The New Normal

The sunless dawn, the sleepy eyes, awoken by localised sirens,
The time-zone asleep, unearthly the vibes, solemn the faucet runs,
A woody scent, a dusty wink, a frosty itch, a wish informal,
A dewy freshness, a lazy wipe; and thus you welcome the new normal.

Thus you welcome the new normal, thus you welcome the new normal.(4)

A gulp of water, the ambrosia of earth, its taste most appealing,
The blessing of the touch of wind, grazing the sense of feeling,
Stimulating the very existence the gift of untroubled breathing,
And the sight of the abode, sweet abode, ever assuring, ever alluring.

Not knowing where the beginning is, not knowing where the ending was,
The mystery continues, enchanting all, demanding an anxious moment's pause,
Where will you be later today, tomorrow and forever, with eagerness the mind asks,
Why care now? Just follow the safe convention and fulfil those humdrum tasks.

Are you sure this is the way you welcome the new normal?(4)

No, it's gone all bad and decayed, the way of the fathers the way they had written,
Now the ruins stand derelict, underneath debris of old memories forgotten,
Pardoned always are redundancy and paradox, which abound ubiquitously anyway,
Your fate stands ahead, ready to be scripted the way you want it to play.

Untrodden is the road to heaven, with obstacles, many small but one enormous,
Unconquered is the heaven itself, so you set out to rule with spirits pompous,
The way is easy, just be alone, the power of solitude will march you home now and ever,
But you know you can't take them for granted, you might lose them (and yourself) forever

So with doubt and trepidation you welcome the new normal.(4)

The chains of pain, the wails of love, the groans of hunger, the cries of thirst,
Will you be content with just reaching the end? Escaping the anguish? Being the first?
The heaven will be where it's always been, or rather it won't be where it never was,
The road is but a landscape fickle, soak the fullest before without a trace it dissolves.

In the quest for greatness unseen, the desire for the miracle of sprouting big wings,
Why forget the magic of walking on grass? Of swimming in waters? Of all the little things?
So before you lay your eyes to rest and pray to yourself for your soul to keep,
Do you wish to be gratified with you, or do you wish to lay restless and fail to fall asleep?

And with decisiveness and finality you welcome the new normal.(8)

An agnostic's FB reply to his fundamentalist school-friend

"And coming to the point of there being a mosque or not, I think I made it very clear in my status msg that I believe having a temple or a mosque over there is going to be equally useless (or even a church, a synagogue or a fire-temple for that matter). And I have never understood this concept of your god and my god - Greek and Latin might be more comprehensible to me. What Rajiv Gandhi did then and what Manmohan Singh and the Supreme Court do now is none of my concern, because I am content in my (human) life and don't need to worry about what happens on a little piece of land somewhere in UP - It will be like worrying about "who will be staying in my house 200 years from now". Obviously I do not care about the history (Thanks for the offer though).

"The only thing I know for sure is that the Universe (or the Multiverse if that appeals more) existed far before man and his temples / mosques / churches, and it is going to exist till eternity long after the last man is destroyed, and not a trace is left of any of his 'achievements', including religion. For the brief period of time that man lives, if he is keen to divide his race on the basis of the name that he wants to assign to the Universe and its Creator, then I am not interested in being a part of any such division. For holding this belief, I have been cursed and criticised too often, but an agnostic never really cared about others' opinions, did he?"

Let me live one last moment........

Let me live one last moment,
In which I care about what befalls
To a story left untold,
To a wish left unfulfilled.

Let me live one last moment,
Of infatuation, of irrationality, of adolescence,
Of fantasies, of thirsty souls, of broken hearts,
Of reminescence, of tears, of dreams dead.

Let me live one last moment,
In which lies the entire life,
Of me and of the things I have ever loved,
The things, alas, that I had never owned.

Let me live one last moment,
Of stagnancy, of resistance, of attachment,
Of vulnerability, of concern, of respect, of care
For all those dear and near and far.

Let me live one last moment,
Of vicissitudes, of emotions, of unease,
Of trust, of insecurities, of faith,
Of being weak, of being human.

Let me live one last moment,
Of non-rhyming poems, of imperfections,
Of pretenses, of pretensions,
Of conceit, of anger, of envy, of sadness.

