End of the Era!

This year 2006 has really been a special and a sad year for all of the sports lovers around the world.

Yes I am talking about the sporting icons those have ended their really great and glittering career this year and that’s also not in a way that any sports lover would’ve expected.

This Year started with the memories of Lance Armstrong, declaring his retirement last year July 2005, his absence was really felt this time at Tour de France. It is never easy to forget someone who has 7 Tour de France wins, 22 individual stages, 11 time trials. And the life which is really inspiration for any one. Yoy don’t find many people in your life time who has a courage and will power like this great man. We salute you sir!


So this was the last year, but this year was also no less. Two Tennis stars of our times, Andre Agassi, Martina Navaratilova. I think Martina was before our time too.

Martina Navaratilova, This woman of substance, surrounding all the controversy around her about her homo-sexual relationship, really proved what a woman or any person can do with the strong determination. You don’t find many players (I doubt any) who can play professional tennis at the age of 50, right! Just to take a look at her achievement 18 Grandslams singles titles, 31 doubles, 10 mixed doubles and total 167 other single titles is something to count. Most of the tennis players like apni Sania would never win these many matches in grandslams as many titles this great sport icon has under her belt.



Then comes another great man, Andre Agassi, This Guy might not be the greatest tennis player ever and might not be in the league of Pete Sampras or or Bjorn Borg, but he is surely the most flamboyant tennis player ever!. Well who can forget this ponny tail, his chest with hell lot of hairs and changing his t-shirts during the match, then he comes back with the fully shaven head and shaven chest too!. He was certainly one of the most crowd puller in any match amd one of the most loved tennis player ever by the tennis supporters.

And yes of course not to forget his tennis acheivemetns, 8 Grandslams, with only the second player in history of professional tennis to have won all the four grandslams, the feat even likes of Pete Sampras also couldn’t achieve. And what else the glittering professional life and more glittering personal life!. I mean not many lads have luxury of having Brooke Shields and Steffi Graff as their wives during the same life time! He is envied by most of the men(if not all) in the world. The Agassi-Graff couple is considered as one of the best and most beautiful sports couple ever!

So continuing with the sporting icons, next comes the man, for whom words are literally not enough. I guess just name is enough to see the spark in anyone's eyes. “ZiZou”. Yes I am talking about the greatest French footballer ever Zinedine Zidane!.

This is the man who always has controversies following him whereever he goes. This 3 times FIFA player of the year, once upon a time most expenisive footballer, sadly will be remembered more for what he did in the World cup final of 2006 (it is shown in the picture below) than what he did in the 1998 final where he made his team won the worldcup single handedly(or should I say single headedly :-)). However nothing can take away that he is one of the greatest footballer of our time.

And the last but not the least, who is according to me the Greatest Sportsman of our time. Michael Schumaker! This guy is still to end his carreer and the last race of his life is still pending but I can gaurantee you this person will be the most missed sports person from next year. I mean you can’t think of F1 without Schumi, you can't think of Ferrari without Schumi. Ferrari and Schmi have become synonyms for eachother over the time. This person has all the records of F1 under his belt. 7 championship titles, 91 race wins, 154 podium finishes, 68 pole position… . You name it and Schumi has it.

7 times F1 world champion, couldn’t have asked for lesser than winning a championship in his retirement year and he was going for it till the race in Japan. But there is always something that anyone can not control but the destiny. Still championship is not over but it looks next to impossible for this greatest man to win the championship, after engine failure when he was leading the race in Suzuka. However I have my fingers crossed and I really hope that something (I really don't know what but something, may be crash for Alonso) unusual happens and this my favourite wins the championship before hanging his helmet!

The sad thing is almost all of the above except Lance Armstrong, couldn’t end their career in a way any sport lover would’ve loved to see it. Agassi and Navaratilova couldn’t win the Grandslam before getting retired, ZiZou made one of the biggest controversy in his last match of FIFA worldcup before getting retired and not winning the worldcup for his team, and Schumi is also struggling because of destiny to win the championship before ending his carreer.

This post is dedicated to one and only my favourite “Schumi”. I seriously hope some miracle to happen to make Schumi world champion before getting retired.

Gandhi - A divine man or a devil?

After watching Lage raho munnabhai, I was very excited. And as I have a great respect for Gandhi, It was a delight for me to watch a movie superbly made using Gandhi's ideology in today's sense.

Ok, but today in my office, I had a real discussion about Gandhi and his ideology and that person was arguing that because of Gandhi freedom was delayed for atleast 10-15 years and the only good thing that Gandhi did for the country, was partition !!!!.

