Subhajit

(Photo Credit - Getty Images) You got big shoes to fill in, if you hail from the lands of Garner, Greenidge, Haynes, Marshall & Sobers. Contrast to the Caribbean aggression, Jason Holder is a calm & quiet character. At the age of 23, when he was barely recognised as a future talent, the selection Panel headed by Sir Clive Lloyd appointed him West Indies' ODI captain in 2014. A year later, he took over the Test team too, indicating how much the WICB and men in the know believed in this man. In the history of Cricket, only extreme world situations have forced Cricket to stop in the past. The most recent being the Pandemic of 2020. Cricket came to a halt for over 4 months worldwide. Cricket enthusiasts would know what it means to lose 4 months of International Cricket for a player. Jason Holder kept growing through the multiple defeats as well as few shining in his first 3 years of captaincy. When he took over, the West Indies team had many senior players including Chris Gayle...

Alarm. Wake up. Brush your sorrows. Shave off your sleep. Prepare yourself for the commute. Run, scamper and reach on time. So you reached on time, that is like half the brownie points scored. Is it similar to half the battle won? Hell no. Absolutely not. The battle only begins after after you feel like clearing a big milestone, punching in on time that is. Then begins the real stuff. Some folks literally live for it, they just love the drama that unfolds, by them or because of them. Because that is all that they have, that is all that they know. The social and family life is non-existent for them, for there is no room for antics there. No friend of yours would like to see your artificial self after office hours. No one has time or patience for that. We meet people who can be honest with after a day of putting a mask on. Okay, let us move on from the morning punch, you know how it sounds. It actually is a punch on all our faces. We now enter our desks, that is our little go-...

"I do not like travelling, I do not like noise, Italian food, crowd, crabs, honking, spontaneous plans at midnight, people on social media, selfies, people getting married." "What do you like?" "I like mountains, chocolates, bikes, beaches, Mughlai Chicken, the smell of coffee, picking up a nice shirt to wear in the morning and I like you." The conversations between June & Sydney never stopped. They meet to talk and talk about almost everything under the sun. They were friends, more than friends and less than what people usually loved to term them as. They never cared what others thought, except for the times when they had to lie, a rare for them. Life has changed quite a lot between them in all these years, ten to be precise. They studied together, started working together and then moved cities, separately. But the chemistry never died. They always started from where they have left. It has been close to a year they are in the same city a...

It feels good to be back here after 3 months. But it feels terrible not to have a specific topic to write. So, I will not force myself to come up with something artificial. And these days, the weather in Mumbai is so beautifully natural that I am trying not to do anything artificial throughout the day ;) It's cold, there are drizzles and there are cold windy evenings. What else one can ask for in a city known for its humidity levels. Last few weeks have been the best when it comes to my sleep, such weather provides quality sleeping and I am just not complaining. I have been doing so many things in last couple of months, both personally and professionally, that I am not able to keep a track of my priorities. But then, who all can I keep happy. So I am just moving from one day to the other keeping myself afloat. Spendings have shot up in recent months without any changes in the salary, that leaves me on the brink of being declared a bankrupt. But I like the idea, I want to be decl...

I speak my mind. I hate pseudo-intellects. Oh God, they are everywhere. All around. They strangulate me. I am counting my share of oxygen. I had one-fourth promise of staying with you. But who belonged to whom? Nothing is permanent. Expectations reduces joy. They are temporary. We have put a price tag for everything in life. The price of life has become nothing. The sweet nothings describes you. You all define me. The definition is subjective. Every subject is hapless at the hands of administrators today. Helplessness, many times, ignited movements. Movements are what we get inspired from. Inspiration is what we long for, inspiration is what we want to be. Longing has been a key element of my survival. Elements of hope, nostalgia is what makes me stay grounded. I seek contentment. I find it costly which I can not afford. Expectations are permanent, disappointments are temporary. I write my life. I describe events. Words are healing. All scars are mine. I am proud of them. I cry for pe...

Good work aimed at development and upliftment of people in general should not only be appreciated, but also must stand as an example for others to follow suit. We find it very easy to blame the system for every apathy we face in our everyday life. Finding a scapegoat for everything has become a way of our life. And it is happening because of the way our entire society is functioning. And gradually, we all are turning into an 'escapist'.  While fighting hard not to fall into the trap of being an 'escapist', I keep searching for ways to do my bit in whatever little way possible. I came across a website of a small village, yes a full-fledged website, and it was so informative and inspiring. I went to explore further about their journey on development and how inclusive it is for them. There are various programs running and majority of them are aimed at sanitation and hygiene. Hygiene has always been a primary area of concern in Indian villages. They, today, have achieved...

When it rains, it does not decide where to go. It does not belong to anyone, yet it is for everyone. Sometimes the sheer noise of the raindrops make you go blank. All you hear is that sound. Nothing distracts you, you start concentrating amidst the noise. These are facts of nature we must understand, for they don’t come with sponsored posts on social networks. The number of events, people and situations around us are enough to divert our attention, or are they? The truth, if we start exploring, will come out simple: if we like what we are doing, nothing can distract us. I never realized the umpteen number of times my father told me the same thing; assuming that how in the world it is possible to concentrate with Tendulkar playing those signature straight drives, Mom cooking those delicious fries, Mr. Vajpayee giving those speeches, those landline ringing during those odd-hours, friends calling for evening Cricket match with the life on stake. With each year, I realized how critic...

This is a guest post by a person who has seen many sides of life too often, Iftikhar Ashraf.  Date was 21st September 2012 and day was Friday; the air was full with anger, Muslims in every part of the world were protesting against the anti-Islam film and the blasphemous caricatures drawn by the controversial French magazine, Charlie Hebdo. In the protesting world, Kashmir was no exception, Syed Ali Shah Geelani had asked the people to show their displeasure through peaceful protests after Friday Prayers. But the government also wanted to show its displeasure and it didn’t want its displeasure to go unnoticed, which they made sure by enforcing an undeclared curfew and blocking all the mobile services, even not sparing the mobile internet services (gprs, wireless internet etc). I had a flight to catch for New Delhi in the evening, seeing the mood of the government and the restrictions they had enforced, I was not sure whether I would be able to catch my flight. In or...

When you are in your early teens, you feel like doing wonders in your life. All larger-than-life dreams floating around. A late teenager adds and subtracts some colours in those dreams. Then comes the phase of early twenties where you feel that it’s time to get serious about life. Actually all these phases were more or less hallucinations till you close in and cross 25. Then you have the fire to do something worth, instead of the regular dreams that everyone has. I have more or less gone through all these phases and ended up leaving my home and coming to a distant place to pursue my management studies, which in turn made me understand that life is also about a lot of such dreams which actually makes some sense. NAB, Worli, Mumbai N I started my first job with a lot of pre-conceived notions that I had with me during my MBA. It all started fading with each passing day and I started understanding that it is pretty easy to seat in an air-conditioned room and discuss with all the...

Life's moving on, so are the timelines, priorities and responsibilities. I don't know where exactly life's moving towards. I am very much aware of the fact that where my professional life heading towards, where my priorities lie and where I belong today.  Your life is the sum of the choices you made. I made some correct ones, so many wrong ones. But do all those have any significance today or will they impact tomorrow! Sometimes I feel I am just keeping my pace up with the race that I am a part of today. The so-called term "value-addition" that I read & lectured some uncountable times during my MBA, is looking so hazy today. May be I need to have few add-ons in my professional life to make it up for the void that I feel inside me. May be I need to go back to the basics and start doing few corrections in my priorities. May be I am sounding weird, may be I need treatment, but I really do not believe that I stand at the wrong end. I don't know, but I fee...