Let me live one last moment,
In which is buried the truth of past,
In which dwells the void of present,
In which awaits the illusion of future,
In which I forgo the life I cherish,
In which I forgo the life I could live,
In which I forgo the life I should live,
In which I forgo the life I would live.

Let me live one last moment,
Let me live one last moment.......

Commandments of Sarcasm - II

Thou shalt never stop being sarcastic, public reaction notwithstanding.

Commandments of Sarcasm - I

No matter how much thou art tempted to make it clear that thou art not being serious but merely sarcastic, thou shant use a ;) or 'lol' or 'rofl' or any other intended-to-show-amusement expressions at the end/start/midst of the said sarcasm. Rather thou shalt proceed with the flow even though the converser might think for time indefinite that thou art being serious.

Random Ruminations - V

Change is good; but no-change is better.

Random Ruminations - IV

The main growth driver of the pornographic industry worldwide, is our lack of faith in our own imagination.

The Tale of Three Losses

Part 1: How I lost my dignity.....

Date: 10th April, 2009; Time: 10:00 A.M.;

Venue: Room no. 12, Ground Floor, B-building, Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology & Applied Nutrition (better known as Dadar Catering College), Veer Savarkar Marg, Dadar (W), Mumbai - 400028.

Occasion: PI (Personal Interview) for admission to IIM-C

Background: Yours Truly (hereafter referred to as YT) had never seriously planned on embarking on the journey to acquiring the most-hyped educational degree, straight after (presumably) acquiring the second-most hyped one. Nevertheless, when a free, non-poisonous lunch presents itself on your table without any initiative on your part, you start believing that you had desired to obtain that lunch all along. You even start imagining that devouring the plateful of delicacies would be the best thing to happen in your life. Now discontinuing the no-longer-palatable-food-analogy, in layman's words, at the mentioned time and place, YT's sole objective was to get into IIM-C (IIM-A had never really spawned a similar 'ambition' in YT and IIM-B had always had a rigidly entrenched idea about what constitutes 'ambition', while being ignorant about ability and smartness).

The GD (Group Discussion) as usual tried to bring out the animal inside all of the 'aspirants' present, by enclosing 12 of us in a semi-circular imaginary cage and asked to keep shouting at the top of our voices whatever we want to, for around 10 minutes. And as always, a topic (on the lines of 'Success of NGOs implies failure of Government') was given for the sake of formality; everyone of us knew that we were free to vigorously exercise our vocal chords to our hearts' content about what we had for breakfast in the morning, why we left our job at Microsoft/Google/Yahoo/Nomura (and for lesser mortals like YT, Infosys/TCS/Tech Mahindra/Wipro), why did we not eat the previous night, and how-can-anyone-forget? 65%-of-India's population-is-younger-than-30, and somehow connect all these to the 'given topic'. After the expected test of the 'survival of the outspoken', the turn came for each to prove that one is the least worthless of all present there, namely, the Personal Interview.

So, now the real story of the assault on YT's dignity begins (does YT oblige???)

To be continued..........

Sore-throated tweets of a disgruntled song-bird - III

European banks fall short of 3.5 billion Euros tier-I capital. What stress was being tested? That of a stretched rubber-band??

Sore-throated tweets of a disgruntled song-bird - II

When you have a choice between watching a good movie, and studying for some unneeded, crappy test, always choose the former, mainly because you are less likely to fall asleep and waste a couple of hours doing that.

Raajneeti - a review

Usually, you would not expect Naseeruddin Shah to be consigned to a 5-minute mini-cameo in a socio-political thriller, especially after seeing him to be one amongst the eight 'stars' depicted on the poster. Nevertheless, if one wished to see good performances, this reasonably fast-paced attempt at a 3-hour adaptation of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharat, would not disappoint. Be it the GenerationX-esque exploits of the calm-and-collected-and-murderous Sooraj Kumar (played by the ever-so-non-versatile Ajay Devgn - apparently the latest prey of numerology) or the power-hungry Virendra Pratap (Manoj Bajpai, excellent, bravo!!) or his power-hungry cousin Prithviraj Pratap (Arjun Rampal, suprisingly expressive - and impressive) or the latter's younger-US-return-budding-Ph.D-able-to-do-anything-for-his-family-including-taking-a-slap-on-his-cheek-and-falling-to-the-floor-in-one-great-aerial-circle-and-apologising-to-a-corrupt-police-officer-for-no-mistake-of-his bro, Samar (Ranbir with his usual, intelligent under-act) or the shrewdly lackadaisical Brij Gopal (Nana Patekar at his non-violent best) or the silent victim Bharti Rai (Nikhila Trikha, brilliant), everyone plays his / her part quite well.

