Wonder Cement Saath7 Cricket Mahotsav 2017 - World's Largest Consumer Engagement

I do believe this truly was a wonderful event. Simply because of the scale and the amount of joy the event spread. For the uninitiated, Udaipur based Wonder Cement, arguably one of the the fastest growing cement company in India, pulled off what could well be the biggest consumer engagement program in the world by hosting Saath7, 2017. The scale and numbers support the claim.

Saath7 2017 Winner SC Club, Jaipur with Kapil Dev, Vivek Patni and Mr. Shrikhand Kripalani

Saath 7 Cricket Mahotsav
Saath7 is a cricket Mahotsav that invites people across classes, communities, region and any other division to form a team of 7 and register and play. Saath7 is a modified cricket game of 7 overs, played by a team of 7, which includes any person over the age of 15, includes women in teams, has no other bar and gives bonus runs to teams that have a woman player.

The first version was held successfully across 248 tehsils in Rajasthan in 2015 and was a roaring success. Wonder Cement held the tournament across 3 states (Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh). The logistics for this edition - 5000 matches, 48,000 participants, 60 women teams and over 1000 women participating. The total prize money awarded was Rs. 40 lakhs.

Held over four weekends in December 2017, the tournament progressed from tehsil level to district level to zonal level and then the state level. From pitches to player registrations to umpires to clothes to prize moneys, everything was organised without a hitch.

Kapil Dev at a press conference

The Final of Saath7 2017
The final  was held on 24th December 2017 at the scenic DPS School ground in Udaipur. SSC Club Jaipur won this year's edition defeating PCA11 Ahmedabad by 23 runs. In the women's category, Pace Maker, Udaipur defeated SS Jain Subodh Girls PG College of Jaipur by 5 wickets. A large number of spectators watched the match at the ground and lakhs of viewers watched this amateur tournament on TV,  telecast live on NEO Sports.  

The winning team in the men's category won Rs. 3.5 lakhs and the runner up were awarded prizes of Rs. 1 lakh and Rs. 70,000 respectively.The Women champion team won a prize money of Rs. 1.4 lakh and the runner up team earned Rs. 70,000. Each player was also provided with a sports kit.

The Man of the Match was Lakhan of SSC Club, Jaipur, best batsman was Sushil Meena of SSC Club, best fielder was Sanjay Bhadania of PCA 11, and best bowler was Kunal Kaushik of Friends Club, Rajasthan. Each was awarded a cash prize of Rs. 7000. In the women's category Divya from Pace Maker was declared Player of the Match and Player of the series (won Rs. 3500 and Rs. 14000 respectively)

Well Done Wonder Cement
I enjoyed watching the games on TV. There is more fun sometimes in the amateur sport than the shine and glitz and even boredom of professional players (watch the Ranji final now between Vidarbha and Delhi and you know what I mean).  My good friend Tarun Singh Chauhan conceived and made this almost dream like tournament happen and I am amazed at what the company and the tournament has done and proud of Tarun for what he has done with such a sensible and seemingly idealistic idea.

Achieved Objectives
Wonder Cement held its beliefs of wanting to achieve a few objectives through the tournament. Apart from engaging with the consumers, the tournament unites people and brings them together. It encourages women to participate and thereby aims to give them the respect and dignity they deserve, it provides employment opportunities and it uncovers and encourages new talent through the exposure, kits and coaching facilities.

Kapil Dev Gives a prize of Rs. 1 Lakh from His Pocket
Kapil Dev, who kicked off the launch on November 1, 2017, in a wonderful program in Delhi (I attended that) was also present at the concluding day. He was so impressed by what the tournament has done to cricket (something that state cricket associations should be doing) that he even gave away a prize of Rs. 1 lakh from his pocket to the best player of the tournament, Sushil Meena of SSC Club Jaipur. It must have been a thrilling moment for the young cricketers to meet the legend, arguably the best cricketer India produced ever.

I am sure that Wonder Cement would take this initiative further and bring more joy to the interiors of India. It is wonderful that they chose a popular game and have been able to involve people of all classes, communities, genders and ages. A pat on the back for Wonder Cement and its team for making this happen.

