My Relationship with.. Chelsea FC : How I became a Chelsea fan

When I started watching football during my school days it was just for passing my time with no real interest in the game. This is mainly because in India, football was almost obscure but for some presence in certain pockets. The nation is so cricket-crazy that the fans and media have no time or money for any other sport.

Not being an avid football fan, I started watching the weekend football matches on TV sparingly. Normally, they would show all matches of Man Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal. They show the matches of the other teams only if the slots did not clash with that of the top three. I had no idea about any of these teams. Then I saw a team playing in a Blue Jersey....

You know you’ve become a fan of a team, when you feel upset like hell after a defeat. You know you’ve become a fan of a team, when you get into never-before superstitions for a team to hold on to that lead. You know you’ve become a fan of a team when you defend a team to death, though they maybe right or wrong. All these things started happening to me with Chelsea. Without even knowing from when, I had become a  Chelsea fan !! . Very soon, everything about me turned Chelsea. I started watching and following their every game almost too fervently.

At first I was given quizzical looks when I told anyone that I was a Chelsea fan, because I didn't just support Arsenal or Man Utd like most people in India did. But I was fascinated about Chelsea and one thing about being a fan is, if you’re a real fan, the reason need not continue to exist. For many people I know the success and fame was a reason why they started to follow Man Utd or Arsenal, the disappearance of that reason might change their loyalty. But I know for sure that won't happen with me, I would support Chelsea even if they get relegated to the second division.

So, I started to read. I read everything I could find. I learned the history of the club and can now tell you how John Terry came through the academy and became Mr. Chelsea and can tell you everything about the Legendary genius of a certain Gianfranco Zola.

I've heard that there are moments when you want to start supporting a new team. But I just can’t do it. I won’t do it. I still bleed Chelsea Blue. I can’t cut the cord but Im not entirely sure why. So I do the unthinkable, I don’t want Chelsea to win.. I expect it. I get upset if they lose and if they don’t win by four goals. I get depressed when they lose to Arsenal or Tottenham or any other team and Im not quite sure how I’ll feel when we will play in the Champions League Final again.

Why did I start this blog? I love football, I love Chelsea and I love the fact that we are the only club whose stadium's pitch, the turnstiles and naming rights are owned by Chelsea Pitch Owners, a non-profit organisation of which the fans are the shareholders.

For me, this blog has been great and I hope you liked it too !! 

PM Manmohan Singh's reply to Anna Hazare

Dear Mr. Anna Hazare (The Last of the Gandhians) ,

Let me first of all Congratulate you. Your Strike has led to an increase in the Sales of TATA TEA (Utho mat Jaago) by 1%.

But the Bad News is. That's about it.

GANDHI-GIRI IN TODAY's TIMES :
In Response to your Letter, As an Economist I thought it was my duty to make you aware of some new developments when it comes to Gandhi Ji Ideology.
Gandhi's ideas are Eternal. But his Idea now has metamorphosed into a Physical Form.
In the form of Currency and Gandhi Family.
Today Gandhi Giri is done by Money.
Earlier you had to, kill people to plunder their wealth.
Now you just ask them to Vote, and then on Everything happens Constitutionally in accordance to the Law. CWG, 2G, Even Sonia G.
No Need to Kill anyone. But on an whole, It's all Peaceful. Like Gandhiji liked it.
Money, Not Hunger Strikes today is the tool of Non Violent Protest.
Also the Little Impact Recent Wikileaks expose has had on the Ruling Govt. goes to show the Shift.

It's no longer SATYAMEV JAYATE......  It's SONIAMEV JAYATE!

Money is the Modern Day Gandhi. So Please Don't Ever call yourself a Gandhian Ever Again!!!! For you have None!
Mukesh Ambani is Modern day Gandhi. And Pranav Mukherjee is the Nehru. Because Congress always does what Mukesh says. (Courtesy Radia Tapes)
Karunanidhi is the modern day B.R Ambedkar.. Because he writes his own Rules. Like the Spectrum Allocation Rules. ( Read the 2G Scam)
Mayawati is the Reincarnation of Rani Laxmi Bai. Because her Philosophy is, "Because Every Rani without Laxmi is a Bai!"
Sharad Powar is the modern day Bal Gangadhar Tilak: " Corruption is my Birth Right and I shall have it!"

And Manmohan Singh (me) is the Good Boy. And History Shows. Good Boys in Politics are also Good for Nothing!



Okay, you have got a couple of Likes on Facebook. 100 more People have started following you on Twitter. But It's not Egypt Mr.Anna.
Now we can't accuse you of a false Rape Case. You are too old for that.. But we can arrest you for an attempt to Suicide.

