Why Harbhajan is out of Mumbai Indians in IPL4

Assuming there will be a IPL-4, Harbhajan should start looking for a new employer.  I mean, the stupidity of this guy never fails to amaze me. Lets do a quick recap

He was dropped immediately after his debut series for "questionable on field behavior". (I always wondered what "questionable behavior" can someone have on field. The only probable explanation now seems to have been refuted with the announcement that he is marrying a girl)

Then he was thrown out of the national cricket academy on disciplinary ground. (Well, now come to think of it, may be my first guess was right. We'll watch how that wedding goes)

Then he had an altercation with police who didn't allow a male photographer friend to his hotel (Hmm.. ok I'll stop trying to force fit these into my conclusion)

Then he was reported for illegal action.. and thankfully this time they were talking about his bowling action (finally.. a cricket related controversy)

He publicly criticized the coach for dropping Dada.

He walked on the ramp.. that's not a problem at all. But look at his stupidity.. If you have hair like that, will you ever remove your turban? Hell, I'll even convert to Sikhism to hide such hair.. Gosh.. 

If you are still here, I promise.. no more such pictures of Bhajji without his turban..

He called Symonds a monkey.. which was not so bad, if you come to think of it. I've been called worse names than that.. sometimes even by my own family.. and I've called people by worse names.. but whenever I call someone such names, I ensure few things 1) They should be no more than 8 years old 2) should be smaller in size 3)should be with their parents.. This is my survival tactics.. If I have to call someone who is twice my size and has a history of drinking problems, I stick to "Sir".. look at this picture and just imagine how close we came to having Amit Mishra as our leading spinner in Tests.

With all that, just when you though Bhajji was a complete idiot, he gave us hope.. He slapped Sreesanth.. and one began to think "hey, this guy is not so bad after all.. I always knew he had some hidden qualities".. Bhajji became our hero.. Even his full tosses looked like deadly doosras and his yorkers looked like well flighted off breaks.. all was well with our world..

And that's when this happened... I can't even imagine how stupid one can be to make this mistake..  how can he break the most basic rule.. every child, growing up, has learned this at his mother's knees.. every religious book teaches you this.. this is the first lesson you learn when you enter school.. that is.. you never never mess with your boss's wife

The worse part is Nita Ambani seems to be enjoying this. Don't be surprised if Bhajji is calling Subhash Chandra for an ICL contract.

After IPL is nationalized

There is a humorous trend going on in twitter - #AfterIPLisNationalized

I joined the band wagon and tweeted like crazy. Here are ten of my selected tweets on this subject (You can view all my tweets here)

1. Pakistan will ask their players to infiltrate the border to play in the league 
2. % of IPL revenues will be used for building new cricket stadiums in Afghanistan
3. Pakistan will ask donation from US to set up PPL. Much to US's anger they will allow Taliban to field one team.
4. Fielding positions will be defined in hindi. Teesra Aadmi (third man), Acchi Tang (fine leg), Khisko (slip) etc 
5. Arundhati Roy will start a "pitch bachao" andolan.. No heavy rollers will be allowed on the pitch
6. Jharkhand team will have Dhoni, Saurabh Tiwari and 9 Dhoni look alike Maoists.. carefully selected by Shibu Soren
7. For matches between B'lore and Chennai, SC will allot the number of drinks each team can have during drinks break
8. Mandira Bedi will play for KXI once the women's bill passes in the parliment
9. Mumbai Indians will be called Mumbai Manus.. team will have only Marathis. Atul Bedade will be the batting coach
10. There will be a new team.. UP's Bhayas.. On field it'll have 9 fielders and 2 Mayawati's statues.. 

If I were Rohit Sharma..

Once upon a time there was an Indian cricketer called Devang Gandhi. Don't worry if that name doesn't strike a chord in your brain, because it means you are normal and, in any case, brains don't have chords. However, if you are one of the 9 people who still remember him and you are not his family, then I'll strongly recommend donating your brain for research (I'm contemplating on doing the same).

