Tag: dailyprompt

Touchwood, Yes!

Are you superstitious?

India is home to many superstitious beliefs. And the beliefs have been passed through generations.

People often visit temples for a pass in an examination, a job in the government and to find a perfect match for a hand in marriage.

And the god(s) don’t disappoint us. He will bless the newly married with children and give the elderly a cure for Rheumatoid Arthritis.

We allow numerology a big say. We add alphabets liberally in names and call our children ‘Praggyaananndhaa’ and ‘Nitthiyaananndhaa’. All in the name of bringing luck!

We bang utensils, light lamps and sing prayers to ward off a killer epidemic as deadly as COVID-19.

Many in Mumbai took a day off from work when word spread in 1995 that one of our Hindu gods drank milk. I carried a can of milk and stood in a mile-long queue.

As COVID-19 was sweeping the country, a baba announced that he had found medicine to cure corona. The ministers and the officials jumped with joy. They called the PRESS to announce the new discovery. All in a day.

Tying threads, wearing an amulet, rings on all fingers, sporting a beard and consulting an astrologer for as noble a mission as winning in cricket are part of one’s growing up here.

We don’t visit a hairdresser on Tuesdays, nor do we eat during the Lunar Eclipse, sorry! 

Jet-fighters, Rafael, from France, were put to a tough test as officials placed lemons under the tires of the flying-machine and rolled.

No menstruating girls can enter inside the temples as our ancestors believed the act would bring evil-spells.

And we believe man goes through seven births in life, before his soul gets fully liberated. You don’t live just once in this part of the Earth.

Bless me, please. I just sneezed.

Thank you.

Alex, the lion in the Madagascar franchise.

Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?

I would love a comparison with Alex, the male African lion in the Madagascar franchise, Escape to Africa.

Because he’s happy, funny and is loved by all the other animals in the wild.

His dancing in the movie both in New York (while in captivity) and in the wild later on was awesome. I too I’m a good dancer, in a funny way though.

His look when posing with a fruit-hat (as punishment) is what made me choose him as my favorite animal. 

He is, no doubt, a real hero.

A century of living, loving and learning!

Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.

Dear me,

Congrats on scoring a hundred! Sigh!

I’m so proud of you. The century must come at a time when playing life as a sport isn’t so easy for many. 

You have seen the good and bad. What a roller-coaster of a life! Many ups and downs and you have still won. Bravo!

A win against all odds, to say it honestly.

You knew the ball coming at 156 miles per hour on the pitch wasn’t the one you often faced at the nets. One was a practice and the other a profession.

You know the difference. And you were able to play a great knock. Kudos!

How the opposition were howling at you when you ducked! Those short-pitched deliveries were deliberate.

How they nudged you in the ribs when you left those without offering a stroke!

Didn’t they call you names? How they told you off many times. You stood your ground. Great!

The running between the wickets needed a trusting and loving partner. And luckily you had one. Thanks to the partner who stayed all through the rough weather in life. Brilliant!

One small mistake you will be gone, ‘OUT’ short of crease.

No appeal could have saved you as DRS was in place and the technology would send you home in a minute. And the audience would be jeering you on a giant screen. Hell with those constant replays!

Came the new villain, Duckworth-Lewis. How tough life was! You score well and you will still lose the match. Damn those tough equations!

The bowler and the guy behind the stumps have always known your Achilles heel. They showed no mercy when you had been late to the crease.

The opposition always threw the ball to the end where you were heading to. Such was the love the competition taught you.

You survived the Bodyline series and pajama cricket.

You survived the Chinaman and the crafty googlies. You survived Mankading on many occasions. 

Age never deterred you from playing a patient innings all through. And money never pushed you to join a circus called Club Cricket.

You shied away from all the glitterati surrounding league cricket. You never looked at the glamour side of cheerleaders either.

Nobody could fix you for a small amount of money. 

All you carried in the kit were a box of salad, a bottle of water and a pack of chewing gum. You had no decent pair of shoes. You were never worried. No complaints.

You’re nothing but a personification of ‘Survival of the Kindest’.

I’m sure you will go on like this forever and score many tons. You belong to the elite club that consists of Don Bradman, Vivian Richards, Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli. The tough veterans.

No Cook, Root, Babar, Gill or Marcus could break the records you patiently built yet in life. 

I shall wish you many more hundreds in life. Keep going. Keep kicking! Keep rocking!

See you soon at 200, mate!

With love,

GK

Failure is a stepping stone to success.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

A failure should never put us down. Failure is all about signs that take us to progress.

Give you an example of how failure turned a man into a huge success.

My friend, Sakthivel lived in Trichy, a fort city in Tamilnadu, South of India.

He did his graduation in automobile engineering and quickly found a job with an auto giant.

He was good at work, hit big in the company and brought fame. But that didn’t last long though.

He quit the job within two years as he was too stressed.

He had to travel most of the time and he missed his family. His wife, two daughters (twins) and a young son missed him a lot.

He decided to launch a start-up and pledged all the assets he owned to banks for funds.

He started a showroom that sold Italian-made scooters. 