Ok and then I visited some community on orkut and there again I find people bashing Gandhi and his ideology. So this again makes me disheartened.

I have found after discussing Gandhi and his ideology with many people that nowadays it has become a fashion in indian youth specially, to blame Gandhi and his ideology. May be this is the "In -thing" for them.

I really want to know what common Indian really think about Gandhi.

• Was Gandhi to be blamed (or given credit as one of my friend was giving!!) for partition?
• Was because of Gandhi our independence got delayed?
• Is Gandhi responsible for Subhash chandra Bose not getting his dues, as a freedom fighter for India (That's what many Bengalis believe, no offense here to Bengali people but this is what I have seen )?
• Was Gandhi to be blamed for not requesting english government to not to give death sentence to Bhagat singh and company?

I have greatest regards for Gandhi and his ideology. I will really like to put some of his ideology in the practice in my real life, I don't know how much I will succeed in that but surely want to try.

A Trip To Hampi


I was planning to write something since long but somehow not getting in to it. Well finally I am starting with about one of my trip outside bangalore. The Hampi-A historical place.

Chirag & I are always planning for some outing on every weekends however it doesn't materialize most of the time as short of friends and grp as always.

Ok so here there was a long weekend on independence day, many times I feel what's the special about 15th August. It has now just become another holiday for most of us. Shouldn't we all be doing something special to be proud of our freedom? May be some small gathering in all the office and a small flag hosting ceremony will also do. But nowadays since many of us work in MNCs, for many of us, 4th of July is more important then 15th of Aug. I heard Many BPOs declare holiday on 4th of Jul and not on 15th of Aug in India. However no reliable source....

Okay coming back to the topic, we were planning so many things on this weekend. Going to Goa, no tickets available from Bangalore, no flight, no bus, no train. Man!! People plan really early now a days and anyways we didn't have any group so may be Goa some other time! So finally after considering many places we came to one place, Hampi, weather was good, not so hot and bit of cloudy so good time to visit. Finally, we couldn't gather many friends so we two only decided to go. We planned minimum 3 days trip and visit hampi, near by places like badami, bijapur etc etc.

Well, again we didn't have tickets and Chirag some how made me ready to travel by local bus. After a long time, it was a long journey for me in the local bus. Well but to tell you the truth, journey was much much better than my anticipation. Since from Bangalore, it is full national highway till our destination Hospet. and it was quiet a smooth journey, However I wished seats were better!! but overall ok journey. It took less than six hours form Bangalore to reach to Hospet.

After reaching Hospet, first thing we did was of course looking for hotel. There are 3-4 hotels near by bus stand. But the first answer that they give is no room available. Well it was a surprise for us. But in the second hotel after making some request he gave us a room. We slept there for couple of hours and then got ready to go to Hampi.

Hampi is 13 kms from Hospet and it takes around 20-25 mins to reach there. After every 5 mins there is a local bus so it was not an issue at all. Once you reach Hampi, you realized that, this is much much better place then your imagination. I mean we expected it to quiet a dull and a dry place as it is just historical one. But to our surprise, it is well maintained by government, with very good roads, and also greenery all around. May be the season for us was just perfect. We visited the temple, first as it is near to bus-stop. Quiet a huge temple and kind of a typical one too. I think it was called Gopuram. It was a good place to visit. There are many small shops and some restaurant to feed our stomach out side the temple. We stayed there for around 2 hours.

After that there was some personal problem and we have to come to conclusion that we will have to finish the hampi in one day and the next day we'll have to leave the place. Well now what's the option? Our own Indian auto rickshaw-wala is there for our help. He told us for a nominal fees of 200 bucks, he will take us to all the places, mentioned in the map (we got a map after getting down at hampi bus -stand) . Again, not a bad choice, as we can move around all the places in 4 hours or so.

So here our trip started. Rickshaw wala took us to most of the places. Many places are not in proper shape because of wear and tear of time and weather but many are well maintained. We visited couple of places like Lotus mahal, Sun Temple, The world famous stone Rath( only 4 places around the world has it), Elephant stable, and some more, which I am not able to recall rite now. And over all it was a good experience to be there.



So in the end, I can conclude, Hampi is a good place to go for 2-3 days trip. I think a good weekend gate away also. There are some places that you can visit by walking, or you can even hire a bicycle, roads are pretty good and it should be fun ride and visit places. For one day you can even go for a trek with the complete stretch of a river. If you are in a big group you will enjoy more, but yes the best season to go there will be from Aug-Jan when it is not so hot!

So, I will surely like to visit this once more, with more time to spend there.

To check out some of the photos, please visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/chickyguy/. And also put some comments. Someone, will surely love that :)