As more bookies are caught, it seems likely that the rot may not stop with just these three players. It is entirely possible that more players were compromised and more matches fixed. What is worse are claims that these incidents may also have taken place in the previous editions of the IPL.

Some glibly argued over the last few days that “spot fixing” was not really match fixing. While that may be true when it comes to Test cricket, there is no doubt whatsoever that spot fixing in T20 cricket can dramatically change the results of the game. We know how often teams lose by the proverbial whisker.

Here is my take on IPL and the sordid events associated with it, true or imagined. I am not restricting myself to what is well known through the media about the cases mentioned above:-

• The IPL has been mired in controversy since the days of Lalit Modi who wanted to transplant an essentially Western hard nosed business concept to a culture and ecosystem which is still not fully ready to accept it in 2013, much less than in 2008 when it all started. Even today, most young Indian cricketers who are touted as the biggest beneficiaries of the IPL have not still got culturally attuned to the consequences of earning unprecedented sums of money, the glitz and the glamour, the cheer leaders and what have you. It is not surprising that some are easy prey to the bookies and the underworld.
• The advent of powerful politicians like Sharad Pawar controlling the game in one form or the other changed the dynamic of cricket administration in India. While many things did improve, some things got from bad to worse, such as the involvement of the underworld in betting as the stakes became huge. Decades ago foreign players were reluctant to tour India and often second level players made the grade for tours. They invariably complained about the facilities and the food. Today it is the dream of most cricketers from all over the world to get an IPL contract. Young or over the hill, black or white, they throng to get noticed by the franchisees’ scouts.
• Conflict of interests abound and have not been addressed though these were evident right from its inception. This propagated the theory that a bit of wrong doing is ok. The rot started from the top.  N. Srinivasan, the then Treasurer of the BCCI was the top honcho of India Cements which owns the Chennai Super kings. Today he is the President of the BCCI, the richest and most powerful cricket body in the world. An Aussie journalist went so far as to say that he is a “destructive figure.”
• The entire tournament is not played as per the norms of the ICC. So it is laughable when the top brass of the BCCI say with pride that the anti-corruption duties have been outsourced to the Anti-Cuorruption Wing of the ICC, which has no say in virtually anything in the IPL.
• Many have not realized that for the franchise owners it is business and with it comes attendant issues like Government regulation on Foreign Exchange and the like. To what extent they follow the rules and to what extent they break them is not clearly know as many allegation of violations have cropped up in the past.
• Like in many other aspects of the law in India, we are quick to forgive. We don’t take tough actions to give deterrent punishment. In the last major match fixing case, the players concerned were banned for life but no criminal charges were brought against them. Years have gone by and the dust has settled long ago. Settled so well that Md. Azharuddin, former India captain and supposed king pin of that racket is today a Member of Parliament no less.

So what happens next? There are no easy answers. I can imagine that the cricketers will be let off the hook and by next year’s IPL things will be back to normal. Unless many changes take place, which are most unlikely, the only thing that will happen is that betting will increase, more controversial incidents will take place and the ” game” will go on. When I say game I do not, of course, refer to cricket.

Much has changed in the good old School since my times. After all, decades have flown by since I attended the school from 1959-67. Some of my early memories of life at “School” ( as it was simply called) impressions are captured in my blog, ” Looking At Life.”

While it is natural for most students to say, ” Things were far better in my time” I must confess that there were many things that were far better now than in those days. This sentiment was echoed by Gul Panag, former Miss India who was the Guest of Honour. Thanks to YouTube I have linked to some videos so that you can see and decide for yourself.

A few things caught my attention:

