Thursday, September 27, 2007
All hail a warrior...
A hundred years ago today, a young warrior was born. He went on to give his life to what he believed was the truth...
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Overdue...
August 29th was Dhyan Chand (Singh) 's 102nd birth anniversary. And I so desperately wanted to have something to say for the occasion. But what would I say? That he hit a 1000 goals in his career? That he once played barefoot and took India to victory in 6 minutes? Or that Hitler is supposed to have asked him to emigrate to Germany? All this and more is old laundry. A click and flick, and you'll find a full life story in Wikipedia. So anything more I say will be me trying to bask in reflected glory by highlighting his achievements. (Like some hyper charged Times group journo- I had to take this cheap shot, the paper and the channel have been pissing me off too much).
So it took me 11 days since his birthday, Sharapova losing in the third round of the US Open, rumours of Sachin's retirement (on Times- where else!), and of course, India making a glorious entry into the Asia Cup final, (The women's team is having slight bad luck, but I'm hoping things get better) to finally say something about the wizard.
As much as I'd like to believe all the stories of the world's disbelief with his prowess (the magnet-in-stick conspiracy theorists, the glue-on-stick conspiracy theorists, the Hitler's-invitation story tellers) for now, we'll just put them aside without comment. The most astounding story that I am desperately hoping to find concrete support for is that his stick-work was so fabulous, slow motion TV replays couldn't decipher the complex pointework. What that means is, 1., Some of his flicks and moves were faster than 1/50th of a second or 1/60th of a second (depending on which video system they used) which is simply supernatural, and 2., There are, somewhere in the world, videos of the wizard playing!
For the last month or so, I've been desperately trying to get videos of India's hockey spectacles and sadly enough even recent victories don't find a place in the myriad of the World Wide Web. (Atleast, not anywhere I've looked, and I've looked in a la-ot of places). So to me right now, Dhyan Chand remains an elusive dream. So much I've read about him (Probably a lot more than he humanly could have been) but the truth is just out of reach. Why hasn't the world any record of the "greatest hockey player ever"?
The only videos that return on a google search for "Indian Hockey"+"video" are those from Chak De! India.
I finish this rather empty post a few hours after South Korea came up the wrong side of 7-2 in a splendid team game that India put up in the finals of the Asia Cup. The ladies however seem to have gone down 4-2 to China, to come in 4th in the tourney. 'Tsalright, there's next time.
So it took me 11 days since his birthday, Sharapova losing in the third round of the US Open, rumours of Sachin's retirement (on Times- where else!), and of course, India making a glorious entry into the Asia Cup final, (The women's team is having slight bad luck, but I'm hoping things get better) to finally say something about the wizard.
As much as I'd like to believe all the stories of the world's disbelief with his prowess (the magnet-in-stick conspiracy theorists, the glue-on-stick conspiracy theorists, the Hitler's-invitation story tellers) for now, we'll just put them aside without comment. The most astounding story that I am desperately hoping to find concrete support for is that his stick-work was so fabulous, slow motion TV replays couldn't decipher the complex pointework. What that means is, 1., Some of his flicks and moves were faster than 1/50th of a second or 1/60th of a second (depending on which video system they used) which is simply supernatural, and 2., There are, somewhere in the world, videos of the wizard playing!
For the last month or so, I've been desperately trying to get videos of India's hockey spectacles and sadly enough even recent victories don't find a place in the myriad of the World Wide Web. (Atleast, not anywhere I've looked, and I've looked in a la-ot of places). So to me right now, Dhyan Chand remains an elusive dream. So much I've read about him (Probably a lot more than he humanly could have been) but the truth is just out of reach. Why hasn't the world any record of the "greatest hockey player ever"?
The only videos that return on a google search for "Indian Hockey"+"video" are those from Chak De! India.
I finish this rather empty post a few hours after South Korea came up the wrong side of 7-2 in a splendid team game that India put up in the finals of the Asia Cup. The ladies however seem to have gone down 4-2 to China, to come in 4th in the tourney. 'Tsalright, there's next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)