“Where were you when… such and such a thing happened?” is such a cliché.

But you still want to task that question.

Today is October 31, the day Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated.

I was a school student when it happened in 1984, and certain things still stick to this very day…

AIR revives Indira: In the ghastly act, her guards pumped 30 bullets into her body at about 9.30 in the morning. She was officially declared dead by the doctors an hour later. But since President Zail Singh was out of the country, the government didn’t declare the news before evening time.

Doordarshan kept saying that she was “serious” all day. One All India Radio broadcast in the afternoon even said something to the effect of: According to unconfirmed sources, she may have regained consciousness!

Such a media blackout is unthinkable in today’s Twitter Age where everything breaks instantaneously and universally. Of course everyone knew the truth in India through word of mouth, but there were still many who thought she would survive till the official confirmation finally came.

The Kid on the Bike: The moment we got the news, one of my school seniors and neighbours screamed “Indira is dead: Now Vajpayee will be Prime Minister!” After that he cycled all day in the neighbourhood shouting “Vajpayee for Prime Minister.”

To me it seemed quite bizarre considering the fact that I had heard Vajpayee’s name for the first time in my life. But his words became prophetic as Atal Bihari Vajpayee did indeed become PM after 14 years.

The Fateful Speech: “Mere khoon ka ek ek katra is desh ke liye kaam aayega,” (Every drop of my blood will serve the nation) is a popular statement she made in a political rally days before she died.

This was the talking point for everyone for months on end after Indira’s death.

But when I entered journalism, some seniors told me that she never made such a statement.

It was a figment of the Congress’ imagination and part of their propaganda!

Seven Years Later: In 1991 Indira’s son, former PM Rajiv Gandhi, was also assassinated. But this time it was after 10 in the night when half of India was either asleep or blissfully unaware of the tragic news.

I fell into the latter category. I took my morning walk and when I returned home I saw (what was to me at least) the most shocking “Breaking News” ever.

“Rajiv Assassinated” was above the Times of India masthead.

My late sister’s journalism teacher had told her that such an event was a rarity and happened very few times in a newspaper’s lifetime.

Of course, now the times have really changed.

Today if you are a rich industrialist with a few crores to spare, then you may be able to announce your son’s birthday above the Times of India masthead, with the way it’s going!

© Sunil Rajguru

When I was small, I had a sprain that wouldn’t heal. My relative told me that there was a balm that was extremely painful and extremely effective and he’d recommend it to me if I was up to it. It was a brutal “one-day” solution. I didn’t know what he meant but I said yes all the same. He handed me a yellowish-orange extremely smelly balm and told me to use it sparingly or else face the consequences. I put in on and rubbed it and wondered what the fuss was all about. Then I felt a mild burning sensation. It steadily got hotter and hotter and my relative was looking at me amusingly from the corner of the eye.

Then suddenly my hand caught fire! (Or at least it felt that way) I could hardly bear the pain and I didn’t know how to describe it. It was as if a dozen hot needles had been poked in my hand or simply someone had poured kerosene on it and set it on fire. The hand got hotter and hotter and I simply felt I would faint! My relative calmly told me to hold on. It would eventually go away. Eventually meant a few hours and in that time, nothing else mattered. No house. No relative. No work. No thoughts. It was me and my burning hand. By evening, the burning started receding, just like a fire that had been put out with embers steadily cooling. I felt a tingling even as I slept.

When I got up in the morning, I was totally OK. And despite the pain, I was converted for life. As my relative said, “Use other balms 10 times, use this one only once.” But I can see why it’s unpopular. It smells. It leaves stains on your clothes. And of course, it burns like hell. My wife can’t stand the sight of the bottle and says that I’ve used it so many times, that my body is probably immune. When I have multiple body aches, she calls it a Sloan’s Bath. Though my wife did inform me that her grandmother uses something more potent and rare called Sloan’s Liniment. I was mighty impressed.

