Its a question that has haunted our clich'ed hindi movies for decades now.(Remember maine pyar kiya!!)

Ask the stereotype "ladki ke papa" and ladki ke bhai" and they will tell you.. of course not.. a gal and a guy can never be friends!!

Ask a stero typical orkut "make friendship with me" kinda guy and he will tell you.. "God I hope not.. dosti to sirf shurwaat hai.."

Ask a beautiful gal from school/college (who has about 6 loosers standing behind her staring at her hopelessly) and she will tell you.. "of course they can be friends.. she has 6 guys who are just her friends"

Ask a philosopher and he will tell you. "ladka aur ladki kya.. is duniya mein koi kissi ka dost nahin hota"

Ask my friend's wife (the philosopher, whose name i wont quote) who has more guy frens than gals.. and she will give a sly smile and say.. "of course.. i can be 'just frens" with another guy"

Ask two frens who have known each other for 10 years.. and they will say.. "of course.. look at the both of us.. we have been friends for 10 yrs.." then ask them if they had that "awkward moment" ever... and their throats will suddenly go dry.

This question will generate many intersting responses based on your sample size and type. But what is really the absolute truth.

I know I will be hunted down by female activists and the representatives of "generation next" for saying this.. but a gal and a guy can never be "just friends" unless one or both of them are seeing some one else.

There will always come a time.. when the awkward silence creeps in... when his/her's perfume makes you go dizzy in a way that is completely foriegn to you.. When you wake up one day.. realizing... how you have been in love with your best friend...forever!! (best friend of opposite sex hopefully)

There will be times when one will cry about a broken relationship and the other will unknowingly become the pillar of support. The kind of suppor that one looks for in a life partner but seldom finds it.

Let the debate begin. :)

I was going through a poll in times of india.

URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes
.com/?

According to this poll, 50% readers believe cricket is to be blamed for the poor plight of Hockey. 48% said cricket has nothing to do with it. Truly incredible!! I would've thought that readers of Times of India would be a little smarter than to blame cricket.

What do you think?

India's hopes of playing hockey in the Beijing Olympics came to an end when Great Britain romped to victory with a 2 - 0 win over India in the Olympic qualifiers finals. True to the nature of our country, the blame game has begun.

The politicians want KPS Gill to be sacked. The audiences (who never watch the game anyway) want the players and the coach to be sacked. All in all. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a solution.

But instead of doing patchwork, I think its important to see the root cause of this issue. Its important to find out why our national sport, which was our forte, our pride a few decades ago, is now down in the dumps. The media wants to accuse cricket of hogging all the limelight and corporate money. As a result, they claim, hockey has taken a beating.

While I dont deny the media claims, lets go back about 3 decades in our past. This was a time when hockey ruled. When no one knew/understood/played cricket. Hockey was our national sport and Dhyanchand a national hero. People were crazy about this sport because... well.. we always won.

Cricket was a sport of the rich and famous. If we ever drew a test match, it was celebrated as a victory. Cricket could never be a game for the masses, it was believed. They could never afford it.

Then came 1983, when an unknown boy from Haryana, coming from rather humble upbringing, changed cricket history forever. A certain Kapil Dev captained India's cricket team and won the world cup from the defending champions, the undefeatable West Indies. Perhaps a team that is still arguably the best cricket team ever to set foot on the field.

That day was important in Indian sports history, not just because the country woke up to a new sport, but also because starting that year, our victories in cricket started getting more frequent. And hockey, after Dhyanchand retired, was never the same. Slowly, we started to loose the grip on the game, loose the dominance that we had held for many years.

In the begining, cricket did not have the corporate money, or the big endorsement deals. Cricketers were paid around a 100 bucks a day when they played a test match. Incase a match finished in 4 days rather than 5, they were only paid for that much. And yet, the sport evolved. Evolved to become a rage in this country. Evolved to become the richest most watched sport in this country. Evolved to a religion.