So Don't be carried away by those letters from Aamir Khan.
And if he is so Serious about your cause. Ask him to Join the Hunger Strike.
I mean Bhagat Singh didn't write a Letter to Gandhi to express his Support. He Showed Up.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak didn't tweet his Slogans. "Swaraj is my Birth Right and I shall have it!" He Showed Up.
Mr.Khan's Conscience Suddenly wakes up before a movie is up for release.

So Anna, Don't be fooled by the Support. It's only till the IPL begins. Then they will be back to supporting their Teams. And you will only be left with the Support of Tier 2 and Tier 3 Cities who can't afford an IPL Team.

If I don't pass the Anti Corruption Bill. You won't Eat.
If I Pass the Bill, then Sonia G wouldn't let me Eat.
Don't you see. Both of us are in the same Boat!

Please understand. I am only a SINGH. Not a KING.

My Sincere Apologies.

MANMOHAN SINGH

The value of your.. Life

In a seminar,
The speaker started off by holding up a Rs 500 note. In the room of 100, he asked “Who would like this Rs 500 note ”
Hands started going up.
He said “I am going to give this Rs 500 note to one of you but first, let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple the note.
He then asked “Who still wants it?”
Still the hands were up in the air.
“Well” he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.
He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty. “Now who still wants it?” Still the hands were up in the air.
“My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth Rs 500
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.
We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value.
You are special – Don’t ever forget it!

India are the.. World Champions - The night of glory

Now this blog has been long overdue....mostly in part due to my crazy Laziness.
This post has been in my drafts for a long time now and I finally decided to complete it.

The final match of the World Cup 2011 will be something that will always be etched in my memory. From the moment India and Sri Lanka qualified for the final I started to detest the Sri Lankan team to the core. I was thinking, "How dare they come in the way of Sachin holding the cup" . I was being a complete douchebag addicted to prove that India can beat the Lankans. Normally my craziness would have been laughed off, but this time I was encouraged by my equally cricket-crazy friends.

I cannot remember anything that happened in the last few minute before the match except for the collective sigh of  "Teri maa ki " on everyone's lips when they saw Sreesanth's name on the playing eleven.

The match then started and after a beautiful innings ( I did not admit that it was a great innings until after we won the match ) by Jayawardene. Zaheer & co. were pounded neatly and almost too sweetly by Mahela, the Lankans had made 275, it was a good score but I was confident that we could do it after all we had GOD in our ranks playing on his home turf. The script could not have been written more beautifully for him to finally achieve his Holy Grail. A Sachin century seemed to be awaiting us.

But when the illegal slinger took Sehwag on the second bowl and then Sachin a few overs later my hands became a bit cold and for the first time a small feeling that maybe we couldnt win it crept into my mind, but still a not so small ray of hope was left in me and damn that hope was turned into a large pool of confidence by Gambhir and Kohli and I was back to my crazy joyous state and then Dhoni came along. I have always been a fan of this guy's cool rocking attitude. After a few tense moments he and Gambhir brought THE moment closer.

And when we were a couple of runs away from winning the Cup. Here I was sitting thinking it was all due to the same boxers, shirt, shorts I was wearing and even the place where I sat since the time the World Cup started.

When Dhoni finally hit that six,that moment, that shot and the collective release of a nation waiting for 28 years will always be etched in my mind.

Everything from that moment is a bit of a blur. Now I have been living my entire life in Hyderabad and I have seen many a beautiful scenes in this wonderful city but what I saw that night surpassed all those. People were screaming, shouting, running around like crazy and hanging out of the windows of cars.

In one of those rare moments everything in India came to a stand still and only one thing was on everyone's minds...... We are the World Champions !!

What a glorious and eventful night !!

Twilight: The Way I Saw It

TWILIGHT: The Way I saw It

Request: I urge all Twilight fans to please read this but before doing so, switch on your "Sense of Humour" and please don't take it personally.

Anybody who knows me fairly well would tell you that I am not a fool. Yet I subjected myself to the phenomenal pre-teen hit movie Twilight. Why I did such unthinkable injustice to myself, in spite of being forewarned, is beyond the scope of this post.

To summarize the storyline, Edward is a 'Greek god'-lookalike vampire who went on one of those low-carb, non-human diets.Along comes the classic dumb heroine, Bella, who is beautiful but doesn’t know it, has everything but brains. To Edward she smells like irresistible food and makes his life miserable. So our 100-year-old vampire eventually falls in love with 17-year-old Bella(Talk about age gap!!). In case I haven’t mentioned it, the director reminds you every other minute that Edward is an awesome personification of awesomeness. Rest of the story is the standard formula. Add forbidden love, a pinch of angst and a villain and shake it. Out pours a regular Bollywood-love story.

