Hardik Pandya Ko Gussa Kyon Aana Chahiye

Why is Hardik Pandya not doing well as a captain? There can be some surface-level answers to this question: he is not an inspirational leader, he doesn't make the best tactical decisions, his own form with both bat and ball is indifferent, or simply he is not "smart enough" to be captain or no one listens to him.

They might all be fair assessments. There is also a segment of pundits saying that it is wrong to call out Hardik Pandya as the sole cause for the failure of the Mumbai Indians. That could also be a fair assessment. But the question remains: why is he not a successful leader, when we have seen how good he is as a cricketer? (Yes, he succeeded with Gujarat Titans, and that matters. But that was a different leadership assignment: a new franchise, a fresh dressing room, fewer expectations, fewer inherited hierarchies, and Hardik himself as the obvious center of gravity. Mumbai Indians is a different psychological job altogether — plus, there are Rohit Sharma's humongous shoes to fill.)

The answer lies in how Hardik Pandya the leader is presenting himself. Let’s look into what makes Hardik Pandya such a good cricketer. I think everyone will agree that some of his stronger traits are supreme self-confidence, fearlessness, an ability to take risks, an ability to make decisions on the fly, and, of course, talent and hard work. There is not enough room in that bag of personality traits for things like keeping a calm head, maintaining a smiling demeanor, or hiding his emotions. Why? Because those are not the things that made Hardik Pandya the phenomenon he is.

The Pitfall of Emulation

And yet, that is exactly what he is bringing to the table as captain. He is trying to be an amalgamation of MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma, possibly his idols. This is not an unusual phenomenon; you look up to people you learn from, and when put in a situation those people were once in, you try to think and act like them. It is not a bad thing in theory, but it is not the best choice for the leader of a professional sports team in a high-pressure arena.

Look at Virat Kohli the cricketer and Virat Kohli the captain. You will not see any difference in personality. Even as a leader, he wore his passion on his sleeve, led with his heart, and displayed genuine, no-holds-barred emotion.

The same applies to most great leaders in cricket: their personality as a cricketer and as a leader was the same. If belligerence and boldness were the strengths of Sourav Ganguly, they were his strengths both as a cricketer and as a captain. If calmness and steadfastness were MS Dhoni's biggest strengths as captain, they were also his biggest strengths as a cricketer. If Rohit Sharma’s leadership strength is his ability to absorb pressure, deflect noise, and make others feel lighter, that also feels like an extension of Rohit the cricketer.

The Case for Authentic Leadership

The point remains the same: to be a great leader in a professional sports arena, you have to bring your own self to the job. If your own self—your default personality—is not a good fit for the leadership job, you shouldn't do it. That is exactly what Sachin Tendulkar realized.

I love Hardik Pandya the cricketer to bits. Chutzpah, audacity, belligerence, and impulsive intelligence are the traits that define him. I think he will be a fantastic leader if he brings those default, original personality traits to his leadership.

Whether the rest of his team will like him in that avatar, or whether it fits the specific "job description" of the Mumbai Indians captaincy, is not today's problem to solve. But we saw a small glimpse of that raw leadership in his conversations with Tilak Varma while batting together, and we saw the results. That is the Hardik Pandya the Mumbai Indians actually need—more so now than ever.

#IPL2026 #MumbaiIndians #HardikPandya #MumbaiPaltan #CricketTwitter #IPLNews

A Day From My Childhood

Looking back at days past is man's way of coping with a variety of things. It is our way of reminiscing about happy moments of the past, memorable incidents and accidents that shaped us to be what we are today, mistakes we made and learned from, and events we cherish and miss.

Often when a day is stressful, the mind is exhausted, or the heat is unbearable like it is today, my brain meanders off into my past and finds solace and refuge in my childhood. Recalling some tiny, insignificant detail from my formative years reminds me that I was lucky to have had a childhood that I could fondly look back upon, and also assures me that I am still some ways away from suffering from Alzheimer's.

Today, out of the blue, I suddenly remembered how much I loved reading fiction as a kid. Well, I sort of lied there. The memory didn't pop out of the blue. I was in the library and my kids were reading. On a whim, I picked up a book and joined them. The book I picked - Murder On The Orient Express by Agatha Christie, one of the greatest storytellers to have ever graced this earth - spurred the memory, supplemented by the extreme heat of this summer day. Another grueling hot day like this flashed through my mind.

It was a hot June day in the summer of 1987 that I went back to. I was moving to 6th grade in the ensuing Fall. Now that I was bigger, I had graduated from Enid Blyton and abridged classics to more mature content, and my current favorite was mysteries. I had started dreaming of growing up to become Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot - although I was leaning more towards Poirot, because like him, I would be a foreigner living in England, solving complex crimes around the globe, sometimes on the behest of aristocrats and royalty. Apart from this, I was also more attracted to Poirot's idiosyncrasies than to Sherlock's aggression and eccentricities.