Devang Gandhi made his test debut for India in 1999; scored 75 in his second innings, and was the top scorer for the team in his next innings, with a score of 88.
This is when his life took a really interesting and unexpected turn ..... Ian Chappell made a prediction about him. Chappell predicted that India had finally solved their opening problems (remember that those days Sidhu was considered the best Indian opener since Gavaskar; and Sehwag was a name yet unheard of). Chappell, on the account of those two innings from Devang Gandhi, was convinced that he had the makings of a successful opening batsman and could go on to play for India for a long long time. Gandhi scored 6, 4, 0 in his next three innings and looked so out of sorts against Australia that he was dropped from the team. He never played for India again. Last I heard of him, he was also dropped from his domestic team (Bengal), announced his retirement from first class cricket and was busy giving tips to youngsters on how to become a successful test opener.

A similar inflection point came in JP Duminy's career in 2009. Chappell, wrote a long piece, on how Duminy is a great in making. Read that article and count the number of times he compares Duminy to Tendulkar and Ponting. Well, Duminy, till then had a decent test career; 10 innings 389 runs and average close to 50. In the 10 innings of post-Chappell-prediction-era he has scored 129 runs and his career average has dropped below 30 (check this out). His vulnerability against spin is now well documented and his stock has fallen so much that he was ignored for the first half of the IPL this year (admittedly, initially few matches were due to injury), despite top scoring for his team in last year's edition. There are question marks about his continued selection in the SA team now and one wonders if his career is going in the same direction as Devang Gandhi's (On a serious note, I hope not. He is a fantastic player to watch and I hope he rediscovers his form).

This is the reason why I would be really worried, if I were Rohit Sharma. Chappell has been calling Sharma a great player in making since that last one day tournament India played in Australia.  Chappell, during that series, mentioned on air that Rohit Sharma was a strong contender for carrying India's middle order in test cricket and take over the mantle from Tendulkar. One wonders if this is what is preventing Sharma for getting selected in the test team. But Sharma was still scraping by, since Chappell hadn't put that prediction down in writing. All of that changed this week, when Chappell wrote this piece.

He says:
"And here was Rohit, a young Indian batsman of abundant skill, displaying the complementary nerve that is required to succeed at the highest level. The question is not whether Rohit has the skill to make it as a batsman in all forms of the game but whether the selectors will ignore his talents for so long that his best years will be past when he's finally chosen."

So, what "best years' Chappell is talking about? Sharma has player 42 ODIs for India with an average of 25; an average that's closer to Agarkar's than Tendulkar's; and a strike rate of 72; more Dravidian than Dhoni-esque. The question we need to ask is why he is still part of India's ODI team and why he is picked for India's T20 world-cup squad, over Virat Kohli (but, then we are forgetting that it is Srikanth who selects the team these days). In any case, Rohit Sharma shouldn't worry too much about his position in the current team. What he should be really concerned about is, now what happens to his career, now that Chappell had made the prediction and, this time, in writing. Out of all the things that can damage a batsman's career, Chappell's prediction is the worst; way ahead of a Shohaib Akhtar's beamer, Darrel Harper's finger or even the cheerleaders.

Meet the future captain of Pakistan cricket team...

You heard it here first. Note down the date, time and place, because today I'm going to make a bold prediction,  a prediction about who will be the captain of Pakistan cricket team in two years (which means predicting the 17th captain after the current one, not an easy task by any means).

And the player is Nasir Jamshed, a left handed batsmen who player 12 ODIs for Pakistan in the past, scored 349 runs at an average of 35 and strike rate of 101. Not earth shattering stuff, you are saying? And some of you would probably have noticed from his cricinfo page that he is already 20 years old, almost 11 years older than the current captain Shahid Afridi, who himself has been playing cricket for 14 years now. So neither stats nor age is in favor of our guy. Then why do I think he is a candidate? Hear me out and it'll all make sense.

