The indelible stamp on first day covers

Collecting stamps was my favourite hobby as a schoolboy , closely followed by collecting matchboxes and collecting coins , in that order . 

A particular aspect of stamp collection was a direct outcome of effort made - the FIRST DAY COVER. The General Post Office at Calcutta had a philatelic bureau that used to have first day covers - ( a first day cover has a stamp on the official envelope, stamped on the day of release)

Attached in the picture are some of my first day covers - they are not just first day covers - behind each is the familiar story of my mother rushing with me and my sister to the GPO ( which closed at 5 PM). For context , school got over at 3.10PM, and we reached home at 3.45 PM. And then, we would make a beeline for the bus to GPO,  a one hour journey from home. 

No matter what the first day cover - Indira Gandhi, Asian Development Bank, 150th anniversary of the postage stamp, Ho Chi Minh - it not only had the postmark - it had the indelible stamp of my mother's love on it !

Life without a TV

15 years

It's been more than 15 years since that day. 

15 years. 

It was the 15 th of February , 2003. Saturday. 

It was our first weekend in Hyderabad. Just shifted to a new city . With a new job. 

In another part of the world, at Centurion ( South Africa), the cricket World Cup was on. It was the big weekend game. India vs Australia. 

This being the first weekend of moving to a new city , and having just moved into a house from a hotel, we ( my wife  Ipsita and me) decided to get the basics of the house going. 

We started with getting a bed, a mattress , utensils, a sofa set, a table. 

The furniture and the kitchen stuff done, we went to an electronics shop - at that time, one of the largest in the city - a shop called JD Electronics , located in the Abids area. 

There were two items on the 'to buy' list - 

A refrigerator and a TV. 

The refrigerator was finalised - LG. while this very important decision was being taken by the wife (as she evaluated various specifications, sizes and colours of the fridge ) , I concentrated on the TVs that were on display at the store. Not for doing a similar evaluation, but for the India vs Australia live telecast. India batted first. Everyone was excited. Anticipation was high. 

A Tendulkar century was expected. Ganguly and Tendulkar opened. Brett Lee was fast and accurate. He got Ganguly to nick to Gilchrist . One down. In walks Sehwag. Tendulkar is at the other end. Sehwag hits a four. Tendulkar is striking it well. However, in his very next over, Lee gets Sehwag. Nicked to Gilchrist. In comes Rahul Dravid. He prods around for more than 20 balls for one run. And then he goes, bowled by Gillespie. 

My wife says the fridge is final. Let's quickly do the TV. 

The eager salesman showed several brands which were in vogue that time . I was keen to take my team at each brand stop. 

He first showed BPL. Yuvraj Singh goes for a duck. Plumb to McGrath. 

We move on to Samsung. As I was testing the remote control, Mohammed Kaif went . He scored 1 off 16 balls. 

We moved to the next brand. The salesman was talking about the excellent picture quality of the LG TV. Tendulkar hits a beautiful four - between cover and extra cover . The voice quality is also very pleasing . 

I look at Ipsita asking about the LG tv. She nods. Let's buy it, she tells me. 

The salesman in the meantime was talking to another person in the shop. I ask him to come for a minute . 

He is coming towards us. 

It's the 28 th over . 

The salesman is walking towards us. 

Gillespie is running in to bowl to Tendulkar. 

The salesman reaches. 

Gillespie delivers the ball. 

The salesman asks me if there is any query regarding any features of the LG TV. 

Tendulkar is wrapped on the pads. He is in front of middle and leg. 

Australia appeal. Tendulkar is gone. India are 6 down. The score is just 78. 

I feel supremely disappointed . Like millions of cricket fans.  

We decide not to buy the TV that day. Just the fridge, we tell the salesman. 

Then the day goes. And somehow, a couple of weeks more pass by because we could not find the time to go to buy a TV. 

The cricket World Cup ends ( India did very well to make it to the finals ; lose in the finals to Australia ) . 

The next weekend there is time. We can go and buy a TV today, we feel. 

However, I feel if we can live through a cricket World Cup without a TV, there cannot be anything bigger in the world for which a TV might be needed. Ipsita agrees. 