I have recommended it to people with adverse reactions. Once when my late sister was limping for days, I gave her a bottle. The next day morning I got a firing.

My leg burnt. I couldn’t sleep all night. I got out of bed at 2am. I put my leg in running cold water. I kept it in a bucket for one hour…

When she finished pacing up and down with her tirade, I pointed to her leg. She was no longer limping. She was cured. “But the pain wasn’t worth it,” she said and stormed off.

Once I gave it to my flat-mate and watched in horror as he took a huge amount and started massaging his leg with it. I warned him of the consequences but he wouldn’t listen. He said something to the effect of “Mard ka bachcha” (Loosely translated to mean “son of a macho man”). My friends and I watched as he sat sure that nothing would happen. Then the tingling started and the pain multiplied. My friend got up started pacing around. He was putting a brave face and having difficulty in controlling his pain. Then he let out a scream and started heaping choicest abuses on Mr Sloan and his extended family.

As all of us watched the comic scene, he suddenly picked up the bottle and threw it out of the window with all his might. I ran to the window fearfully, for it faced the main road. If it hit a passing motorist then broken glass and Sloan’s would combine to unleash such pain, that the motorist would surely file a case of attempted murder. Luckily, it had fallen safely into the ground. I could only hope no man or animal would poke its nose into it. I realized that I couldn’t recommend it again to anyone.

It is also a tough task shopping for it. If I go to 10 medical shops, then 5 shopkeepers are sure to look at me as if I’m speaking some foreign language. When I finally do get a bottle, the shopkeeper opens his notebook and scribbles. (Customer came and bought the entire stock (1 bottle) of Sloan’s Balm) I’m serious, when I ask for a second bottle, I don’t get it.

I read somewhere that Sloan’s has capsaicin, which is an essential component of chili pepper. That explains it. If you eat chili pepper, you’ll feel as if your throat is on fire. If you use a balm which has a chili pepper component, you’ll feel as if your body part is on fire…

Hello, is there anybody out there… anybody using Sloan’s Balm?

More importantly, does anybody want to use Sloan’s?

© Sunil Rajguru

There was a time when Indian TV had only Doordarshan. Colour TV was difficult to imagine. A remote was an unheard of concept. And multiple channels? Ha ha ha!

Strange but true: This government owned unprofessionally run non-24-hour TV channel was all we ever wanted. For us, Doordarshan (or DD) was Santa Claus who had at least one gift for every person in the family. DD probably peaked in the eighties and after that satellite TV took over. Last month, DD completed 50 years.

Here’s looking at 10 of my favourite programmes in no particular order…

Weekend Movies: Our home box office
The high point of every week was the Sunday Hindi movie. No matter what they showed, you still looked forward to it. Blockbuster or flop, millions would sit glued to it week after week right till the very end. I never missed the weekly regional movie too. It was a glorious peek into the culture of every state and national integration at it best.

The World This Week: The ultimate news capsule
When this was first aired, we were all blown away. Nobody thought news could be so slick and sexy. Prannoy Roy became a superstar overnight. If you missed this, then you felt as if you had missed the entire news of the week. But if that was cream, then the 24/7 news channels of India today are definitely highly diluted and adulterated milk.

Buniyaad: Saas Bahu ka baap
There was a time when Master Haveliram and Lajoji were the most watched admired couple in India. This epic, from the maker of Sholay, spanned decades and we didn’t feel like missing a single episode. The first serial for me that probably became a habit. (I always found India’s first soap Hum Log a tad slow)

Bharat Ek Khoj: India’s history channel
Even if you didn’t like Nehru, you couldn’t dislike Bharat Ek Khoj, based on the book The Discovery of India. This serial, which lasted roughly a year, took you through India from the Vedic period to Independence without sounding like a history lesson.

Karamchand: Desi Sherlock Holmes
We heard at that time that Pankaj Kapoor became the highest paid TV actor with this serial and he deserved every Rupee. Just like Hardy’s “Here’s another fine mess you’ve got me into”, the eccentric Karamchand’s “Shut up Kitty” became a national rage.