Over the years, selectors of national teams have used different criteria to select the squad and the captain. Do you go with the naturally gifted players or do you go with the ones in their peak form? How do you balance between raw talent and work ethics? Do you look for a consistent player or the ones who can change the games on their own? These are probably some of the questions national selectors contemplate (unless, of course, they are Srikanth)

Hence, I was pleasantly surprised when the newly appointed chief selector of Pakistan, Mohsin Khan, showed great clarity of thought and articulated the criteria of selection. “My criteria of selecting players are discipline, fitness and performance and I will not compromise on any of it.", said Mohsin Khan. Then, he promptly went ahead and appointed Shahid Afridi as the captain of the national team. Makes sense, doesn't it?. If discipline is one of your key criteria for selecting the team, then who else is more suitable to lead the team than Afridi. The guy has recently been banned by ICC for tampering with the ball and have been fined by his board. He has threatened to quit his domestic team when he was overlooked for captaincy. He also has an extremely rich history of excellent disciplined behavior; be it mid-pitch collisions, tampering with the pitch (video), threatening spectators with the bat, just to name a few examples. One can understand what Mohsin Khan meant when he said that he will not compromise on discipline. He clearly means business.

So now, once we know that how serious the chief selector is, can we look at the domestic circuit to see who else fits the bill. Of course, one need to be cognizant of the fact that the talent displayed in domestic circles doesn't always gets translated to international arena. But all we need to look for is the early signs, signs that show a next Tendulkar in the making or in this case the next Afridi.

That's why, I almost jumped out, shouting Eureka, when I read this article in Dawn (for those who are wondering - no, I was not in my bath tub at that time and I was completely dressed). Nasir Jamshed has been fined for cheating in the school exam. Wow! the signs of another Afridi in making is unmistakable. Not only did he cheat, but he was also caught "red handed". If this doesn't convince you that he has all the right stuff to be Pakistan's captain, I don't know what will. I'll be watching this guy's career with considerable interest.

And by the way, I believe Ramiz Raja, after hearing about this incident, is planning to write an artcle called "Give Nasir a break" and "legalize" cheating in exams (a sequel to his earlier article about ball tampering). His logic would be something along the lines of - the entire exam system is unfairly biased towards hardworking and intelligent students. So to offer a even playing field to guys like Nasir, we should allow people to cheat in exams. We are in for interesting times.

The aftermath of the "IPL snub"...

The "IPL snub", as Pakistan likes to call it, has come back to haunt India again. I mean, what were those private franchisees thinking, not spending thousands of dollars on players who may never show up. How can they refuse to just give away money to Pakistanis?  They never thought their actions would have such serious repercussions. How naive one can be? A nation, whose entire economy is based on receiving charity from others, was deeply hurt.

The first big causality was, wait for it, kabbadi; when Pakistan's kabbadi team refused to tour India. You would think that should have taught us a lesson. That decision by Pakistan alone should have convinced all those IPL bosses to apologize to them. But, Pakistan had moved on. One of their ministers, I forgot which one, while speaking to a news channel said that the time of saying sorry was over. India should send a delegation, personally apologize to the cricketers and take them to play in IPL. I thought that was a very fair ask. I mean, sure, the two countries may not be willing to send delegations to share information on terrorism, help in investigation; but when it comes to such important matters as IPL, how can you not send your best and brightest representatives to sort out the issue.