• The involvement of girls was far more, be it on the parade ground, on the PT field in equestrian sport or indeed anywhere else. I was amazed to see sword -wielding girls command parts of the Trooping The Colour which was the hallowed area for boys in our times.
• The degree of skills exhibited in the Equestrian Display was mind boggling. In my time, we had all of six horses, out of which let’s face it may be three were more pony than horse. Now the school has, I believe, something like 16 horses and all of them look very well bred and cared for. To see Junior School kids do gymnastics on horse back was a splendid sight, and as mentioned in my earlier point many of them were girls. My memory is rather dim on this point but I don’t think the girls did horse riding at all in my times. We didn’t have gymnastics on horse back, that’s for sure.
• The Trooping The Colour was done with greater pomp and ceremony than in our times. I guess the very presence of a cavalry detachment, their pennants flying in the air so proudly on their lances, makes such a huge difference. My friend, Joe Thomas, who passed out of School ten years ahead of me tells me the National Colours were formally presented to the School in 1949.
• Beating The Retreat continues to be a hallowed tradition. The presence of a girls pipe band added significant colour to the event. This, I am told, has been in vogue since the ’80s.
• However, I do maintain that on an individual basis the drill standards and personal smartness of the boys and girls on parade were far, far higher in our times. Our shoes and brass buttons shone and there was considerably more snap in the drill in our days. Could perhaps corporal punishment which was so common then and is conspicuous by its absence now be a contributory factor?
• The quality of the arts and crafts exhibitions were always high and I was glad to find the standards have been maintained. It was heartening to see new age art forms like media studies be given such importance.
• The school grounds continue to be immaculate. I presume the comforts levels of the students must have increased considerably.

It was wonderful to be back in Lovedale. The smell of the cypress and eucalyptus told us, more than anything else, that we were back in the “home of our school days.”

The hapless opponents, the Pune Warriors India did not know what hit them as Gayle helped his franchise team to score the highest ever in a 20 over cricket match, 263/5 beating the earlier record of 260 by Sri Lanka vs. Kenya in 2007.

Gayle remained not out at the end of the RCB innings with a mind-boggling individual score of 175 (which, by the way, is more than many teams often make in their allotted 20 overs) make made in just 66 balls. His innings had 13 fours and as many as 17 sixes, which is another record for the most number of sixes ever in an innings. Gayle and Dilshan scored 167 for the opening wicket which was a record for RCB.

What amazes me about Gayle is the enormous power he generates in his shots. He is not known to be keen on running singles. He does this infrequently relying on his ability to score boundaries and sixers later in the innings. Unlike most others, he is typically a slow starter and unlike in this match I just spoke about, he usually takes his time to settle down and read the pitch, the opposing bowlers etc which is something most batsmen don’t do. They plan to go out there and try to hit boundaries and sixes from the word go. Gayle is very different from the others and holds back till he is ready to let fly!

RCB has been lucky to get Gayle because he was originally signed on by Kolkata Knight Riders in the initial seasons but somehow or the other he didn’t click there, thankfully for RCB.

They say the IPL is all about entertainment. You get that in plenty if you happen to see Gayle in full flown. His 175 not out was a one of a kind innings. Most of us have never seen such a destructive innings before. Perhaps we never will again.

Apparently his name as well as that of Mike Mulugeta came up from excerpts of talk on the Boston Police scanner. This set off speculation and later world-wide rumours that Mulugeta and Tripathi were wanted as the prime suspects.

We now know that the brothers Tsarnaev,  were the perpetrators of this dastardly crime. In an incident that shocked the nation, the brothers tried to make away and in the process killed a police officer in the campus of the MIT in Cambridge, Ma. In an ensuing gun battle, the elder brother, Tamerlane seems to have got killed. The younger, Dzhokhar, escaped and was tracked down later and apprehended in a seriously wounded condition in Watertown, Ma.

The objective of this post is not to speculate on who these people were and why they did what they did. It is to reflect on how some bit of misinformation must have so wounded the Tripathi family, who were already in shock considering that Sunil, their youngest son had left home on  March 16, never to be found since then till date. This despite a hunt spearheaded by the FBI no less.

Interestingly while the hunt for the perpetrators, who we now know were the Tsarnaev brothers who are of Chechnyan origin was going on, there was so much on Twitter which carried “news” swifter than the new channels themselves. While the media perhaps held back and did not disclose names, even if they knew them, the netizens on Twitter, amongst other social media fora, found it perfectly fine to tweet, re-tweet and comment on tweets really based on unconfirmed and unsubstantiated news.

The Atlantic carries a comprehensive article on this misinformation and the havoc it created .

This has been a lesson for me. It’s far better to hang on and give confirmed news rather than fire away with more misinformation, however noble your intentions might be.

Indira Gandhi. the PM of India was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards and some Congress leaders vowed to avenge her death by killing Sikhs in general.