Byomkesh Bakshi: Classy and gripping
I had never heard of Byomkesh Bakshi or Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay in my whole life but when I saw this Bengali detective serial, my first thoughts were, “It’s right up there with Sherlock Holmes.” Sterling performances by Rajit Kapur and KK Raina.

Quiz Time: The battle of the brains
For me Siddhartha Basu’s university quiz is still the gold standard for quizzing in India and he’s still the ultimate quizmaster. The suspense and drama beat KBC, Dus Ka Dum and Bournvita Quiz Contest all put together.

Mr Yogi: The original What’s your Raashee?
By 1989 standards, this was quite an exotic concept and Mohan Gokhale seemed like an exotic actor too. This was a fresh serial and Om Puri as the sutradhar excelled. Our bumbling NRI and his 12 heroines enthralled us.

Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi: The original laugh riot
Shafi Inamdar, Swaroop Sampat, Rakesh Bedi and Satish Shah were the perfect cast. The script was perfect. The comedy was perfect. Indian TV is yet to better this serial. We looked forward to what avatar Satish Shah would come up with in every episode.

Chanakya: Vedic magic
While we had heard so much about Chanakya and his Arthashastra, to see it come out on the small screen was really different thing altogether. The atmosphere transported us straight back to the Vedic era. Dr Chandraprakash Dwivedi was Chanakya incarnate.

…and 4 “imported” ones…

Secrets of the Sea: The precursor to National Geographic
Jacques-Yves Cousteau has no idea how many millions of Indians he introduced to the wonderful world of televised nature. In an era starved of good educational and enlightening multimedia this was an hour of pure bliss.

Oshin: The most famous Japanese girl of that era
The dedication and toil of this 7-year-old girl bowled all of us over. We cried with her and rejoiced with her. We grew up with her.

Jungle Book: Chaddi pahan ke phool khila hain…
The cartoon was good, the story was good, Nana Patekar’s voice as Shere Khan was good… but the only thing that sticks is the title song penned by Gulzar.

Talespin & Duck Tales: High octane adventures
Kids of today who have 24 hours access to multiple cartoon channels will never understand the weekly anticipation for these two serials. Disney’s wonders travelled all over the world in these adventures… and we travelled with them.

And to think all that on a Black & White TV!

© Sunil Rajguru

Take a few old socks. Roll the first one into a ball. Take another and wrap it onto it carefully so that the shape is maintained. When it reaches the correct size, stitch the final socks neatly so that you are left with a very strong and sturdy ball…

But I am getting a bit ahead of myself. Why would you want to convert old socks into a ball anyway? Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. There was no shortage of necessities and no shortage of inventions at Sainik School Satara, for the hundreds of boys away from home. One was the necessity to play cricket. Footballs, football grounds and football sessions were abundant. After football, basketball and hockey ruled. Swimming and horse riding were regular affairs too. The only problem was cricket. There were simply not enough balls, not enough bats and definitely not enough sessions in our packed hostel routine.

But we wanted to play cricket. So one genius had a brainwave. What was the one thing that every hosteller had? A hockey stick! What was there no shortage of? Old socks! And what could we find in every study room? Chairs. So the game of hockret (hockey+cricket) was invented (most people pronounced it as hockrate, but I think I’ll stick to hockret). (I think the game could also be called sockret. In that case, the inventor would be Sockretis)

The game is played thus: The back of a chair serves as a wicket. The freely available hockey stick replaces the rare cricket bat. And our good old hockret ball (as mentioned in the introduction to this article) replaces the cricket ball. All the other rules are more or less the same. Now there are many advantages of the hockret ball. What happens when it hits a window? Voila! It magically bounces off! What happens when it hits someone? It pains for maybe not more than 30 seconds. What happens when the ball gets lost? No need to buy a new one. You just pool in your stock of old socks and sit together and stitch up a new one. Luckily, enough of us could handle a needle and a thread to make sure that hockret balls were never in short supply. They were better, cheaper and safer than even tennis balls. So we could set up a game of hockret anywhere: On the road, in a small alley, in a ground or even on the boxing ring.