The opening half-an-hour though makes you feel inclined to develop some self-inflicted bald spots at the prospect of losing your bucks (especially the horribly picturised sequence in the hospital, where the founder of the Rashtriya Janshakti Party, Bhanu Pratap Singh is admitted after suffering a paralytic stroke - the entire scene looks hastily improvised to say the least - and chants like 'jab tak suraj chand rahega, bhanu pratap ka naam rahega' which occupy half of the screen time, contribute as well). But as the movie progresses, the mind-games and more so, the murder-games materialise between the cousins and their families. The film reaches a crescendo at half-time when the plot appears to thicken and the audience is tempted to forgo that extra-large bucket of popcorn so as to avoid missing the beginning of the second half, what with Ranbir Kapoor's character being unveiled gradually as he comes into his own. But with the expectation of the plot thickening comes the disappointment of the realisation that there is no plot in the first place - just both parties taking out men from each other with slightly innovative methods admittedly. But the only motivation to watch by this time remains to see which party is the victorious one in the end, and anyone having a less-than-decent idea of the culmination in Mahabharat would be able to guess the outcome - but, waiting for it is actually less excruciating than one would expect from a three-hour virtually song-less movie. So, that is a reason sufficient, I guess, for granting some instinctual brownie points.

The movie had a chance halfway to turn out to be legendary, but in the end it falls short of being even a must-watch, as one can't help but notice certain deficiencies. Katrina Kaif and Sarah Thompson could have been given much more substantial jobs than just being conscientious good-lookers, atleast one (male) politician could have been reasonably expected to decide that politics is not worth all the bloodshed and could have withdrawn from the mess, Prithvi and Samar's dead dad (some Pratap Singh, can't remember the first name) could have actually held his breath for some time - come on man, he was clearly breathing his way through the whole shot under the white cloth, (at the risk of repeating myself) Nasseruddin Shah's fans could have clearly hoped for him to be assigned some more footage than just being the quintessential surya devta, some nice compositions could have been effectively used in the background (but then, no songs are better than bad songs, especially in the background), some dialogues could have been eliminated or rather, replaced by silent expressions by making use of the talents available at disposal (once Ranbir goes something like - "Pata hai yahaan media ke paas freedom hai, lekin iska yeh matlab nahi ki media us freedom ko leke hum par aatank machae" - Why?!?!?! No dialogues are better than bad dialogues. Period.)

Despite all the flaws though, the urgency with which the audience got up as soon as the credits started rolling, was certainly unwarranted. Good cinematography coupled with excellent performances always produce a cocktail worth trying rather than not trying. And if one gets an irresistible urge to go to a multiplex at least once every month, then Raajneeti should be a pretty good bet, because as the quality of contemporary Bollywood movies suggests, this could be the best non-Aamir Khan-starrer for a long time to come (I would have held high hopes from 'Raavan' if I hadn't had the misfortune to not skip 'Guru').

My rating: 3 / 5.

Random Ruminations - III

Suicide is widely considered to be an act of cowardice. The fault with this argument is the presumed generalisation of the circumstances in which suicides are committed.

A suicide committed to escape from a dull / boring / screwed-up / bad, etc. life (as is generally assumed to be the case) may be remotely considered to be cowardly (although arguably it is an act of pure, self-obsessive logic)

But a suicide committed to escape from a life well-lived has no equal in terms of adventurous bravado.

Random Ruminations - II

Someone should make adhesives for broken hearts.

Random Ruminations - I

I always wondered why people went to temples, mosques, churches, etc. for praying to God (who must either be everywhere or nowhere, right?). Then I got acquainted with the concept of wi-fi and things became clearer.

Life at the crimson paradise

Coming soon.......

Sore-throated tweets of a disgruntled song-bird - I

A trivial thing does not become significant by just taking it seriously.

