My Role Model- Rahul Dravid

In India, cricket is a religion as it the most coveted game. Everybody talks about cricket. There is huge money involved  and hence has a strong propaganda than any another game. And people too prefer this game due to sheer entertainment. The cricketing stars are compared to Gods. It is not the national game of India but the craze has ever burgeoning. People around me always used to talk cricket and play cricket which made me slowly attract to it in my childhood. I addiction has continued till now. In my childhood during classes, at break times and on the way back home, we used to debate about the ongoing matches, the shots played, the wickets taken and the catches taken. Any book or pad or a stick in our hand would definitely make us imitate the shots. After school we used to play in the evenings and the fun part was imitating the batting and bowling styles of the players. It added fun to the game. Everyone had a beloved player and they used to imitate him.

For me the real star was Rahul Dravid. He is nicknamed as ‘’the wall’’ because of his excellence and is also considered as the ‘’gentleman’’ in the game of cricket. He is ranked among the outstanding players the game has ever produced. I am never a fan of fast cricket. For me, test cricket is the real game, where the player’s character and determination is tested. The circumstances are stringent to leave a mark in the history of the game.

It was in the year 1997 when I saw the whole test match against South Africa during my holidays when he made a solid 148. It was when the team really needed and witnessing this I became an instant fan of him. He had faced more than 400 balls to make this score. India always had a problem playing abroad but Dravid never had the hesitation to play in those conditions keeping in mind he made his debut a year ago. His debut was on the international ground at the Mecca of cricket, Lords. I liked the way he played that particular game. His concentration was impeccable. He never got distracted. His intentions were clear and he did everything to achieve what he wanted. Any person who has watched him play will like him. His elegant style is unmatchable. The sobriquet ‘’ the wall’’ has evolved from his batting which had helped India from dire straits.  

He became my role model in my late teens. I had idolized greater people like Abraham Lincoln, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Thomas Alva Edison. They are still my role models. I have learnt a lot and still learning from their experiences by reading more about them. Since I was watching Dravid evolve in my childhood, he was the perfect living role model for me. It was from him I learnt persistence pays. I could see from his game that persistence really pays. There is nothing worth comparable to hard work. I leant many things from him like the ability to adjust in any condition as posed in life. Using our knowledge by improvising it to face challenges in our life. We should be always calm in our life irrespective of the situation we are in. Thoughts from a cool mind are most pragmatic. We should always have the desire to learn from anyone irrespective of his stature. We should not have ego. Never to be complacent with our previous glory. To keep working, improvising and be determined. I could see all these traits in his 16yrs of service to the nation.

He has in one way shaped my life. I have my never give up attitude from him. He has retired from the game but he is in my mind. He is a person who reminds to keep working whenever I am losing to my endeavours. Dravid you had a very good attitude and I will give my best to replicate your principles in my life. Thank you for teaching me the path to glory with a never dying  fighting spirit. 

Why do I blog?

Julian Assange described his experience with Wikileaks, and I think there was a very sharp insight there which says a lot about human nature and motivations for blogging or any other form of communication, particularly online:"Our initial idea, which never got our initial idea, was “look at all those people editing Wikipedia”. Look at all the junk they are working on. Certainly if you give them a fresh classified document on the human rights atrocities in Fallujah that the rest of the world has not seen before you know it’s a secret document. Certainly all those people working on articles in art history, maths, and so on, and all those bloggers who are busy pontificating on the human rights disasters  who are complaining they can only respond to the NY times because they don’t have sources of their own. Surely those people will step forward, given fresh source material, and do something. No, it’s all bullshit. All bullshit. In fact, people write about things in general, if it’s not part of their career, because they want to display their values to their peers who are already in the same group. Actually they don’t give a damn about the material, that’s the reality."

Few years back in order to kill my boredom; I started reading forums on the internet on several issues and in some of the forums, I was directed to blogs. That is how I came to know about the existence of blogging. Blogging was growing extensively. Every other person had a blog. I was not much into having a personal space on the internet and had the least idea on blogging. The forums and questions and answers were the best way to get educated and educate on any debate or an issue, according to me. After I read blogs of many people, and came to a conclusion that blogging is just like maintaining a personal diary, where in you share your mind. Many people had written about their happy times, sad times, their travel, poems, stories, educational stuff etc. It was just sharing your thoughts. In forums you can’t express your mind to the maximum extent, but surely on a blog you can do. So I thought of changing my mind and have a blog. I posted few posts initially and used to boast about it and talk about it to every other guy I met. I could not continue it much due to my pounding pressures in my personal and professional life. Also it was something which I hadn’t liked it. But I came back after a gap of around 2 years. This time I was sure as to why I am blogging.  

I always had the problem of expressing. I am more of an introvert kind of a person. I find it difficult to express my mind. When I try to express my mind either in written or oral form, I just can’t replicate my mind. And I know that writing is the strongest form of communication. May be writing about something and reading it after few days, will give a different impression and I myself will see me as a different person and try to understand what the text is saying and what was it intended to say.

English is not my native language, but my medium of instruction during my school and college was English. Writing surely helps us in improving the language like, sentence formation, word usage, and cohesion of ideas. So I thought that writing can aid my vocabulary even if I use at least one or two new words in my writings. It would surely be helpful in long run.

Once I read in ''good reads'', you either read a book, coz you like reading or you want to show off. I guess this logic applies to writing too. I always wanted to write stories for kids or crime or detective genres. I want to be a story teller. Blogging and reading other peoples writings can surely help my writing skills and give me many ideas to learn about styles of writing and improve myself. By posting online, I can expect people to comment if they like, and their advice would be really helpful for better writing skills in terms of language and change of   ideas on any topic I wrote.