Thought Shots

Being the captain of the Indian Cricket Team is no picnic. As the captain of Team India, one carries on his shoulders the Himalayan weight of a billion people’s expectations. In the past, only very few Indian players could handle this job effectively. And leave alone improving the team’s performance, some of them saw even their own performance deteriorate. Instances include the likes of Gavaskar, Azharuddin, Tendulkar and Dravid. But change is constant and there are always exceptions. Mahendra Singh Dhoni is one such exception. The man has broken the jinx which had infected the indian captaincy for ages. Not only has he led India to two Cricket World Cup victories and the Number One Test Ranking in International cricket but Dhoni himself is considered to be one of the world’s best batsmen. What are the lessons that we can learn from him? Firstly, Dhoni has the advantage of being acceptable and relatable to all class of players in the team. He doesn’t carry with him that air

I love the song, "Ram Chahe Leela" from the film Ram-Leela. The song basically asks that if two people love each other, how is it anybody else's business. Good question! The sad part is that whenever a Ram loves Leela or a Leela loves Ram, the world around them does seem to think that they have at least some business in whatever is going on between them. Take for example any love story from history, ‘Romeo-Juliett’, ‘Heer-Ranjha’, ‘Laila-Majnu’. In all these cases, you would find the world acting against the lovers. Causing one roadblock after another. Almost as if they want them to part from each other. As if their happiness makes them drown in unhappiness. Now, I don’t know why that happens. Perhaps, it is because most people in the world haven’t been lucky enough to find their best half, and so they cannot stand the sight of someone having found theirs. Or perhaps, the world is too imperfect to let a perfect love story prevail. Perhaps, that’s why Devdas couldn’

I have been listening to a couple of speeches lately. And yes, they are speeches by some of the great leaders both from the present and the past. Hearing these speeches, one is swept away by the depth of conviction in these people’s messages and the substance of their speeches' content. Let me start by saying something about Martin Luther King’s speech, ‘I have a dream’. Considered by many to be the greatest speech of all time, the speech tells you exactly why King was one of the greatest Americans and social rights activists who ever lived. The speech is as old as 51 years but when you play it even now, it echoes around you. King spoke in this speech like a lion. A lion hungry for making change happen. And boy, did he roar! When you listen to speeches nowadays, there are only very few people that you can say are entirely genuine in their delivery. You can’t trust if most of them really mean what they say. And you would take a while to trust them. And to follow them in wh