Philosophical Gyaan - VII

Every moment, you have two logically relevant options to choose from:
1. Think that you are living every moment
2. Think that you are dying every moment
The second option is not that bad either since it gives you the advantage of not being shocked at finding yourself dead all of a sudden, when you would say, "big deal" (assuming that your sarcasm won't die with you. It would be really sad if it does).

Cryptocross - I

(Clicking on the crossword might give you a clearer image, which can be copied to a word file and the solutions written on.)

Across:
1. Babes with rectangular extremities somehow help you with cutting-edge tools (7)
5. Race around ten squared cricket-pitch lengths (4)
7. The small city will not be shortly changed (4)
8. Use tray somehow to get to the tidal river-mouth (7)
9. Dormant, refreshing talent (6)
10. A circus accoutrement may catch muddled alphabetical end in a non-British way (7)
13. Fall behind with empty-headed goon to reach the salt-water lake (6)
15. One of the hundred cellulose fabrics is colourful and waxy (6)
18. Happen before something that was somehow parted electronically (7)
20. A confusing publicity race for acquiring the supporting series of a kind (6)
21. Accomplish the corruption of the best of the pack in a bee house (7)
22. Renovated room became an open wasteland (4)
23. Creepy, headless lake (4)
24. Disgruntled son glares at the set of gifts (7)

Down:
2. Hitler was born where Al wasn’t down-under (7)
3. Relate without right to induce excitement (5)
4. A partly floral way of doing things (5)
5. Ferrous deficiency is caused by the absorption of volatile amine by Alcoholics Anonymous (7)
6. Destroy the snake-tail on the way (5)
11. Enthusiasm without much ado while dozing (4)
12. Mark of an injury due to crashing of cars (4)
14. Result of a changed coo not heard (7)
16. Dazedly save shortened long month to get sets of seven diatonic notes (7)
17. The head of the borough is on a short march with half-rebounding toy (5)
18. A gem of a Russian cereal (5)
19. The clear sky can be imagined to consist of anaesthesia (5)

Matter of fact - XIV

It is pretty obvious that God is either everywhere or nowhere. In either case, squandering millions of taxpayers' money on construction of places of worship, is not justified. But then, the human penchant for doing unjustifiable deeds is quite legendary.

Quote Hanger - IV

There are two types of people on earth.
Type 1: who do not believe in luck and miracles, who believe that they are alone and no one is out there to look after them and that fills them with fear.
Type 2: who believe in luck and miracles, who believe that there is always a higher power somewhere who will protect them in times of danger and that fills them with hope.

- Mel Gibson in 'Signs'

There is one more type:

Type 3: who do not believe in luck and miracles, who believe that they are alone and no one is out there to look after them and that fills them with hope.

- Adarsh Shettigar

Matter of fact - XIII

There are too many stupid people living on this planet.

Matter of fact - XII

Success is not about never falling, but about getting up every time one falls.

Also, the above sentence is nothing but bucketful of crap, and made up as an excuse by those who were foolish or incompetent (or sometimes unfortunate) enough to fall in the first place.

Matter of fact - XI

Time is like a rural Indian wife; no matter how much you abuse her, she offers herself to you silently, ceaselessly and unconditionally.

Philosophical Gyaan - VII

There is always a right time and a right place to start something good..... The time is now, the place is here.

Matter of Fact - X

Commitment without ability often fetches more than ability without commitment (sadly).

Life - preface

The redefining e-novel 'life' is a philosophical attempt at compensating for all the idled-away non-blogged hours of the past 12 weeks and hence, for the lack of compelling torturous epistolaries.

The topic 'life' has been chosen as a smack on the face of the agitators propagating hatred about this blog for the heck of it and on top of that, finding a justifiable cause for their unrest, that being the irrevelance of the posts. So, here is a 'relevant' subject - life. All you esteemed critics out there, try all you want to get away from this one - you can do that only once and won't live to do it again.

Matter of fact - IX

The seriousness with which you are listened to, is (usually) inversely proportional to how much you speak.

Matter of fact - VIII / Philosophical Gyaan - VI

Sometimes in life we have to choose between a right way and an easy way. But at other times, the two ways coincide and we don't have to make a choice at all.

Quote Hanger - III

Time has no divisions to mark its passage; there is never a thunderstorm to announce the beginning of a new year. It is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

- Thomas Mann

Quote Hanger - II

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal, is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

-Douglas Adams in his speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, UK, 1998

Matter of Fact - VII

The saddest thing that can happen to one's ability is the loss of one's own faith in it.

