Why i love to be called a Hyderabadi...

An article not on sports , on my blog, has as much possibility as Federer had of winning French Open with Nadal in the draw, but since that has happened , for a change i have decided to write on some thing else ...

So here we go ...

There is no bigger topic of debate which has concerned me more than this.....

Being called a " Hyderabadi "

Before some of u start bashing me on talking about being an " Indian " first and not going to regionalism, lemme clarify, this has nothing to do with nationalism and more to do with my love for the beautiful city that ' Hyderabad' is ....

I was born in Delhi, lived in north india till i moved to Hyderabad in my 5th standard, and even though i left the city in 2005, my love for it has never changed a bit...

Enough of background stuff, lemme get straight to the point...

Every one loves their city, and i am not gonna argue on that, and neither am i here to brag about why 'Hyderabad' is better than ur city, which i am sure of and which u are not gonna buy...
So here are my reasons for loving Hyderabad...

1. Accent :

" kya miyan kya karre....." " baigan bataan nakko karo ".....,
Well there is no city in India which has the hindi accent the way Hyderabad has, it's unique, it may not be old school hindi but tht's wht sets it apart, believe it or not, people love it!!!!

2.

The People :

City is what it's people are..It's name and fame are built around it's people....True that we may not have the history that u can associate with a city like Delhi or Bombay, but the people here compensate for all those things....

They aren't cocky as people from India's 2 major metro's are and neither are they regional bounded like the people of the 2 other metro's.. Simple, helpful,down to earth and humble. I am trying to use the best possible words to describe my people, and if u don't believe it you can look at the famous son's and daughter's of this city..

1.V.V.S Laxman
2 P. Gopichand
3. Harsha Bhogle
4. Azharuddin
5. Sarojini Naidu

and so on....

It is easier to choose the names of these stars and prove my point but if any of u have been to Hyderabad or have met any one ( ahem ahem :P :P) from that city then u might know this anyway...



3. Deccan Chargers..

Don't ask me to rub it in..we have the best team in India's most watched and most followed sporting event of calendar year..and for the year 2009 we won it.. till then shut up and let us bask in glory.. don't talk about past and don't tell us what might happen in 2010.. we live in present so talk about now!!!!!!!


4. Chandra Babu Naidu

Till Narendra Modi burst onto scene post Godhra events, no regional leader had more national importance than he had..... When Bill Clinton came to India they gave India's so called " silicon valley, bangalore" a miss but not Hyderabad..I came to Hyd in the year Naidu came to power in A.P( i think the way he worked i should use Hyd not A.P). There was no necklace road, no Hi Tech city, not a great airport.. The city could be compared to a beautiful girl in a very ordinary dress.. he glamorized it..........

He was the most talked about politician of this country in the last decade and he set a benchmark in terms of I.T and technology which C.M of other states hope to match!!!

There are many more, food, the HI Tech City..etc etc but to wrap it up. the final reason


5. My Heart...

Before you think out of the box and try to ruin the emotional part of the blog which may tilt you towards the concept of hyderabadi, just stop.. i am not talking of love and stuff here.....

I love being called Hyderabadi because thts my identity and thts where i still relate to despite not living there...

I think of the great times i had with my frens from school and college... the evenings i wandered to IMAX with Nag and Harsh for... lets say bird watching...
The cricket matches outside Shanti Apartment or football discussion(where i was totally hopeless!!!)

It's nostalgic... May be repeating again and again that i am a 'hyderabadi' keeps those memories vivid in my heart...the memories of a lifetime which i don't wanna forget....

An Age for Sport Lovers....

Just a few hours after Roger won his 14th Grand Slam and that too the French Open( more on that in coming days!!!!) to tie the Sampras's record of 14 Slams, a certain Stanford alumni scripted a sensational comeback to win yet another golf tournament, this one, the prestigious Memorial. If you are not into golf the first person you would have still guessed must have been Tiger and you are damn right!!!



If a poll is conducted by sports lovers across all ages and across all generations, to choose the best sporting era, the present one would win hands down....

If you think Roger and Tiger are the only 2 reasons for that then go ahead and finish this article....
Yes every era has athletes who raise the bar to new level, who challenge themselves to scale peaks which have never been scaled before, but this era is different..



Jack's record looked invincible till Tiger came along, Federer and Nadal have been more dominant than even Andre and Pete or Borg and Mcnroe were together..., Sachin is irreplaceable and so would be his records...



Lightning never strikes twice and it will take years before some one like Usain Bolt emerges again, Phelps has reached where no swimmer ever reached,Yelena Gadzhievna Isinbaeva has literally scaled new heights in every single tournament she has entered, Tom Brady is no Dan Marino but he is not very far from that either.. Lebron maynot be Jordan when it comes to winning titles or finishing but the way he has progressed who says he might end up better than him when he retires in another 15 years!!!.....and i have not even included Michael Schumacher and Lance Armstrong the most decorated athletes of this generation...!!!!!