I can clearly see the younger me lying on the bed, mid-afternoon, both feet dangling out between the vertical iron bars of the bedroom window of our second floor rented apartment. Only we called it first floor, the floor below being the ground floor. The rickety ceiling fan semi-successfully tried to cool my body, but the pleasant summer breeze outside definitely did wonders for my lower extremities. I was reading the same book - Murder On The Orient Express. I was completely lost in the intricacies of the world designed by Christie, where the crime was baffling, the characters involved both amusing and misleading, and the clues mind-boggling.

Reading a Hercule Poirot novel is an experience in itself. Page after page, I would puzzle about the goings-on, completely clueless about where the unfolding events were leading to. I would feel just like the characters in the book tagging along with Poirot assisting him in his quest for answers, hapless and helpless and completely unable to contribute. And like a magician, Poirot would assimilate everything thrown at him, piece clues and events together, and with a flourish, present a comprehensive and plausible explanation in the end that would blow my mind. The conclusion to a Poirot novel was like an addiction that I would crave for, and when it arrived, I would put the book away and lie there on my pillow, satiated, mesmerized, and wanting more.

Today, life is messier, more complicated, and way more demanding than that summer day of 1987. There are appointments to be kept, deadlines to be met, jobs to be completed, and mores to be observed. I cannot ask for a lazy afternoon devoid of any errands and chores where I would lie on my bed and read a book. But today, the few hours I stole from life to read Dame Agatha Christie's masterclass were as satisfying and joyful as that summer day three decades ago.

So you want a better job?

So you want a new job? Because it is more lucrative? Better benefits? Better work-life balance? Well, a choice between continuing to live your life as it is now, and dying to move on to a new place and the possibility of a new, better (after)life is not much different from choosing to continue in your current job and moving on to a new one. They are, in fact, eerily similar.

You don't believe me, do you? I understand. Even thinking about death can be scary. But in the interest of keeping this though-exercise as non-morbid as possible, let's assume that death is painless, easy, and instantaneous. Let's also say that you possess the ability to glimpse into the new life and see how it is expected to be. And by this I mean something like a YouTube recruitment video from Google, and not a pastor's interpretation of a religious book. These two assumptions take away the uncertainty and pain out of dying. Now you know where you are going, and you also know it doesn't have to hurt. What do you think now?

•   Both moves involve breaking existing ties. 

◦                  Once you move to a new job, you never meet up with your ex-colleagues.  Once you die, obviously (and hopefully) you don't come back to visit them either. 

◦                  You might bump into some of your ex-colleagues at your new job, when they also decide to make the transition. Or you might meet them in heaven or hell when they make the transition.

•   Both are permanent. 

◦                  Coming back to an old job is almost as rare and miraculous as coming back from the dead. 

◦                  Returning back to your old job in a relatively small time frame after leaving is more frequent, just like the possibility of reviving someone whose heart just stopped is a little bit higher than someone who died a while ago.

•   Both can mean making adjustments to your current lifestyle, and learning new tricks and skills. Or not. It completely depends on where you go, in both cases, and what you need to survive and thrive there.

•   You don't exactly know what you are getting into, sometimes in spite of lots of research. Your new job might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you, or the worst. You might be in heaven, or you might be in hell - well, in one case, literally and in the other, figuratively.

•   How well you do at the new place depends a lot on your actions in the previous place. If you worked hard in your previous job, displayed great work ethics, and leaned a lot of skills and new tricks, you will be able to get a good job at a big company and will do very well. All the hard work you put in at your previous (not so great) job will now reap dividends. If you have lived a noble, righteous, virtuous life, most religions promise you a great after-life. And the opposite is true too. It is called Karma.

Do you agree now? I hope so. If you still harbor some doubts, let me remind you gently that people do get laid off and fired from their jobs too, mostly against their wishes, and sometimes even unfairly when they have done nothing to deserve it.

Pink is a gender neutral color

The color pink is associated with girls.  This is a universal concept. Men don't wear pink, and are generally reluctant to have any accouterments that are even remotely pinkish in color. Girls, on the other hand, from a very tender age, are drawn to this color. My five year old daughter is literally living a pink life - pink clothes, pink room, pink bed, pink bedcover, pink pillow, pink comforter ... you get the idea. She started playing soccer today, and it is not hard to guess the color of her cleats, socks, and shin guards. Yes, they are all pink. 