Quote Hanger - I

More than our abilities, our choices tell who we truly are.

- J.K. Rowling

(Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter in 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets')

Matter of fact - VI / Philosophical Gyaan - V

You may think that mere existence is a miracle, or you may think that it is a curse; either way, you will be right.

The dawn of a new era?

(After an exaggeratedly long break from blogging, I am back to torment my (apparent) well-wishers who incidentally happen to have undue interest in my writing skills, having occassionally reached such a fever pitch that my online absence results in me being on the receiving end of pretty petty chivying. So, if you want some, come get some. It's revenge season, man!!)

The November of 2008 will be remembered as the dawn of a new era for Americans and Afro-Americans. The historic moment of the birth of the new Deal with Barack Hussein Obama becoming the first ever black American president, will bring nostalgic tears to many an eye who have been there, seen it all and witnessed the fulfilment of Martin Luther King's dream to a substantial extent. For once, the mere election of an individual to the pinnacle of political echelons made a considerable fraction of the world population forget the many obstacles on the road ahead. This is one of those rare moments that will be firmly etched on the minds of the (concerned) humans for all their lives, and will go down in history as an epoch-making milestone.

For a certain other set of people(mostly not overlapping with the first set), the November of 2008 will be remembered for another reason altogether(albeit a little too anticlimactically insignificant compared to the previous one). The ardent cricket-following Indian populace (of which I naturally consider myself a part of) got the moment of its dreams when India defeated Australia fair and square in a 4-test match series: 2-0 in statistical terms.

The series also saw two stalwarts of Indian cricket retiring completely from international cricket. You could not help but think that the timing of retirement of Anil Kumble and Saurav Ganguly could not have been more apt. Not because they would not have been able to win matches for India in the future, not because their replacements will be performing much better than they have been, not because they no longer had the hunger for success and the passion for playing cricket that we have come to associate with them over the years, but because of the likelihood of failure being interspersed among the moments of glory in the morrow, possibly resulting in the tainting of what would have been illustrious careers anyways, and because of the realisation that at some point of time in sport the aging physical dimension of oneself can become a hindrance rather than an asset. So in the end, the decisions of both were that of going out on a high victorious note, so that Anil Kumble won't be remembered for his extensively dry spells towards the end and Saurav Ganguly for his relatively weak technique against short-pitched bowling.

The series does not only mean a possible end of the erstwhile Aussie domination of world cricket, but it also implies the beginning of a new era in Indian cricket, that of the captaincy of M.S. Dhoni, the man with the Midas touch in Ravi Shastri's words. While it is true that Dhoni's job was made much easier by the strangely lacklustre performance of the Aussies and most importantly the all-round team contribution to the victory, his well-deserved lion's share of the plaudits should not be taken away from him by any means. As far as the Aussies are concerned, the return of a certain Andrew Symonds might make a helluva difference and in conditions seamer-friendlier than found in the subcontinent, there is every reason to believe that they will be back to winning ways, in spite of the absence of Mr Glenn McGrath. Despite that, one thing is certain - from now on, the opposition won't enter the field thinking that the Aussies can't be beaten; because the golden aura of invincibility has now vanished.

Matter of fact - V

Self-belief makes prayers redundant; unfortunately, the converse is not true (or else, life would have been much easier).

Matter of fact - IV

Pulchritude is inessential for self-satisfaction.

Matter of fact - III

The more things change, the less they remain the same (logic).

Matter of fact - II

Arrogance is inversely proportional to ability (with possible exceptions) and directly proportional to insecurity (without exception).

Roger Federer vs .....................

This is what John McEnroe said about the Wimbledon 2008 men's singles final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal:
"There was so much drama and, we have to say thanks so much to Roger. There was class from both players and their levels were incredible. It was the best final ever. People talk about my matches with Bjorn, but this was better. It was an unbelievable effort from both players. I've never seen tennis like it. I don't know how Nadal did it because Roger was playing brilliant tennis after the first two sets. At 2-2 in the fifth set, I didn't know who was going to win. To say this match was magnificent is an understatement. Federer has dominated on grass in the past few years but now he has someone to equal him. Will Federer win Wimbledon again? I don't know."