And now, just when India was about to recover from the "kabbadi snub", comes the killer blow. Pakistan's national cycling federation has decided not to invite Indians to the biggest athletic event on the planet; an event, which completely overshadows the Olympics or the soccer world cup in terms of the fan following; an event, which every Indian child, growing up, one day wants to be a part of; an event known as Tour de Pakistan. The secretary of the federation showed tremendous clarity of thought and rational decision making when he said "As a protest for the IPL auction we have decided not to invite Indian cyclists for our event,"  

To understand what our countrymen are missing, you have to picture a 12 day journey that goes from Peshawar to Karachi; a journey that takes you through a great land full of suicide bombers and terrorist training camps. Indian cyclists miss the once in a life time opportunity of getting up close and personal with the Taliban leaders, the Al-Qaeda members and who knows, if they were lucky, they might even have been at the receiving end of a drone attack. Name another sports event in the world that provides so much adventure and learning experience. 

The critics might point out that the Sri Lankan cricket team got attacked while touring Pakistan. But they only stayed in the high security hotels and traveled, escorted, only between their hotel and the ground. How can one even compare that to the safe environment of the Tour de Pakistan, where the participants have to pass through the mountains and forests of the Pakistan on their cycles. And particularly if the participants are from India, a country against which Pakistani terrorists have never even raised a finger.

I guess this "cycling snub" has demonstrated what the scientists called "the butterfly effect". I'm sure Lalit Modi and the IPL owners never saw this coming. They all should be held responsible for the disastrous effect it would have on our nation. Let this be a lesson for all of us. If you are a corporate, forget making profit for your partners and shareholders, forget the sentiments of your customers; if you have money, give it to Pakistan. Else who knows, may be the great game of kho kho is next in the  list of causalities.

If the Internet collapses....

How Stuff Works, a website that I haven't visited for more than nine years now, has an interesting article  about what would happen to our lives if the internet collapsed. It's not clear to me at what point exactly during the last nine years, they went from their core positioning of explaining how things work to speculating about the implications of if they don't.

Now there is nothing wrong in changing one's core positioning or belief. I mean there are bigger guys than How Stuff Works (henceforth called HSW) who claimed their philosophy was to do one thing really really well, but ended up rolling out hundreds of half-baked products. Now don't even get me started on the "Doing No Evil.. " thing, but then I digress.

Coming back to HSW's article, these guys make an honest attempt, but fail way short in understanding the catastrophic effect of such an event. They waste way too much time worrying about trivial matters such as loss of jobs, impact on the economy, political crisis etc that they completely ignore some more fundamental issues. So how serious impact exactly would the collapsed internet have on your life? The short answer is "very", much more that HSW wants you to believe. Let's address some of them -

Imagine the day you wake up and realize that people can actually use more than 140 characters when they communicate? No matter what anyone tells you, believe me when I say that we are simply not prepared for such a world. None of us have any idea what that 141st character would be. But something tells me it won't be pretty.

And the worse part is, after few decades, once the world get accustomed to this fact, it will expect you to use more than 140 characters in your conversations too, and no you can't just add hashtags to sound cool.

Imagine a world where if you have to call someone an a**h*** you have to do it in their face and not as some cool, brave anonymous guy in a discussion forum. Imagine how difficult it would be to have arguments with a fellow human being or a group of fellow human beings if you have to actually be there in person to do it and you have to use your real name. You can't postpone buying that health insurance with Accidental Medical Expense (AME) rider any longer.

You can no longer have 500 friends who you have never met and have no intention of meeting, but who are always there to fertilize your farms, to send you illegal transaction record, to share all their greatest achievements; such as removing fish hooks from another friend's tank, and lastly, not to forget, friends who are always more than willing to poke you.

In a world without internet, when you go to office, you have to actually look at some applications on your computer other than the one with the blue "e" icon (or the earth on fire icon). If you didn't pay attention during that induction training 12 years back, you are screwed.

Now, if you are thinking that you can still somehow manage to get by with all these issues, I'm sorry to inform you that I've been saving the worst news for the end. Imagine the worst thing that can ever happen to you. What happens when the thing that you love most, the one thing that has been holding your life together is taken away from you? Still didn't get it? I've one word for you.. PORN

Downloading and watching pornography is what has historically separated human beings from animals. (Not sure if it has changed though in recent past. Someone should do a market sizing exercise for the porn industry among animals. Given the fact that some of the animals, with sheer determination and hard work, have made it to the industry as actors, it's quite likely that they might have developed a fan following among their species. But that topic needs a separate and much lengthier post).

