The United Colors of Germany

Way back in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, a man standing 5'8"tall and armed with a toothbrush moustache started a political party that apart from many stupid things also believed in the racial purity of his countrymen. So committed was he to this ideology that, legend has it, he was a little miffed with the podium finishes in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and refused to acknowledge the winners of that second-class race.

Recently, I took out my planchette kit and summoned his soul to talk about his country's performance in the FIFA World cup of 2010. The following is a Q & A with the Fuehrer himself, the only published interview with a dead man's soul ever. In this regard I seem to have surpassed the TIME magazine's interview with Paul, the soothsayer. The following are excerpts of our conversation:

Me: Fuehrer, Thanks for dropping by, it was quite an effort to get you here. How are ... [cutoff]
Fuehrer: Are you Aryan ?
Me: Errr, I'm Indian , and I think I'm Dravidian. Apparently, we have two races in India, Aryan and ... [cutoff]
Fuehrer: Good, you're Aryan. So what do you want from me ?
Me: Just a few questions on the performance of your team in the FIFA World Cup 2010
Fuehrer: What performance ? We won it.
Me: But that was 1990 in Italy. This is 2010 and you lost the semis to Spain. Spain meets Holland in the finals now.
Fuehrer: Same difference. Be quick. I need to attend a mass killing now ... [as an afterthought] What we lost to those Moors ?
Me: More Catalans than Moors. Well to start with one of the lead scorers for the team this time was Miroslav Klose. Klose is Polish by birth. Klose himself once stated that the decision to play for the team instead of Poland was not an easy one, and if Polish officials had been faster, he would be playing for Poland now.
Fuehrer: But we invaded Poland in September 1939 ...
Me: The same with Lukas Podolski. He is Polish born and chose to represent the team only when he did not get the chance to represent Poland. Also, Piotr Trochowski is Polish-born as well. Trochowski's mother sent several letters to the Polish Football Association informing it about her talented son and about his willingness to cap for Poland. The Poles were not interested, which disappointed both Trochowski and his mother, and he chose to play for Germany.
Fuehrer: [Rolling eyes] Not the Poles again ...
Me: What about Mesut Oezil. He's a third-generation member of the Turkish community in Germany
Fuehrer: Third generation ... These people multiply rather fast ...
Me: And the team has people of African descent as well. Jerome Boateng is the product of a German mother and a Ghanaian father. Sami Khedira is of partial Tunisian descent as his father is from Tunisia
Fuehrer: [Beaming] but we have Oliver Kahn ...
Me: Ahem .. that was way back in 2002. He didn't play much after that ...
Fuehrer: [Rather pertubed] [on his announcer] Get me Goebbles ... even better, get me Riefenstahl ... I want the final to show our team winning 106-0 against Holland. It should be like Triumph of the will, an epic match
Me: Which brings me to Bastin Schweingsteiger. He has a Dutch great-grandfather
Fuehrer: [almost losing it] Where are my countrymen ?
Me: All of them are Fuehrer. It's a changed world. Look at Cacau. He is Brazilian-born and became a citizen in 2009 having lived and played in Germany for over 8 years
Fuehrer: [fuming] What is this ? A Benetton ad ?
Me:Even better. A sign of everything you stood for being undone
Fuehrer: You @#$%& ... [disappears]

The Test

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
If Freddie don't get ya, Broad must

The Crazy Diamonds ...

Him: Okay, first things first. He is now the Greatest. Now, even greater than that stupid, tongue-drooping-out like a greyhound, drooling-in-spittle like a baby, Pistol Pee (for his name I shall not utter), that you so adored. With 15 slams and a French Open, the only thing that could have helped the Pistol remain the greatest was to have shot "The Greatest" with that rusted Pistol of his before this year's Roland Garros, or even better at Roland Garros. Alas, all Pistol could manage was to come dapperly dressed to Center court and wear dark shades to camouflage his weepy blood-shot eyes.
Her: Can you imagine my dilemma? I badly wanted Fed-ex to win, but if he does, Pistol's record would be broken and then I felt even worse when A-Rod broke down into tears. Do you even realise how difficult it was rooting for Fed-ex, feeling bad for Pistol and then feeling guilty about rooting for Fed-Ex when A-Rod cried. Gosh how could you not empathise and understand the pain.

She was never able to watch a Pistol-Pee match without having her face buried in her palms. Even when the Pistol was 40-0 up and serving for the match at 6-0, 6-0, 5-0. When he was younger he didn’t even try watching the greatest Germans ever to grace a Tennis court, Fraulein-Forehand and Boom-Boom-Bee, play. He loved them too much to want to watch them lose. In 1989, when he saw them on the cover of The Sportstar, posing at the Winners’ ball in SW19 he predicted marriage. He was even willing to play cupid. Nobody ever asked him to. The Fraulein went on to marry another of his favourites, The-Rebel-turned-comeback-kid-turned-elder-statesman. Incidentally, it was the 1999 Winners’ ball at Roland Garros that kicked off their romance, and of course, the Boom-Boom went on to screw a waitress in a broom cupboard at Cafe Nobu, Soho, London.

