Gary Kirsten’s ‘infamous’ Diary
I confess: I haven’t been reading newspapers these days and was oblivious to the fact that Gary Kirsten is in contention for being Indian cricket coach. But the way I realised this wasn’t all that great either.
I just picked up the Times of India and the front page had this article which said Gary Kirsten hated India or something to that extent. By love of the printing presses everywhere, the guy has not even been confirmed for the post (do correct me if I am wrong here), but the media has already started dissecting the psyche of Mr. Kirsten. I mean comeon, give that guy some applause; I for one wish he starts blogging.
Look at these for a sense of humour:
“To spread cricket to all corners of India, we played in what could politely be classed as one-horse towns, places with more cows on the street than cars.”
Alright, I agree its a little too straight forward. We are speaking about India of 1996 remember. Things weren’t all that great then. I would say we are much better off now. But someone whos coming from SA, which I believe has the best settings for enjoying a cricket match (what with all the lawns, beer and amazing girls), India is really one stop short of a trip to hell. I swear; to go watch a cricket match here means getting heat boils for the rest of the month; and lest I forget, waking up at 6:00 in the morning, standing in the utterly chaotic crowd (ok, of which I am a part of), waiting for two hours for the game to start, and head back home seeing the Indian team lose (again). Maybe I wasn’t very lucky; maybe cricket is just not my game; to watch. We have seen the intolerably toned bodies of Indian cricketers enjoying the waters in West Indies and South Africa. But when was the last time we had seen any foreigners enjoying in India. All we see is them garlanded and thilak-ed the Indian way at their arrival in one of our airports.
”There are very few new cars, and most are dented and in bad shape. There’s no point in having a decent car in India because it will get wrecked in no time.”
Oh this one is bang on target. I still have this survey going on which car is the most Bangalore-traffic friendly. My vote is on Honda City as rarely does one find a badly dented Honda City. Most cars which looks atleast half a year old in Bangalore will have atleast one visible dent.
“There are people sleeping on the streets, and acres and acres of slums and shack dwellings.”
1947. 1977. 1996. 2007. This one has stood the ultimate test of time. Me, being from Bangalore is still surprised at the disconcerting contrast between Koramangala, Forum and what I call Bangalore’s most efficient gully shortcut which is like 5 minutes from Forum. The contrast that can be seen in living amenities makes us think if this one is a blind spot.
I wouldn’t want to conclude this post as this is just a mere observation. But my two cents for anything, will be an overall lack of responsibility from the side of the media (print and visual). After boycotting Aaj Tak, Star News and Zee news (with Headlines Today closely making it for the English newschannels), what am I supposed to do with newspapers? I cannot cut off pages or columns from it; because on the other side of page 3 I might find a column by Shashi Tharoor.
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