Test Cricket, unlike other sports, is a game of multilayered narrative. It's less a sport & more a novel being written over 5 days of sine waves.

Exactly why the greats of the format attain mythical hero status - their wins & losses metaphors of human condition. 1/4

#ShaneWarne Among this pantheon of heros, #ShaneWarne was the most unusual one. A spinner in a world of pace.

He didn't behave like a part of the drama. He ran his own indie play centrestage while others recited mugged up lines of an epic. He made 'free will' look possible, even easy.

2/4

Since a lot of us are trying to amplify SOS calls in this silent-apocalypse mutating around us in India, am sharing some tips from personal experiences on:

a) How to seek help with clarity. (Clarity helps better reach & response.)

b) How to offer leads effectively.

(Thread) a) I know people SEEKING HELP are distressed & might skip some of the details but please try to include these points too in your call for help.

- Date+Time of request
- Contact # of 2 diff people (in case one is unreachable)
- City+Area (to amplify in local circles)

2/10

As a 9-year old in 1989 & throughout the 90s, I believed that reservations are stealing our (savarna Hindu) jobs & medical/engineering entrance seats.

I was wrong.

[My new piece]

indianexpress.com/article/opinio… The Vinod Kambli incident in 1993 didn't change my views immediately but with more reading over the years (Om Prakash Valmiki's Joothan especially) and real life interactions, the various myths propagated about Dalits in savarna-circles started to crumble.

As far as heists go, this is an innocuous one. But it's as much fun as baffling - and exposes chinks in the background checks by @IMDb.

IMDb is the most well-regarded database of movie/TV credits. For every professional, getting their 1st IMDb credit is a memorable day. /thread I stumbled upon this name while checking the IMDb page of Sacred Games. 'Abhishek Chaudhary' is listed as one of the writers on the show.

Nobody with that name ever wrote anything on the show in its two seasons. (The writers were Smita, Vasant, Pooja, Dhruv, Nihit, and I).

Dear housing societies - if somebody in your area is tested positive & home- quarantined (because they are asymptomatic or due to shortage of beds in hospitals), please step up and make a rotation system to deliver meals to the patient's home because they can't & shouldn't cook. Please bring more awareness and scientific temperament about how it spreads (through direct or fomite transmission). It can't reach you if you just deliver meals at somebody's doorstep in disposable boxes, keeping safe distance.

Some friends looking to fund kitchens specifically for migrant workers walking on the highways - esp on the high-traffic routes like Mumbai-UP, Delhi-Bihar etc.

Any such reliable organisations/kitchens already running & trying to expand? Please share leads. Thanks for all the leads. So many self-funded initiatives doing such important and wonderful work to feed the migrant workers on the long road home.

Sharing some of the options for those who might want to contribute now or later.

This complete apathy towards the horrible tragedies & ordeals of the migrant workers and poor people stems from a much rooted, even celebrated mindset of urban India.

That the poor deserve it because they are lazy/non-meritorious by choice. [Thread] Since childhood we city-kids are taught to chase this (academic) idea of merit that completely ignores the multiple levels of privilege we are born into. We not only take the access to food, electricity, water, love & care for granted - we are made to believe we have EARNED it.

Yes it does feel like a bit of a PR-exercise for the Aussie team post sandpaper-gate but THE TEST still achieves something yet unseen in Cricket - it humanises the mechanics of the sport much like Masterchef humanised the mechanics of cooking.

It shows us vulnerable men. Thread/ There's a bit of manipulation in its grain when it frames Steve Smith's batting prowess against the booing he got for his unethical conduct. The way the team & the documentary celebrate his centuries as some sort of redemption is like completely (deliberately?) missing the point.

Y'day while waiting to buy vegetables at the nearby sabzi stall - a couple just ahead of me made me realize (yet again) one of the defining features of the urban elite.

They bought stuff worth INR 315 & then started walking off after paying INR 300 with a casual wave of hand. The sabzi waala protested saying there's no profit margin in these times so please pay the total he asked for. They acted a mix of shock and mocking and said sab itna mehenga hai. (That's a lie: Surprisingly there's no or very little inflation in veggie prices here.)