We decide to give it a pass. 

We Try to experiment a life without a TV. 

And from that serendipitous moment when India became 78 for 6, to now ( 2018 March) , it's more than 15 years. And we are living without a TV. 

Since it just doesn't exist, we don't miss it. I don't even know how to operate it. 

Sometimes, this results in embarrassing situations - I was travelling and in a pretty nice hotel. I decide to watch the TV. However, I just couldn't get to the listing of channels because the remote control was so unfamiliar and complicated. I called housekeeping , and when the boy came, I asked him to help me get the TV started. He looked at me and gave me a look. And in a second, got it done. 

The only time in these fifteen years I have felt it might have been good to have a TV was on the morning after the Bombay terror attacks, on the 27 th of November 2008. 

I was blissfully unaware of the Bombay attacks and had a morning flight from Hyderabad to Bombay around 8 AM. It was an air india flight . Around 6 in the morning , a friend called to say there was a huge terror attack in bombay and I might consider cancelling my trip. 

I shrugged him off and called the Airline at the Hyderabad airport. It was then that I looked up the internet to get a sense of the enormity of the attack and the magnitude of the disaster that had stuck. I rushed to my neighbours house to see the TV. It was a very tense atmosphere . 

Coming back to TV, other than that one incident , it has never been missed. 

I am a big sports fan, and there are times I really want to watch some sport. Occasionally, If the craving is too intense, I watch it on the internet. 

Our son Jaadoo is a big football fan too. He does not know what it is to have a TV at home. So he too, somehow manages on those few occasions he really feels like, on the internet . 

TV, the 15 years without you have been good. Looking forward to the next 15. 

Why Barca can get another treble this time

Neymar's huge move to Paris definetly caused a bit of a stir in the Barcelona dressing room. It was almost certain that this would be one season the players would want to forget after getting crushed by arch rivals Real Madrid twice in the Supercopa de Espana even after signing expensive Ousmane Dembele and Paulinho.

Both the big signings were criticised. Ousmane Dembele was out for three months after only his second start for the team. 

And Paulinho ? The duo of Messi and Paulinho was too much for many la liga defenders even with Luis Suarez out of form. And when Suarez was back to normal did Barca need to worry about defending ?

Right now, Barcelona have calmed down a bit from their early rampage. Several factors have led to Barca being in good form. 

1) Andres Iniesta being ever so stable and controlling the game.

2) Ter stegen proving to be brilliant

3) Messi, Suarez and Paulinho, ahem.

4) Great effort by all team members and of course Ernesto Valverde

Of course the season is still far from being over right now, but Barcelona are very much in contention for their three major titles. But with the coming of Phil Coutinho and Yerry Mina, let's hope they achieve it !

Hardik Sapra

If it's tennis, it's got to be LOVE-ALL

From early school and all the way up to college, I was a big tennis fan. It was my second favourite sport. 

Not without reason -Numerous exciting things happened in tennis in that period.

There was also a pragmatic reason to it - Tennis was one of the few sports available on direct telecast in India that time. While a lot many more matches are available for viewing these days, I have been living without a TV for the last 15 years, so have lost touch somehow . 

In those school and college days , when I did see tennis, it was amazing. It inspired me to take up the sport and go for coaching with my brand new Slazenger racquet.

Coming back to my tennis watching career, some events still give me the goosebumps. 

Here is a list of some- 

1. A 17 year old school boy named Boris Becker diving all over Wimbledon centre court to stun Kevin Curran in the finals , thereby becoming a hero to millions of adoring schoolboys and a crush for many girls. 

2. Martina Navratilova continuing her dominance of women's tennis like no one had done before. Winning title after title and completely dominating Wimbledon for years on end. 

3. Pat Cash, the underdog Aussie, with his cheque hairband he always wore because he was a motor racing fan, breaking tradition and jumping over the Wimbledon stands to hug his family after putting it across Ivan Lendl. 

4. Ramesh Krishnan , all grace and class, leading India's charge, ( with support from Vijay Amritraj ) to take his country to an improbable victory against Australia in the Davis Cup Semi finals to put India into the finals against Sweden. 