He soon ran into trouble. Sales didn’t go as expected. He failed in the venture.

He lost his money and went completely bankrupt. His family was broke.

He sat introspecting one day when a customer called and said he wanted to buy a scooter. All Sakthivel had in his possession was one last scooter.

As he was waiting for the customer Anil, his nephew Prakash popped in for the routine coaching classes. Sakthivel was helping the boy with his class 12 exams.

The doorbell rang as Anil entered. He apologized for turning up so late. He saw Sakthivel sitting in the cabin with a boy and there was a class going on. 

Sakthivel said he was helping his nephew with free coaching in physics and mathematics.

Anil asked if he would mind coaching his daughter Purnima too, as she was struggling with the subjects and the exams were fast approaching. He said he would pay for his service.

Sakthivel wasn’t too keen. But he said jokingly that he would coach his daughter for free if he bought the scooter as promised.

Anil was so happy and issued a check at once. Finally, a sale was made.

He kept his promise and helped both his nephew and the girl with some serious coaching in physics and mathematics. He himself was a top ranking student in the said subjects at school and college. 

The duo appeared for the examination and the results came. Both scored good marks.

Anil’s family was joyous as their daughter scored full marks. A 100/100 each in Physics and Mathematics. All thanks to strict coaching by Sakthivel.

As a gratitude, Anil took him to the school where his daughter Purnima studied. The head of the school was so thankful to Sakthivel and asked if he could offer his services as a special coach to teach Physics & Mathematics to the rest of the students in the school.

He said YES.

He soon became so popular with the students, and they called him a ‘Century Coach’. Because he helped many students to score 100 in physics and mathematics.

Many schools approached Sakthivel for special assistance in coaching students.

He has hit fame now. 

He now owns two colleges in the city, and has just taken up another huge place in Chennai for the purpose of coaching students to write NEET, an entrance exam for students who wish to join popular medical colleges in India.

Sakthivel is now heading the ‘Sakthi Residential NEET Academy’ headquartered at Trichy.

He runs his own YouTube channel and is a popular coach among students all over India.

The number of students in his academy is now growing each year. The strength stands now at around 1000.

Failures in his life didn’t tire him. Failure made sure he was progressing to a successful entrepreneur.

The box that raised me up.

What experiences in life helped you grow the most?


There are plenty I can list out, but I owe it largely to the family I was born in.

My dad, mom, two brothers and a sister gave me a lot to learn. With our relatives living close by, we were a huge home-study.

(My brother-in-law, sisters-in-law and kids soon joined us in our studies and made our home almost a home-run university now).

We never missed an occasion to meet up. From celebrating the birth of babies to attending weddings, we were an entertainment ourselves. We traveled a lot to have a laugh. 

I have got a lot of friends. We studied and played a lot of time together. Cricket was our favorite game. 

My dad was an engineer and I have always looked to him for guidance. He never failed us.

He taught us good values and helped me get a good education in India. I am so proud. 

Carrying a cuppa in hand and reading news so early in the morning was how we started the day in the 80s.

The Hindu was our family newspaper. With the Oxford English Dictionary in one hand and the newspaper in the other, our breakfast couldn’t have been any richer, each day of the week.

Dad surprised us one day by bringing home a television. It was a B&W TV.

We were just left wondering, as there were not too many television shows, let alone television stations. I listened to the cricket commentary only on the radio when India won the World Cup, in 1983.

The box therefore remained mostly shut at home. So sad.

On the advice of colleagues in my dad’s office, we put up a tall Burj-Khalifa-dipole antenna (about 18ft tall) on the terrace of our home.

All that for a one-hour weekly show called ‘Road to Wembley’, beamed from Sri Lanka. We lived closer to Sri Lanka than India when it came to watching shows on TV.

The show was a Friday special, capsuling the English Premier League football matches. It was a rage those days. 

If the weather permitting, we (people in the South) were able to watch the show thanks to the tall new aluminum Burj-Khalifa on the terrace.

Evenings on Fridays soon became a ritual. We took showers, wore new clothes, visited places of worship, canceled the day’s appointments (if any) and got ready just in time for the transmission from Sri Lanka to start.

Half our family were sent up to the terrace to stand guard, roll the antenna, fine tune and try tapping whatever signal was available in the transmission, just in case.

Pat, came the reply soon when Delhi Doordarshan set up a station closer to our homes and started transmitting a one-hour UGC (University Grants Commission) educational program on TV. Seven days a week. 

But the show sadly ran to an empty audience. Nothing was as captivating as ‘Road to Wembley’, by Rupavahini.

Came the 90s, the landscape in the sky changed, forever. Star TV opened up shops in India and that revolutionized watching television in Indian homes. Good god!

I’m becoming a student of mass communication, choosing a career later on as a television journalist and now a consultant in the media was largely because of my dad and the box he bought in the 80s.

Call it the idiot-box (sorry for the language), but it gave me a career for a living. 

As the person I’m today, I owe a lot to my dad. And as a journalist I’ve become, I owe a lot to the box I grew up with.

Now, I miss them both.