No one could have summed it all up better in these few words.

Now the question that arises is not only whether Federer will win Wimbledon again or whether Federer will win any Grand Slam in the future or whether he will break Pete Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slam singles titles, but also whether he will be able to retain the no.1 spot for long. The only answer to these questions is that we'll have to wait and see.

If you ask me, Federer still has the capability to win atleast 3 more Grand Slam singles titles with which he would win a record 15 titles. But with other players (Nadal and Djokovic) not heeding the earlier aura of invincibility around Federer which had innumerably demoralised potential Grand Slam winners such as Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Roddick apparently even before the match started, there is no doubt in my mind that winning those 3 more titles is not going to be a piece of cake as it was for him in case of most of his 12 earlier titles, but it would be a really hard earned meal. And finally when he decides to close the curtains on his illustrious career (which for the sake of tennis, shouldn't be too soon), we will come to know who Roger Federer really is: one of the all-time greats, or someone who has even surpassed that level. As far as the French Open is concerned, I feel that Fedex would be derailed until Nadal doesn't feature in it (because after what happened at Roland Garros final, 2008 I feel that Rafa is too good to be beaten on clay by any of the current frontline players, no matter how much I dislike believing it).

But all of this wouldn't make a difference to me if every future Grand Slam final is even half as good as the Wimbledon 2008 men's singles final. (And I would be hoping that somewhere in the future, Marat Safin is able to win a Grand Slam or two, out of the blue).

What to do?

After a four-week hiatus, I'm back to blogging with this solitary post just for the sake of those who have visited 'blogger' purely for reading this beloved blog of mine, which not only has led me to believe that I'm a decent writer but also has played a part in improving my typing speed.

Without wasting any more time writing mediocre fifth-grade stuff, let me move towards the supposedly philosophical, 'high IQ' standards that I have set for myself.

So here goes nothing:

Looking up at the tribladed aerator (or air-director, should I say) with my body stationed on the couch in horizontal equilibrium, I wonder whether being an ardent advocate of nihilism is the right way to live.

When the overall scheme of things allows me to take a break from the mundane activities spanning the diurn and the nocturn, and contemplate the various possibilities of the origin of and the reason behind everything (in dissonance with one of my philosophical gyaans), I reaffirm my earlier view that whatever one does in one's lifetime will prove to be futile in the long run in the context of the seemingly unending panorama of space and time called as the multiverse (which appeals more to me than the more widely accepted concept of the universe). So what's the point in living. Remaining unaffected by the Total Perspective Vortex would imply that your soul and your will to live are already dead.

But then, another possibility occurs to me, the one proclaimed by me earlier in all those chronologically numbered anecdotal posts, which my inadequate cerebrum forced me to forget, as a result of which I once again become one of those bloody hypocrites I despise from the chasms of my coronary arteries.

The ultimate choice that I make among these two will obviously be immaterial in the end.
But this is not the end yet and hence, the dilemmic question of making the choice arises.

So, good-bye folks. See you after a fortnight. Meanwhile, let me make that much shouted-about (or rather, blogged-about) choice and also remind myself of my legacy, both inherent and otherwise. I suggest you do the same.

A must watch

If you haven't seen it before, see it now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yILDiU859FU&feature=related

The most famous football save ever, featuring the daredevil Rene Higuita of Columbia with no worries of victory or defeat, just aiming to provide pure entertainment.

You don't get to see such things these days.

Yaaaaaawwwwwwwwnnn

When you reach third year engineering and you appear for your examination, staying awake for the whole three hours becomes the biggest challenge of all.

So near and yet so far

There are very few things in life that are worth losing your sleep over, and in the past few years I had added the Champions' League semifinals and finals to the list of those things. So it was but natural that I fought the closing instincts of my eyelids to (inconsequentially) cheer my beloved Chelsea to glory in its first ever Champions' League final.

I always thought that nothing hurts more than seeing your team put up a pathetic performance (as Chelsea did in the first half, but escaped with a serious stroke of luck in the end), but I was proved wrong in the end.

Apparently, I had forgotten the dreadful record of my teams once the matches went down to penalty shootouts. It began with 2006 World Cup quarter-finals (the unheralded Portuguese trouncing the paper-tigers England 4-1 in penalties), followed up by 4-1 defeat of Chelsea to Manchester United (3-0) by penalties in the Community Shield, 2007.

