The Roads Less Travelled …

I don't understand bangalore. I rate it amongst the most pleasant places to live in due to the moderate climate. But for some heavenly reason that my petty little grey mass fails to comprehend, the city has had been having temperatures that would do my hometown proud (I lived the first 17 years of my life in a place where the average summer temperatures went in excess of 45 degress … Celsius). Throughout the week I was basically saved from the heat because of the AC in the office, but in the weekend I felt the brunt of it.

Sunday having my breakfast at Megh Sagar (one of those South Indian breakfast joints you will find in every Bangalore street) I realised that heat as become as bad as I had experienced in any time of my life for this time of the year. Whether it was the realisation of the fact or some actuality, I do not know, but my day went downhill from here. With 15 minutes, as I was returning from Food World (after ditching my roommates there) I was as dazed as I ever had been. All I could see was a dark cool room where I could close my eyes and feel cool gusts of wind drying away the sweat from my body.

The rest of the day was spent genuinly in the spirit of the Indian summer. Drawn curtains that seemed to burst out of their seams as the winds hit upon them, a bottle of cold water by my side and myself lying listless on the ground as if trying hold on to a modicum of energy that the sun is so eager to suck away, completed the picture. This unfortunate turn of events also brought back the memories of many such summer days when I would lie down with my parents and discuss everything and anything under the sun, waiting for the afternoon to just pass away, and for the coolness of the evening to set in. Also suddenly I had one of those moods to write and with my laptop in hand all I had to do was type. Somehow suceeded in typing some hundreds of words before Martin and me started on a discussion about the features we are working at PI. As the discussion ended I could feel that the heat was starting to ebb away while evening was setting in. It was time - I finally had to shake myself out of my summer reverie.

I was just going through my old post about the Champions League matchups later this week and clearly I felt that a lot has changed since those days of december when Barca looked unbeatable and Real madrid could do no good. So a couple of re-thought(and more pertinent) points with regards to the upcoming matches.

1. Real Madrid vs Juve : In December, this was a match which looked most one sided. Now it looks the most unoredictable. Juventus have slipped down from the imperious machine of those days into a lumbering team which finds it difficult to score goals against opposition such as Messina. Madrid, its recent loss to Sevilla notwithstanding are in great form. Prior to this loss they had a eight match winning streak and they are producing some good (as well as lucky football). This fixture's result is a difficult one to call because both the teams have players in every position who can produce that little bit of magic to turn the game.

2. Barca vs Chelsea : Roman Abrabmovich should not blame Jose Mourinho too much if Chelsea crash out of the CL. They are probably playing the team which for the majority of the last year played the best football on the planet. Barca, notwithstanding their long injury list, continued to pull it off till this year's beginning when another Roman virtually ripped them apart in their loss to Villareal. While Barca have an edge in attack with Eto' clearly in better touch compared to Drogba, Chelsea will be looking to its defenders to do the job once more this season. Though it will not really be the "Irresistible force" vs "Immovavble Wall" contest, it is clear that while Barca hold the trumps in attack Chelsea hold them in defense. A key battle in the centre of the park between Makalele and Albertini might well decide who wins this fixture.

3. Arsenal and Bayern : Two great and yet inconsistent teams of this season. Bayern looked to have the Bundesliga in wraps given their imperious form in December. Arsenal also looked the only alternative to Chelsea in EPL. However January has not been good to both the teams. Bayern have sprinted and stuttered while Arsenal just cannot get their engine going. On the good side, any given any both of these are capable of beating the best.

4. ManU vs AC Milan : Probably the best game of the lot. Two in-form teams. AC has caught up with Juve in Serie A and ManU now looks the only team which can stop Chelsea. Both are playing good football and their will be battles all over the pitch worth watching. Its a pity that Shevchenko won't be playing for I was looking forward to his battle with Rio Ferdinand. Though Crespo I am sure would also keep the ManU defence occupied. Also the key matchup will be Pirlo vs Keane and Scholes vs Gattuso. The players first in the pairs are those start the moves and break the opposition moves. Milan for example relies a lot on the pinpoint long distance passing of Pirlo in their gameplay. It will be upto Keane and Scholes to check that. On the wings Ronaldo and Giggs on one side and Kaka and Seedorf in the other should provide a good spectacle. And then we have Rooney and RVN vs Nesta and Maldini/Stam. So I don't expect any one of these to roll over and gift a tie away.

Let the best team win …

I still remember the two icelandic kids in a foggy haze. The field behind them was a green that I had never imagined. It was a 6 cm x 6 cm photograph of, I believe, two brothers. I have always seen them as brothers though nowhere was it written that they belonged to the same brood. I guess the photo remined me of myself and my bro standing together sleepy eyed dressed up for school and now immortalized in our family albums.

Reading Amitav Ghosh's Shadow Lines took me to a time when I used to spend hours together poring over the geography encyclopedia, thinking how the people would be in the islands of papua new guinea or how bright the lights will be in the city of Paris. Every country had a description of a couple of pages with some photographs and that would be enough for me to go a trip of the place in my mind. I have seen the Coral reefs of Austrailia and the falls on the river Zambezi without leaving the chair in my room. When Ghosh says that to visit any place it is more important to have a picture in your mind, than actually being there I felt so vindicated for the hours spent with books.

Shadow Lines is an archtypical Amitav Ghosh novel. Mutliple threads of narration intertwined both temporally and spatially. The narrative structure of a journey, towards some climactic conclusion that the author only knows. Another of Ghosh's strengths that came out really well in this novel is his eye for detail when describing places. I am guessing that the author himself is one of the armchair travellers that he made out his narrator to be. His other book "Calcutta Chromosome" also dealt with a lot of travel but there it was mostly of the physical variety. This book does not have the superb story line of CC but Ghosh manages to elevate common day occurences and events into another level. The langauge is very close to comtemporary English writers like Martin Amis. And add to it a dash of magic realism ala Marquez and you have "The Shadow Lines".