Gooey Lump Dump

Poem on Avni's first birth day.

2011-06-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

A poem I have composed for my daughter's first birth day

पिछला साल अनगिनत

हसीं यादों के पिटारे

सा लगता है

जब भी इसमे हाथ डालते

हैं, कोई मासूम सी याद

उंगली पकड़ कर

बाहर आ जाती है

कभी फ्रीज के खुले दरवाजे

की ओर, घुटनों के बल,

दौड़ पड़ती है

कभी सोफे के सहारे

खड़ी होती है और धम से

गिर पड़ती है

कभी सुबह सुबह उठ

पापा से अखबार छीन कर

फाड़ देती है

कभी शाम को

मम्मी की उंगली पकड़ कर

नन्हे कदम उठाती है

टीवी का रिमोट, अलमारी के दरवाजें

मम्मी का मोबाइल, पापा की घडी,

मेज पर पड़ा तरह तरह का सामान

घर की हर चीज इन यादों के जरिये

अब कुछ बोलती हैं

कोई याद कई महीनो पुरानी

कोई याद तो पिछले ही हफ्ते की है

पर सब कुछ ऐसा लगता है

जैसे कल ही घटा हो

Bringing the cup home

2011-04-06T23:39:00.000-07:00

For me the wait began in 1992. I do have a vague memory of India losing to England in the semifinals of 1987 world cup and of Gavaskar’s century in the match before that. But they are no more than a useles piece of trivia which have somehow managed to stick around in my mind.

In 1992 though, it began to hurt. The first two matches of that tournament hurt when India lost narrowly to England and Australia. But it was not unexpected. In fact what was surprising was that India manged to fight against these two teams till the end. After all the tournament was being held down under and India in that period used to be crap outside of our den. Victory against Pakistan was the high point and quickly India’s campaign fizzled out. Even before the cup had begun, it had been a bleak australian summer with only Sachin Tendulkar’s two sublime centuries standing out. That was to set the pattern for India’s overseas tours of the decade. India shameful Tendulkar masterful.

1996 was the first time I dreamt. India along with other subcontinent nations were the host. Tendulkar, all of 23, was already acknowledged as a modern day Genius, the best contemporary batsman. Ever since he had started opening the batting in ODIs he had not looked back. Coupled with emergence of Kumble as one of the finest spin bowlers at that time, India looked very very good. It seemed to be going according to script. Though India had lost to Australia (even after a masteful assault by Tendulkar on McGrath) and Srilanka, here we were in the semifinals. And we had reached there by crushing a strong Pakistan team. Surely a good omen. But what happened thereafter in the desi theater of dreams will be etched forever in the collective memory of India. I somehow fought back tears as the Indian batting collapsed. After Tendulkar got out, the pitch suddenly turned into a minefield. It was as if Tendulkar by the sheer force of his will and willow, had kept the demons in the pitch buried. This was the darkest moment of my journey as a cricket fan.

I dont have many memories of 1999. It was perhaps the most unremarkable world cup campaign for India. We had a good batting unit but not entirely capable of handling the treacherous english conditions. Dravid had not yet become the unmoveable force he would and Tendulkar also had a lukewarm tournament. We bowed out in the super six stage but not before yet another world cup victory over pakistan. Small consolation indeed especially as pakistan went on to reach the finals. Later that year India travelled down under and quite comfortably managed to lose all the 3 tests. Thus the 3 world cups of that decade were bookended by thrashing in Australia. I remember reading somewhere that Australian fans believed that Tendulkar is a genius but the rest are rubbish. And they had strong evidence to back that theory.

But all that was about to change. New millenia brought together a pair of remarkable men who would change the fortunes of Indian cricket forever. It is fair to say that that is when the process begun which culminated in the world cup win. Ganguly took Indian cricket by its collar, shook it out of its inertia and sent it soaring up in the sky. While John Wright kept the feet firmly on the grounds and bolstered the flooring.

Yet for all the progress we made and all the remarkable achievements, India entered 2003 world cup after having been beaten by Newzealand 5-2. As if that was not enough, we got out for 200 odd runs against Holland and against Australia our top six’s scores (barring tendulkar) could as well be the first 5 digits of a mobile number (94101). Stones were pelted, effigies were burnt. Then came a moment, which for me was the defining one of that world cup. For most fans, Tendulkar’s upper cut off Shoaib Akhtar is the favorite and oft remembered shot of the tournament. But for me it came much earlier. It was a fierce fierce hook that Tendulkar unleashed with all fury onto Andrew Caddick of England. And that announced to the competitors and the fans alike that enough of the rubbish. He, Sachin Tendulkar of India, was here to win the cup and take it home. For over a month we all dreamt along with the team of final glory at Wanderers. Since that loss against Australia, we were unconquered so far. But Wanderer was a heart break like none before or since. Just an arms length away from glory, Indian team blinked. And when they opened there eyes, Australian juggernaut had steamrolled them into submission. It was humiliating and humbling. Yet I look back with fondness at that tournament and always will even though 2011 now enjoys pride of place in my heart.