All that looked to be changing when Petr Cech saved the third ManU penalty from Christiano Ronaldo. The heart of every Chelsea fanatic would have filled with ecstacy and would have pounded in anticipation of the turning of a new page in Chelsea's history. (The foolishly red-carded Drogba ensured that) Chelsea's fifth penalty was taken by none other than the inspirational John Terry, perhaps the last person to be expected to goof-up in a tight situation. But then, even Christiano had missed and luck gave John Terry the slip at the worst possible moment and the penalty shootout was then tied at 4-4.

It only took another couple of successful shots from ManU and a save from Van der Sar (off Nicolas Anelka) to bring a sudden death to all my hopes, aspirations and expectations of victory.

It is said that penalty shootouts are a lottery and most often rightly so. And there would be no denying that after their insipid first half performance, Chelsea fought back brilliantly throughout the match, enough to have deserved their victory, if it was to be.

From the final extra-time scoreline of 1-1, it can be rightly inferred that it was an even match (perhaps, with all the missed chances from ManU and the shots from Lampard and Drogba hitting the post, 3-3 would have been more apt). But sadly, one of them had to lose and even more sadly for me, it was destined to be Chelsea.

The scenes of joy and celebration from the Luzhniki in Moscow would have made me happy for ManU if Chelsea hadn't been their opponents. Anyways, well-played Manchester United, maybe a deserved win, or maybe not, doesn't make any difference now.

As far as Chelsea is concerned, it was the most awfully heart-breaking case of being so near and yet so far.

Philosophical Gyaan - IV

Life is too precious to waste even a moment of it hypothesising about its cause of origin (and coming up with dubious answers)

Philosophical Gyaan - III

Life is too precious to waste even a moment of it doing something that is not required (to be done).

- Funnily, I contradict myself by writing this blog.

Matter of fact - I

We need to complain; hence, we converse.

Philosophical Gyaan - II

Life is too precious to waste even a moment of it doing something that you don't like (to do).

Philosophical Gyaan - I

Life is too precious to waste even a moment of it worrying (about it).

Victory is the cake and revenge, icing

It all begins with a presumed supreme advantage you have on your side, not without the avoidable help of your antagonist. Continuing in that frame of mind, you think that nothing can stop you. You are the ultimate ruler of the world (of the continent, rather). And you prove it with a stroke of talented brilliance.

Then you take a break and savour your pachydermian exploits, utterly unaware of the scheming opposition's urge to get level with you.

The battle resumes and you are oozing with self-confidence (possibly qualifying as over-confidence). You don't expect anything to go against you and you even ignore the consequences of something that might do so.

And when you blink and see, it's a different world out there. It can't be true, you think. But your efficient senses don't agree with your ever-optimistic thought. You even pinch yourself for the dreaded confirmation and grudgingly you infer the seemingly only possible conclusion. But it ain't over yet..........

Shaking yourself out of your self-materialised Edwardian summer blues, you strive doubly hard, you don't want to give even an inch to those consistently over-achieving bloody idiots. But they are stronger than you. Fatigue starts showing up. You yearn for an opportunity to reassemble your physical, emotional and mental strength.

You get that opportunity and you reflect on how wonderful your situation could have been at this juncture if you had decided for it to be so. You repent and you pull out your hair. Even your tears evaporate in the heat of your anger. But then you seek solace in thinking that it could have been worse and the battle hasn't finished yet. You embark on a new beginning, remembering your legacy that made you what you are: special.

You restart with all guns blazing, minus the complacency this time round. The elusive reward now appears within sight but you are blindfolded for a moment and you lose sight of the goal. But you know that it is somewhere just round the corner. And yes indeed!!! You are back with a bang. You are eager to fulfil your potential, do justice to your abilities and you strike a double whammy into the guts of your enemies.

And then you are back to where you started from. A few scattered moments of glory are all that are possible for your opponents to achieve. Plenty of breathing space for you.

And then it's over. You finally win, you soak yourself in sweaty mirth, you dance with joy and relief because this time, it was you who won and someone else who lost and not the other way round which you have been used to and wary of experiencing.

The final whistle becomes just a physical sign of the inevitable occurrence that was waiting to happen for eons.

- This post was specially dedicated to Chelsea fans.