The question is - Why is pink associated with girls? The association of pink with femininity is a rather recent concept, and an Occidental one at that. It only became noticeable in the 1940s, and there are no definite or documented origins for this association. It is one of those things that just happened slowly. It has been said that it was brought about in the USA by President Eisenhower's wife's pink inaugural gown. It has also been claimed that Barbie might have played a significant role. When I was growing up in India a lifetime ago, before television and Internet had invaded our lives, pink was not a girl's color at all. Many males, including yours truly, comfortably sported pink shirts at the very least. In fact, traditional male Indian garbs and headgear from several parts of the country still have pink hues.  

So do Occidental men hate the color? Is that why this association happened? I think I can categorically say - NO. If they did, girls would have stopped wearing pink once they got to an age where they discovered boys and quickly realized that wearing pink is a definite deterrent to attracting male attention. The very fact that girls and women of all ages don copious amounts of pink indicates very clearly that men actually love the color, at least on the fairer sex. So, is the reason then that pink suits girls much better than they suit boys? This is not even a point worth arguing. The color has nothing to do with anatomical differences between sexes, since the color is not limited to garments. It is everywhere, from shoes to cellphone colors to cars. It cannot be based on looks because pretty and ugly are purely subjective concepts. Babies look pretty in any color, regardless of sex. 

So, what is it then? I believe, at this point, it is simply peer pressure and a demonstration of the control exerted by society over man. Men don't wear pink simply because other men laugh at them if they do. Their wives and girlfriends refuse to go with them, and their children innocently state, "Dad, you are weird!" We are social animals, and for the most part our lives are governed and dictated by social trends. And this association of pink with femininity is simple a very strong demonstration of that. We have seen many brave men, men who have dared to defy the social norms of their times. Men Like King, Gandhi, and Mandela fought and emerged victorious against racial discrimination, caste system, and apartheid respectively. They were able to move huge masses with their words and actions, and convince them to support their cause and fight and die for it. 

But the world is still waiting for that brave man who will be able to come out and declare that pink is a gender neutral color, will have the guts to have a wardrobe dominated by pink, drive a pink car, have a pink cellphone cover and wear pink shoes. And, by the looks of it, this is going to be a long wait. A really, really long one.

Spasmodically Social

Being social comes easily to some people. They are the social type. They become socialites, or politicians, or start cults or revolutions. To some others, it is an extremely arduous task at the very least. These people are the unsocial type, usually recluses, and become authors, or scientists, or hackers. However, both these sections of society form a minority, even when combined together. The remaining population hovers somewhere in between these two extremities. These are the somewhat social people. They can be very social within some groups, and not social at all in another. The groups they can open up to become their friends, lovers and allies. The group they cannot associate with comprise of their enemies, and nemeses. 

However, I think that there is a fourth, hitherto formally unidentified, group when it comes to social behavior. This group comprises of people whose ability to be social is governed by the calendar. This is not entirely an unknown phenomenon. It, in current parlance, is identified by the phrase - "woke up on the wrong side of the bed". Some days we wake up and feel social. On those days, we can be social rock-stars. Some days, I surprise even myself with my ability to be social. I am the cynosure of all eyes, the beacon of a gathering. However, I should mention that those days are few and far between. But they happen, and they tell me that I know how to be social. Most of the other days, I wake up and feel like my more familiar usual self - extremely unsocial or at best socially awkward. On those days, I spend most of my time staring at my toes. I hate mankind, and even some animals if they nuzzle up to me. I brood at gatherings, and sullenly mutter curses under my breath. 

There are two factors that differentiate us from the somewhat social group. First, our ability to be social is not determined by our company. We can be completely social and completely unsocial with the same group of people on different days of the month. The other factor is that there is no middle ground between our two extremes of social behavior. There is never a day when we feel somewhat social. Ergo I believe that it is time to formally recognize us and give us the social status we deserve. We are the socially spasmodic. Or maybe we are the spasmodically social? We will be extremely happy or utterly disgusted with either coinage depending on the day of the month.

Why the world needs more gay men

Let's start with a joke. A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

"House" for instance, is feminine: "la casa."

"Pencil," however, is masculine: "el lapiz."

A student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?"

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether "computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computadora"), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval;
 and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your pay check on accessories for it.

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine ("el computador"), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE  the problem;
and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

There can be no better example of difference of opinions. What does difference in opinions lead to? Conflicts. Arguments. Wars. But, men and women have never engaged in wars in the modern era. Not like the ones fought in 1914, 1939, 1990. Why? Because the difference in opinions is negated and nullified by something else - mutual carnal attraction. All differences and egos are overpowered by that. And results in coexistence and peace.

That's why the world needs more gay men. For world peace.