to score centuries wherever he goes, making us believe that he is one of the finest prospects that the cricketing world has produced, in the last decade or so.

I saw Virat kohli first when he was captaining the U-19 team India in 2008. The team went on to win the world cup in a last over thriller. The way he ran on the field and hugged his bowler, I saw glimpses of the fighting spirit of ‘Dada’ and later when I saw him bat in a four-day match between India-A and Australia in which he and Rohit sharma made centuries apiece, my instinct said that he is going to become one of the most promising finds of Indian cricket. Of late, in the recently concluded India-Australia series, people were telling that Rohit sharma should be given chance and Virat has to be left out of the test team. But he shut all their mouth by scoring the most runs in both Test and ODI series.

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Over the last decade Indian cricket has produced some fantastic batting talents starting from Virendar sehwag to Mahendra singh Dhoni. But none of them have been as consistent in all the forms of the game as Virat kohli is at this point in time.(He has still not made a concrete point in the international test arena though)

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He entered the international stage without much expectations or any background. But once he got the opportunity he latched on to every possible chance he was provided with. If you remember it right, In the world cup team squad selection there was a tussle between him and Yusuf Pathan. But by his performances Virat became an obvious pick for the selectors and Suresh Raina had to make way for him. From then on he never looked back and converted all his hurdles to success. In fact he made it look like as if he had no hurdles during this course. But as we all would agree, it is not so easy as said.

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Arguably Indian cricket currently has few better talents than him who are finding it difficult to consistently perform in all stages, which is not a case with Virat. One thing that differentiates him out from others is that his passion to perform and the zeal to convert his ability to achievements. Understandably, this is one good quality that every youngster is supposed to possess. Day by day he is becoming an idol for all the growing talents not only in cricket but in any other field as well.

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Sometimes, we see Virat kohli as an over-excited kid, making bad scenes and showing immature emotions on the ground. But we all forget that he is in his early twenties and can learn from his mistakes. We keep making fun of him and he keeps scoring centuries. More importantly he is also making a statement to the world that he has developed his game considerably and learnt to control his emotions substantially. The last century and the following celebration was one example of his matureness. Mark my words, my dear friends! He is going to break some of the biggest records of the cricketing world down the line!

One of the oldest languages of India (for that matter, of the world), One of the very few languages that have a very large treasure of literature, one of the most venerated cultures of the world, one of the fewest places to live in definite peace in India, albeit having all these laurels do the elite language of Tamil and the state of Tamilnadu carry the same image across our compatriots and other nation people? Sadly, I would say no. The reason is our inability to communicate in a language in which they are comfortable. (For the proponents of the language, who have already started raising voices against this statement: I am one among you, please do read on)

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For the past three years, I have been living in Bangalore, perhaps one the most diverse cultured city of the world. I have at least talked to one person from all the states of the India. But none of them have shown willingness to visit Tamilnadu. The most disheartening aspect is that people are nearly scared to pay a visit there. I am sick of explaining them all what is Tamil and Tamilnadu all about. I had to, for a moment, take off my defending cap and wear my thinking cap to arrive at a conclusion on what goes wrong to end up in such a piteous scenario.

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The umpteenth passion that Tamilians show towards our language, has made us reluctant to learn other languages be it Hindi or even English. By virtue of that people from other state find it very inconvenient to be close with us. I swear, the so called passion-towards-mother-tongue in Tamilnadu is mere an illusion than reality. I have friends who do not even know to write a paragraph in Tamil, but jump between earth and sky to show off that they are ardent language lovers and they want to salvage the language from extinction. The perception that the language will become obsolete in case we allow our people to learn other languages is nothing but insane. Evidently, the language is impregnable to all such threats.

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I fear, we are unknowingly rendering a great humiliation to a race that presented hospitality as the most significant traits of humanity. While finding it tough even to talk to them, How would we elucidate a Bihari about the great “Thirukkural”, How would we lecture a Punjabi as what Specialty does the “silappathikaaram” hold, How would we explain our countrymen that we treat our friends’ friends as our friends, How would we tell our other state politician counterparts that we had politicians who respected opposite party men also. In English? Bull shit. We know we don’t take English seriously either.

