Songs of the not-so innocent

As I write this, Munawar Faruqui has spent 3 weeks in jail for a joke he did not make. Meanwhile, Virat Kohli has spent 3 weeks at home, basking in the glow of a series of victories he wasn't part of. To me at least, there's something strangely tragic about the times we live in. Since I like my freedom, this is not a post about India's kangaroo courts. Instead it is about kangaroos who courted disaster by underestimating the character of this Indian cricket team. Can't blame the Aussies though, because many of us did too. As mentioned in the previous post, there is a traumatised section of the Indian population, roughly spanning the ages of 60 to 35, which still cannot fathom just WTF happened and HTF the Test team won at the Gabba on Tuesday. Like the delicious pain of a loose tooth, I revisit the first half of January 19 over and over in my mind and yet scarcely believe it happened. How fiercely my heart thumped when we were just 3 runs away. It was akin to the uncons...

As India prepare to take on Australia at the fearsome Gabba, you'd have to be a serial optimist bordering on delusional to believe the visitors have a koala in a wildfire's chance of winning the game and the series. It's one of today's best (not in terms of class, mind) Test teams versus a gutted out shell of an XI; a hodgepodge of the walking wounded who really ought to be led by Florence Nightingale rather than the eminently dignified Ajinkya Rahane. An Aussie pace attack to dream of in comparison to an Indian one suffering a collective nightmare. It'll take much more than what the team had in Sydney to come out of the last Test with a positive result and I don't know if we have any more to give.   And, speaking of which, what a Test that was! That we drew in Sydney, against tremendous odds and broken body parts, is a stellar achievement in itself; a draw that felt like a victory. The batting was ugly but hey, so was the behaviour of the Aussies. Fuck that lot...