Blue Litmus

Work hasn’t become so monotonous that I come up with something as disturbing as Marx’s manifesto but really, I can’t wait till I am informed about my eventual location and my key result areas. However, two things happened over this week and the last, that have given me immense pleasure.

Federer took the French, a prediction I made last year, aghast at his shock defeat at the hands of jungle-brute Nadal in the lawns of Wimbledon 2008. Nadal received a solid whipping from silent Swede Soderling in the Round of 32 . When he(Soderling) fired his forehands, particularly the inside-out version that very few players are able to pull off, Nadal was clueless, absolutely beaten for speed and power. A sore loser that Nadal is, he said he let Soderling play his game. The cheek of the blighter!

But on other fronts, did you happen to catch Leander Paes getting smashed in the eye with a perfectly well-guided tennis ball? What was he doing there standing erect right up at the net? Dlouzhy was smart enough to keep his racquet close to his face anticipating a shot like that. What was depressing though to see was Paes exulting and howling like a mentally challenged gibbon after every point he won as if he couldn’t believe he was winning.

The second exciting thing was the way Chris Gayle lay waste the Aussies. There are no words to describe that onslaught. There could be words in the Caribbean for this sort of thing; words like ‘blow-dem-ay-way’, ‘jingo-lo-ba’ and the like. The Windies showed them the way out alright. They made 170 runs look like a paltry total as they knocked it over with 5 overs still to go.

Finally saw some children going to school in the morning. I hadn’t seen that in the last two months – vacation time. It appears that come hail or come shower, this place will never move on from twin-plaited-ribbon-tied hairdo for little girls not to mention the boys with their shorts buttoned above their navels and all you can see is the zipper flap on the front. Madras is unaffected by climate change and this dubious distinction is something the city shares with Indian Politicians. I was browsing books to read at a nearby store standing absolutely still but the volume of sweat I was drenched in would have easily misled the casual observer into believing that I had just run a mile in under two minutes. What with the quantity of fruit juices that I am ingesting? It never seems to be quite enough for I am practically drowning in my own sweat [this would make a great story for Stephen King]. Until work picks up, I thought I’d resume the pencil sketching that I used to do.

You might have to wait a long while for another post.