Surely, all this dint happen because of the money.

The way I see it. Money and fame did not make cricket so famous. It was the other way round. The grit, determination and talent of players in that era, who played without the financial backing and still won, made cricket what it is. For the following years, cricket became a religion because a God called Sachin Tendulkar was born, who, despite being in a team that hardly ever won, dominated world cricket in such a way, that every one associated with the sport just watched him in awe and disbelief.

The way I see it, hockey does not necessarily need more money and attention to do well. What it needs is a Sachin Tendulkar. Its a doggy dog world out there. Corporates will not pump money into hockey until people start watching the game. They will not start watchin hockey, till we start winning something.

Hockey must not rely on the charity of its youger cousin, cricket. It must resurrect itself as the most watched sport of this country. It must fight for its right to remain the official national sport of India. It must START WINNING!!!

This is what I like about cricket. This is the only thing that truly unites our country other wise seperated by caste color creed or sex.

The feeling that came over me when piyush chawla took the final catch of James Hopes is beyond words. And yet, all of you will know exactly what i mean. Its almost like cricket connects every indian at a subconscious level.

However, I am a worried man. The victory yesterday brought back memories of the natwest final in England when two unknown youngsters (Yuvraj and Kaif) brought the mighty england to its knees. A time when we as a nation rejoiced a new faced team. When we thought Indian cricket had changed forever and that we would never loose again. When we thought Tendulkar was no longer required to win us games and "youth" had now taken over.

What followed is no secret. That win was nothing more than a flash in the pan. It took us forever to win another prestigious tournament. Yet again, the crown lies on the head of the youngsters.

Is this another flash in the pan or has the Indian team finally arrived? Is Ishant Sharma the next Brett Lee or is he Ashish Nehra who won us a couple of matches and then disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared? Is Rohit Sharma the next Tendulkar or is he Sanjay Bangar who was known to be very technically correct as a batsman with an amazing attitude and a cool head?

I dont have the answer to these questions. Being a true indian, I can only hope. But I think its a touch early to pronounce Dhoni and his men as the next cricket team that will rule the world. Its a touch early to write off the Australians. Even when England had defeated the Aussies last year in two back to back finals. The entire world thought they could now defeat the world champions. The entire world was wrong.

Lets see how this one shapes out to be.

No judiciary, no police department, no political party can ever stop a man from commiting a crime. But what it can do is make an example out of him.. so everyone else learns from it. So everyone fears the consequences.

Every day on news channels, papers, blogs, university discussion forums.. every indian talks about the discrepencies in the system. about the rising crime rate. about women getting raped. And yet. Mysteriously. All we ever do is complain. We blame it on the civil servants and the police. The discussion ends there. As citizens of this country. Every time we bribe someone. Every time we witness attrocites as innocent by standers. We fuel the fire that is so rapidly consuming this country. We cannot blame the road side romeo who whistles every time a girl passes by. We cannot blame the self proclaimed college "NETA's" for the doom that this country is running towards. We have to blame ourselves.. the common man who who let this happen.
 
This road side romeo who would only whistle and blow kisses so far.. is a rapist in the making.. our ignorance.. and perhaps fear of conflict have given him the assurance.. that he can get away with it. The babu sitting in the government office will not move a leg from his office until he is bribed. It has come to that soley because we as common people bribe willingly to get our work done quicker.. and then even boast about it in our friend circle.. claiming to know people at the right places. And let alone crime and corruption. The lack of respect we have for our country and our coutry men.. comes through in things like the way we drive on the roads.. the way we throw our cig butts and coke cans anywhere we want. The real villian of this socienty lies not in the robbers and muderers.. but perhaps within us.