The Year in Books - 2017

80 books!
It is the most books I ever read in one year in my life so a pat on the back for that. I also tried to be conscious about the ones I chose to read. The top 10 would be - Zen, The Beginner's Mind, The Inner Game of Tennis, The Sentimental Spy, Are You Experienced, Open, Autobiography of a Yogi, Sons and Lovers, The Heart of a Woman, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared and Heat and Dust. Stanley Kramer's biography by Daniel Spoto was a lesson in how to write one. Two books that left an impact - How I Raised Myself from Success to Failure and Dying to Be Me. Suresh, Sagar (gifted me close to 30 books this year), Vinod (selected ones, all lovely), Jayant and Suhita, Ramesh, Rajesh (all the sports and business books I get to read in Bangalore), Gauri Dange, Mythily, Shobha and Anjali who shares all the books she likes with me by keeping them on my table after she reads.

1. Deer Hunter - EM Corder
2. Hotel - Arthur Hailey
3. The Last lecture - Randy Pausch
4. You'll See it When you Believe It - Wayne Dwyer
5. The Art of Creative Thinking - Rud Jenkins
6. Cal - Bernard MacLaughly
7. Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw
8. The Wild Boys - William Burrrough
9. Trimalchio's Feast - Petroniuis
10. The Saga of Guunlag-Serpent Tongue - Viking Epic
11. A Hippo Banquet - Mary Kingsley
12. Who Says Elephants Can't Dance - Louis V Gerstner
13. The Unquiet Ones - Osman Samiuddin
14. Thank and Grow Rich - Pam Grout
15.Sadgurus' Bestowal - Ratnakar Nargundkar
16. How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success - Frank Bettgar
17. Inner Engineering - Sadhguru
18. Jason and Medea - Appollonius of Rhodes
19. The Sentimental Spy- Krishna Shastri Devulapally
20. Something Happened on the Way to heaven - Sudha Murthy
21.Sons and Lovers - DH Lawrence
22. The Wisdom of Gibran - Joseph Sheldon
23. Working with EMotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman
24. A Noble Queen - Meadows Taylor
25. Ghachar Ghochar - Vivek Shanbhag
26. Mehboob, India's Melville - Bunny Reuben
27. Khullam Khulla - Meena Iyer
28. Jallianwala Bagh Massacre - VN Dutta and S. Settar
29. Physiotherapy, a New Mode of rejuvenation - Dr. Jyotsna Nangad
30. The 100 Year old Man Who Climbed Our of the Window and Disappeared - Jona Johansson
31. Open - Andre Agassi
32. Ace Against Odds - Sania Mirza
33. AB - AB de Villiers
34. Scaling Up Excellence - Robert Sutton, Huggy Rao
35. Playing to Win - Saina Nehwal
36. My Life - Brett Lee
37. The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
38. 7 Spiritual Laws of Success - Deepak Chopra
39. Top Driver - Naresh Raghavan
40. Madras on My Mind - Chitra Raghavan
41. The Pleasure Principle - Sampath
42. An Area of Darkness - V.S. Naipaul
43. Anusual - Anu Agarwal
44. Three Dog Night - Gauri Dange
45. Lady Chatterly's Lover - DH Lawrence
46. The Adventures of Stoob - Samit Basu
47. The Butcher of Amritsar - Nigel Collett
48. When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
49. Are You Experienced - William Sutcliffe
50. Lie Dow WIth the Lions - Ken Follett
51 Being Mortal - Atul Gawande
52. Selected Stories - Nikolay Gogol
53.Ravelstein - Saul Bellows
54. A House at Pooh Corner - A A Milne
55. Autobiography of a Yogi - Yogananda
56. Greatest Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy - Leo Tolstoy
57. The Royal Bengal Mystery - Satyajit Ray
58. Escape from Java and Other Tales of Danger - Ruskin Bond
59. Gotama the Buddha - Vipassana
60. The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster
61. Stanley Kramer - Donald Spoto
62. Trust Me Not - Ankita Verma Dutta
63. Zen Mind, The Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
64. Daring Greatly - Brene Brown
65. The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou
66. The Inner Game of Tennis - Tim Gallwey
67. Project Management - Prasanna Kumar
68.Wings of Fire - APJ Abdul Kalam and Arun Tiwari
69. Right Ho Jeeves - PG Wodehouse
70. Magic Drum and Other Stories - Sudha Murthy
71. Awaken the Giant Within - Anthony Robbins
72. Heat and Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabwala
73. Magic of the Lost Temple - Sudha Murthy
74. Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
75. I Take This Woman - Rajinder Singh Bedi (Translated by Khushwant Singh)
76. A Faceless Evening - Gangadhar Gadgil (Translated by Keerti Ramachandra)
77. Six Machine - Chris Gayle
78. Beneath the Surface - Michael Phelps
79. Voices in the City - Anita Desai
80.  Dying to be Me - Anita Moorjani