Hockret also came with its own set of innovations. One of them was to counter the contentious LBW rule. Nobody ever wanted to be an umpire and if anyone ever became one, he was just short of having his head knocked off by a dissenting hockeystickman. What were we to do? Even TV replays and Hawkeye together have eluded consensus among commentators, so what hope was there for us always fighting mere boys? Someone came out with the bright idea of the Rule of Three. “Let the ball hit the leg two times and all is forgiven. The third time it will be out.” It doesn’t matter if the ball would have hit the stumps or not. Three chances is all a batsman got. Not only was this proposal accepted, it was a roaring success. It also gave you the freedom to kick the ball out of harm’s way if the hockret ball was heading towards the stumps.

Hockret allowed you the freedom to chuck. That way, it was more like baseball, since the hockey stick is also pretty thin, like a baseball bat. It let someone like me, who was a failure at playing the “propah” game of cricket, a chance to finally get a few wickets and hit a few boundaries. I still can feel  the grip of a hockey stick and the pleasure of clobbering a soft ball.

Over time, we found that NCC stockings also led to tougher and heavier balls and the dynamics were also different. (Just like Kookaburra versus Dukes balls!) If the ball fell in water, it became all the more unpredictable. Not only was it heavier, it would hit really hard if it came on to you and splash water all around. So hockret’s only disadvantage was that we couldn’t play it when it rained. Mud made it totally unplayable and that’s something that couldn’t be simply wiped off like a leather ball. Football still ruled the monsoon season.

What really made things addictive, was indoor hockret. We had dormitories with 13 beds on each side, so they had pretty long corridors. People started playing in the dorms and that could be done at any time of the day and night (Of course one had to be evading authorities all the time). At times they lasted all day. I think one batsman even claimed to have made a thousand runs in a day! Brian Lara, eat your heart out. Some of us would even play this during our study holidays before the exams. I think it did lead to some of us getting fewer marks than we ought to have.

The hockret we played showed no resemblance to Test cricket or even the one-day variety. The bowler would try to get a wicket with every ball or at least stop the ball from being clobbered. The batsman would try to hit every ball for a 4 of a 6. In fact I think the current T20 is the game closest to our good ole hockret. That’s T20 cricket + baseball + hockey. No wonder it was so irresistible!

I wonder if they still play hockret at our old school or has it become extinct by now.

© Sunil Rajguru

I have one very big weakness that I am ashamed of. That is my handwriting. Whether it’s signing my name, writing someone a brief note, or even noting down a phone number, I find it quite awkward to see my squiggly handwriting on a piece of paper. Recently at a parent-teacher meeting, when the principal talked of a handwriting developing a man’s soul (or something to that effect), I was squirming in my seat.

In my whole life, I have met only one person who could read my handwriting with cent per cent accuracy. For some strange reason, it was my chemistry school teacher. Being surrounded by symbols, maybe he found my handwriting another form of some vague symbol language which he could decipher. However, that man was one in a million. What about the rest? To save those poor souls of visual torture, I soon switched to writing in all capitals. Funnily I was pretty good at that. It came out very neat and uniform. I developed a good speed at writing in all caps. In fact, I completed a written test in such a fashion during a job interview well before the stipulated time. The project manager who checked my paper was totally taken aback.

I remember when I wrote my first letter at the age of 10. I was dismayed by its look and feel. Should I post it or should I not? I dumped it in the letterbox and ran. I dreaded the thought of writing letters after that. That was till I discovered a wonderful invention lying at home. It would give me the most legible and official handwriting in the world. Our trusted Olivetti typewriter. After some coaching from my father, I took a 15 paise postcard and inserted it into the typewriter. Then I started typing with my index finger at a rate of probably ten words a minute. After a couple of hours, I looked at my masterpiece. I was thrilled to bits.

