When we met Santa...

Lured by the glittering Christmas trees and streets in Leuven last year, I desperately wanted to spend (at least one) Christmas in Europe. With stunning white Christmas around the corner this very year has been an incredible experience. All throughout the year, I dreamt about Santa clause coming to the door step with a lot of goodiebags and gifts providing lots of support and strength. I always believed he must be just around the corner, just to the left or to the right or... Illusioned by his presence, I kept on venturing and exploring each and every activity eagerly looking for surprizes, half chances with the hope that someday I would catch him...I would talk to him...I would sing with him...I would clap with him. From Jan to Nov. passed without much luck but with Christmas around the corner on one rendezvous evening I could indeed meet Santa....We all met Santa....We all sang...We all clapped...We all cheered:

"Wish you a Merry Christmas
Wish you a Merry Christmas
Wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year"

Julienne playing Piano

Itziar on Piano was a marvel. Julienne, Tomas and Sandeep in the background

It's a pity that camera's can't capture sound

It's Jingle Bells time. Everybody joining the corus.
Have a look @ the instrument with Parvathi; Bells in Sandeep's hands are not visible.

What a fantastic evening it was!!! Tomas's aunt Julienne warmly welcomed us and within no time we were in their enthralling music room with Piano, Guitar, Violin, Bells and many more musical instruments I do not even know. All three sisters are heavily into music. They compose songs, melodies, compile lyrics and perform in Chruches mesmerizing the crowd. Make crowd sing with them, clap with them, dance with them. If we would have had other two sisters at the venue, we would have had a live performance for sure but the shear amount of energy and enthusiasm with which Julienne was singing, playing Piano and Violin was good enough to offer us some glimpses as to what these performances would be like. With the house packed crowd, what amount of energy levels these artists must be producing, Stupendous! simply Out-of-the-World!!!

Although this was not the only surprize in store for us. Itziar, one of the new IMEC interns from Spain accompanying us on the trip was an accomplished Piano player. Phew!!! Practicing Piano from the age of 5 (if my memory is sane), her fingers started dancing on Piano producing incredible symphonies. With Julian on Violin and Istiar on Piano, we were treated with plenty of Christmas tunes. Some familiar, some unknown and it was an evening none of us wanted to end. From Beethoven to Jingle Bells we kept on singing and clapping and cheering:

Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way...
What fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh...

If Santa greets me this way every time; I would love to spend Christmas in Europe year after year...

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File photo of Tomas with his parents taken last year
during the Leopoldsberg reenactment battle visit

Do we have it in Us....

Nileshbhai pointed out this motivational piece in Indian Express. The story is about his star Basketball playing sister and her friends coming back to courts after tangible time off it: punes-basketball-moms-script-fairytale-comeback. For more than a reason this is story proves the power of an agile mind. The win of will over all adverse circumstances proving if you want to achieve something and if you set out to do it with all you have, success won't be that far. Acting as a catalyst this encouraging story made me hallucinate sitting right here on my desk. Here I narrate my dream and hope some fellow (ex-)AVS players have similar thoughts. I strongly believe, if we come together, We Can Do It...

I have no second thoughts that my (and hopefully yours) best times have been playing on courts. Be it Kho-Kho or Basketball, just being present on the court in a match or a practice session was a thrill in itself. Gaining approval of the coach and the audience after winning a good tough match has certainly been memorable and loosing a close match and standing in front of angry coaches (Milind, Manoj, Anand and Shetty sir) was as distasteful. Getting selected for district and state teams was the formidable goal and not ending up making it was indeed a huge disappointment. Manisha made us all proud to play for Indian Basketball team through her shear hard work and determination but there are plenty of us who gave it up in between for one reason or the other.

Believe it or not, we were a formidable team (Boys in Kho-Kho and girls in Basketball) in Bombay circuit and if most of us have continued with the sport, some of us would have been head peons (or may be on higher rank accountants) in banks, railways or other public service institutes supposedly bolstering sports and sports men/(wo)men. Obviously this was not a career that a middle class dreams off and with all the surrounding peer pressure we all landed in other Better Safe Than Sorry careers ending up being engineers/doctors/CAs/artists/scientists and what not.

Most of us are excelling in our respective careers, leading happy family lives, making decent money towards meeting both ends meet but in a process we have had to forgo our dreams to excel in sports we all passionately played and practiced every evening. The joy of any sports is not only about winning and loosing but getting back to the competitive spirits does lead to an inexplicable happiness of a higher degree. The bonhomie and team spirits inculcates stronger bonds as we had developed a long while ago. Unfortunately True!!! Under the stress of time and inevatible circumstances, the bonds have waned, contacts are lost. But, if we can take a cue from these brave moms and super achievers not only in sports but in life, we can as well relive our dream to be a formidable opposition in the Bombay circuit.