To give you a better picture, here is how the story will look like if told by Edward, a human being, who falls in love with his food(Humans- or in his sense "Chicken"),

"I am Edward. I am a Vampire. I used to eat chicken for breakfast, lunch, dinner and when I got hungry in the middle of the night. But I became a vegetarian. I vowed not to eat chicken any more. In fact, I go to school with a flock of chicken and pretend to be a chicken myself.

One day, this extraordinary Chicken(Bella) waltzed into my class! It smelled just like Butter Chicken Masala. I was overcome with hunger. It started looking like a barbecued chicken, so enticing, so inviting. But at the same time, I was terribly attracted to it too! I had all these feelings I couldn’t understand. I was confused. Testosterone and hunger fought for control over my body. I wanted to kiss its delicate wing, make sandwich out of it, cuddle it and whisper Chicken-65 recipe softly into its ear.

The chicken had an uncontrollable attraction for me too. I tried to persuade her to leave me. I confessed my hunger for her.I explained to her that it won't work out. She wouldn’t relent. She had dreams of marrying me!!!!

When the love story between us was cooking, another human laid his eyes on my chicken. He wanted it for a dinner date, where the date becomes dinner. I protected my feathered friend and made it mine.

I implored it to leave town, find greener pastures; I didn’t want to clip its wings. But it decided to abandon all its family for a human it knew for about 2 months and stay with me. Now I know why they call it chicken brain. For now we are a happy couple."


Rest of the story is for birds....

Moving on in Life

So how do you know when you have moved on in your life, I am not just talking about, a relationship.. How do you move on from a situation in general? .The truth is that life goes on whether we want it to or not. The world keeps turning no matter how bad we feel.It is up to us to decide whether we want to stand where we are or learn how to bounce back and keep moving forward.

Most people have trouble moving on from a relationship.All I have to say to those people is you fell in love,one of the most undefinable things derived by Human Beings.It was good for you that you were lucky enough to do that.But now it's over. Whether they broke up with you or you broke up with them or some other alien-istic force pulled you apart,the TRUTH is it's over.If you find yourself trying to hide in the feeling and have been on a grand crying or drinking spree and made your life a mess.Today is the day you turn it around.

Now some people will agree with what I said above but many people at this point of time will feel that,Ya I have moved on and I am happy.For those of you who feel they have moved on just honestly ask yourself this question "Have I really moved on?".If the answer is Yes,I am very happy for you.If it is No.....read on..
This is the time to spend with guys called "Friends".These are the fools who will be happy to reassure you of jst how wonderful a person you are even if it includes a whole lot of lying :) .This is the point where you shud start smiling a lot.Dont just put on a fake smile jst for the sake of it.Smile at and for yourself its the best thing to do,because if you are not happy with yourself there is no damn person in the world who can help you.

There are a whole lot of beautiful,nice and damn sexy people out there.Forget your past and give these people a chance.If your still hooked on to your past,then sorry it won't do you any good but will rather weigh you down.All I can say to people like you is, "Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror".

Now I feel that I have dragged on this kinda boring topic a bit too long.So to conclude all I have to say is,There's no need to miss someone from your past,there's a reason why they dint make it to your future.(Ya,I know it's an often repeated quote but I coudnt stop myself from stating it again)

P.S: This post is dedicated to all those people.....Who liked it :)

Only once one has known real sadness can one feel true happiness

Its true,to realise what true happiness is you have to experience sadness in your life.It might not be too difficult to imagine the truth in this fact but the complex emotions of a human being are very interesting and difficult to understand.
A great example of this fact is when a person who has got used to his society and lives in a routine manner can sometimes take his friends or family for granted.He may never truly appreciate their emotions not because he is not happy with them or because he does not love them but because he does not truly understand the happiness they give him.When this person loses a friend then in the remorse he feels due to their loss he begins to truly understand how happy he was with his friend.
So what is exactly happiness? I don't think there is an exact definition for happiness.It might be monetary success for some or a loved one for others.What is sadness then? We cannot define it exactly too. It is generally associated with pain or suffering which in the end means lack of happiness.
So happiness and sadness are like Ying and Yang.One cannot exist without counterbalancing the other.So we can basically define happiness as the lack of sadness.It might not be an exact definition but it does definitely explain it.
Hence,people who lead a routine life in this busy world should realise that they have to appreciate the fact that they are happy and they can only do this once they know what sadness is.
So in my view you do need to know what sadness is for you, to really be happy.