RAGA:mixed up and indistiguishable

feeling sleepy and nursing bruises and feeling exhausted after the ordeal.Lilith has generally been very aggressive leaving me copies of extremely suggestive books which include Paradise Lost.old moulds crumble leaving behind more sinisterly seductive sensations. :-)

You don't think about it till it happens to you.All the pain and suffering seem distant-till you face it yourself.The first blast spot,the bus shelter is barely 300m from my house.I have walked past it hundreds of time.While driving through,I have seen friends standing there waiting for a bus and it sends a chill down my spine whenever I think what would have happened if the blasts were to happen in the morning.When the messages and the mails started coming in,it was unreal-the first reaction being that of denial-this couldn't be happening to us-in Bangalore-we are away from the epicenters of danger-and then it was frustration and anger at the ease with which the bombs were planted and the ease with which they could rattle us.The phone networks got jammed almost instantly after the first messages came through.Thank god for the internet.The feeling that it could have been any one of us instead of that unfortunate lady is very very disconcerting.It has been a depressing weekend.I hope that whoever is behind this and the Ahmedabad blasts is dealt with very severely.

It will probably never happen again.After seeing half a decade of Domination,seeing countless champions bite the dust ,two nerve wracking finals and four hours forty eight minutes later it was finally redemption.

It was unreal and just very indescribable*.I came back from Jam after a whole day of traveling and was resigned to the fact that the final would probably be over and was scared to even check when Debu turned on the TV but the match was still being played with the score on 6-6 4th set.The tie break that followed was just amazing tennis.Every time Nadal got a breakthrough Federer clawed back.It was won by Federer 10-8 and the rallies were just beautiful with Federer hitting a backhand winner down the line which just had genius stamped all over it.The match see-sawed so many times that it became difficult to sit still and the crowd at center court couldn't keep mum either with oohs and aahs at each and every point.

Finally it was big big relief to see Rafa win.I think all through out the match one could see that Federer was not his usually benign monk-face self and there was just this slight hint of a worry on his face whereas Nadal has become more and more composed as the years have gone by.then there were major changes in his game most noticeably the heavy top-spin on the forehand.He wasn't hitting flat out at all.I have never seen anyone play that shot for every point in a rally but Rafa really did.Another thing which I saw him do quite effectively is alternatively switching between the baseline and the volley game which would be pretty unnerving for anyone. He also combined this with some very acute angles and power hitting and sometimes-deep in a point you could almost feel Federer's helplessness though in the very next moment Fed would come up with one of those magically surreal shots which would sometimes even leave the linesmen gasping.But in the end it was Rafa's mental toughness more than any other factor which finally saw him through.After four and a half hours it was just too much for the 'inhuman' Fedex. For all those people who keep waxing eloquent on Fed and keep saying how perfect he is -all I have to say is that most people don't realize that Nadal was very very close to beating Fed last year.He was broken only in the 5th set last time around and this time not at all.so even though Federer had some twenty six aces to Nadal's six;Rafa still managed to not concede a service game.amen.***Hamilton winning the Silverstone being an added bonus.
**This is not say that I do not regard Fed as a great player but that maybe-just maybe his best days are behind him.

PS:Actually I checked and Federer did break Nadal once in the second set.The error is regretted.

UPDATE: so it was Gwen-the first lady of Rock and her hubby Gavin Rossdale beside Mirka-Fed's girlfriend at the final and even though I was suspicious I assumed it was some dumb Swedish blonde.I hope the final was not too agitating for dear Gwen in her current state:

At home now and technically 'chilling' out though it is quite muggy here in Jam.People tell me that it is pretty cool now but all I know is that I start sweating if I don't sit under a fan.You really appreciate ACs here.Maybe I have become the extremely sensitive to weather asinine Bangalorean.I was wondering why we don't have power cuts here in Jam,then the power went off yesterday and it dawned on me-its impossible to breath without a fan or an AC here.At the steel plant here during most of the summer,all work is stopped between 11AM to 4PM because even the sheltered portions of the plant become as hot as 50 deg Celsius or more.

So all that can be done is done in the evening and the rest of the time is spent reading or sleeping indoors.I have been reading Moby Dick,Gravity's Rainbow and Beyond Belief in turns so that I don't get bored of any one book.I somehow always end up concurrently reading two or more books and this might seem strange to people who swear by one book at a time but somehow I end up finishing books faster this way.I am also very desperate to read Paradise Lost but unfortunately all these fancy bookshops in Bangalore do not bother to stock it.All I could locate was a massive 'collection of Milton's works' or something of that sort which was anyway beyond the price range.So,whoever you are,please mail me a copy.

Spain won in style and quite decisively.They broke their jinx of not having any silverware for the past 44 years.For me the find of the tournament would be Fabregas-his passing is beautiful and elegant and he created that vital space on which the likes of Villa and Torres thrived.The penalty taken against Italy was very clinical too.With this win I broke a personal jinx too.It would so happen that every team I supported lost in the football world cups or Euro championships.in '94, the first I remember seeing; I was supporting Germany being a fan of Klinsmann.They lost in the quarterfinals.Then in '98,it was again Germany and they lost again. in '02,I switched to Argentina being now a big fan of Batistuta,they were in some 'group of death' and didn't even make it to the second round.That was enough for people to start saying that I am jinxed and that whichever team I support is gonna lose. With Argentina out of the way,I supported Spain and they lost to South Korea in the second round.Then Italy collapsed in the quarterfinals.I started getting taunting calls from all my friends.(you know who you are) They supporting the safe bet- Brazil.Then in '06,it was Argentina again and they were playing some amazing football right throughout the tournament.This time,watching the world cup in the hostel common room was amazing.Unlike cricket in which there would be a collective mourning after an Indian loss,hostel had this different groups of people supporting different teams-the German supporters,the Brazilian supporters,the Argentinian supporters and that would spice things up.The '06 world cup ended in July coinciding with the exams and it was pretty tough concentrating in that almost carnival atmosphere.It seemed as though the jinx would break when 80 mins into the Germany-Argentina Quarterfinal Klose headed in a winner and all was lost. Consequently I bungled up my Digital Communications paper.Yesterday was weirdly familiar with Klose still at the helm of the German attack but thankfully there was no equalizer and I could finally after a 14 year wait see my team win :-)

PS:the only thing better than tennis under lights is probably swimming under lights