If the internet collapses, suddenly this beautiful world of free porn is taken away from us. What do we do next? Go back to buying magazines? Paint our walls with erotic pictures (an art form which, by the way, was lost when our ancestors moved out of caves)? For married men like me, it's not that easy. Where do we hide the porn? Gone are the days of saving 500 GBs of videos in a folder named "Work > Legal > Important Documents". Yeah, sure you can stuff it under the mattress. But how long before it starts piling up and your wife starts to notice the bulge (on the mattress, of course).

Thankfully, HSW assures us that the internet is a tough cookie and such an eventuality is pretty remote. But I'm not so sure. It wont hurt us to be prepared, will it? So go ahead and buy that 24 month subscription of penthouse magazines as soon as you can. That site won't be there for long.

The Office Jerk - (The Trip Planner)

Just imagine this scenario; you have managed to avoid OJ for one whole week. You are sitting at your desk, working on some interesting task and finally beginning to think that life is actually not that bad at all; when you suddenly hear foot steps behind you. You fear for the worst, close your eyes and pray to God. But its one of those instances which push you more towards becoming an atheist. The dreaded conversation starts…

OJ: Hey man.. how are you doing mate.

M: As a matter of fact, I was doing very well.

OJ: I was really busy last week man, couldn’t catch up with you.

M: The good old days…

OJ: What?

M: Nothing. I was just thinking of something. Did you say you were busy? Got some new project?

OJ: You have to start thinking beyond these mundane activities.. there are plenty of people to take care of these things.. I was involved in something far more important.

M: which is?

OJ: I’m completely in charge of planning a trip for the team. You know for celebrating our last quarter results.

M: Oh! That’s great. Must be really challenging work. So have you finalized a location yet?

OJ: Absolutely, that’s what I’ve been trying to do for last 3 weeks. We are going to go to Kushinagar

M: Err.. never heard of that place. Why did you finalize that one?

OJ: I’ve seen all the other tourist places nearby. So this is the only one missing from my travel diary..

M: Oh! But didn’t you visit the other places just to find out which one is suitable for the trip? (decided not to add “at company's expense”)

OJ: Yes, and they are all good.. but now I’ve seen them all. This is the only one I couldn’t visit..

M: Gotcha! So now everything is done, right? We are all set.

OJ: Gee, Man. If everyone has an attitude like you, nothing will ever get done in this company. Now my real work begins.. I’ve to come up with a list of people who are allowed to go on the trip.

M: Err.. but I thought our entire project team is going.

OJ: Holy mother of God!! Do you want this company to go bankrupt? Jesus … We are celebrating the last quarter’s result, so only people who joined before that can go. See this list, I’ve removed the names of the three people who joined this month.

M: That surely would save us from bankruptcy…. But hold on, didn’t this girl join the team last week. How come she is on the trip?

OJ: Ah! I thought it would give her a nice chance to mix-up with the team..

M: What about the three guys, who joined just two weeks back?

OJ: What about them? They already know our names…

M: Right!! So this trip planning must be taking a lot of your time

OJ: Yes, but I’m also working on other things simultaneously. For example, I’m planning this knowledge sharing session for the team..

M: (chocked on the coffee, which prompted OJ to pat him on the back.. a completely disgusting experience) Knowledge sharing session? I didn’t know that you have some exclusive product or process knowledge.

OJ: Small mind.. small thoughts.. think beyond these things man. My knowledge sharing session is about something way way more important.

M: do I even dare to ask?

OJ: You remember that personal trip I took to US two months back?

M: How can I forget? I’ve heard about it so many times that it feels like I was there.