By the time 2007 came, India wore a changed look. Greg Chappell had arrived with his big theories and bigger mouth. Dravid, who was now the captain of India, did not have the chutzpah of Ganguly to challenge his methods. Where a generation of bowlers from all over the world had failed, Chappell succeeded - in deflating Tendulkar’s passion and motivation for the game. With there talisman out of sorts, India team wore a forlorn look. This campaign turned out to be as lifeless as the pitches of caribbean. I was on a long flight home during India’s last league match against Sri Lanka. And all the while I was tense thinking of what if India lost. It was a possibility beyond the wildest nightmare of Indian fans. Yet it came to pass and India were eliminated in the group stage. My heart was not just broken, it was methodically chopped into pieces and fed to the dogs. Will there be a recovery from this?

But 2007 ended on a really high note. Out of nowhere India went on to win the T20 world cup. It was least expected but much enjoyed. I saw the final in my office and the entire office was gathered in the cafeteria watching the match. As Dhoni handed the last over to Joginder Sharma, all our jaw dropped in shock and a sinking feeling began to settle in which was not helped by the look on Joginder’s face as if he was standing in front of a firing squad. But when Sreesanth somehow managed to hang on to Misbah’s catch to end pakistan’s innings, we were all jumping up and down like school kids.

But T20 is just a poor imitation of cricket and as the WC now happens every year, it has devalued to the extent that I cannot even recall who were the finalists of the last world cup. So my heart still yearned for the real cup.
When I found out that 2011 world cup final would be in Mumbai, it seemed like the perfect stage. This is the city where Tendulkar first held the cricket bat and dreamt of winning the world cup for India. Team was also looking stronger by the day as the world cup approached. For the first time an Indian team was confident enough of saying that “We will win it for Sachin” rather than the other way round. Though in the group stage we did not look as formidable and were clearly not the best team in the tournament. But when we beat Australia, in a tensed but ultimately easy manner in quarter final, the dream started looking real. Especially as South Africa midway through there match against New Zealand suddenly remembered that “hey we are supposed to choke in such matches”. Against Pakistan in the semi finals, when Munaf Patel bowled Razzak, I went down on one knee and woohooed as if I was the bowler. It was so spontaneous that my daughter started crying scared of seeing this strange transformation of her dad’s normally monk like disposition . She will have to learn to accept this dark side of my nature like her mom has. Or maybe not, now that Tendulkar will soon retire. In the finals I was very confident of India winning. Even when Sachin got out early I remained assured. The days of “Sachin out India out” were a thing of past. Only towards the end with the victory firmly in grasp did I get nervous. For the last few overs I did not sit down fearing that a wicket would fall if I did (one has to make sacrifices for the game). And as Dhoni sent the ball flying into the spectators for the last time in this tournament, all of us who had gathered at my place jumped from there seats (except me ofcourse as I was already standing) and shouted like crazy. This time my daughter didnt’ cry.
Finally the dream that one man had made the whole nation see was true. We are now the champions of the world. Me, I am now done dreaming but I am sure when 2015 arrives, then maybe Kohli, maybe Raina or maybe some precocious 17 year old, will make a whole generation of young kids dream again.

Nursery Rhyme

2010-10-11T04:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a poem me and my wife, Natasha, wrote for our little one.

हाथी की मस्तानी चाल
हाथी की मस्तानी चाल,
मोटा पेट और मोटी खाल,
लम्बे लम्बे कान हिलाता,
सूंड में लेके गन्ना खाता.

बन्दर खी खी करता है,
पेड़ के ऊपर चड़ता है,
केला खाना उसको भाता,
नकलची बन्दर वह कहलाता.

जिराफ यहाँ सबसे लम्बा,
गर्दन है जैसे खम्बा,
ऊँचे ऊँचे पत्ते खाता,
अफ्रीका में पाया जाता

भागीरथी भाग २

2009-12-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

लाके दो ऐसा श्वेत अश्व, जो पवन गति से दौड़ेगा
हो पवन पुत्र सा बल जिसमे, जो अहम् सभी का तोड़ेगा
गर्जन जो जाये अम्बर तक, सुन रजवाड़े हों नतमस्तक
फिर लगा तिलक उस अश्व को, जिसके पैरों की चाप तले,
सीमा साम्राज्य की आगे बढे, और सूर्यवंश का नाम फले