I believe we can do it. If moms could do it, we could certainly do it. The question is, Do We Have It In Us?

Leuven 'O Leuven!!!

As you dream for tomorrow, you miss today.
As you look far, you miss the things close to you.

In between traveling around Europe, I get a feeling I have almost overlooked the beauty of the very town I stay, Leuven - beautiful Leuven 'O Leuven. In fact, people from all over come to visit Leuven, which I used to find very funny. But no more!!! These glittering christmas lights are for sure a testimony of the fact that Leuven is indeed beautiful and once in Belgium one should visit Leuven.

Last year I had only a hint of Leuven gearing up for Christmas but had very little time capturing it through the lenses. Only Last night before departing to India, I decided to give a skip to (much desired) sleep and went to Leuven Centre to capture the town in the wee hours of morning. Here are a few images:

Glittering Leuven City Hall - It's a very artistic structure with a lot of art work all over. A must see when you are in Leuven. Looks like the town never sleeps during Christmas...

Glittering facade of the city hall

Oud Markt - I was informed that this is judged as the largest pub in the world

A Glittering Christmas Tree

City of Leuven has plenty of statues. This one right at the Leuven Center depicts a KUL student in my opinion and you can see the beer flowing while reading equations? Well, there are actual equation inscribed in the book he holds. Have a look if you haven't so far...

Update:

KU Leuven Library Building. I was informed that it's a renaissance style of architecture.
This photo is taken on one fine evening in 2009.

OMG!!! My fly is open

"Stop! Stop!! Stop!!! One by One.", I, acting as a bad Erasmus coordinator, banged the table hard screaming at fellow actors on stage at the end of scene 3, only to figure out that my fly has remained open and was wondering what to do next as I continued with the scripted dialogs, "Do not worry. I will listen to all your problems. I will solve all of them but one by one! Is that clear? One by One!!!" but in my mind I was shitting in my pants pondering to myself, "OMG!!! My fly is open. WTF!!! What should I do now?" The next part was the closing and most important part of the scene where I have to move to the front threatening on phone, "If you don't finish your job today, I will cut you into pieces and feed you to dogs. Understand? Understand++ you M*****F*****"

Going to the front part of the stage with the fly open would have been adventurous and would certainly have guaranteed stardom in Leuven in no time. Showing back to the audience and fixing the problem would have meant negative body language and hence was not advocated. I never realized what to do, how to act and how to fix up the mess without digressing from the scene. What I spontaneously ended up doing was zipping the fly as I walked down the stage at an inclined angle. Thankfully nobody came up to me saying that I had messed it up royally but it goes without saying that some in the audience must have noticed it. To my surprize, some informed me in the intermission that I was outstanding in the same scene. LoL :-)

But, then again. That's theater. Everything is for the real. No retakes, no editing and everything is uncut and up for the audience to grab it all. You can never fake it and all your problems and strengths are all out in the open. As an actor, not only yours but the lines of the fellow actors should be in your memory. Timing is crucial. The body language, on stage movements should be streamlined with the character and above all you should be ready for all the surprizes. At the end, anything can happen. Everything is a possibility. You can practice any thing and everything. Rehearse for hours, days and months together but performing in front of the house packed audience? It might surprize you altogether. Tailoring your dialog delivery as per the audience responses, taking adequate spontaneous pauses whenever demanded could hardly be simulated and that makes every theater show unique, be it the first or the hundredth. That's why it is and will always remain an art, a performing art of highest quality.

As it got planned, all my scenes were listed one after the other and that meant a limited amount of time to prepare (mentally and physically) for each of them. To add to the predicament, all of them involved change of dress and as narrated above, I ended up making a mess during the last scene. On the whole, the Janus show was an astounding success with "Mind your Language" opening the show to a very warm audience and the grand "Global Party" scene providing a brilliant end. Other scenes in between were very well received as well.

Some in the audience said they just loved it. It was a indeed a pleasure and a very memorable experience to work with all of the Janus crew (Actors, directors, stage setters and others) and the hard work indeed paid off as some in the audience were lured (some even vowed) to be the part of Janus next time. There can hardly be a better complement. As audience was in the guffaws outside I was discussing with Fredrick in the wings when he quoted, "They are not fools to pay 3 EUR to watch us play. We are good, just too good!!!" Indeed We Rocked and made 'em Rock in sync with "I Got a feelin'. That Tonight's gonna be a good night~. That Tonight's gonna be a good night~. That Tonight's gonna be a good good night~" OMG!!! What a fantastic night...

