Oi United , Why So penurious ?

It has been a strange transfer window , very very strange and not only from United's pov but from the overall perspective as well . City pursuing an actual transfer strategy rather than buying the first player whose name their manager blurted out . Spurs actually buying players with pedigree , even though Levy remains the same stingy bastard that he always was . Arsenal have added a bit of normalcy to the affairs with their shoddy bit of work and Liverpool too , buying *world (b)eaters* while pursuing every other player who seems to have an iota of talent before failing miserably in their plans.
And to top all of this Manchester United falling short of making one signing( Valera Varela doesn't count ,in fact the way they are hiding him , he might be the next Bebe ) at a time when the greatest manager of all time has left the building . They were linked with a plenty many big names , Thiago , Bale and *cough* Ronaldo being the biggest among them . This was before Ed Woodward went AWOL after leaving the tour of Australia on urgent transfer business which was purported to be the signing of Sex Fabregass . United went public for the second time(or maybe third if you include this) in one year in pursuit of Cesc . Fabgrass or FabAss didn't return the favour leaving United in the lurch and Moyes in the midst of a  transfer soup . Since that time Moyes has appeared in every interview armed with platitudes such as  " I’m confident we’ll have players in soon" and "Wayne Rooney is not for sale " . Atleast one of them should be true come the end of the window for United to make any sort of challenge for the title .
 The only real target at this moment seems to be Marouane Fellaini and even if United sign him it beckons the question , why have United been so reluctant to make a much needed signing after the end of the Ferguson era . The answer to that may lie in the kind of football United tend to play .
Any signing that United make at this time should either seamlessly fit into its pattern or should be good enough to change the way the team plays . Thiago Alcantara (or FabricAss) might have been able to do that but Moyes ,for some reason, hesitated in signing him and the Bavarians swooped him away .
Another reason for United's lack of activity might be the fact that the management tends to overvalue(unlike the fans) the talent that they have  at their disposal . Two Cleverlies wouldn't be better than one neither would be three Andersons . Our defence is stocked with ten years worth of World class talent and the forward line looks pretty much ohk though majorly due to the presence of a certain Dutchman . What would United do if he gets injured , may be play Rooney up top , I can't say .
Putting all the hoopla regarding whatever aside, the importance of a Director of Football can't be enough emphasized in modern day football . Txiki Bergenstein and Baldini have done a terrific job at City and Spurs respectively while dEaD Woodwork is well for the moment AWOL  .  The situation is complicated by the fact that United don't want to appreciate that player's agents are , unfortunately ,a vital part of the transfer business . One would assume that they would have learned their lessons with Hazard and Moura slipping away from their hands chiefly due to this reason but that fact hasn't made a dent in the management's psyche yet .
And although United's fans would have been appeased by their 4-1 victory over a good Swansea side anybody who has watched the match would agree that United were anything but brilliant and were it not for the heroics of Van Persie the situation could have been very different . It would be interesting to see how the management reacts to the tirade of fans if United succumb to a defeat in Moyse's first official match at Old Trafford against tital rivals Chelsea . Chelsea have looked the part in their first match against Hull and it is difficult to look beyond them for Champions unless United make a significant signing which is unlikely . A tough start beckons for the Devils , hope it doesn't extend to a tough season .

TT

Imagine Al Pacino walking to the mike with a little boy . Your eyes lit up , you feel he is gonna say it . He talks about acting in his grungy voice , marooning from his start as a small time actor to some of his unforgettable roles . But he doesn't say a word about the kid by his side . You can't imagine him missing such an opportunity and believe that with a clever turn of phrase he will come round it and then you shall smile and think how fucking clever that was ; but he doesn't . He goes on and on about shit you don't care for anymore without acknowledging the presence of his little friend . You are on tenterhooks , almost praying for him to speak those holy words , praying for a release from this unnecessary vanity . And then you snap for you realise that is all there is to it .You stop giving  a fuck .
That is how the transfer window has been for me . (For the uninitiated this is it )

Oh the futility of it all

Oi , when you walk down that road , be you a prince or a pauper or a sheikh for that matter , all your moolah cannot hold to ransom the hack of the guillotine that shall come down on your oblongata . So go forth and live and don't care, for fair is foul and foul is fair .

This began as a serious argument , but now , I just don't know .

While child prodigies, precocious individuals who show early signs of excelling in specific domains ,do exist such individuals are far and few and the possibility of finding them may be one in a million . Without hard work such individuals would not achieve the greatness they are destined for . 

Most of the people in general have very minor difference in their innate talent for specific domains and with dedicated hard work can achieve designated levels of expertise in the fields of their interest (given that they are not physically or mentally unfit for the field in question )

While I do accept the fact (mostly because of lack of examples to the contrary) that certain very exceptional individuals (Terrence Tao , chris langan , Arthur wiles , Perelman) exist my stand on this highly debatable and controversial topic is merely this , with the right amount of goal oriented hard work any individual with normal physical and mental capacities can achieve a level of expertise in a field of their interest . While they might not stand a chance against the exceptionally endowed individuals listed above ,who are very few in number, they can match the performance (if there exists a way of quantifying it) of individuals outside the above spectrum .

I take this stand because too many times in my lifetime I have come across situations where people around me have given up on hard work because they believe that they are not innately talented enough for a particular task , may it be sports , mathematics , physics or the like . And also because I have found people giving lack of talent or the presence of innate talent in others as a reason for their success or failure . As Nietzsche said " To call someone divine means , here we do not have to compete ."  