5. Steffi Graf putting an end to Martina Navratilova's dominance through sheer grit, lots of power and stupendous will power. Steffi's subsequent rivalry with the flamboyant Argentine Gabriela Sabatini replacing the Martina vs Chris Evert one.   Steffi 's golden slam of 1988, when she won the four grand slams and also the Olympic gold medal at the Seoul Olympics. 

6. Leander Paes gritting his way through the Olympic men's singles draw  to put India on the medal podium at the 1996 Atlanta Games. 

7. Aranxta Sanchez adding Vicario ( her mother's surname ) to her name after winning her first grand slam when she beat Steffi Graf in the French Open finals .

8. Monica Seles, all power and precision, shockingly halted in her tracks by a lunatic spectator who stabbed her during a break in a match.

9. A teenaged Michael Chang, unknown and unheralded , running through the French open draw in his second appearance at the tournament ( after being decimated by John McEnroe in his first ) 

10. Lindsay Devenport, world number 1 with a great world view, calling her exploits on the tennis court 'just a job like any other'. 

11. Jennifer Capriati, in her mid teens when she won her first grand slam and later becoming an unfortunate victim to drugs. 

12. Andre Agassi , the rebel, living his fathers dream through tennis . Subsequently, his famed rivalry with the uber cool Pete Sampras. Years later , marrying Steffi Graf to become tennis' first couple . 

13. The Leander Paes- Mahesh Bhupathi doubles domination. leander's partnership with Martina Navratilova to win the Mixed doubles at Wimbledon. 

All of this was before the era of Fed and Rafa , before the Willams sisters made grand slams family property . Kim Clijsters, the young mother, timing her baby's food and sleep timings , to win a grand slam in between remains my standout tennis moment of the current era. 

All the events I mentioned above happened after two of the most talked about matches of all time had been played several years ago - I could not watch them for two simple reasons - the first one happened before I was born, and the second one when I was too young to understand any sport . 

In the last 24 hours, though , I saw a movie on each of those matches . 

'Borg vs McEnroe' is the name of the first movie, and 'Battle of the Sexes' is the second. 

The first one is about the 1980 Wimbledon finals - Bjorn Borg, all of 25 years of age, playing for his fifth consecutive ( yes- consecutive ) title and under tremendous pressure to keep scaling the peaks he had created for himself. 

John McEnroe- the young , brash, invective spewing artist with the tennis racquet , a worthy challenger. 

The Wimbledon final between the two is often touted as the greatest tennis match of all time - Mac won the first set, Borg the next two, Borg had several match points in the fourth which McEnroe saved and managed to take the game to the decisive fifth after one of the longest tie breakers in a Wimbledon final. 

During a break in the fourth set, with the game on the edge, Borg notices McEnroe very tensed up. 

He tells McEnroe that he ( Mac) has been doing great and he should keep playing his normal game. 

Borg s ice cool temperament and calmness finally prevails in the fifth set to give him his fifth consecutive crown. 

Despite the fierce rivalry, Bjorn reaches out to John and they develop great respect for each other . the entire narrative of a media hype around the rivalry melts into a shared respect and display of sportsmanship when they interact one on one. Person to person. ( subsequently, they became great friends and Borg became the best man at McEnroe 's wedding ). 

The second movie is about the 'battle of the sexes'; a tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King. 

Riggs, once the men's world number 1, all of 55 years old in 1973, challenged the then women's champion , Billie Jean King , to a match saying men were far superior to women in sport. Billie Jean, who had put her career at stake demanding equal prize money for women and men player's, believed she was not just playing for herself and against Riggs, but for equality and against all forms of male chauvinism. 

In parallel to the tennis, Billie Jean, married for many years , also discovers her own preferences and sexuality; and that becomes one more societal taboo to fight against . 

The tennis match is therefore not just a match - it's about one extraordinary person fighting against societal perceptions of gender and against societal prejudices around the LGBT community. 

Billie Jean wins. 

With these two movies seen, I am glad that I have seen the stories around two of the most extraordinary tennis matches that preceded my tennis watching career. 

And they reinforced the joy of sport , in its purest , most entertaining form.