OJ: Exactly, this is what I want the entire team to feel. They should know how to deal with challenges while traveling abroad. At the end of it, they will be as capable as me.

M: Didn’t you actually get mugged couple of times in that trip?

OJ: So? What’s your point?

M: Nothing.. I just think this session is not required. Entire team now knows everything about the trip. I mean what you ate, where you slept, what you wore. We know it all.

OJ: But there can never be too much of a good thing. So I’ll again give you guys all the details… and besides that, the new girl has missed most my narrations.

M: Right, the poor girl. Anyway I think you can go now..

OJ: Why? You don’t like me here.

M: No no.. I absolutely enjoy it. I just noticed that the new girl is back from her coffee break, so you might want to get back to the mentoring you have been doing for last few days..

OJ: Oh.. cool.. thanks mate.. see you again..

M: I can hardly wait..

The Office Jerk

There are three kinds of people who work in offices. First, there is a tiny minority who are the honest and sincere workers trying to do their job as well as they can. The second group, which actually is the vast majority, consists of people who just go through the day to day life without putting too much of an effort into their jobs. And then somewhere in between (in terms of numbers) lies the third group whom I like to call the office jerks.

You know the type; these guys act as if they are carrying the entire business on their shoulders. Whenever they meet you in the office, which is generally when they sneak into your cube with a cup of coffee in their hands, they never fail to tell you how challenging and difficult their job is (even if the only work they do is to make sure that the code is properly formatted). Then they give you that look of complete disdain and loathing, when you tell them about your work (even if you are managing a product that contributes several millions of dollars to company’s top line).

If you are saying that you have never met such a person in office, then it means either you are working from home since you have been employed or you work as a night watchman in a cemetery.

Here is an example of how a typical conversation between the office jerk (hereafter called OJ) and an honest worker (whom we'll call...ummmmm.... say.. M) would look like. (This, of course, is a completely hypothetical example)

OJ: Hey M, saw your blog. Nice work man.

M: Thanks OJ

OJ: So, have they not given you a project yet?

M: I beg your pardon?

OJ: I mean, you must be having a lot of free time to write blogs like this.

M: (takes several deep breaths and counts up to 5 before speaking) I write the blog in my off hours; that is generally late evenings or weekends.

OJ: Oh! No wonder you get free time in the evening. I think you leave office very early.. around 7 pm. Whereas I stay here till 9pm. Almost two hours more than you. I don’t get much free time in the evenings.

M: (thinks for a while whether to maintain a calm dignity or point out the obvious flaw in the argument. After couple of milliseconds of deep thinking decides “to hell with dignity”) But OJ, don’t you come to office around lunch hours and even then you don’t go to your desk till 1:30 pm. Whereas I come to office around 8:30am. So if you do the math, actually I work 3 hours more than you everyday.

OJ: Come on M. It’s not the number of hours you work that matters; what matters is how much work you put into those hours (a rip off from the employee guide.. OJs are not capable of coming up with statements like that on their own)

M: I think you started the comparison of work hours.

OJ: You shouldn’t take my words literally. By the way I never see you in the office in weekends. Seems like your project is a pretty easy one.

M: No, I think what it means is I manage my work well and make sure that my team doesn’t have to work on weekends.

OJ: Ah! But see I look at it differently. I always come to office in weekends, just to make myself available.

M: To whom? Nobody else is there.

OJ: You know just in case of some emergency.

M: But isn’t there a different team that handles the emergency situation in production servers. Your role doesn’t even come in that escalation path.

OJ: But no harm being there for the team.

M: (decides not to bring up the free lunch angle) So when you are just “being there”, what exactly do you do?

OJ: You know surf net, download movies, chat with friends.

M: And you think that’s more creative than writing blog? Anyway, what are you trying to tell me is you spend so many hours in the office doing nothing and you think you deserve credit for that?

OJ: See, I don’t think you get my point. It doesn’t matter whether you work or not, what matters is how many hours you are in the office… .err what happened? Why are you looking at me like that?

