It was the 1997 India-Pakistan match at the Chepauk stadium. A lot of hype was built around the match in line with yester-year India-Pakistan rivalry. Pakistan had chosen to bat first. I watched the match in rapt attention along with a bunch of cousins. The Indian cricket team had a fearsome frontline slow bowler in Abey Kuruvilla, charging into the dangerous Afridi, while another batsman looked upon nonchalantly at the non-striker’s end. The slowest of slower balls from Kuruvilla fooled Afridi into a false shot and Ganguly at mid-on caught it in his own inimitable fashion. Ecstasy and shouts of yayy resulted in my room. It was shortlived. The non-striker, who went by the name of Saeed Anwar tore into the Indian attack with belligerence. Bowlers came and went (V.Prasad, Anil Kumble, Robin Singh, Sunil Joshi – oh yeah, we had a fantastic attack of slow bowlers back then, along with Abey Kuruvilla who was our main spearhead) but it made no difference to Anwar. He went on to score a century at a fast clip and then with the help of a by-runner scored runs at an increasing pace. At 194, just when I thought and feared he would reach the magic figure, Sachin weaved his magic with the ball. A sweep from Anwar resulted in a top-edge to fine leg and Ganguly caught the ball tumbling down and making a mess of an easy catch, as was his inimitable style.

That day I feared. That day I was relieved.

It was not the magic figure of 200 that mattered. What mattered was India’s name against a particular score. What mattered was Sachin. Let me explain.

Back in the ’90s, India was the team to lose to. The Indian cricket team would invariably snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Those were also the days where everyone and anyone had their records against India. The general feeling was that any team which was out-of-form or was on a continous-losing-streak at that point of time had to just play against India and they would be back to form and winning ways. Such was its reputation. What I didn’t want was any cricketer scoring a 200 in an ODI against India. It was too much of a record to digest; too much of an insult to take. (Yes, it was personal. I was a 14-year old!)

Back in the ’90s, Sachin was the only torchbearer of the Indian cricket team. He scored while everyone around him collapsed in single digits. He was my idol – in fact, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that he was an idol for every Indian of my age. Suffice to say, he had too much of talent and that everyone aspired to be like him, or at the very least admire him. There were two other cricketers with similar talent. One was Lara, the other was Anwar. Lara was a fantastic cricketer, but he was also subject to his quirks. A lot of them. He could score a 375* in a Test match and then get out for four ducks in a row in the next four innings. What he lacked was consistency that the other two possessed (in relative comparison). In my opinion, Anwar was the biggest threat to Sachin. He had the talent, grit, determination and consistency – precise traits of Sachin. I loved and hated him for that. I didn’t want Anwar to score a 200 earlier than Sachin, especially against India. (As a side note, if not for Anwar’s tragedy, it would have been such a treat to watch two brilliant cricketers in a battle for runs and records. As much as I was fascinated by Lara and Sachin, Anwar always remained my favorite cricketer except for when he was playing against India.)

That brings us to today’s moment. The single taken off CK Langeveldt’s bowling, guided wide of point which triggered manic celebrations in Gwalior, India and rest of the world. Bleary-eyed early in the morning, as I watched Sachin bat after he scored 150 runs, I could not help but remember – Anwar’s innings in Chepauk; Sachin’s 186* against NZ in 1999 and  his valiant 175 against Australia in 2009. Every run from then on was counted and every boundary was celebrated with a loud cheer. As He crept out of 180s into the nervous 190s (how many times can you say, ‘nervous 190s’ in an ODI?), the excitement died down and fear bolted right in. As He was left stranded on 199 for a couple of overs and Dhoni was going all guns blazing (and the crowd not even bothering to cheer for all his bottom-hand sixes and fours), I was silently praying for his turn to bat and for his 200.

That single off CK Langeveldt did it. The Master had scored his 200. The celebrations began. And they will continue.