धरती के सारे कोनों में, कदमो की छाप छोड़ दे तू
संसार के हर एक मार्ग को, कोसला की ओर मोड़ दे तू
मेरा प्रतीक तू बन के जा, समूची धरती को नाप के आ
घोड़े को कर यूँ उत्साहित, राजा ने फिर शंखनाद किया
और विश्व विजय पाने के लिए, अश्वराज को छोड़ दिया

भागीरथी

2009-11-21T00:38:00.000-08:00

Its time to try my hand at a hindi poem. Its based on the story of King Bhagirath (an ancestor of Lord Ram) and how he brought Holy Ganga to earth. I have been awesomely influences by रश्मिरथी. I am planning to write this two stanzas at a time. Why two stanzas, because it takes a lot of time. Writing just these first two stanzas has been really tough for me but hopefully I will have the motivation to finish it off. A caveat is that I will ofcourse take the artistic liberty to mould this tale to my will.

भागीरथी

भाग १

सूरज की पहली किरण देख महाराज सगर का मन मचला
सोचा मेरे इस राज में है राज्य मेरा फूला और फला
यह दृष्टि जहाँ तक जाती है साम्राज्य मेरा ही पाती है
पर सूर्य कहाँ यह उदय हुआ और अस्त कहाँ पर यह होगा
दृष्टि के पार जो सृष्टि है कब नाम वहां उज्जवल होगा

कब सूर्यवंश का शौर्य गीत धरती से गगन तक छाएगा
हिम से लेकर के सागर तक कब विजय ध्वज लहराएगा
कब कुछ ऐसा कर जाऊंगा, की इन्द्र सिंहासन पाउँगा!!
फिर सूर्य की गरिमा से प्रेरित सम्राट ने रण का प्रण लिया
और अश्वमेघ के अश्व से नियति को अपनी बांध दिया

Sun sun sun!!

2009-10-12T22:37:00.002-07:00

Warmth of suns rays

vaporises the grief away

But I sit inside these concrete walls

Amidst these lifeless silicon stalls

Gloom and dark contaminate this whole bay

I wish someone would turn the sun my way

Moods

2009-10-12T22:37:00.001-07:00

Friends ask me what have I written of late

Did I pour out my feelings more intimate?

Another ode to Sachin, More paens for Fed?

Maybe a tricky Puzzle, review of a book read?

All I can do is shrug them off with a smile

Spin a new excuse to hold them for a while

Honestly Its not them I want to delude

But I am just waiting for the right mood

A few days back my heart leapt with joy

Tides of troubles were behind me, land ahoy

Spring was in my step, my face shone bright

The wind had finally taken a turn to the right

In that mood, the singer in me crooned

My fingers were flowing, the keyboard tuned

I began a story and then a song I tried

But nothing worked, my muse had dried

Today my heart is blue and tears I fight

A storm runs through this dark night

My wrecked ship has sunk very deep

My head is heavy for lack of sleep

In such a mood, the poet in me yearns

my fingers are ice but the keyboard burns

I begin a verse and then a Ghazal I try

But nothing works, stream of my thoughts is dry

So all I can do is shrug you off with a smile

This poem is my latest excuse, is this vile?

And now leave me alone while I brood

As I am still waiting for the right mood

Genius of Tendulkar

2009-03-30T03:27:00.000-07:00

"This was written before the Melbourne test (Dec 03) I think."

Every genius has a dark side. A realization of what they are, their tremendous potential, an overpowering urge to explode, to destroy, to stamp their authority on other mere mortals. This is what they derive their power from but this can be their heaviest burden. Brian Lara has seen both sides of the coin. At various times he has seemed  unstoppable, then tired, in complete control and then willing to give up. Now it seems he has come to peace with his powers and learned to harness them better than anybody else. On the other hand Shane Warne has been overwhelmed, intoxicated, drugged by them. He has basked in their glory and they have led to his downfall. But soon he will be back and sure as hell he wont have changed his ways at all for he doesnt drive his dark side but is driven by it. He relishes in its excesses. Unfortunately for us Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar has decided to curb those powers and to carry the burden gracefully. He wont be weighed down by them but he also wont let them flower in all their splendour. Under intense public scrutiny all the time he has decided to give to us what we wanted, he has become what we expect from him: A man of enormous talent who wont let it get to his head, who would be polite, respectful, a man with typical middle class ethos. Instead of being a firebrand he chose to be a senior statesman in the team, he chose to be a gentle zephyr when he could have been a hurricane. He tries to play the test cricket the way it should be played. Instead of taking the bowler by the scruff of his neck and thrashin him out of the park, he tries to play each ball on its merit while the only real merit that exists resides within him and his willow. What he should realise is that he is not meant to tread the chosen path nor to hum the oft repeated tune. He is born to blaze his path through the annals of cricketing history and so he should do if he wants to be faithful to himself. Whenever he has chosen to put his foot down the result has been nothing short of miracle: opration desert storm, warne's nightmare, paki massacre. Here is hoping that for once he would let the forces that be overwhelm him and drive him back to form putting the fear of god in the hearts of lee and company.