M: Never mind…

The secret blog and the unforgivable curse

(This post is a deviation from the common theme of this blog. If you have not read my other blog or the Harry Potter series, then I'll recommend you to skip this post)

I knew this day would come… I always suspected he knew… but I was not looking forward to the day when we’ll come face to face.. I walked down the dark corridor .. there was a certain chill in the air.. I don’t know how long I walked.. may be five minutes .. may be five hours… I had lost the sense of time…

and then suddenly I could see him.. a dark figure was sitting behind the desk .. the red eyes clearly visible even in the dark….

He saw me.. the lips curled slightly to show that he was finding the situation amusing… “so you are here.. I knew you wouldn’t refuse to come.. not that you had the choice.. sit down”.
I disliked being told what to do.. so I decided to keep standing.. in any case I felt better protected that way. “No thanks.. so why did you want to see me”…

“Ah! Right into the heart of things.. I liked the attitude.. we would have been great together in one team”

I had already calmed myself… the fear of unknown was no longer there.. “I never liked you P*****.. I would have never worked with you.. get to the point quickly”

His eyes got narrower.. “I heard that you are writing a blog on me”

“Yes”
“Why?”
“Some of my friends find it very funny”
“And what do you think has happened to my reputation”

I almost laughed. “ You never had a reputation P*****, in any case the blog is not public.. I never display the URL on my profile.. only my friends know the URL and only they can read it”

“Give me the URL”

“No.. I can’t .. it’s not for you”

He raised his hand… I was too slow to react.. He shouted “Crucio” … several things happened at the same time..

The curse hit me in full blow.. the chillness I was feeling before was gone.. the night was getting hotter.. There was a loud crack as if someone had just apparated .. and the cracking noise was enough to wake up the portrait of Sirus’s mom… she started screaming… not the usual screams like “scum.. mudblood”… but she was screaming as if she was in pain.. that was unusual…

What was more unusual was the state I was in.. I knew the crucio curse has hit me and was expecting severe pain all over my body.. but the pain was there only in my left hand..

I knew the time had come .. I looked up at the figure… he seemed to have been slightly distracted by Sirus’s mom’s screams.. I had just enough time to fire one curse.. I didn’t know which one to use.. nobody had told me

Then it suddenly came to me.. of course.. I was stupid not to think of that before.. I raised my wand and shouted “Yippee Ki Yay M*&%$^%$^”.. nobody in Hogwarts knew this curse. I had learned this from John McClane.. the LAPD cop from Die Hard series…the curse hit him on the chest.. he fell back from the chair.. I charged ahead.. not sure what to expect.. he opened his mouth.. but no words came out of it.. he whistled . a strange loud whistle that echoed everywhere in the still night.. I knew he was calling someone and I had to run.. but I was losing my sense.. the pain in the left hand was killing me.. I fainted…

I forced myself to open my eyes … I was not sure where I was.. I could still hear the screams coming from the portrait of the Sirus’s mother. .. where was I……..

And then to my great disappointment I realized what has happened.. I was still sleeping in my apartment.. the Harry Potter book lied next to my bed.. the pain was coming from my left hand because I was sleeping on it, not enough to kill me though…

the night has become hotter not because of the curse , but because of the power cut.. the fan and ac in my room were off….the source of the cracking sound, that I thought was the sound of someone apparating, was the stabilizer of my ac which switched off automatically as the power went..

but the screams? Ah, that was coming from my inverter which got overloaded and the buzzer went off.. and then I heard the whistle again.. the security guard outside my house was patrolling the campus..

So I was a muggle again ..*sigh*.. it all seemed so real.. the “jiju blog” that I write secretly… the Die Hard movie dialog to kill him..

I was feeling very low again… my throat was dry.. but I was too lazy to get up and fetch the bottle from fridge.. I shouted “Acio Bottle”.. ahh !! nothing happened.