Soccer Punch!

"We'll teach you soccer in 5 mins" proclaims the headline on the sports page (thankfully not the front page!) lightening scores of hearts which have been palpitating in rhythm with the frenzied run-up to Germany 2006. Droopy-shouldered denizens of the Tavern called "Tendulkar's elbow", who's ritual chant is "Dravid, the Wall! What the heck is football?" can emerge in the sunshine with renewed confidence of having mastered the basics of the beautiful game. I must admit to catching the bug myself and spending those fruitful 5 minutes with the daily read.

Even my musical tastes have acquired a soccerly color: Ricky Martin's World Cup anthem "La Copa de la Vida" gets more airtime these days than Bon Jovi and U2. Not to be outdone, Vengaboyz have made a comeback with their masterpiece "Brazil" which brings a spring to my step and "We're going to Ibiza" adds fizz to the party! I find myself yelling 'Go Wanchope' or 'goal goal' or even 'go for it!' as football fever grips me firmly.

Well, you can't blame me for getting bitten by the soccer bug. If you saw all those images of football pooja in Kolkata where the black-and-white sphere is the subject of ardent worship and boys of all shapes and sizes getting football hair-dos, you would too! Nope, I am not kidding. If you want to get up, close and personal with soccermania, you need'nt fly to Germany-you'd get to see it on the streets of Kolkata, Cochin and even Bangalore and I am not just talking about rickshaw-walla street soccer matches!

Cutting away from all the frenzied media blitzkrieg, I have discovered the pure joy of watching a game of soccer on TV. The memories of those unruly football games played as a 12 year old on the neighborhood maidan are fresh again-the games where I used to be one of the only 2 girls on the team and had my share of face-to-face encounters with the ground beneath my feet! I can smell the earth again....

Much Ado about Da Vinci: My critique of a critic!

I would've called this a labour of love except that after you read this, you would be tempted to call it a labour of hate! A friend sent me a, shall we say, rather well informed critical review of the Da Vinci Code, well-informed because the critic self-confessedly has not managed to get past the first 100 pages of the book. I was inspired into writing my critique of the review which I shall present here for the benefit of humanity.

Before you read my critique, it would help to read a short excerpt of the original review by our Esteemed Critic. I am reproducing it here with full credits to the author.

The Esteemed Critic speaketh:
"There has been much debate over Dan Brown’s novel ever since it was published, in 2003, but no question has been more contentious than this: if a person of sound mind begins reading the book at ten o’clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03, shortly after I read the opening sentence: “Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.” With that one word, “renowned,” Brown proves that he hails from the school of elbow-joggers—nervy, worrisome authors who can’t stop shoving us along with jabs of information and opinion that we don’t yet require.
am aware of the argument that, if a tale has enough grip, one can for a while forget, if not forgive, the crumbling coarseness of the style; otherwise, why would I still read “The Day of the Jackal” once a year? With “The Da Vinci Code,” there can be no such excuse. Even as you clear away the rubble of the prose, what shows through is the folly of the central conceit, and, worse still, the pride that the author seems to take in his theological presumption. How timid—how undefended in their powers of reason—must people be in order to yield to such preening? Despite repeated attempts, I have never managed to crawl past page 100. As I sat down to watch “The Da Vinci Code,” therefore, I was in the lonely, if enviable, position of not actually knowing what happens.
The film is directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman, the master wordsmith who brought us “Batman & Robin.” I assumed that such an achievement would result in Goldsman’s being legally banned from any of the verbal professions, but, no, here he is yet again. As far as I am qualified to judge, the film remains unswervingly loyal to the book, displaying an obedience that Silas could not hope to match. I welcome this fidelity, because it allows us to propose a syllogism. The movie is baloney; the movie is an accurate representation of the book; therefore, the book is also baloney, although it takes even longer to consume."
HEAVEN CAN WAIT
“The Da Vinci Code.”
by ANTHONY LANE

My Critique of the Esteemed Critic:
To put it mildly, this piece comes closest to a self-righteous review by a critic suffering from chronic constipation. The obsession with grammatical nuances of certain random phrases seems to suggest an assumed belief in one's own literary capabilities acquired through continuous auto-suggestion presumably with the aid of some self-help book.

A classic case of missing the woods for the trees.

In launching an acrid attack on the "theological presumption" which is the central premise of the book, he seems to prance over a basic concept with the agility of a court jester doing cartwheels: That, a book (apart from text books, of course!) is an expression of the author's point of view and the attack is actually ,then, aimed at the entire community of writers who have ever had the audacity to write a book.

Going by the special unflattering attention accorded to Akiva Goldsman, the guy who should be banned from the "verbal professions", I can't help but ask: Is the esteemed critic waiting at the cold and lonely fringes of the "verbal professions" to occupy the place vacated by the Da Vinci writer, understandably having failed at his other attempts to become a legitimate member of the same? And what the heck (excuse my usage of verbal terms of the 4-letter variety!) is a "verbal profession" anyway? A desperate attempt at creating an avenue of livelihood for the selfsame critic, maybe.

That said, one cannot rule out the outside chance of the esteemed critic being a devout Christian!