An hour of mesmerizing cricket!

The final moments in the final test of the three-tests series Aus-SA were indeed mesmerizing. With Ntini and Steyn battling the Aussie bowlers and then G. Smith coming out in a super-hero fashion trying to save his team and then finally the Kangaroos winning the match with a narrow margin...everything was so dramatic. This is what we miss in the ODIs or the T-20s. The preseverence, the endurance put to test.

The pitch was a wrinkled one with cracks and grey spots all over. The bounce was uneven. But really there wasn't much in it for the bowlers too. I could see them struggling to bowl a bouncer with the withered ball. 

There was a countdown after every ball bowled. Ntini played with awesome courage and sophistication. After Steyn left, Smith joined the ring with a right arm broken and a left arm holed with injections. Every ball survived was cheered and congratulated. Every emotion known to human-being was sensed. There were comic moments when Ntini hit the bowler over mid-on...there were tragic moments when Hayden dropped. 

With 10 balls to spare, Austrialians won the third test. Having lost the earlier two tests, this win certainly meant a lot for them. With two amazing teams fighting, true cricket was on display.

On a journey to campus- Pilani

This post is purely inspired from my previous one. I could not resist my temptation to write something about Delhi-Pilani journeys throughout my under-grad life after writing the Goa post.

Well..its a sad story and noone other than Bitsians would sympathesize each other as they are the only ones who overcome this journey of life. 

Travel once through the ordinary bus service from Delhi to Pilani and you can travel any other bus route anywhere in the world. Note here I am talking about the bus-service alone that too the ordinary one. Had a Merc journey too  this enduring...there would have been 0% placements.

Anyways..it started with the ISBT-Delhi. Finding the bus was not hard but relying that the bus will take us to the destination was extremely hard. In the event of very few passengers to Pilani or a town on the same route ahead...the bus wouldn't go further. So it was always better to travel in a gang and that too with some bully guys so that atleast money was spared. 

The actual distance was 200 Kms. In normal circumstances, it used to take 6-7 hrs reaching Pilani. Part of the reason was the pitiable condition of the roads and buses devoid of any shock-absorbers.  Passengers occupying every inch of the bus brought with them stuff having horrible odors. In addition to that were the street-vendors selling cut-fruits, coconuts. Dust as it is in any part of India was always omnipresent...n then those pathetic hindi movies on yellow-colored TV screens added to the pandemonium. The volume used to be so loud that it was hard to hear each other. 

Even reaching Pilani was no fun until you reach your bhawan. Fighting your way through the rickshaw-wallahs who sealed the bus-door was the most grueling task. The rickshaw used to very cheap..not even a quarter. Riding through the campus on a mounted rickshaw was the best part of the tiresome odyssey. Had Alexander, who was keen to see his home again, reached Macedonia back after conquering the world....he would have experienced the same feeling. 

On a journey to the campus - Goa

Today I happened to read in the news about the New Year's party in Goa..n suddenly I was reminded about my 4-hours stay there back in 2006. It would have been the shortest stay for anyone in Goa. 

I had gone there to take Recos from my professor who had shifted from Pilani to Goa recently.

The journey however was not that short as I had taken a volvo from Bangalore. Today its hard for me to understand why on earth I took a volvo and not fly there. May be I was testing my endurance. Reaching Goa was not the only hurdle....reaching the remote isolated BITS campus from the station turned out to be worse.

The campus is on a major highway. There isnt any train/bus/taxi stop in the radius of 2 kms. I really had no clue whatsoever. Having no other option...I was about to rent a vehicle. But after some enquiry, got to know that there was a bus-stop on a road nearby..just that no vehicle would go from that road to the main-highway where the campus was located as I had to cross a hill-type pathway. If anyone has seen Amol Palekar's Choti Si Baat in which in sheer desperation he climbs up the hill to meet Ashok Kumar..I too staggered through. Though I should say that this option of clambering the path was selected knowingly as I kind of was curious to see how students, if they travel by bus, reach the campus.

I do not know about other things but overcoming impediments-on a journey to the campus is certainly the facet shared by BITS-Pilani and BITS-Goa students