He didn’t like Pistol-Pee. He found him too drab. Uninteresting. She was the indulging elder sister. She cheered for all the ones he wanted to win. In the end she was the only one cheering as he wasn’t watching. And his "not watching bouts" extended to the Fed-Ex who would eventually become the greatest. The Spaniards’ turn will come too.

This is not about those hallowed gladiators who fight within the confines of the 78 feet X 27 feet battlefield. This is about us. Who could be the crazier of the two?

P.S: Will somebody put an end to his “him-her”/ “he-she” nonsense? He’s been on it for the last 3 posts now

I failed the Tebbit Test ...

"A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It's an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?"

A worried Norman Tebbit, a Conservative British MP, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in April 1990 made this comment as he felt immigrants and their children from Asia (Pakistan, India, Srilanka and Bangladesh) could not show loyalty to Britain and hence would fail to assimilate with the mainstream until they supported the England team at Cricket.


In 2008, in the Euro Football final a bunch of Indians in Dusseldorf faced a similar dilemma. All of us wanted Spain to win because of the wonderful brand of football that they played and their total domination on the event by remaining unbeaten throughout the tournament.

The problem was that Spain was playing against Germany, a country that we were living in at that point of time. My heart wanted Spain to win and my mind was rooting for Germany. More than the loyalty that arose from the comfortable home and the great job that I had over the past two years, I wanted Germany to win because I wanted to revel in the all night celebrations that would have seized Dusseldorf after a German victory.The best Team did win and I failed the easiest form of the Tebbit Test, considering that India wasn't even in the equation.

Of Flashes in the Pan, Coorgis and first crushes

Watching India beat England after chasing down 317 with 2 balls to spare reminded me of the Natwest One Day Final in 2002 where we chased down 326 and Ganguly performed a "Half Monty" from the Lord's Pavilion. It also reminded me of the famous India Pakistan match in the Independence Cup final in 1998 where we chased down 314. These 3 matches (forget about the order) are my favourite One day victories. The heroes in these matches, Robin Uthappa hitting 2 consecutive boundaries off Broad in the last over, Mohammed Kaif coming in at 146-5 and batting with great cricketing sense and Hrishikesh Kanitkar hitting Saqlain for 4 off the second last ball, were all unestablished when they played these gems. Looking back, both Kanitkar and Kaif lost it somewhere down the line. Some go to the extent of calling them flashes in the pan (though it would extremely unfair to call Kaif that). Only time will tell how Robin Uthappa will be judged but as always a billion people will expect him to do what he did last night everytime he comes to the crease. I do hope this Coorgi dude becomes one of India's next generation of cricketers.

There is something cool about the Coorgis though. We had a bunch of them in school and each of them had this cool streak running through them that by the end of my first year in school I wanted to be a coorgi as well (The only thing I guess which stopped me was that Venkat would have had to become Venkatappa, Venkayya, Venkanna or something similarly uncool). I was lucky enough to sit next to one such Coorgi in Grade 6. Kaveri was this one helluva beautfiul girl and I think by the time we finished our first term I was very much smitten by her. I was this budding philatelist then and during study hour one day I was sorting out my stamp collection. She seemed to be interested as well and I couldn't say "No" when she asked for a few stamps to start a collection of her own. Caught between possessiveness towards my collection and this request from the girl, I by now was very much in love with, I did the obvious - I gave her a couple of fake stamps from my collection (I think it was those funny moon landing collections from one of those Gulf emirates). Kaveri left after the 6th grade and I never got to meet here again. In all those years in between I would rather discreetly ask other Old school mates about her whereabouts and I'd always get a blank.

In 2005, I got this forwarded mail about the dangers of using a microwave to heat water (Moral of the e-mail: Don't heat water in a microwave unless the cup has something like a tea-bag or wooden stir to diffuse the energy built up). It was forwarded from a colleague and as I scrolled down to read it my eyes lit up. The originator happened to be the very same kaveri I knew in school. I shot off a mail asking if she ever went to the same school and if she remembered my fake stamp collection or me. Yes (she went to the same school) and no (she could neither remember me nor my fake stamp collection) was the reply.

As far as I can remember Kaveri was my first serious crush (till then all I had in my crush list were Class Teachers). I did learn from friends that Kaveri is now married to a fellow Coorgi who was a Senior at school but when I think of first crushes I still think of those balmy evenings of 1990 when I had to make the diffcult choice between parting with my stamp collection and indulging the girl I adored and I know I couldn't have done better.