Anjali - Mimicry Class

Sandhya aunty is Anjali's teacher and she has several innovative ways to engage children. For example, she used to give them lots of riddles early on and kept them on their toes. Recently she had a class when everyone was asked to mimic something.Anjali came home and mimicked a few including hers which was the Metro train announcer.

"Namaskar. Agla station baye taraf aayega. Sambhal ke utariye. Dhanyavad.'
Or something like that. She does a good job of it.

She imitated Harsh who mimicked Virat Kohli on the field and it was pretty funny.

But what makes me laugh every time I hear is the one that Suvan, Kartiikeya and team did. It was a train announcement in Telugu.
"Namskaram. Train no 12345 ippudu platform number 1 meedaki vastundi. Meerandaru rail pattila paine nilchondi. Train zup mani mee meeda vellipotindi. Mee souls haayiga heaven ki vellipothayi. Dhanyavadamu.'

Translated in English it goes like
"Namaste. Train no 12345 is shortly going to come on platform no 1. You are all requested to stand on the railway tracks. The train will come zup and run over you all. Your souls will proceed happily heaven ward. Thank you.'

I cannot stop laughing both at the content and the way she says it. I wish I could listen to the actual team. Sometime soon hopefully.

I envy them. They seem to be having a lot of fun!  

Knife in the Water - Movie Review

This is a 1962 Polish film and a Roman Polanski classic recommended by Sagar. A well-to-do couple is driving to go sailing when they almost hit a young hitchhiker. The older man, who is a bit of a perfectionist and who prides himself on knowing many things, finds in the young hitchhiker a good person to taunt and takes him sailing. The young man does not know sailing so the older man bosses him around which the younger man does not like.

There is growing tension between the two men and it is clear that the older man is trying to show off before the woman without much luck. It turns out that the young man is no fool either. He scales the mast in minutes, is strong, and though he says he cannot swim, has several other talents, Like making up poetry. He also has a knife in his rucksack which the older man removes, worrying about a showdown. The younger man says he does not need a knife to handle himself. In the skirmish, the knife falls into the water. Then the younger man falls overboard. When he does not surface, the woman tells the older man that he has murdered the boy - he cannot swim. After much taunting the older man goes to report to the police and then the younger man who was hiding near the buoy comes to the boat. He and the woman feel the sexual tension between them and one thing leads to another. The boy jumps off the boat before the older man comes on board. The older man is clearly afraid to go to the police and the woman establishes it first before telling him that the boy had come on board and that she had been unfaithful to him. The older man does not want to believe her - he says that she is saying that to save him from the police. But deep inside he knows. The movie ends with the car stranded on a fork in the road.

It's simply brilliant. The way the ending is conceived where the woman uses the information she has to put the man in the spot and all of human nature comes out to play is simply outstanding. Three characters, a boat, and the water. That's it. Roman Polanski's first full length feature film and what a film. Must watch.

Dying To Be Me - Anita Moorjani

Anita Moorjani is a name that often comes up when there is talk of Near-Death- Experiences. She is the most famous face of NDE (that I know of) and gave many theories and ideas of what happens after life etc a clear perspective from someone who has been there. Born in Singapore in a Sindhi family, Anita experienced typical dilemmas of all young girls in the subcontinent - be this way, dress this way, get married, cannot study abroad etc. She had the temerity to break off an engagement and almost died of guilt but then she found her love, David Moorjani and they settled down to a happy life. Next social pressure - have children. After six years of married life, Anita, who lost her father and her best friend Soni to cancer, got lymphoma. 'I think I was so scared of cancer, that I think willed it almost,' she says.