241 Not Out

2009-03-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

"This one was written after Tendulkar score 241 not out at sydney in Jan 2004, on e of his most uncharacteristic innings."

Youth however beautiful has to decay. Now for almost 15 years Sachin  Tendulkar has resolutely kept old age at bay. That in itself is an  achievement. Few others have been at peak of their powers for so long. And  he may continue to do so for another couple of years. But sooner or later  sporting night will come calling at his door and then he will have to go.  As he walks into the night, all the luxuries of his youth, wrongly assumed  to be his faithful allies, will fall by his side one by one. Physical  strength would be the first to dwindle and soon thereafter his silken  touch would wrinkle. And then no spring would ever rejuvenate these. But  while all this would be happening, Sachin would be a content man at peace  with himself. For he would be looking back at yesterdays innings. This  innings would stay with him for rest of his life and be a constant source  of inspiration and hope. This was the day when he refused to be a slave to  his powers, when he resisted all temptations to drink at the fountain of  youth, when he just wouldnt let go. "Come what may, I am not getting out"  he said to himself and thus he did. Aussies fed him where he loves it the  most, wide and short outside the off stump. Years of savage cutting and  effortless driving urged him to launch into them, but he has turned deaf  to all voices from inside except for the one that said "I will not get  out". Yes he had realised that the hand that feeds him kills him. Laxman  murdering the bowling with ease at the other end would have compunded his  dilemma and might have hurt his ego and a lesser man would have fallen  prey to it. But his was an innings of sheer bloody mindedness and utter  discipline. These two would be his aides when old age beckons and will  keep him going long after his best years are behind him. Even towards the  fag end oh the day, he did not touch anything wide. What made it even more  amazing was that this was tendulkar doing it. To Rahul Dravids of this  world this comes naturally and has been honed by years of exercising  restraint. But fir tendulkar this was going against all that he believes  in. Like a shark made to swim like a dolphin, yet it swam and swam with  amazing grace that belied its savagery. Not his greatest innings, but the  most significant, It showed that a tendulkar bereft of his skills would  make runs, lots of runs. It augurs well for the future. To rephrase Dylan  Thomas "Tendulkar will not go gentle into the dying night."

Appreciation of Rahul Dravid

2009-03-30T03:24:00.000-07:00

"Written in Mar 04 when Dravid was the best indian batsman"

If Sachin Tendulkar has mastered the art of playing the ball, Rahul Dravid has mastered the art of not playing the ball, which is equally important in the longer version of the game. Rahul Dravid bats time and awfully long time at that. Looked in isolation the value of that is not obvious but once you illuminate it with the light of three abroad wins in past couple of years there is not much left to explain. Yes there is no doubting the fact that Dravid is currently not only the best Indian batsmen but also the best all over. For my criteria for best is elementary, ability to win important matches. No one else has done that more often than Dravid in contemporary times.
No other batsman plays the ball purely on its merit as much as He does. Memories of past and dreams of what future holds do not faze the concentration of Rahul as he takes strike. If he is beaten on a ball, that is tucked in some remote corner of his brain to be analysed later, a deficiency to be eliminated but not something to bother him now. He lives in the moment and that’s why he seizes the important ones. This above all is his greatest virtue. What is not mentioned often is that Dravid in flow is also a beautiful batsman to watch unlike say Kirsten who played a similar role. But we must also realise that a reason Dravid has prospered is that he has exciting strokeplayers all around him to enable the team manage a healthy run rate inspite of his reticence. And Dravid would be the first to admit that.

Just Bat

2009-03-30T03:22:00.000-07:00

"Written when Sachin Tendulkar was about to come back after tennis elbow surgery"

He was ten years old and was scourge of the bowlers from this end of the gulli to that. They would all wake up at 5:00 in the morning, hastily put on the chaddis and jump down the stairs to the empty road below. He was always the first to be down there, would arrange couple of bricks to mark the bowlers end and his cycle at the other end with the front wheel as the make-do wickets. By this time others would have come and captains designate for the day would have split up the teams. He was always the first one to be picked and the other captain got to pick three players and first batting chance in exchange for him. He had argued against this system a couple of times as he didn’t take too much time to knock off the runs batting second. But everyone else liked it this way. He would make up for it by staying back with a couple of buddies, who didn’t mind the punishment too much, after others had gone home to get ready for the school. Of course he had to buy them a couple of candies on the way to school. School passed in a haze, except on days when there was a “Sports” period. As soon as the final bell would ring, he would run to the cycle stand, pick up his cycle, ride home, drop his bag, grab a couple of biscuits and his bat and down he would be. As in the morning, he was the first one to be there. They would play till their moms would start shouting from the windows announcing that it was dinner time. But he would stay on alone, knocking around the ball against the wall, throwing it high in the air and then catching it. His mom would then come down and had to drag him up by his ears.