Phew!! I never thought i might come up with these many names when i started this article about 2 hours back...but hell yeah this sure is the greatest sporting era of all time...



We are lucky to be part of this era, and for a sport fanatic like me this quote from Lebron James sums it all up

" I'm just thankful for every day that I wake up."

The Day i dread of...

As i was having my dinner tonight discussing about Sachin's knock with Warren, i asked him a question absolutely unrelated to the happenings of the day...

What when Sachin retires?

"Oh many people are gonna cry, it's gonna be some thing u have never seen ", was his reply...

As we egged him on to reach towards a 200, and then the disappointment of him getting retired hurt, i forgot our little discussion.....

An hour later, as i am sitting in library, supposedly to prepare for my midterm, my thoughts wandered back to the very same question i asked him...

Hmmm..Indian cricket without Sachin.. Can u ever imagine that???

To think of Indian cricket without Sachin, is unthinkable.. Across all the sports, legends have come and gone, they left a void ,but as time passed these voids were filled..
Basketball went through that phase when Jordon retired, but came along Kobe and then Lebron..
Football has been luckier with Zidane, Ronaldinho, Kaka, Messi all coming along in a quick span of time...
Ian Thorpe left, came along Michael Phelps,
Schumacher has been forgotten in the Hamilton Mania..

But when the question comes to Sachin, we are speechless..We have no answers..

Yes there have been months when he has not played for Team India, but the thought of him returning to the team was always there in the back of our minds.. You might say that it is gonna be very similar to when Sunny Gavaskar retired and it is gonna be similar with Sachin..

Well no..I don't think so....It will never be the same...



There might be arguments about Sachin being the greatest Indian Sporting athlete of his time, but there can be no arguments when it comes to who India's favorite sporting personality has been...

Tell me whose heart did not skip a beat when ever Sachin was batting.. Who was not disappointed when he did not score a century.. How many midnight discussion revolved around his innings.... Was he not the topic of discussion among ur school friends the next day of the match, whether he succeeded or not...Why does a Sachin century mean more to us than another cricketer's century?


Some where down the line we all thought he should retire because he was not good anymore..but did we ever imagine the day he finally hangs his boots before saying that...



The connection between Sachin and us is just not related to Cricket..From the day he walked on to the field in 1989 he was our family member.
His success was our success, his failure.. ours....
Can anyone ever replace ur family member.??

The answer to that question would be the answer to some one replacing Sachin..

Sachin grew with us.. He entered our lives as a 16 year old school boy, with curly hair and a squeaky voice, and he would leave as a husband and father of 2 kids. He has been in our lives for 20 years... Saying goodbye will never be easy...

Recommendations for this week..

Well, with Federer taking a break of sorts right now, and nothing interesting happening in the world of sports, (well talking about use of steroids in sports is never interesting and unless Real Madrid overcome Liverpool in the second leg, i wont be following champions league too...) , so i decided to come up with few things..

I have decided to post link of few things, either songs, or articles or puzzles which you all can view or check out( if you trust my choice...!!)


Here are the list of songs you can check out :

1. Waterfall by James : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIdCjMYBHyU

2. No other way by Jack Johnson : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JxuDO7YyOA

3. Day n Nite by Kid Cudi : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3P6f2Rp5CA

4. Say by John Mayer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ0z86LmXBM

5. Favorite Girl by Marques Houston : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ctLC7CJ1oE

6. Apologize by Timbaland : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm0T7_SGee4

7. Yeh Zindagi bhi in Luck By Chance : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm0T7_SGee4



Well that's all for this time...next time some more things , definitely some articles..

Few Sporting Headlines you might see in 2009..

A very Happy New Year to everyone.

As i look forward to another year (hopefully the last of slogging through books, of nightouts in library, of exams and tension of grades), there is one thing that keeps me going in these dark times and that is sports. So apart from waiting for USC to finally get a shot at national title, there are still a few more things i hope to see happening this year in sports.

1. A view from the top ...




Federer breaks Sampras's record of 14 grandslam titles... I know Federer is no more invincible, he is losing more in a single year than he ever had in 3 years from 2005-2007..but still there is still a lot this artist from Switzerland possess and i do see him breaking Sampras's record this year.. and guess what.. i say its gonna happen in Wimbledon... so does it mean he is gonna win 14th before that .. well yeah the french Open...now thats what some of u might say.. height of optimism...wait n watch...

2. It now takes 9.6 seconds to run 100 metres.



Usain Bolt becomes the first man to break the 9.6sec barrier.
He should have already done that had it not been for his exhuberent celebration before he had even crossed the finish line in beijing olympics, but i still believe he is gonna have atleast one race this year where he will put his head down and run for all 100 metres and when that happens even 9.5sec would be threatened.