Many will write about this innings – about his flicks, pulls and cover drives. Many others will write about statistics, his best scores and how this innings stacked up against all of them. For me, with this innings, I had exorcised my demons. This too is an innings that I would remember for a long long time to come. In a good way. A very good way.

P.S – Saeed Anwar, hope you watched the match. I really hope you did.

“Sample this: Mumbai, the commercial capital of the country and the city that witnessed massive public mobilisation after the 26/11 terror attacks, managed a figure of only 43 per cent in the phase held on April 30 (the lowest since 1977); Bangalore, the seat of the country’s IT revolution, notched up a figure of 46 per cent on April 23; Lucknow, the capital of the politically most important state of the Hindi heartland, Uttar Pradesh, disappointed with a pathetic 34.5 per cent turnout; Kanpur, an industrial centre and the second largest city of UP, managed 39 per cent; Bhopal, a politically important state capital, saw 45.1 per cent polling; and Indore, Hyderabad and Gandhinagar (L.K. Advani’s constituency) crossed the 50 per cent mark, but only just, with 50.89 per cent, 52.46 per cent and 50.82 per cent, respectively.”

 Fantastic, ain’t it? I mean, what better response could we give to the leaders of our country than the verdict that

 -   Urban India just doesn’t care who gets elected.

 -   Urban India is ‘resilient’ to false/no promises at all from any political party

 -   By logical extension, ‘Spirit of (insert name of Indian City)’ is a given, irrespective of any political party in power, considering the number of terrorist threats to our country every day.

 -   Urban India will not make the issue of terrorism a part of any political party’s manifesto. Why should I? I mean, it’s a national issue, no? It is military/police/politicians’ automatic responsibility, no?

 -   Urban India (probably) didn’t want to brave the summer heat to vote. Obviously, Health is Wealth, no?

 -   Urban India doesn’t want to educate its children (by means of their actions) that every vote counts. In fact, children might grow up to understand that all this voting is a big circus/tamasha. Good for them, they realized it much earlier than all of us.

  -  Urban India is pseudo-elitist; it doesn’t like being preached by stupid campaigns like ‘Jaago Re’. I mean, who are these ‘Jaago Re’ morons to tell US to vote? We are bloody well intelligent.

  -   Urban India probably doesn’t believe that any change would come by irrespective of the political party. Wonder, if they knew who were the candidates contesting the elections? Wonder if they even bothered to enquire if there was any good independent candidate who didn’t affiliate himself/herself with the two main political parties?

Nope, who has the time I say, dammit? Who the hell has time to vote? Who has the patience to research candidates in the constituency? We care two hoots about who gets elected. But, BUT of course, we will complain.

   1)  We will complain if infrastructure is bad; roads, electricity – you name it.

   2)  We will complain if terrorists attack our nation and kill 150 people every 3 months. We are a ‘effing’ spirited city,     no?

   3)  We will complain that all politicians are corrupt. Armchair experts, who don’t even have 1 hr of their time, once in 5 yrs, to vote.

   4)   We will complain against reservations and for merit. Oh yes, by the way, only from the sidelines, on blogs and twitter. Yes, even during coffee conversations in Coffee Day/Barista.

Yes, we will not vote. We are like that only. ‘Jaago Re’ or ‘Sleepo Re’ – it wouldn’t have made a effing difference.

II) Gaurav of Vote Report India, talking of online engagement and other initiatives like Jaago Re says ‘These initiatives may not have resulted in a significant voter turnout but they have laid the foundation for engaging India’s urban middle class in serious civic issues.‘

Gaurav, frankly, c’monn. I understand optimism, but ‘engaging urban middle class’? You might as well search for the long lost California gold mines – you might actually find one. People tune out the moment they are given any responsibility (like the right/responsibility to vote) outside their family. 60 yrs of disillusionment with reservations, casteism makes ‘engaging urban middle class’ that much harder. The rich have an interest in politics to save their money (tax sops, favored political parties, whatever). The poor have an interest because of agricultural sops. Middle class? What have the politicians got? Neither proper education nor proper infrastructure nor proper security – the three most important things for the middle class to be engaged in politik. ‘Engaging middle class’ will not happen because politicians (being the smart people they are) know that this ‘middle class’ wouldn’t come out to vote in large numbers – thereby not a large vote bank. Why would they even waste an iota of a paise to ‘engage middle class’?