The wheels of justice in India move ever so slowly. Today 29 long years after the massacre which are wrongly described as ” Anti- Sikh riots” a court held that the CBI should re-investigate the role of Mr. Jagdish Tytler, a famous Congress leader of Delhi for his role in the ’84 massacre. I say “riots” is a wrong expression to describe the gruesome events of ’84 because when we use the word, we generally tend to think of communal riots involving more than one community. In this case, I don’t think  even a single person, other than Sikhs was killed. The hapless Sikhs, including women and children in some sections of Delhi were systematically hounded out and butchered.

This case has once again demonstrated how the country’s premier investigating agency the CBI is controlled by the political masters. So much has been said about the Gujarat riots of 2002 but that was in relatively modern times when TV brought the riots into our living rooms. Imagine how it would have been if the Sikh massacres were recorded for posterity. The age of media was also different in those far away days.

I commend the lawyer for the Sikhs, Mr. H S Phoolka for his perseverance over the decades in the cause of the Sikh victims. I have just placed an order for his book with Manoj Mitta called, ” When A Tree Shook Delhi.”

I think the guilty should be brought to book, however long it may take. To my mind, the massacre of innocent Sikhs in 1984 was a blot on our nation’s history. Worse than anything else, it showed that religion could be used effectively to whip up such maniac passions in mobs. It also showed that the rich and powerful remain untouched using their political clout. Nearly 30 years later, we as a country still pay the price for this ghastly incident.

The main reasons for my supporting this club was that I am from Bangalore so this was the natural choice. Secondly, some of my favourite players like Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble played for this team.

Six years later, I saw the first match that RCB played yesterday with mixed feelings. I was thrilled as a cricket fan at the way they beat the powerful Mumbai Indians. It was a game that swung from one team to another and in the end RCB just about sneaked through with a last ball win. However, unlike in past years I did not see the much touted inaugural ceremony for the first time. Nor did I see the opener between KKR and Delhi Daredevils.

The IPL and controversies seem to go together. Isn’t it funny and strange that Dr. Vijay Mallya spends huge bucks engaging players from all over the world for the RCB, when his employees of the now grounded Kingfisher Airlines agitate outside the stadium saying they haven’t been paid their salaries for months? That Subrata Roy popularly called “Sahara Shree” once the principal sponsor of the Indian cricket team and now the proud owner of the Pune Warriors who has a stadium named after him, is alleged to owe Rs. 24,000 crores, which is a huge amount of money to his investors? That Mr. Srinivasan, the Managing Director of India Cements, who owns Chennai Super Kings is the Big Chief of the BCCI and says there’s no conflict of interest in this. Interestingly, India Cements recently appointed one Mr. M.S.Dhoni as the Vice-President, surely not because he is the skipper of the Chennai Super Kings.More recently, Kolkata erupted in agitation when a student leader died under circumstances which are still not known. Mamata Banerjee the Chief Minister attended the inaugural ceremony of the IPL but ignored the incident the same day when the  protesting student supposedly died in police custody not too far away.

There is talk of sleaze and betting and match fixing, but that’s not yet been proved in a court of law. So, let’s not even go there, however tempting it might be to believe at least some of the rumors that dutifully make the rounds every season.

The IPL is a great product, make no mistake about this. It has made kings of paupers, even if I exaggerate a little to make a point and provided employment to thousands including dancers from the Ukraine and wherever else. However, right from the days of Lalit  Modi, persistent stories of foreign exchange violations and money laundering  continue to abound. The BCCI have done precious little to allay the fears of the public on this score.

The game must go on and it will take its toll, on ordinary people who are suckers for a blend of Bollywood and cricket. It will not affect the super rich of India who will continue to laugh all the way to the bank. Let’s see what IPL Season 6 has to offer!

She has been a relatively new entrant to the world of Facebook. I encouraged her to publish pictures of the great stuff she cooked on her FB Page. On many occasions, we found our friends and others asking for recipes for these dishes. One thing led to another and I cajoled her to go the whole hog and start a blog, which she has finally done, only a couple of days ago.

To increase and ease connectivity, she now also has a Facebook Page for “Cooking With Shobana.”

I guess most of the dishes will be cooked the way we do here in India, where we have an amazing breadth of styles in cuisine. The recipes will, perhaps, also have a slant towards cooking the Konkani way.