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++ Understand? Understand you M*****F***** was not part of the script. But I ended up saying it. Do not know how?, why? but I guess I was just too much engrossed into the character and it came up naturally. In retrospect it fits well to the character as well. Wonder why I never thought of it during any of the rehearsals. Never occurred.

Janus Theatre in Leuven Poster

The poster prepared by hardworking Janus International Theater patrons (Bieke, Bart and Others):

I Love Leuven Poster

The preparation is going on and on and on and all of us are putting in lots of hard work. Honestly, I am getting more and more nervous with every approaching date and hour. The show appears to be much more serious than I had thought about. I need to work on my voice and on my gestures. This is unbelievable excitement. Really excited to see how it all unfolds...

For those who have asked for tickets:
It's not possible to advance book the tickets. There will be about ~130-140 seats and show is likely to go Houseful. Reminder, it's on 10th Dec., 9pm @ Pangaea. Please be there around 8-8:15pm when the tickets sale will start.

Viru and Sheru

In one of the English county championship matches, Viru and an Englishman were facing Abdul Razzaq who was making the ball talk with his reverse swing. Quite impossible to face, Razzaq was running though the batting order. In between the overs, Viru nonchalantly informed his partner that he has a plan for Razzaq in his mind and with the same nonchalance next over the ball was dispatched out of the park, never to come back again. Phew! Problem solved!! New ball in!!! Good Bye reverse swing!!! Get back to basics!!!

True or false, the story tells a lot about the character of Viru. Simple solution to an otherwise difficult problems. That's Viru. Rather, "Keep It Straight and Simple (KISS)" has been his mantra right from start and to his credit, he has never ever mended it. Careless, fearless, Out of the box and above all always his own self. "When you commentators (Goeffrey, Gavaskars et. al.) discuss about batting, its techniques etc., it looks as if it is the most difficult pursuit in the world. I know only one simple thing. See the ball and hit it.", He had commented to Harsha Bhogle on one of the TV shows and doesn't he make it look so simple?

Peeping into the history, there have been three prolific batsmen who metamorphosed Indian approach to batting. Gavaskar in late 70s and early 80s showed us how to stand and stand tall. Weathering the storms of Roberts, Halls, Marshals, Holdings etc. Indian team learned not only to save games and but they earned the pride too. Tendulkar (Sheru) in the early nineties started demonstrating how to walk and at times run. He offered confidence that we have it in us to take the attack to the opposition and at times we can indeed dictate terms. Unfortunately, he did not receive adequate support from team mates to keep that pressure for long (a day or 2 straight in a test match) in the early nineties. Soon realized that the longer he stays at the wicket, more beneficial it is for the team and (probably) had to alter his game to a reasonable extent. The usual flamboyance was replaced by caution with aggression approach. The behind the wicket minimal risk shots were invented and longer he stayed at the crease, the team looked better. Otherwise it was like Sheru gone, match gone.

Starting Ganguly's tenure as a captain and settled quality middle order (Dravid, Sachin, Ganguly and Laxman) at his disposal, Sehwag has started to offer us a dream that we can fly and fly high. To his credit, Viru has never changed his apporach to the game. Probably because, he could always rely on the cushion of the prolific middle order batting line-up. With his brutal ability to hit the ball hard at will, he has changed the role of an opening batsman in Tests. The usual role of the opener has been to leave as many balls as possible, take the shine off the ball so that it becomes easier for the middle order to plunder the bowling. Viru, even in a short period at crease, not only takes the shine of the ball but also changes the shape of it, setting the opposition to the back foot early on. The longer he stays at the crease, more devastating is the effect. Be it the first ball after lunch or the last ball before the end of days play, he plays every ball the way he wants to. The position of the game, nature of the wicket, reputation of the bowler seldom intervene in the decision making. Average balls never receive any respect and bad balls are always treated with disdain. Remember, he went from 294 to 300 during his first 300 @ Multan with a flamboyant six. How many can ever do that? and how many can go public after missing another saying, "(No big deal.) It was a missed opportunity, but there will always be a next time." Striking, isn't it? Looks like he treats tripple 100s just as another 100 or a 200. To me, there is a very thin line between confidence and arrogance. For brave hearts like Viru the boasting probably suits the most and touchwood he gets another chance sooner than later.

I really wonder what would have happened if Viru phenomenon would have occurred to Indian cricket ahead of Sheru? Sachin surely has an early bird advantage over Viru. Owing to the rule that the best batsman should bat @ no. 4 in Test cricket, Viru would definitely have been given that role in the absence of Sheru and Sheru would then have had to open the innings for team India. If Viru then had altered his game? and if Sheru would have remained his aggressive self? Would Viru have proved to be a better finisher of the game? and if Bradman would have felt Viru bats very much like him? The questions are fun to address. Thoughts are welcome...