No way. Or maybe I am saying all these doomsday utterances because of terrible disillusionment at the extremely poor poll numbers. This was Urban India’s chance and they blew it. Circa 2014, technology might have changed dramatically, but would people’s attitude change? The answer is anybody’s guess.

But then, you got to give it to Urban India. (Hearty applause please)! With hardly any difference in the percentages of voter turnouts between 2004 and 2008 inspite of all the brilliant campaigns like Jaago Re – Urban India has well and truly shown the middle finger to all political parties, nay to the tireless Jaago Re and other campaign workers. Thank you Urban India, you have done us proud.

Quite.

Now that we are done with the excitement and enthusiasm of ushering in the New Year and all that, let’s look at what 2009 has in store for us.

With the hypothesis of ‘data doesn’t lie’, let’s look at some of the news across the world and India before meshing in our conclusions depending on the data  -

a) RBI has cut key lending and borrowing rates, esoterically called repo and reverse repo rates (Simply put, these are rates banks pay to borrow from the RBI and get from the RBI for keeping cash there). Repo stands at 5.5% and Reverse repo stands at 4%. RBI cut interest rates for the fourth time since October and has unveiled thousands of crores of stimulus package. If this doesn’t amount to ‘measured panic’, I don’t know what is.

b) In September-October 2008 timeframe, inflation was 12%. It is around 6.6% now. (Inflation, as a simple concept, is rise in prices). Since inflation has reduced from 12% to 6.6%, it is a good thing, no? Actually and worrisomely not. In usual circumstances, reduction in inflation is good for the economy. However, we now have a serious risk of deflation where it might touch 0% or go negative. Economics 101 will tell you that reducing inflation is a slightly easier job than pulling out an economy out of deflation, or even worse stagflation (Lots of jargon like inflation, deflation and stagflation used. Our dear friend Wiki has loads of explanation on them).

c) If Indian economy was on the rise over the past 4-8 years, Real Estate in India was on cocaine. Simple example. In 2003, a 2 BHK (bedroom-hall-kitchen) in one of the very good localities in Hyderabad cost Rs. 17 lakh. In 2007, the same flat costs Rs. 50 lakh. That’s close to a 200% increase. I am not sure any of our salaries rose by 200% in the same period, barring a lucky few. If income doesn’t keep up with investment avenues (or is it the other way round), sooner or later, that particular investment avenue has to be disbanded. Now that we hear that prices are coming down (drastically in some places), speculators will go out of business which will lead to a further spiral. My call is that real estate should correct itself by atleast 20% if not more by end of 2009.

d) Other general news in India includes

- Investments being drastically cut down by manufacturing and service companies.

- Risk of layoffs (massive in some places) to calibrate supply and demand (the offshoot of this being that people would be fraught to take home loans where EMI is more than 1/3^rd their net income and hence further reduction in real estate demand)

- Good startups would find it difficult to find funding, and hence many a innovative idea would die a death for now.

- With banks not reducing interest rates in line with RBI reduction (although they had no problems increasing it immediately when RBI was increasing the rates), discretionary spending will drastically reduce. Small businesses will have difficulty getting working capital (Wiki again!) to sustain their business in this difficult economic scenario.

e) Globally, US has cut interest rates close to zero percent, while Japan magnanimously has reduced interest rates from 0.3% to 0.1% to stimulate the economy. US, UK and Japan are already in a recession, while I believe Asia will be truly hit by a recession in 2009. Asia’s biggest revenue generator is exports. With worldwide spending clampdown, exports have already taken a hit and are expected to take a bigger hit in 2009. US’s economic stimulus package – $850 billion, China’s stimulus package – $585 billion. Aren’t those numbers just plain awesome. I think they are avoiding mentioning a ‘trillion’ since it sounds a big number. In fact, I forget the number of zeroes in a billion or trillion now. South east asia’s manufacturing and shipments are down dramatically and expected to continue over the next half year. I wonder what’s up with Antarctica?!