From then on it was just me and my good ole typewriter. Slowly I started using one finger from each hand and that itself gave me great speed. I became a letter-writing maniac. I would sit in a closed room and type out a dozen letters in a single sitting. Before I knew it, I was writing hundreds of letters a year. Some letters even rambled on for thousands of words.

I remember the time when I used to study in hostel. I would be back to the primitive, ancient and un-co-operative pen. I used to struggle to write even a hundred words. How I wish the typewriter was allowed in the classrooms and examination halls. I would have happily lugged the device had I got the chance. (Even though it felt like a ton of bricks for a small boy) I got the same feeling when I joined the Hindustan Times, which was doing all its editing by pen and paper at that time.

As a student, I once went to buy vegetables for my mother after a helluva long time. I was shocked jab aate dal ka bhav pata chala. Or rather tamatar ka bhav pata chala. They were going at Rs 20 a kilo. The last I had bought tomatoes, they were 20 paise a kg. I decided to write a Letter to the Editor on this 100-fold inflation to the Times of India.

Now I don’t think I would have sent one if I (a) had to write it out with my ineligible handwriting or (b) had to go to the job typing shop just for a couple of lines. My typewriter saved the day and I saw my name in print! That was a great byline for me. I started bombarding various newspapers with postcards and got published with great regularity. The postcards became inlands and the inlands became A4 sheets. Finally, the letters became articles. I eventually became a journalist. When I look back, the typewriter played a huge role in me getting into the media in the first place.

I always thought that the typewriter would be one buddy that would stay with me for life. But unfaithful me changed all that and went in for a friend sleeker, faster and more innovative than its predecessor: The PC. Today the computer is so widespread and part of our “basic necessities” that it is difficult to imagine that once you would find it nowhere in your neighbourhood.

But the computer and Internet are the true socialists of the world. Whether writing emails, word documents, Facebook scraps, PPT presentations or the like, we all have the same “handwriting” in any part of the world. We are all equals in cyberspace. Now that’s true progress!

© Sunil Rajguru

New Delhi 1971. The whole neighbourhood had gathered for my naming ceremony. My father’s side seemed to have a great fascination for Ps. My grandfather’s name was Pundlikrao. My father’s is Pralhad and sister Pratibha. I was to be called Prakash, but the God of Cricket had other ideas.

While the pandit was busy chanting shlokas, one neighbour was in a faraway land. In West Indies, to be precise. India’s new star was in the nervous nineties and so was his fan. Suddenly the neighbour put his transistor down and yelled, “Gavaskar has scored a century! Gavaskar has scored a century!” Soon the baby was forgotten and there was an atmosphere of jubilation all around. My neighbour walked to my mother and said, “Bhabhiji, now you have to name your son Sunil. Who knows, he might open the batting for the Indian team one day.” Protests were useless and my parents relented. My father is a great cricket fanatic, but little could he have guessed that my skills would be so rock bottom that I wouldn’t even make it to the B team of my hostel dormitory (which had only 26 inmates in the first place). But then a man lives on hope. At any rate, I was saved from having the same initials as my father.

At the age of six, my father got transferred to London. England is a country whose national game is cricket, but national craze football. Cricket was alien to me. Football was home and it seemed the easiest, simplest and greatest of all games.

One Sunday, I saw my father glued to the TV for hours. It was an India-England Test match. I decided to sit down and watch, much to the delight of my father. I sat and sat and sat and sat… Nothing seemed to be happening. A man would throw the ball. Another would block it with the bat. A third would pick it up and give it back to the first. After six balls they would change ends (sometimes you do need an ad break to make things exciting) and repeat the monotony. An occasional “run” would bring about some action. Could this actually be a game? This seemed more like a brilliant cure for insomnia. I kept asking my father for details, but he kept saying, “Sshhk, don’t disturb!” “Disturb!” I muttered to myself, “What is there to disturb? There’s nothing happening in the first place!” I got up and went. My father didn’t even notice.