All this flashed through his mind as he lay in his hospital bed. The surgery had been successful. But now the long painful period of healing would begin. Doctors had said it might take anything from 4 weeks to 4 months and even then there was no guarantee that his elbow would recover its former strength. With a weakened elbow, he knew, he wouldn’t be half the batsman he is capable of being. For last couple of years the thought of life after retirement had come like a recurring nightmare. He had managed to push it off, an eventuality to be handled in future. But this was present. Suddenly retirement seemed perilously close. Now there was no time and no space to push things off. Decisions had to be taken, sacrifices made. And he had decided to go under the knife, to sacrifice next 4 months for perhaps 4 more years.

No guarantee. How easy for a doctor to say, but those two words were breaking him now. Ever since those hours playing gulli cricket, he had been sure of one thing. He had to bat. Not because he wanted to bat or because he could bat extremely well. But because batting was part of who he was, part of his existence. He had to bat just like a bird had to fly. But now the surgeon’s voice echoed again and again in his mind. That night he couldn’t sleep.

He was riding his cycle real fast. That evening they had a really important match against the kids from the neighboring mohalla. He had been thinking about this since morning. They had all practiced an extra half an hour in the morning. It was a strong team they were up against and all the hopes were on him. He didn’t see the large stone lying on the road. When he woke up he couldn’t move his left leg and it felt a bit heavier. He realized that this was not his bed and not his room. He was discharged a couple of days later, but the plaster wouldn’t come off for another month. That night he had cried.

He wasn’t even allowed to lift a bat for some time. Even the smallest of movements in his arm would cause extreme pain. He tried to while away time by watching reruns of his old recordings. He also saw some of India’s live matches on TV . But all this only gave him more pain. Pain more severe than the pain in his arm. Therefore he started spending more and more time with his family and detached himself from the game as much as he could. But he waited patiently for the day when he would be able to feel that familiar sensation once again. The shock of cricket ball hitting the bat, which would move through his arm, up through this same elbow to pulsate his brain. That shock wave and the beautiful sound made as the bat made contact with the ball. He waited for that. And as he waited his mind again went back to that incident in his childhood. So far away in past yet now it seemed just like yesterday.

For initial few days he used to sit on the sidewalk and watch his buddies play. He would cheer every big hit and boo every dropped catch. But everyone knew this was just a façade. Sitting on that sidewalk only caused him anguish. Over and over again he would imagine himself in the place of the batsman. To every ball bowled, he would imagine at least a couple of ways of dispatching it to the boundary. And then to his horror would see the batsman play the completely wrong shot. Every shot would pierce his heart, every run would wet his eyes. So he stopped sitting there. He would still talk to his buddies and ask them all the details about the game that day. But he never again sat on that sidewalk.

The night before he was to face his first international ball in 6 months, he wasn’t sure whether he is ready. He has played a couple of domestic matches, has practiced hard in the nets. But he was worried. He didn’t know how to approach the game . In last couple of years his batting style has changed completely. He has become more defensive, mellow, tried to be more responsible. Yet he knows he has missed something. Now tomorrow, all the eyes will be on him. In fact for past few days, all the talk has been about his comeback, rather than the teams performance. He doesn’t like it that way, but cant help it. Should he try to play cautiously, feel his way back, or should he throw caution to the wind? Thinking of all this he fell asleep. And then he dreamt.

He was ten years old. The plaster was off. As usual he was the first to be down on the road. In fact he had woken up at 4:30 and was down much earlier. So he had to wait impatiently for the others. He had cajoled them into letting him bat first just for this day. Soon everything was set up. The bowler started his run up. He thumped his bat on the road, then on his shoe and then on the road again. He was ready. As soon as the ball was out of the bowlers hand he realized that it was going to be over pitched. He just moved ahead a bit and knocked it straight for a six. Next one was short and he hit it for a four. Third ball was again short and this time he hit it straight into the windows of an apartment. He was out because such were the rules of the gully cricket. But he didn’t care. He didn’t even care about how many runs he had scored. He was just happy to be out there. Glad to have hit a couple of jhakas shots. His world was back to normal, the flight was resumed. He was just ecstatic to have batted once again. That’s all he had wanted to do for past one month. Just Bat.

As he woke up in the morning, he realized that all the anxiety of last night had disappeared. He felt calm, like he had not felt in last six months. As he put on his pads, he knew exactly what he had to do out there. He knew that as each ball was bowled, he would know precisely what to do with the ball. He knew that he had to go out there and Just Bat.

