I know this is juvenile and some might even consider this blasphemous. But this goes to everyone from my generation who saw Mahabharat and Ramayana on Doordarshan and had trouble distinguishing between gadha and gada, two phonetically similar Hindi words with meanings that couldn’t be more different.

DT says: “Clamouring for women’s lib — is my version of this post.”

She also adds: “I want omelette.”

But no matter how thick-skinned they are, a loss like the one at Hyderabad is a kick in the nuts. I’ll speak for myself. It hurts. Really bad.

Many of us have been discussing how Hyderabad 2009 is similar to Chennai 1999, when India lost to Pakistan by a gut-wrenching margin of 12 runs. In both cases, Tendulkar got a big hundred, raised hopes of a jail-breaking win, got out, and then the rest of the batting line-up had the tensile strength of a marie biscuit.

My colleague Arjun Sen first mentioned a possible similarity between 1999 and 2009, when we were discussing the match on my Facebook status.

I later thought it’d be worthwhile comparing the Chennai and Hyderabad scorecards to detect similarities. On top of my mind were 1) a Tendulkar hundred, 2) Nayan Mongia and Raina getting fifties and 3)  a partnership of 130-odd runs in both games.

But once I began the analysis, the findings were startling. Eerie. Bizarre. Unbelievable. And mostly too good to be true. We suspected Chennai and Hyderabad were similar, but here was eye-popping data that confirmed our suspicion.

I ran the report on the findings on India Today an hour or so after the Hyderabad match.

Later, I updated the copy twice when I found some more eye-popping data from the two scorecards.

The story was picked up by In.com and later by Cricinfo’s Surfer.

Later this evening, blog buddy Arvind Iyer saw my report. My jaw dropped when he said he’d read something similar in the Bangalore edition of Times of India today.

So I looked up their epaper. And here’s what I find, on Sports Pg 1 .

Fantastic headline, and a five-star rating, too. (Update: Venkat Ananth points me to TOI’s Mumbai edition which carries the same infographic. I’m guessing this originated from Mumbai.)

Now, the connections between Chennai ’99 and Hyderabad ’09 have been talked about by thousands of cricket followers. I’m just one of them. And the stats which establish these connections are also out in public domain.

But what gets my bakri is the sequence of TOI’s points. They are exactly similar to the sequence in which I wrote them.

Without suggesting anything, I’ll just add that TOI & Sons are known offenders in such matters. Ask Twilight Fairy, The Cook’s Cottage, Food For Thought, Jai Arjun, to name a few. They’ve given bloggers a hard time, and now they’ve done it to someone of their own community.

I’ll leave it at that. I hope India kick Australia’s gadha tomorrow. There, I said it. It was an emotional outburst. But only because Hyderabad still hurts.

After about six weeks of playing FarmVille night after night, I’ve reached Level 29. Needless to say it pisses off the wife.

I crossed 41,000 XP points tonight, and my interest in the game is on the wane. I might stop playing soon.

Here’s what my farm looks like.

Have you noticed how ridiculously phallic the grain silos look? I buy one everyday and I’m fast running out of space to store them.

One thing I’d like FarmVille’s developers to do is make these decorations and buildings useful to farming. Sure, they get you XP points for buying them, but they just sit there and do nothing to make farming easy.

So what level are you on?

Believe me. It’s true!

My attempt is to depict how a lot of men around me think. The flow chart doesn’t necessarily convey my own feelings.

(Click to see enlarged image.)

Update, October 24, 11:40 pm: I’ve removed the old flowchart and added this new one.

Uncle Akalmand, Babu the Jupiterian Giant, Raaku the Filthy Undead Daaku

I’m glad my life doesn’t depend on drawing. But I’ve had this concept which I decided to put down on paper this evening.

You might have noticed the earlier post on Chacha Chaudhary & Raaka comics. I’ve spent my last few evenings reading them.

So I got this idea to spoof Pran’s works. I don’t know how this is going to turn out. My drawing skill sucks. So I’m betting on content.

In the photo is the first sketch of the concept. The first story would follow soon. Feedback most welcome.

This is from Chacha Chaudhary – Raaka Se Muthbhed (चाचा चौधरी – राका से मुठभेड ) by Pran.

We now own every Chacha Choudhary vs Raaka comic book — all 15 of them. Are we really cool dorks or what?

No, I’m not lending them to you!

Shahid Kapoor, IMHO, has delivered his grittiest show yet. His saliva-swapping, bullet-popping double role with a double speech impediment must be one of the more challenging roles taken on by a mainstream Bollywood actor in recent times. Especially given the homosexual overtones in the portayal of Charlie.

Priyanka Chopra kicks ass too. For once she’s not the dolled-up accessory to the protagonist. My favourite bit involving her was when she picks up the Sten gun. When was the last time that gun appeared in a Hindi film? 1993?

I thought the climax parodied those of some gangster films. It might be considered overtly philosophical too. This film isn’t Omkara, but it stands apart from Vishal Bharadwaj’s films. My respect for him has grown. I’d give Kaminey 3.75 out of 5.

And here’s an addition to the Wornacular Collection:

Speaking of Bharadwaj’s films…