“What a weird game! Give me a football any day,” I thought to myself, “And I always thought my father was such a sane man!”

Then we returned to India: A country whose national game is hockey, but national craze cricket. So I said, “Let me give a good shot at this game.” I found that I couldn’t bat (even touching the ball was a monumental task), couldn’t bowl (the wide is my all-time favourite delivery) and couldn’t field (falling was much easier than stopping the ball). My friends found the whole story of my naming ceremony hilarious. So I slowly lost interest.

Then India won the World Cup in 1983. Everything changed forever.

I thought everyone had gone mad. This seemed to be India’s greatest event of the year, maybe even the decade. There must be something to it. And we were World Champions after all! So I decided to find out what it was all about. (Off the field this time) I started reading books on rules and followed newspaper reports. I watched matches and discussed them. The complexity of the game started fascinating me. Like millions of others, I became hooked.

I think two things attracted me to cricket. The first is my fascination for numbers, statistics and co-incidences. I think you’ll agree that no other game in the world can offer such a rich scope for figures. Secondly, at my heart I am a chauvinist. For me it’s either India or bust. The Indian football team doesn’t even participate in world cups. I can’t even remotely imagine an Indian challenging Roger Federer and winning Wimbledon. We don’t even exist in the scheme of things of most games on the planet. Where does that leave you? Abinav Bindra’s feat was great, but watching shooting doesn’t take too much of your time. Cricket is the only game where you feel you can rule the world and kill all your spare time to boot.

It affects even those people who don’t watch. My classmate gave one such example. It was Reliance Cup 1987 time. My friend and his father were going through a crowded market. Suddenly the whole place went berserk. There was clapping, shouting and cheering all around. A man came out of the shop screaming, “Chetan Sharma’s got a hat-trick! Chetan Sharma’s got a hat-trick!” Much to my friend’s surprise, his father got carried away and joined the group of revelers. He shouted “A hat-trick for Chetan Sharma,” and danced with the crowd (even on one leg at times, much to the shock of my friend.)

When the din died down, my friend’s father left everyone speechless when he asked, “Who is Chetan Sharma? What’s a hat-trick? And what’s going on?”

***

The only negative was that by the time I reached college, cricket began to rule my moods. A match day was greater than my birthday. A Test match rest day was unresting. (Thank God they abolished those) If India lost, I was in the pits. A victory and the world suddenly seemed a beautiful place. When we lost to Pakistan for the umpteenth time in Sharjah days, I punched the wall so hard that I fractured my knuckles. I stopped watching cricket for a few years. (Javed Miandad’s last ball six was still vivid in my mind) When I started watching again, match fixing happened. So I stopped watching for a few more years. Actually this trend started when Gavaskar retired and I didn’t watch the subsequent Test matches played by India.

Then I realized that such an extreme approach doesn’t work, especially when one is working and has a wife and kid. The difference in time zones of various cricket playing countries doesn’t help sleep and moods either. So my mantra is: As long as India is winning, enjoy it to the maximum while it lasts. When India is losing, shut off. Totally. Don’t watch the matches or news channels. Don’t read reports and don’t waste your breath discussing it all the time. It’s not worth it and there’s so much to do in our lives today, use the spare time wisely. After all Ganguly, Dravid and Kumble all gave it their best shots. And despite everything, Dhoni is still the best man for the job. But his life depends on cricket while mine doesn’t. That puts a lot of things in perspective.

Thanks to this philosophy, I must say that I enjoy cricket more nowadays than in the past.

T20 World Cup? What T20 World Cup? All I know is that the India-West Indies series begins on June 26. If we lose that, then there’s always the ICC Champions Trophy in September. If we lose that, then there’s always…

Much like that famous line in Casablanca: We’ll always have Lord’s, 1983 and Johannesburg, 2007.

