Laxman Sivaramakrishnan

The current IPL has confirmed a long-running suspicion of mine.

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan is the worst commentator of all time. Ever.

I'm sure there will be some people who disagree with me and will provide the DD Hindi commentators as counter-examples. But these commentators are only guilty of being boring and unimaginative. But Siva (as he is fondly called by his fellow commentators, including Danny "ye beauty" Morrison) is Stupid, Vapid and has sold his soul to the devil (AKA The Sponsors).

Hence, instead of endeavouring to give solid Cricket gyaan or atleast an entertaining view on the gloriously uncertain game that is cricket, what we get from him are a string of sentences which are a poor excuse for including the Sponsors names.

Now again some may argue, all the commentators in this bloody IPL tamasha resort to this. But Siva my friends is not only the worst offender but takes "sponsor-name-insertion" to a new level.
For example, he once included all 3 major sponsor names in a single sentence. "Oh! He tried to go over the top for a huge DLF Maximum but ended up giving a Karbonn Kamaal catch to the fielder and this certainly is a Citi Moment of success ..."
In fact I noticed that he refers to the sponsors name 3-4 times more than the next worst commentator. Obviously he must have cut some sort of a special deal with the sponsors or SET Max.

Looking at Siva's gaunt frame one can assume a long history of malnourishment and maybe the sponsors have assured him that each time he mentions their name they will guarantee him a square meal for the day.

On the rare occasions when he does comment on the occurences on the field he is capable of making the most stunning bloopers - making one wonder if he did ever play cricket at all.
For example, in a particular match when Virat Kohli's run-out decision was being referred to the Third Umpire - the entire world could clearly see that Virat's bat was well short of the crease. And yet Siva boldly proclaimed - "It would be a brave Umpire who would give that out!" Maybe he wasn't even looking at the screen but thinking about which sponsors name would he insert in next.
And as expected when the Decision of OUT came he bellowed, "A Citi Moment of Success ..."

But he did have a career once, before he ruined it with excess alcohol usage. His debut at the age of 17 was spell-binding when he took 23 wickets in a home series against England. But within a couple of years he was nowhere to be seen ... until he resurfaced some years ago in his latest avatar.

I imagine that the after-effects will be seen in Siva's day-to-day speech long after the IPL is over. If one is willing to be a little snarky, then one can with some effort imagine Siva in bed with his spouse (I know, I know - this is pretty difficult to imagine) and the conversation between the two of them would be something as follows

Siva - "Oh dear, today I will give you the DLF Maximum amount of pleasure. I know I couldn't perform last week and you had to satisfy yourself with just a Karbonn Kamaal Catch. But that was because the IPL was still on and my energies were flowing in another direction. Let's begin ..."

And 10 seconds later Siva shouted out "Ahh! A Citi Moment of success ..."

Tell Me Why

Before wikipedia became so popular and put them out of business, encyclopaedias were in every home - huge volumes of information available to us at our fingertips. They may seem primitive to us now, especially as they lack a search function - but I still remember the pleasure of going through the huge volume - the scent of the pages transporting me to another world.

We had the Tell Me Why series of books in our house - allegedly written by a Mr. Arkady Leokum - atleast the guy's name used to be on the cover page of the books. The books were named Tell Me Why, Still More Tell Me Why, Here's More Tell me Why and so on. Each book claimed to answer hundreds of questions - seems anachronistic in the age of Wikipedia with its multimillion pages of information.

For a young child like me who enjoyed the company of books more than people, Tell Me Why was a wondrous companion and I spent hours upon hours poring through the various sections in the books. Each book answered questions on various scientific and sociological disciplines including botany, paleontology, astronomy, physics, zoology, culture, literature, philiosophy among others.

Ever wondered "Why humans have hair?", "Who invented plastic?" or "Can fish hear?". Were you ever curious about "Who was the first astronaut?", "Why do cannibals eat people?" or "Why did the dinosaurs become extinct". All I had to do was open the books and search for it. Of course the lack of an equivalent of the search function meant I had to go through tons of other questions before I found my relevant query - but these other questions themselves intrigued me and thus hours were spent in their company.

Then i grew up, started to lose interest in books and gain more interest in the people around me. These books were lost in the back of my cupboard - a couple were probably sold off - unknown to me and passed out of my memory.
Recently as I was cleaning my bookshelf (probably after a decade :D) I found a couple of these books - yellowed and musty but still intact. And as i turned the pages, the years melted away magically.

I was a 8 year old kid again with my encyclopaedia, reading about - "Why does an opossum hang by its tail?" and "Why do dogs bury bones?"

Life is good.