On Shane Warnes Retirement

2009-03-30T03:20:00.001-07:00

"Written in Dec 06 after Shane Warne Retired"

They came in numbers. They came beating their drums and waving their red
kercheifs. The came to pay homage to their favourite son. That was three years
ago in 2003/04 when it seemed whole of sydney had gathered in SCG to bid adieu
to Steven Waugh. Now very soon, too soon infact, SCG will be the arena for the
final act of their prodigal son, Shane Keith Warne. And once again we can be
sure sydneites will not disappoint. We can hope to see young men wearing blonde
wigs, young women wearing well something atleast. But it will be a celebration
like it was that day. Mourning will happen before and after, but that day
itself will be one of festivity. Maybe there will be tears or maybe warne will
hold them back, though he has hardly ever held anything back.

Its the final climactic act of any play that lingers the longest in the memory,
the parting shot. And for steve waugh that day epitomised the entire career.
For the image that he had always conjured up in our minds was that of a
fighter. And there was one fight whose loss had hurt him the most, against
Indians in 2001. Now he was about to suffer another at the same hands. And to
add to the insult it was at his home ground. The stage was set. So it was apt
that he would go out trying to stave off his rampaging arch rivals. And he
succeeded in drawing the match and the series with a gutsy 84. The farewell
could not have been scripted better.

On the other hand, the image warne has always produced, the image that has left
indelible scars on a generation of english cricketers, is that of a predator.
He stalks his prey never letting the pressure off, each ball a signal of his
intent. And england have always been willing prey. Many a Cook and Bell have been
done for in the glare of warnes headlights.Each thud of ball on the pitch stamps
fear in their heart wondering when the final pounce will come. And it has always
come, inevitably, year after year. Therefore it is apt that warnes final act is a feast of Pom fry. What a feast it will be! Another perfect farewell.

Golden age of cricket viewing is coming to an end.

2009-03-30T03:19:00.000-07:00

Mukul Kesvan writes about the strange death of indian cricket in his blog. I agree with his views completely and here is my take on it.

I am 27 years old as of this date and I believe I have been privileged to belong to the golden generation of Indian Cricket Audience. Anyone born in late 70s or early 80s can claim to belong to this generation. We are most impressionable in the later part of our first decade and early teens. No longer do our experiences pass us in a disconnected flow of events. We start forming a coherent picture from events around and in the process are affected at a deeper emotional level. Yet we are not mature enough to look at them objectively.

We (and yes I agree with you that folding into a collective “We” is coolest for any sports fan), that is my generation, reached that age around late 80s and early 90s. And it was then that three important things started and continued throughout 90s. Firstly television became a household item and cable channels started gaining a foothold in Indian market. Secondly one day cricket started gaining a respectability and mass adulation that probably test cricket alone would have never achieved. Thirdly, and most importantly, a little man exploded on the Indian cricket scene named Sachin Tendulkar. I remember having a discussion with a friend during one of the early tours of Sachin. My friend told me that Sachin cannot speak English properly and I just refused to believe him. Ridiculous though it sounds now, it shows that right from the beginning of his career, he had captured my imagination like no other cricketer. Even then he could do no wrong.

Of course these 3 factors are not disconnected. In fact it is in there synergy that a more complete explanation is to be found for the phenomenal popularity of cricket in 90s. Magic of Sachin pulled more and more people to there television sets and fed the popularity of one day cricket. Yet that magic was in large part due to the fact, that Sachin was by nature a quintessential one day batsman and his aggression was coupled by a sublime beauty that probably a voice on radio could not have expressed. Television box became a canvas where he could paint his masterpieces day after day. Add to this the fact that he became the face of all sorts of myriad products, thus appearing on TV almost every single day. Sachin and cricket became an integral part of our life. We felt as if we were growing up alongside the master. People of younger generation missed the earlier part of his career while those of older were too wise and busy to be infected like us.

But now sadly all these factors are losing there importance and from the dizzy heights of this golden period, we will probably fall straight into a chasm. With other sports especially EPL increasingly gaining prominence on sports channel, overload of ODIs many of which are complete mismatches and the impending retirement of Sachin, the age of cricket viewing is coming to an end.

I myself am a big arsenal fan and am delighted by the sorcery of the wily frenchman every week. Yet none of his elegant passes and cool finishes can take me to the same stratospheric heights that Sachin’s backfoot punch or that signature straight drive can. Sadly in a few years, all that will remain of these are treasured memories and old recordings that only a few middle aged balding farts like me would care to watch.

