Eternal Fanclub Wars

For every generation there are heroes. Be it sport, music, cinema, business or even politics. If there is one aspect in which heroes really endear themselves to human emotions is that they are fodder for coffee-table discussions. Of the battleground kinds.

Obviously not everyone can become a hero - what fun is it if everyone was a hero?! Whom would we gossip about?
And so people become fans of heroes.
And it is here that the topic becomes interesting - passionate fans will swear by their heroes.

And these make for fascinating discussions.

Take the case of the Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal rivalry.
The Federer fans are a combination of the uninitiated, the moms, and ofcourse the experts. The Nadal ones are the folks who like to be called underdogs, who crave for an anti-hero. And so the debates go on: Who is better? Who has the fastest serve? Who deserves the right to be called the real no#1? Who has a prettier girlfriend? Who has more money? The debate ends when both of them lose and some unheralded Novak wins.

Or the case of Mohd Rafi and Kishore Kumar.
Left largely to the elders in the family, these debates take great shape when two of them get down together for a Sunday breakfast and need a topic to converse. The women largely care less. The men are passionate. The Rafi fans swear by his renditions whereas the Kishore Kumar ones find it hard to trump the evergreen classics with Kishore Kumar himself in front of the cameras and serenading his women. The younger generation has tried to pit AR Rahman with folks like Pritam or Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy- but it hasnt worked. Fanboy wars work when there are 2 of a kind!

Then there are politicians. Akhilesh Yadav versus Rahul Gandhi.
One is a winner. One is always trying to win. Again it is the grand old men of the house that seem to have an opinion on what kind of policies are required in UP that can change the way their creaking chairs can be fixed.

For the women there are other kinds of debates.
Like Anandi vs Parvati vs Tulsi. Each one portrays a different kind of woman-following, and triggers in the lady an expression of approval or discontent based on what show she likes more and what her fellow kitty-party women follow. I love to see the expression on my mom's face when one of these lead women characters on the show is manipulated by other women. She almost sheds a tear!!

There is something for the kindergarten kids too. Batman vs Superman. Barbie vs (well!) Kent (now thats a bit funny!).

And some for the techie geeks: iPhone vs Android, Mac vs Windows, Apple vs Samsung...

Then there are the cricket fans.
The 'Is Sachin the greatest cricketer?' versus 'Is it Dravid?' debates. Oh give me a break! I mean really? Smart tip: you know who is the nerd in the group if he/she starts talking about Dravid in the face of Sachin. However the more interesting debates are the ones between father-son or uncle-nephew. The older generation paints this beautiful picture of Gavaskar and his sublime grace in the face of the youngster's craze for Sachin (or now a Kohli), and it takes some mindblowing hot dosas from the lady of the house to get them to forget talking cricket for a while. Of late there is discussion if Laxman was better than Dravid, and believe me I heard one of my relatives giving Laxman a better score because his wife looked more beautiful than Dravid's. LoL!!

But its fun. Apart from the rise of a few ounces of adrenalin, these characters touch our lives in more ways than we think. There is something to discuss, to chat, to feel for, and sometimes even to win some brownie points for breaking the ice. So the next time you hear a debate between Aamir Khan vs Sharukh Khan vs Salman Khan be sure to talk passionately about atleast 2 of them and negate the other - that is when your coffee will get warmer!

Cheers!
(PS: picture sourced from the internet)

Homework

Image obtained from the internet

Homework- the albatross that hung around our necks while in school.

We all hated it. But we all had to do it.
It took away our weekends. And cut short our play-time.

As kids all we wanted to do was play.

I remember those arguments with mom when I had to beg her to let me go and play in the evening while she insisted that I finish the homework first. She would bribe me by saying that I can play for 30 minutes longer. And I would bribe her in turn that I would help her clean the fans. Usually one of us would get the better of the other based on who was in it to gain - whether it was a guest visting the house that needed cleaning, or whether it was the season of a favourite sport during playtime.

Teachers were part of the mix too.
I think they gave homework only because they felt they needed to.

Think about it - did any of your teachers ever say to you "ok kids! u ve all worked hard. no homework today".
Never.

It would either be that your teacher forgot, or, more often than not, you just interpreted it to mean that there was no homework for the day.

And then there was holiday homework.
LoL!
This was the homework that you had to do while you were on your Diwali/Christmas or NewYear vacation.
It typically ranged from tasks such as reading all the 100 chapters in your history textbook, to drawing the maps of all the countries in the world (each with a different color). There was also the extremely complex idea of understanding those Hindi poems and translating them to simpler hindi- oh my!!

Seriously!I always found it difficult to understand the Hindi poetry.
Some of those poems by Harivansh Rai Bacchan are today posted by Big B on his blog.
He calls them the great tenets of wisdom.
And i still cant understand them.
And to think that poor 5th standard kids had to read, understand and prepare answers to questions based on those poems...that too during holidays....oh during Diwali holidays!

Goodness me!

Think about it - they gave you homework when you were supposed to be on vacation? Poor kids!
Adults never had to do homework when they were on a vacation from work - so why kids?

The best students neatly finished all their homework items by the time school reopened.
Down to getting their red Nataraj HB pencils sharpened and ready to go.

I was always choosy about homework.
Once in middle school one of the things I had in my list of holiday homeworks was to prepare a chart about some hindi poem that would be stuck on the class display board. I didnt want to do it...and kept postponing it until it was too late to do it.

When school reopened, the teacher asked me about it.
And guess what i said "which homework? who? me???????"
And she said "wasnt it you?"
I replied "No maam!"
"Ok forget it. Lets not waste time"

LoL!

But homework also had some good memories.
Like the school project that we had to do during the holidays.
I remember crying when dad tried to help me with it coz i wanted to do it all by myself.
But in the end he helped me do a fantastic job.

Or the time when I finished all my homework even before mom could ask and she was so thrilled that she let me play all weekend.

My sister was usually always perfect with her homework.
I think girls are always prompt and perfect about these things.

My sister and I would compete hard to be the first to finish homework.
And I would always lose!

I would always sit by the window-side when doing homework.
The sight of some of my friends entering the football ground below would alert me to go and bribe mom to let me go.
She wasnt always strict.
Most times I would get to go.
The problem was when there was an exam round the corner and I wanted to play.
I would feel guilty if I played before an exam.
Just the mentality of indian students.

And the feeling of getting to play after the last exam was over - OH MY GOD!!!!! i cant explain that! :)))))))