Winning Matters

While watching Chak De India last night a thought crossed my mind that to build a strong team you have show results and guarantee a degree of success. It is a chicken or an egg kind of situation; you can say that to achieve success you need a strong team, but, the opposite may also be equally true. A strong leadership is required in both the scenarios as a power to guide the talent of the team in the right direction.

With the adulation that this film has got, I feared that I’d feel disappointed when I actually get see it. But, my fears were unfounded as I really enjoyed watching it.

But still there is a bit of disappointment because I haven’t learnt computer programming as Jaideep Sahni, which he claims has helped him being a scriptwriter. Instead I have invested money in Syd Field’s book and trying to revive a few story ideas languishing in my harddisk.

On Chesil Beach

For the past few months I’ve been reading books back to back as a result of a pep talk from a writer I respect a lot. Earlier I’d have read just one or one and half books per year, and many more lying bookmarked at various stages of completion.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan is the latest one that I read. This book marks a couple of firsts for me. This is the first proper book that I completed in one sitting (a toilet break and a tea break not counted). This is also the first short listed book for the Booker Prize that I read before the Prize was announced.

On Chesil Beach tells the story of a virgin couple, who have been lovers for some time now. It is set in the 60s when people did not talk about sex or discuss their anxieties with their partners openly. They have come for honeymoon in a resort on the Chesil Beach and it becomes a disaster. The author weaves their tale of one night with layers that lay out the past of the protagonists and discusses the politics of that period in England (went beyond my head).

Somehow, On Chesil Beach took me back to Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music maybe because the leading ladies of both the books are musicians. And, the review of Just Married by Baradwaj Rangan kept reverberating in my head.

Here is the first chapter of book from the New Yorker.

Reviews of the book as appeared in the Guardian and the New York Times (requires free registration).

A Stroll

Wish I could take a stroll alone

Mindful of not harming the wet grass below my soft feet

Unmindful of a spontaneous tear dropping from the eye

Ruminating on the words of a Gibran or a Ghalib

Today I understood that an overdose of happiness can also disturb the Buddhist equilibrium of the accepted state of physical being.