Should you be interested, do drop by the blog or the Facebook Page and leave a comment , your feedback or even a request for a recipe. I am sure she will respond provided she knows the recipe you have asked for.

The scene is one you would see almost everywhere, you might say. In any school or activity center for kids. You are only partly right. Closer scrutiny shows you that without exception, all these children have two things in common. One of them is visually very evident . All of them have their heads shaved off. The other is more subtle and cannot be immediately made out as they so enthusiastically read and play. The location of course tells you why these children are special. They are amongst the 60,000 children afflicted with cancer, a disease which affects 10 to 12 children out of 10,000 population in India every year. We are in the children’s ward at the Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology in Bangalore with volunteers from the Samiksha Foundation: Caring For Children With Cancer.

Sandhya Sharad the energetic Founder of Samiksha and Dr. Manjari Bhatnagar, the equally committed Director, share their infectious enthusiasm for their work. Their Foundation is a creative learning initiative for children with cancer and their care givers. “We provide,” says Sandhya, “educational and spiritual support along with creative play and activities.” By training she is an architect and interior designer but this passion to support children afflicted with cancer has given new meaning to her life and indeed to many who have come in contact with Samiksha’s activities.

The best way to see what Samiksha does for these children is for you to volunteer and join them in their on-going effort to mitigate, in however small a way, the suffering of less fortunate children. They aim, in their own words, to bring joy to the children and their care givers. They say, “Our strong belief at the Centre is that one can always do something to improve the situation for the children with cancer and their families outside the formal medical atmosphere. Irrespective of getting an ideal solution, one can make a real difference, by improving their lifestyles or helping the families maintain a quality of life and giving them hope for the future. The ultimate aim is to increase the happiness quotient of those affected by cancer and such life threatening diseases, notwithstanding their circumstances.” Here’s how you can volunteer to help.

As you can imagine, Samiksha could do with sponsors to carry out their goals for the immediate future. Here’s how you can contribute as a sponsor.

Before you leave, irrespective of where you are and what you do, I would urge you to see this short documentary on what Samiksha has been doing for the last four years. Isn’t it very inspiring? I hasten to echo what Samiksha says, and says so well : “We ask that you respect the purpose of the mission and the privacy of the families in the documentary, and do not use content from this film for personal purposes or advertisement.”

If you want to help increase the “happiness quotient” of these children and associate yourself with the Samiksha Foundation in some meaningful way, here are their contact details. You will find interacting with Sandhya Sharad and Dr. Manjari Bhatnagar well worth your while.

And, guess what? In increasing the “happiness quotient” of those less fortunate than you, especially when they are children with cancer, the joy you derive cannot be described. It has to be experienced.

This post is submitted to the ISB iDiya Blogging Contest.

http://www.isb.edu/idiya/

Bangalore is ranked 19 in this list but that’s nothing to be embarrassed about because this list features the best places in the entire world. It is encouraging to know that the factor for which Bangalore had the best score was with regard to “Mindset Index” which refers to how the founders of startups think and have an appetite for risk etc.

Fallowing this report, I read a detailed analysis in DNA newspaper of March 13 which covered in great detail what some of the leading entrepreneurs in Bangalore had to say about its advantages and disadvantages.

From my experience as a talent management person, I have the following points to share:

* The talent available in Bangalore is highly adaptable. They can learn very quickly and soon get ahead of the game.

* More and more young people are taking the plunge and starting their startups. Such a career choice is far more accepted these days than before.

* We need to recognize that not everyone has it in them to start/work in a startup. The needs are very different and call for a very different psychological profile.

It is reassuring to know that Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, continues to pursue greater success. SeedTable which captures trends of startups globally indicates that Bangalore was ranked 22 out of 150 “Most Active Cities” worldwide.

Events like the four day Startup Festival’s street art event speak volumes of the diverse possibilities and potential ahead.

Mangeshi is a regular feature on every tourist’s schedule. It’s a very old temple which goes back to the 1560s if I recall correctly. Our family deity or “kuldev” is Mangesh, we worship this god who is another form of Lord Shiva.

We have been visiting Mangeshi for over 25 years now and see many improvements over time. To give you a pictorial description of what it’s like, have a look at this album I created on my return to Bangalore yesterday.