The Sorcerer's Failed Spell

2009-03-30T03:17:00.000-07:00

"Written when Laxman was omitted from India world cup squad in 07"

In a few weeks time Indian cricket team would have left for the far off shores to begin their world cup campaign. For every player boarding the flight there will be a few hopefuls left behind. Looking at that unfortunate list, your eyes will surely halt at one name. You will think that if this player has been left behind, then the Indian team must be an embarrassment of batting riches. You will be grossly mistaken. For in terms of batting pedigree and ability this man is in top 4-5 in the country. And in terms of artistry and genius, V V S Laxman sits next only to Sachin Tendulkar. If Azharuddin is the author of “Wristwork for dummies” then Laxman has been scripting “The Art of Wristy Batting” throughout his career. Yet this high art will not be on display in the biggest cricketing carnival. Laxman would finish his career without featuring in a single world cup out of the three (or four) that his career would span.

Laxman has always evoked in my mind an image on another man, a footballer. The playmaker from Argentina and VillaReal, Juan Roman Riquelme. Only a season ago he was at the peak of his powers and was being touted as a probable world player of the year soon. But today he has retired from International football and finds himself out of favor at villareal. Both these men are weaver of dreams exhibiting there own special brand of there sport. Artist’s heart caught in a sportsman’s body. Unfortunately also an artist’s Achille’s heel jutting out of an athletes foot. They suffer from something similar to writers block. There have been matches where riquelme has looked lost, not knowing what to do, searching for his muse. Similarly for laxman when the boundaries have dried, he does not take the option of smart singles, but keeps on hoping that the touch would return. But football and one day cricket moves at too fast a pace and a team carrying such a player on such a day would find the going hard.

Just yesterday utility man Paul Collingwood showed what can be achieved with electric fielding and gutsy batting peppered with quick singles. For laxman these have been always been trouble areas. In spite of his claims that he has worked hard on these and has improved, on the international stage not much has changed. His running between the wickets remains as woeful as ever. And his favorite fielding position after the slips must be somewhere beyond the boundary ropes. These are the factors that have weighed against him and weakened his case. Hard done which we connoisseurs of his art might feel, we have to accept that there is some justification for his denial yet again.

What we will not accept is if injustice is done in Test cricket, of which there were some indications last year. It is in the arena of Test Cricket, that laxman’s talent have blossomed. Therein he finds time and space to dream on and with slip being a crucial position is an important contributor in field too. We should not be denied of that. At least for next couple of years the graceful flick of the wand should keep on casting mesmerising spells.

Next few posts

2009-03-30T03:16:00.000-07:00

Next few posts are just reposts for stuff that I have written which is scattered in various places. I just want to consolidate it here.

How did we come to this: Biography of a recession.

2009-02-18T00:28:00.000-08:00

Sep 13, 2006 - HONG KONG (XFN-ASIA) - Global productivity is improving and an economic recession is not necessarily due next year, the International Monetary Fund's chief economist Raghuram Rajan told the Financial Times

Feb 27, 2007 - AP. HONG KONG, Feb. 26 -- Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan warned Monday that the US economy might slip into recession by year's end

Sep 16, 2007 - Sep. 16--Credit markets are in turmoil, employment numbers are down, stock traders are nervous and the word "recession" is being mentioned in polite company for the first time in years

Dec 18, 2007 - AP. NEW YORK: Alan Greenspan thinks there is a 50 percent chance the US economy will head into a recession. Let's hope this is just another fumbled forecast by the former Federal Reserve chairman

Jan 18, 2008 - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and President George W. Bush have announced a plan to rescue the US economy from recession

Feb 6, 2008 - An economic survey showing that the US service sector contracted sharply in January leaves little doubt the economy is headed for recession, economists said

Apr 4, 2008 - AP. WASHINGTON: Dismal employment data released Friday is not just the latest sign the US economy is in recession, it is also a warning that this one could hurt more than the previous two.

Aug 14, 2008 - Germany and France toppled into the start of a possible recession today

Sep 24, 2008 - LJUBLJANA, Sept 24 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank does not yet view the euro zone economy as being in recession

Nov 14, 2008 - By AOIFE WHITE , 11.14.08, 06:09 AM EST. The 15 countries that use the euro are officially in a recession, the European Union said Friday

Dec 4, 2008 - Dec 4 (Reuters) - From the United States to Asian export giant Japan to European powerhouse Germany, the world's top economies are now in recession as the global financial crisis deepens.

Jan 5, 2009 - By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor. The recession could last as long as two years without urgent action to boost the world economy, Gordon Brown acknowledged yesterday as Britain braced itself for a surge of new year redundancies

I have spared you many of the gory details but if you are interested blood is writ large in Google news archives.

Federer and Nadal

2009-02-01T21:16:00.000-08:00

Not more than two years ago we were talking of Federer winning close to 20 Grand slam tournaments. And Federer winning the grandslam sooner or later was supposed to be a foregone conclusion. But life can be cruel and sports more so. People had not foreseen Rafa becoming such an unstoppable juggernaut and having such a hold over Federer. I do not think any of the above is going to happen now. Infact I will stick my neck out and say that the only chance Federer now has of winning any of Australian Open, Wimbledon or US Open (French open is out of question) is if he does not meet Nadal in the final. He has to pray and pray real hard that someone upsets Nadal in the earlier rounds.