I do admit that at different points in life , people do differ in their abilities for different fields but that difference is not attributable to innate talent but rather to the amount of hard work that the more able have put in till that point of time . And I desist the fact that the less able tend to simplify the dedication of others and lump it together into natural talent . 

I put forward this question to a friend of mine who was a supporter of the opposite cause " What would you like to tell your young child in this regard , that if he worked hard he could compete with the best in the world or that if he has the talent he will , otherwise he won't " He answered in favour of the first option but said that he would be lying in doing so .

 There are too many times we lie hoping it is the truth ; I can imagine a lot of parents doing that and that has made all the difference .

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The importance of certain activities is at times shrouded in our perceived aim of excelling at them . 

What is the aim of juggling a football ? Is it to keep the ball in the air for the maximum time possible ? It may seem so at the outset , but how can that help in improving one's skill . If one aims for keeping the ball in the air by any means possible and in the process just tries to hit it in any way he can , he tends to forget that the real purpose of juggling is to teach an individual in finding the sweet spot everytime he hits the ball . But if he tries to hit the ball as sweetly or as properly he can , each time the ball shall remain in the air and his touch shall improve as well .

On Cricket

One of the earliest memories that i recall is of my father holding the bat alongside me and enacting a perfect cover drive . He was good at cricket , but a natural left hander , I on the other hand was a right hander with occasional bouts of left handedness to reenact that charm of a square cut that Ganguly so effortlessly played . Cricket was never a topic of discussion at home but had seamlessly blended into the household through the family following every match that was telecast on Doordarshan .
I can't say when i started watching cricket but  it was sometime before the '96 WC . I distinctly remember a towering six that Jayasuriya hit against England , one of his many at that World Cup ,as a bemused Jack Russell watched the ball scale heights and eventually land somewhere on the roof . But it was to be a  WC of heartbreak as I discovered sometime later . I never watched the Semi Final to its conclusion , not that the ever sporting crowd of Eden Gardens didn't allow me to ,i had resigned to defeat a long time before people took matters in their own hands . Unfortunately i managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of Kambli , gloves , helmet in hands and tears in eyes , my heart was with him and  my eyes reciprocated his own .
'96 did more for Tennis than perhaps it did for Cricket in India . I never knew such a game existed, before that lad called Paes brought a bronze medal home . And that was the time doordashan began to oblige us with savory treats of Grand Slam semi finals and Finals . I watched them all , Paes Bhupati , Woodbridge Woodford , and Rafter that ponytailed herculean fighting it out against  Agassi and Sampras . Perhaps Hingis  too though i don't recall . Tennis was enjoyable , but it was more of a upper class sport , the only court in the vicinity being at IITK and not worth the trouble . So i stuck to playing cricket in gullies , occasionally in parks and maybe once or twice in stadiums .
Although Kanpur has an international cricket stadium i had never watched a match there until 2002 when India hosted England .  It was january and naturally the pitch was wet due to early morning dew . The match started late and was cut short to 39 overs . India made no heck in chasing a modest target of 219 that England had set with Sachin scoring 87 . But overall it was a dry affair , or so it looked from my seat in the student stands . Perhaps cricket is a sport meant for drawing rooms than stadiums , but i cannot really say for sure .
Though a taste of watching cricket from close quarters wasn't one to savour , i had complete faith in the ability of the idiot box to provide my cricket fix . I followed cricket assiduosly till 2007 ,but after that things were never quite the same any more . It was not completely downhill and i still enjoyed watching test matches and ODIs . But I could never stand 20-20 , and it was everywhere . The launch of IPL and then  IPL 2 perhaps proved to be the final twist of the knife .
For most of my college life i have not followed the Indian Cricket team , except the occasional match and the World Cup , which left me teary eyed ( and perhaps Kambli too ) . But i hope to make up for the transgressions and follow cricket again , perhaps at a more comforting time and place , when my head and heart are at peace with each other

You know how life is

" A man without aim is like a ship without a rudder " . I quoted that in an essay I wrote in my sixth standard English exam . I even used to like that quote , the ship propelling ,steered by the rudder ; the man living guided by his aim ; well you know how it works . Fastforward four years I had found my rudder or so it seemed . Things happened my ship changed directions passing through triangles hitherto unknown before reaching a state of lull . I had lost faith in my rudder , that might have happened a long time ago but
it really struck me later . Confused and distraught i looked for answers around me . Standard procedure , a naive mistake , for it was really within me that i should have been looking . But you know , truth hurts , so you don't acknowledge it and move on , while time glides and only when the burden becomes too heavy to carry that is  when you , boggled down by the heaviness of your own heart , care for a look behind . And it sends you into a realm of nostalgic dreams and you decide to change things around you , to live for what you really care for , for your dreams and not someone else's . This happened around 10 - 15 times , this nostalgia and revamping your life stuff . Everyone loves being nostalgic .
It takes a free man to actually acknowledge that this aim thing doesn't work . Never will . When God made  there are so many fruits why only eat banana , why not  pear, structurally so enamouring and tasty as well . Its always better to take things as they come . Like this blog post , i don't know where its going, it started with a small idea and we shall see .  Like suppose someone calls me for dinner now , having aimed to complete this post by 8:45 , i can't afford to go . But a free man won't give a rat's ass about it and shall complete it in one line and happily jaunt away .But I love nostalgia , and will be back to my withered old self and my aims haranguing me .