3. Brett Favre finally calls it a day...


Well Brett would be wishing that 2008 never happened.. Starting from the playoff loss when he was still a Packer , the retirement fiasco , the agony of last few games of the season as a Jet, an endless list of disappointments...Brett is a proud individual, a great player who should realize that sun has finally set on him and this year he will..

4. It takes 200 million to win world series.



When you have 4 highest paid players in MLB on the same team, you dont expect anything other than the world series let alone the playoffs. This year the Newyork Yankees would achieve that target. CC would have a stellar 20 win season, A-Rod would shake of his post season blues and Texeira would only push him as the 2 battle in HR race...This year i see them going all the way and winning it all..

5. The Wall calls it a day..


This is the year when Rahul plays his final test match for India....I know that he can still battle it out with the toughest,he still can play for another 2 years even though there are some cracks appearing in the "Wall"..... but Rahul being the individual he is would know that when the time comes to move on then you move on.. and its always good to retire when people ask "why" and not " when".....

6. Is Delhi Ready...???


This is one question which you are going to hear over and over again. Delhi's preparation for commonwealth games has been questioned many times and the games with just an year away the question assumes lot more importance. well as far as the answer is concerned it lies with Indian Politicians...Hopefully it wont be too late by the time they get the answer.....

7. Deccan Chargers wins 2ns IPL tourney...

Well from rags to riches.. This would be the Chargers story...After a poor performance in the first IPL tournament when they did not win a single home game, the chargers would bounce back to win it all.. and yeah this prediction comes straight from the heart...

Thank you Michael Phelps

Michael Phelps was not even born when Mark Spitz set the record of 7 Gold Medals in a single Olympic.... His parents were not born either when Paavo Nurmi had perhaps the greatest Olympic any athlete had ever had...
It is so tough for us mortals to comprehend the nature of Michael's achievement.... to understand the enormity of this achievement.

Let me try and put it in a perspective.
Carl Lewis won his 9 in 4 Olympics. Paavo Nurmi won his 9 in 3. To compare his achievements with these great athletes would be unfair not only to these great athletes but also to Phelps....

He has not only shown amazing consistency in his preferred fields but also shown amazing will power and hard work to succeed in events he was not considered the best.
Phelps made his debut in 2000 Sydney Olympics, finishing 5th in the 200 metre Butterfly event,when another great swimmer of this generation, Ian Thorpe, was making waves. As a 15 year old not much was expected of him, but no one knew what was in store ahead..He tried surpassing Mark Spitz's record in the Athens games, but fell short. 6 Gold Medals, 2 Bronze.. not bad for a 19 year old... When most of the kids of his generation have many other things on their mind Phelps had just one thing...Swim ... and swim he did..
Beijing 2008 would always be remembered as Phelps's Olympics. The guy from Baltimore not only did the unimaginable of winning 8 gold medals in the single game, but has 14gold medals to his credit.. and at 23 .. no one would doubt his credentials to add to this tally in London 2012.


Beijing 2008 was a journey for me .A journey which i took along with Michael. Every evening starting Aug 10 i tuned onto TV with just one thing on my mind. To see Phelps swim, to see him take this journey of a life time... and what a journey it was...
After 19 swims , 8 Gold Medals ,7 World records the journey has come to an end... but it has been one hell of a ride....
A journey which i dont think would ever be repeated anytime soon in the future..may be it would...may be Michael is already preparing himself for one in London 2012.....till then..Thank you Michael....

The Slow Decline of a Champion....

Well years down the line u may recollect 6 july 2008... as the day when Federer's days as king of tennis ended....may be not...
I am a Federer fan..no 2 ways abt tht and accepting Nadal as the new no 1 would be the toughest thing for me to accept..
Nadal has come a long way from being a clay court specialist...he has worked hard to improve his game on the grass and he deserves all the credit for his work ethic..the very next day after he won the French Open, he was playing in the Queen's London, because he wanted to win this one more than ever....he wanted to win Wimbledon..

Its a fact tht he has not done justice on the hard courts, but then again who will bet against him to change that record too...He has won the french and wimbledon in the same year..the first player after Borg in 28 years... He is the best player today .. he is the new King of tennis...

As far as Federer goes, it would be tough to replicate wht he did for year after year...( i had written tht earlier too in my blogs...).. but which road does he head too???


For the first time in 3 years, he only has one grand slam..THE US Open...which he would defend this august..and it would be tough to do so....
Time waits for no one.. and may be his time at the top is gonna end soon...but he would not go out with out a fight..he showed tht on Wimbledon after tht french debacle.....It is always sad to see a top athlete, an immortal athlete of his time going through the phases of mortality....it was same with Sampras....it would be same with Federer....
Federer has taken me on a journey of a lifetime, on some of the best sporting moments i have ever seen, his shortmaking, his grace on and off the court has always mesmerized me, i hve been lucky tht my years in college coincided with his time on the top of his game, and i was able to catch most of tht... may be his time at the top is over...
but....i still hope to be proved wrong......