Does this mean that we need to go out there in true bollywood style and start changing poeple.. or take law in our own hands to teach criminals a lesson?? No.. definitly not. The idea should be to discourrage the smallest act of crime or corruption. The idea should be to make sure that the next time the road side romeo misbehaves with a girl. we go through that extra trouble to report him to the authorites.. to the media. Whether something comes off it straight away or not is irrelevant. The very fact that it becomes a big deal.. will stop this man.. or atleast make him think twice before he retries it. If we just let it go.. coz we'll get late for the movie.. then it could be our sister.. or wife.. or gf.. who is caught unaware and alone at night.. by this very person. This country today stands at a very important cross road. From here. We can either become an example to the rest of the world as a country that rose from the ashes.. that rose from over 300 years of slavery to become one of the most advanced and powerful nation in the world. OR.. we can become the perfect case study for the western countries of how to waste a perfect opportunity and slip away into oblivion, into depression, into poverty. The decision lies in our hand. In the hands of every common man. Every indian. And all it will take is small moral and social changes in life. Nothing drastic. Nothing very heroic.
 
FOR EVIL TO WIN.. ALL IT TAKES IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING!!

Every living human in this world has wondered.. atleast at some point of time in their life.. abt how they got here.. who created life.. what is the purpose of us being here?? So have I... If we could prove the existence of our "so called creator", GOD, we could probably understand the reason why we are living today.. Why we were born in a certain family.. Why some of us are richer than the others.. I believe the key to our future lies somewhere in our past. If we could understand how and why we are here.. we could understand what we are here to do.
 
The convineint theory of course.. is provided to us by our ancestors.. by our religions. We believe that there is a super power somewhere "GOD" that exists.. that this super power created us.. watches over us.. and then judges our life when its over. We are taught that if we live our life in a just and decent manner.. we will be rewarded in heaven.. But if we are mean and corrupt.. that we will rot in hell forever!! If you can break the stereotype of religion for a while.. and think freely.. you will realize that this theory is far from convinving. I am not much of a scientist, but our research so far.. of how life came into existence comes to a stand still at a certain point.. where there is no logic.. there is no explaination.. It is at this point that religion is born... faith is born.. GOD is born.
 
Going by scientifc evidence.. it is reasonable to assume that something like the creation of this world was too much of a co incidence to have just happened. The hand of a more intelligent and delibrate power is very evident. So lets conclude that we were indded created by something more intelligent than us.. something or someone we can never see.. or understand. But the real nut craker is this.. who is to say that this powere is GOD.. GOD who is omnipotent.. omnipresent. Why cant it be possible that we were created by something more intelligent than us.. and that something was another civilization.. another world.. or in common man's terms.. aliens.

Lets for the sake of an argument. Consider this. These aliens came to our planet. Created everything here. Their technology and intelligence was far beyond our capability or understanding. But these aliens were not immortal. They were not omnipotent.. and definitly not omnipresent. They were just.. well.. smarter than us.. Whether we are in one big petri dish and part of an experiment.. or just a freak creation of some alien kid who wanted to see what happens when he mixes a few elements together.. is a question i cant answer. But going by the chaos in this world.. the uneven distribution of health wealth and happiness.. it is safe to assume that we are not being goverened by our GODS. There are no brownie points for doing good deeds. And belive u me.. u will not get struck by a bolt of lightening.. lest u commit a sin.

This thought.. if true.. is most disturbing for most of us to except. Because then it proves that there is no bigger meaning to life.. that we will live here and die.. without any one ever caring about what we did when we were alive. I dont intend to start a new cult by saying that religion doesn't exist. Neither do i propose that everyone must think like me and not believe in God. But these thoughts came to my mind only when i realized that the happiest or the richest people in this world arent the most religious. As indians, we seek the solution to every problem in our prayers. This technique has never worked for me. At the end of the day, if you want something, you have to go out there and get it for yourself. Going to temples or praying will not help you pass that exam, or win that lottery. But wit and hard work will ensure that you end up on higher ground.

Like a smart man once said "Expecting life to be fair to you just because you are a nice person is like expecting a bull to not charge at you because you are a vegetarian"