By now, you would have arrived at a conclusion that I am extrapolating at a doomsday scenario. Not really. The end of 2009 will see some light, although recession is going to continue well into 2010.  IT service providers especially will benefit due to the strong dollar-rupee equation along with increased outsourcing from US and UK companies. The health sector is not cyclical and will not be affected by the recession. There are some stocks which you can really buy cheap (although, for the risk of repetition, the word ‘value’ is being bitch-slapped around in media for any and every stock). As Buffett says, ‘I don’t know what will happen 1 year down the line or 5 years down the line. The only thing I know is if I invest in good businesses, they will give me a decent return over the long run’. The advice is valid both for stockmarkets as well as life.

]]> http://kirandhanwada.com/2009/01/04/preview-2009/feed/ 0 http://kirandhanwada.com/2008/12/31/happy-new-year/ http://kirandhanwada.com/2008/12/31/happy-new-year/#comments Thu, 01 Jan 2009 03:00:28 +0000 Kiran http://sarvamekam.wordpress.com/?p=170 First up, Wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year.

It’s been a crazy year, hasn’t it? The tradition across the blogosphere nowadays is to blog about lists – 2008′s list of good events, bad events, improbable events, good movies, bad movies, resolutions, number of girlfriends etc etc – the theme goes something like this: list what went on in 2008, list what might go on in 2009, thereby dancing in the trance of hindsight and probability.

Or as Shelley said, very succinctly ‘We look before and after, and pine for what is not’.

In line with the tradition, here goes my personal note (Preview of 2009 from a generic scenario post coming up in the next couple of days) -

2008 – When I look back at this year, I can define it as the Year of Accumulation. Personally, this year was not as wild and crazy as 2007. This was a year where I consciously put my head down and worked on little things, accumulated a lot of things and in general surprised myself when I discovered rather surreptiously what worked for me and what didn’t. Lot of friends (online and offline), Lots of adventure and sport (Rafting, Golfing, Shooting{yep, semi-automatic and revolver}, Bowling) and Lots of learning on the professional front. Nothing very great, nothing very significant and yet they add up to being a decent year. Frankly, I don’t know what was the best part and what was worse in this year. This has probably been the longest time I have been away from home and my close set of friends back in India. (At this point, I thought and thought for about 20 minutes and my mind is just blank to write anything more – probably indicating to the fact that no ‘goals’ were set and hence achieved in 2008. It was, as I said, a year gone by in accumulating and understanding myself better).

2009 – Lot of things lined up for 2009. First thing, I need to take care of my investments. Being in the US has cut me off from the stockmarket and other investing avenues in India – laziness and timezone difference beingg the primary factors. If not for the timezone difference, I would have short the hell out of the stockmarket and made some decent money. Not to be. Secondly, on look out for a better profile professionally – probably looking at a P&L role in the current organization or any other. Thirdly, by end 2009, should be on the board of a startup (product company) – need to see how far it goes. Fourthly (is there such a word?), working on a couple of social entrepreneurship ideas which might take off in some manner by mid-2009 (What I have realized is I am good at ideation and market execution, but absolutely have no clue about coding. If you think you are a decent coder, get in touch with me – we can work something out). Skydiving and Bungee jumping are high on the radar and might happen anytime soon. Last but not the least, I got to start writing a book or atleast collaborate in writing a book. Not sure of a 2009 completion though. Blogging, hopefully, should be more frequent than 2008.

With all that personal history and futuristic view aside, having fun is more important than anything else. Here’s raising a toast to a happy and fun-filled new year 2009.