Hay House

What happens next is the interesting part. Anita does everything to fight cancer. Yoga, hypnotherapy, meditation, forgiveness and every single alternative therapy she could find. She spent time with BKS Iyengar in Pune and actually got better. Then she went back and got worse. As the cancer spread she slipped into coma and died. For all practical purposes. Or so the doctors thought.

But Anita remembers everything clearly. Her painless, ecstatic state as she could see everything happen around her simultaneously. She felt an expansion she says, could feel oneness, bliss, love. She could see things far away - like her brother who was on a flight to see her, like the doctor speaking to her husband in some faraway corner, a paramedic giving up on her. Then she crossed over and heard her dead father speak to her, as did Soni. And they spoke to her with no judgment, only unconditional love. They told her that they have always been there for her, for everyone in the family and it was all perfect.
"I'm loved unconditionally for no other reason than simply because I exist."

"God isn't a being but a state of being."

"I became aware that we are all connected."

Anita was given a choice - to go back to her life, or move ahead and join her father in the other world. Anita obviously wanted that painless, ecstatic state but when asked again by her father at a point where she could not return from, Anita decided to come back.

"Cancer was not punishment for anything I'd done wrong, nor was I experiencing negative karma as a result of any of my actions. My many fears and my great pains had manifested in this disease."

"Dad, I feel like I have come home.
You always were home. Remember that."

"Our communications weren't verbal but a complete melding of mutual comprehension. It wasn't that I understood my father - it was as though I became him."

"I was aware that he'd been with my entire family all through the years after he passed."

By now she knew everything would be alright including her cancer and even if it was not, it was ok. That was a beautiful thought. Also that her life had a purpose.

Then the magic happens. Within five days after coming out of coma, Anita recovers fully. Biopsies show no trace of cancer. It's a medical miracle. Anita simply says she knew. If she chose to die, the reports would have shown accordingly and if she wanted a different outcome, the reports went that way. All possibilities were okay with her.

"I discovered that since  realised who I really was and understood the magnificence of my true self, if I chose to go back to life, my body would heal rapidly - in days. Doctors wouldn't find a trace of cancer in my body."

"My body is only a reflection of my internal state."

"If my inner self were aware of its greatness and connection with all that is my body would reflect that and heal rapidly."

"To access this state of allowing the only thing I had to do was to be myself (without judgment or feeling that I was flawed."

"We are pure love. Realising this meant never being afraid of who we are. Love and true self are the same thing."

"Being the love I am, I can heal."

"The reports changed depending on my choices."

Anita's key thoughts (as I remember) are of how we are all made of unconditional love. And when we choose to be that love, she says we will stop living out of fear. Our lives are not meant to be lived fearfully she says, and says that was why she probably contracted cancer, because her body could not express itself any other way. She talks of not being attached to any outcome, to any belief, and instead to trust and be open to all possibilities. She speak of surrender. Of enjoying life. She says that it is all going as per plan, so don't fret and worry.

Some quotes
"I just had to be myself, fearlessly. In that way I'd be allowing myself to be an instrument of love."

"I knew that there wasn't going to be any judgment waiting for me in the after life if I chose not to follow religion or cultural dogmas that didn't feel right."

"My life and time here are much more valuable to us."

"We are all one, we are love at our core, we are magnificent."

"If things seemed challenging, instead of trying to change them physically, I began checking with my internal world. When the internal changed, the external changed."

"Centered is experiencing being at the centre of my cosmic web, being aware of my position. It's important to feel our centrality at the core of it."

"I wouldn't have to do anything. It would just unfold as long as I allowed it to happen."

"We already are what we spend our lives trying to attain."

"Everything - tests, biopsies - were being done to satisfy everyone."

"I am strongest when  let go, when I suspend all beliefs and leave myself open to all possibilities.
I surrender."

"I am most powerful when I flow with life, not against it."

"The only thing that keeps me from being aware of the Universal Energy is my mind - my thought, my self-limiting thoughts."

"Life was not supposed to be such a struggle - we're supposed to enjoy it and have fun! I wish I'd known this. Oh, so my body created the cancer because of all my dumb thoughts, judgments about myself, limiting beliefs, all of which caused me so much internal turmoil. Boy, if only I'd known that we're just supposed to come here and feel good about ourselves and about life - just express ourselves and have fun with it!"

