Articles.. My literary misadventures!

IMPORTANT:All the events, characters and places in following articles are fictitious and I cannot be held responsible if it bear any accidential coincidence with anything living, dead or existing.

1.Kingfisher at the Kovalam Beach.
..And there layed me and Biju, on the heated rocks, looking at the magnificient Kovalam beach.Almost everything under the sun was said and discussed as we were meeting after a long time.The mildly radiating November sun must have done some tricks. We felt like having beer! and sudddenly,like an angel, there appeared a lean, short dark man, wearing a lungi and shirt with front opened. He had a towel like rug tied on his head and was smoking an alredy finished 'beedi'. He approached us and asked us " Sir, would u like to have an 'aurvedic' massage?","there is a good 'Lady' doctor near by.." with wide opened eyes and a foolish questioning expression, we, me and biju looked at each other .. no we were not interested in 'massaging' anyway. So, we inquired this guy whether we can get beer from somewhere. This fellow, who introduced himself as "kumaran", said "yes but it will cost you Rs 100/-" I could not agree this pricing as I was coming from Bangalore where the beer was priced at an economical rate of Rs. 40-50 per bottle. So, we told Kumar-ettan that we didnt want anything .He climbed the rocks and disappeared to nowhere. Again, we spent time talking about 'massaging' and all those things but the intentions for beer was gaining strength...we started looking for "kumar-ettan" around, and lo! this Kumarettan again appeared from thin air!, we called him waving our hands and asked him to bring two 'KF strong beer', giving him Rs. 150/- as advance.Kumarettan said..."sir, after bringing beer dont forget to give Kumaran some tips" we agreed up on that and thus Kumarettan climbed down the rocks, crossed the road near the beach and once again vanished. We, much elated, thinking of having chilled beer, laying on the rocks and gazing at the wonderful beauty of the Arbian sea layed there. It has been 15 minutes where is Kumarettan? .. minutes ticked by ... It has been around an hour where is Kumarettan?... we still waited for Kumarettan expecting his thin figure to climb up the rock, holding two bottles of chilled beer in his hand. But it took around one more hour for us to realize that Kumarettan was in anyway not going to return atleast for next 24 hours! to realize that we are being fooled at our own expense! and thus, bearing a foolish grin on our faces, we started climbing down the rock towards the place where we had parked our bike.
Post script: After this historical incident at the rocks, Ranjith and Biju decided to go to the Kovalam-inn restaurant and get cool chilled beer.

2.Learning "Never Say Die" On a Summer Vacation
Summer vacations and we were enjoying it doing every damn thing possible and playing criket till it was dark enough so that we could not see the ball properly. It was a Friday (18-04-1986, if I am not mistaken) and we( me my brothers and a friend) were rushing in an auto to 'Anjali', Raju maman's(uncle) house to watch the Sharjah cup finals of 1986 between India and Pakistan. Being a die hard cricket enthusiast, Raju maman was on leave that day.. the T.V was on... Yes...we rushed in and took our places..eagerly looking at the T.V. Indian batting was over and the target was set to 246 in 50 Overs. The match was interesting for the pace in which Pakistan kept losing wickets and the pace in which they gathered score. I don't remember much of those overs but the final over of the match, which really exposed what stuff the batsman called Javed Miandad was made of. I remember the last two balls. Bowler was Chetan sharma, the pace bowler of Indian team then. 5th ball, the last man was on the batting crease, a spin bowler-Tauseef Ahmed, Miandad on the other end. They manage to convert that ball into a single. Pakistan 242, losing 9 wkts. Now,balls remaining 1 and 4 runs required. "Kapil Dev, the veteran Indian all-rounder and captain goes to Chetan and gives him some tips.. Chetan strides forward to bowl ..every one's eye on Miandad..we all were silent...Chetan sharma releases the ball, he tried a Yorker it seems.. Miandad, strikes the ball hard to the on side...a sssixxxxx!!! Pakistan wins ..."and we all dejected but wondering is this man the devil himself? That was when I first heard of this never-say-die Pakistani cricketer. After this glorious innings of 116 not out,I used to worship Miandad along with other cricketers. Somehow or other, his last match also was a very exciting one. It was the quarter-final of the 1996 World Cup at Bangalore. With the help of some cracking sixers and boundaries of Ajay Jadeja in the last overs against Waquar Younis,the Indian team had posted a confident looking target. But the Pakistani openers - Said Anwar and Amir Sohail was ripping India's opening bowlers apart all over the Park. As it is common in all the India-Pakistan ties, this one also had some tensions between the players. An over excited Amir Sohail, after hitting a boundary off Venkatesh Prasad, gesticulated that he was going to put the ball out of the ground in the next delivery. The very next delivery, he was clean-bowled by the Indian paceman. Such was the excitement and tension in that game.But Pakistan kept losing wickets succumbing to Kumble's attack.But,there, as ever, Miandad tried his damnedest to beat India, the match was going our way only after he was run out after a battling innings. Today, every cricket team longs for a fighter like him in their side. Every individual has to learn something from this man-"the never-say-die" attitude.

3.Site History: I started uploading html pages to 20 megsfree on 14 MAR 2001 and it is almost a year now. I was not satisfied by the looks of my pages. So added some Style sheets and Javascript on 05 SEP 2001. Installed Netscape on my box and checked this site on 12 FEB 2002. The site was almost useless when viewed thru Netscape-due to the style sheet and javascripts. I decided to make the site viewable with any browser. So after reworks, this is the latest form on 22 FEB 2002.
4.Geek Code:The geeks on www have a very intersting method to describe themselves. Here I have my geek code being a pseudo geek.

	------BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
	Version: 3.12
	GCS/MU d? s-:+ a- C++ UL++ P+ L++ E- W++ N- o K- w-
	O- M- V- PS+ PE Y PGP t- 5 X++ R* tv++ b++ DI-- D+
	G+ e+++ h-- !r y
	------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------