Are our culture, heritage, rituals, in total our civilization, going to be confined to a mediocre 6 crore people? Are we going to end up as own trumpet blowers amongst ourselves? Are we not interested in making friends from Assam, Kashmir, and Rajasthan? Unless we realize, in blood, that a neutral language is all important to make this paradigm shift, we are going to be smelt bad by others.

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Hereby I am not telling having passion towards mother tongue is a sin. That would be silly from my end too. But the emphasis is on showing intent towards learning other language to lay a better path of communication. A kannadiga never gives up his language, A Bengali loves his language than anybody else in this world, and A Marati is so obsessed with his language than anything under the sky, besides all that they learn other languages, rather, they allow other languages. That makes their job simple. Let us ignite a transition here. We have been kept inside an enchanted ring for years; it is high time we break the shackles.

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When Vivekananda addressed the crowd in Chicago as brothers and sisters, the whole world stunned. We keep applauding that. Ironically, we have forgotten that we cannot address a crowd in New Delhi the same.  The next time we should address them “Bhaio aur Beheno”. Change should happen, not necessarily to start loving the other languages, but to get rid of the aversion towards them. At least we should not be the obstacles for the next generation to proceed in that front.

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Let us open new doors for our kith and kin to come to us. Let us be familiar to chapatti and Dal Makhani, Let us taste Phav bhajji and Rosogulla some times. Let us celebrate “The colourful Holi”. Bharat matha has been waiting for ages to see this happen. Let us make her dream come alive!

Hold on my dear friends. The subject can mislead you as you all are in the same age of mine. I understand. And knowing me, you would have bet on something that is totally different from what we are going to discuss here. Let’s move on! (Its mostly my brothers article and a few comments are mine J)

It’s been a week since I started to cook. Within that I burnt my fingers twice, cut my finger once while cutting vegetables, messed up the entire a kitchen in a span of minutes and spent hours together in cleaning. All these chaos made me write this small article which in all seriousness a sentimental one!

Have we ever thought how many times our mom would have hurt herself since she started cooking? Have we ever heard her complaining? Have we ever seen her taking a break from the kitchen? She would never say that she is hurt, that’s the beauty of perpetual mother love.

I have been to kitchen a lot of times to eat the snacks that she keeps for us and to loot the money she saves from market shopping. But hardly a few times I have helped her in cooking. And recently, I was helping my mom in cooking for about a week’s time when she was ill. I tell you my dear friend, it is tough. I am not talking from the perspective of just cooking but from the myriad varieties that she brings to your dining table without ever compromising on quality.

FlashBack: Recently I prepared the worst ever eatable (?!!) Maggie in an hour. (But in advertisements they claim Maggie can be made in two mins) And the question of the hour is, can Maggie really be made in two minutes? Barring Rajnikanth, No one could ever make it, I swear. Put aside your thoughts of him making ‘kothu-Parotta’ in -25 seconds!!

You talk about cooking and its demons. But in a sense, that too can come handy over a period of time as my recently married sister supposes.  Spare a thought for cleaning. It is difficult to describe and it’s the most disgusting part of cooking I would say. How many of us wash our plates after eating? (For the matter the vessels that we use.. Ah.. I am afraid to go to the sink in the early morning) And if you are aware of the way our guys eat chicken and mutton you must be holding your stomach by now. (Attention all Rajkirans!)

You come to realize the greatness of your mom’s cooking either when you cook for yourself or your over-enthusiastic wife comes up with something like a puliogare-chicken-biriyani and tosses up a “Hows that honey?” at you.

In all emotions, we criticized our mothers hell lot of times for the food. But have we ever praised or thanked her for good food any day? Shame on us. I am not writing this to hurt anybody and I am not going to ask you to become bodhi dharma (neither can I) in a single night. What I want from you guys is once our mom is done with her work “Just give her a beautiful kiss with a tight hug and praise that the food she made that day is the best food that you have eaten in your life time”. See the joy and happiness in her face that’s what she wants from us, after all.

NOTE:  Strictly, please refrain if you have a lady cook in your room/home. Given this generation from your male cook too…