"Why did something so big - like this terminal cancer thing-happen to me just for not realising my own magnificence?"

"Ohh, I see- it didn't happen to me because in truth, I'm never a victim. The cancer is just my own unexpressed power and energy! It turned inward against my body, rather than outward. I knew it wasn't punishment or anything like that. It was just my own life force expressing itself as cancer because I did not allow it to manifest as the magnificent, powerful force of Anita."

"From my point of view, strongly held ideas actually work against me. Having concrete beliefs limits my life experiences because they keep me locked into only what i know, and my knowledge in this world is limited by my physical senses. Being comfortable with uncertainty on the other hand, opens me up to all possibilities. Ambiguity is wide open to infinite possibilities."

"Needing certainty shackles my potential for the unexpected. Feeling I don't know, or Let's see what happens, allows my expanded self to provide answers and solutions that may be completely serendipitious and outrageously synchronistic. When I step into the realm of my ambiguity I'm really at my most powerful. Letting go of all my previous beliefs, disbeliefs, dogma, and doctrines puts the infinite universe at my disposal and works to give me the best possible outcome for my life. This siw here I receive my most internal clarity. It's where magic happens."

"When something comes from the center of our being, it's no longer an action - it becomes who we are. We don't need to think about it or work at it. We become an instrument for service to manifest on this planet. This is the difference between being of service and performing a service."


I loved the book and her story. She has two books and I would like to read the other one. She is a speaker too. But all that she says resonated profoundly.

Voices in the City - Anita Desai

Published in 1965, 'Voices in the City' is about a loose-cannon character Nirode (for some reason, I kept thinking of Nirodh). Nirode is the kind who will irritate the hell out of me with his bombastic talk and no action (a lot like me so I simply detest the fellow). He is a loser (his brother Arun is smarter, and more successful), works as a journalist before starting a journal which will make him out to be an artist. Once you made up your mind to be a loser, you choose the best way to be it. So you struggle hard with a journal that will not work (or like me, choose writing!) and end up the glorious loser. The one who tried but failed.

Orient Paperbacks, P 257, Rs. 35

Nirode goes about it very boringly and there can be no other way to go about something that is deemed to be a failure for the word go. He has some friends like Jit Nair who is married to some voluptuous babe (cannot recall her name), Sonny who has a car, Prof Bose who is a bigger loser than Nirode, Dharma, an old artist and his wife Gita Devi. All messed up characters made even more messier with tons and tons of boring and affected dialogue - no one can speak like that. Or if they do one must remove oneself from their midst. (I think I speak like that sometimes...no wonder I cannot hold audiences!) Anyway some rum and some big talk and no action.

Nirode has a mother who lives in Kalimpong and writes even more boring letters about her garden etc. She has a Major Chadha as her admirer and Nirode feels that Major Chadha is peeking into her cleavage which he fells his mother is more than happy showing. His two sisters, Monisha (the only sane character in the story) and young Amla flit into the story. In the end Monisha dies, possibly of boredom, which I would have done if I was a character in this story. I don't know what happens after that - in the end it ends. What of Nirode and his love, his sex life..nothing.

I got a hang of the way things might have been in Calcutta then - mostly about self obsessed, weak and scared people acting big and bombastic. I knew some people like this too who spoke in a language only they knew and no one ever understood. But those endless descriptions and metaphors slowed things down unbearably, and I could not wait to get done with it. The people came across as real. But the writing, impeccable as it is for the Sahitya Akademi winner and three times Booker Prize nominee, was too packed with writing and too little story. So goes down as one of the most boring books ever read.

The Fury of a Patient Man - Movie Review

It's a Spanish film about a man who loses his girl friend and his father in a botched up jewellery heist. He waits for the one person in the gang who is caught, the driver of the getaway car, to be released after his sentence of eight years. He befriends his family, his girl friend and finally finds out who were the real killers and kills them.

It's full of holes. Why wait so long? Why be so sure that the fellow will tell him all the information which he did not tell the cops? Why do the criminals play along like some pussies with this patient man? Also, for all his patience, he kind of loses it when he kills them. Pretty disappointing. But if you don't analyse, it is quite entertaining.