© Sunil Rajguru

1. A non-Nehru descendant completing a five-year-term as Prime Minister and actually getting re-elected after that!
- Jai Ho!

2. Pakistan cricket becoming irrelevant in the world and India.
- Arre baba, IPL ka matlab Indo-Pak League nahin hain.

3. A mobile phone becoming one of the most common of devices.
- Mere paas Star Trek ka kam se kam ek device to hain!

4. An Indian picking up two Oscars on one night for Bollywood songs in a Hinglish movie.
- Jai Ho again!

5. Prabhakaran actually getting shot and killed without a fight.
- Do tigers just roll over and die?

6. No years of waiting for scooter, gas, phone,…
- Instant ka zamana aa gaya hain, aur bahut accha hain.

7. A Western type lifestyle and roads jampacked with cars.
- Watch an old Hindi flick, roads look so empty and only the hero is so well-dressed and educated.

8. A non-Russian becoming the World Chess Champion and that too an Indian to boot.
- Vishwanathan: Jaisa naam, waisa kaam.

9. An African American getting elected to the White House.
- Now that’s Change we all can believe in!

10. Coalition governments actually lasting in India.
- NDA doesn’t just mean National Defence Academy and UPA is here to stay.

11. Indians buying out top world companies.
- Mittal and Tata: What an appetite!

12. India becoming an IT powerhouse.
- When will Microsoft be toppled? Maybe the answer lies with India.

13. Veerappan getting caught and killed.
- Sandalwood? That’s the Kannada film industry.

14. The Berlin Wall crumbling. Communism falling. Russia becoming almost irrelevant in world politics.
- One world. One Germany. No USSR.

15. A Governor of Indian origin getting elected in a US state. Indian origin CEOs worldwide.
- So there is such a thing as Indian leadership after all (But currently only outside India).

And 15 Things I’m still waiting for…

1. Toppers and professionals outnumbering criminals in Parliament.
- “Hi! I’m an IIT Gold Medallist and Politics is my first choice!”

2. The Kashmir dispute getting solved.
- The Indian and Pak heads of states walked into the sunset saying, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

3. India becoming No. 1 in Tests and actually staying there for a few years.
- “First it was the Windies. Then the Aussies. Now these mean Indians!”

4. India producing the fastest bowler in the world.
- “Aur isike ke saath Lucky Singh ne 100mph ka barrier cheer ke rakh diya!”

5. India playing in a Football World Cup.
- “India scores the decisive goal against Argentina and enters the quarter finals!”

6. An Indian company wholly producing a Windows or iPod type of product.
- Hail India, the new powerhouse of patents.

7. America playing cricket and India playing baseball.
- Slamdog Millionaire!

8. India becoming an economic, military or cultural superpower ahead of America.
- China door raho, tum hamse takkar nahin le sakte.

9. India making it to the list of 10 least corrupt nations on the Transperency International list.
- Corruption, woh kis chidiya ka naam hain?

10. A Bollywood production which makes $250 million in the US box office
- Farhan Akhtar? Abhay Deol? Anurag Kashyap? Abhi-Ash ke beta/beti?

11. The extinction of farmer suicides and local blood-sucking moneylenders
- Article in Economist: The Indian farmer is now a model to the world

12. India 100% electrified along with a pukka road and school in every village.
- Elections 2030. Bijli, sadak aur paani to aa gaya, ab mudda kya hain?

13. The entire MiG-21 fleet to be grounded and replaced by the latest fighter jets.
- F-22s anyone?

14. Dalai Lama returning gracefully to a Free Tibet.
- Tibeti-Chini bhai bhai.

15. Communism getting totally wiped out in West Bengal and Kerala and the states becoming the economic powerhouses of India.
- In Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram, they have something that’s called Communist Museums.

Bottomline:
Ek eighties ke schoolkid ke nazariya se dekho to ab India main kuch bhi ho sakta hain!

© Sunil Rajguru