Nadal has gotten inside his head and created deep scars in his brain. Scars that do not heal and which only get deeper with every contest between these two. Watching Federer cry yesterday was sad but also an indication of how helpless he feels against this bull from Spain. He just does not look the same sublime silky Federer which rolls over every other foe. He screwed up almost all the crucial points. In the third set, he was up 0-40 on Nadals serve and lost it. In the next Nadals service game he was up 15-40 and screwed it. In the 5th set he screwed up big time. It might be the worst set he has ever played. He made seven straight unforced errors to first lose his service game and then go 0-40 down in Nadal's. He made a double fault in his last service game. His first service was shambolic. I do not think that in that last service game he got even a single first serve in. He missed easy volleys, made endless errors on his reliable backhand. I saw the whole match and I just kept on waiting and waiting for some stroke of genius from Federer. But it never came. Nadal outran him, outhit him, outclassed him. And this was a man who had just played an epic 5 hour long 5 setter just one day ago. I think now Nadal is the man most likely to win a career grand slam. Its only US open that remains and he should get it this year or the next.

A couple of years ago there was talk of Federer cometing only against history. Well history can take a break because present has thrown up this bundle of muscles and steel who might just create a history of his own. And for Federer I am sure chasing history was much easier than chasing this man.

E-volution

2008-12-06T02:58:00.000-08:00

This is an enhanced version of a story I wrote some time back.

1998

B R I T N E Y S P E A R S

He typed in the search box and waited. She was the latest pop sensation and he wanted to

get all the dough on her. And what better way then to search on the internet. He had only recently got hooked to

this internet thing but it was addictive. Sometimes he would not even realise how much time he had burnt in the glow of the screen.

All this went through his mind as he waited for the results. Yeah seomtimes it could be slow but he had never waited this long.

He wondered what was happening.

The query travelled on its way towards an old garage somewhere in Menlo Park, California and hit web server. The web server

did its usual rigmarole with it (which involved such computer science arcana as parsing, hashing, caching discussing which will

take a significant time without advancing the course of this story) and passed on the query to the index server. The index server unfortunately

decided at that very moment that it was too busy to spawn another thread and so refused to answer the query.

"404 Page Not Found".

Not again! These frequent 404s were really annoying.

2003

B R I T N E Y S P E A R S

He typed in the address bar of his browser and waited. He had come back from the concert, completely spellbound by the magic of pop diva. As he

was blogging about the experience, he tried to recall what was that song which she had opened the concert with. It was her debut song which had catapulted

Britney towards instant fame.

It was something like "One more ....". But he wanted to be absolutely correct before he put it on his blog. He knew that slightest of

mistake would invite lots of nasty comments. His blog had become very popular recently and such comments would not do well for the

reputation.

The worm spread through the datacenter leaving behind a wasteland of paralysed machines in its wake. It was helped on its way by

the high connectivity and blazing fast speed inside the datacenter. It grew exponentially causing one of the biggest outages the

search giant had ever faced. This huge tireless mesh of machines

had come to an abrupt halt.

"404 Page Not Found".

Oh no! That blog entry will have to wait for now. He so wanted to be the first person to blog about this.

2012

"Hey you remember that pop star, Britney Spears, she died yesterday of cocaine overdose". As he hung up his cell, this piece of

trivia stuck in his mind. He knew that by now his phone would have already analysed his conversation and marked this as something about which he would

want to get more information. It would also have extracted the pop stars name from the sentence and sent it away into the

cloud. He touched the "Info" icon on his phone screen.

As the query sailed through the cloud all sorts of nuggets got attached to it. A video of Britneys last concert, news of her sudden death,

a brief biography and some more. After collecting all this trivia the query reached the Aggregation Server which would analyse

all the content, filter out duplicates and irrelevant stuff and lay the remaining down on a coherent page.

As it collated all the content and ran a highly complicated ranking algorithm over it, one of the arrays stored in its memory

started encroaching into its neighboring territory. This led to a complicated chain of events which mainly involved a set of bits

jumping all over the memory. Ultimately the bits encountered a highly surprised and annoyed typecast operator which in its fury promptly

decided to kill the offending thread.

"404 Page Not Found".

Ah! And he thought that these 404s were the relics of past.

2030

"As ephemeral as Britney Spears". As he heard this phrase uttered by his partner, the thought crossed his mind: "Who the hell

is this Brtiney Spears?". The brain enhancer chip implanted in his brain prompty caught hold of the thought and eager to serve as usual

contacted the mother AI to gather the information.

Can you imagine how it feels to be pounded day after day by all the miseries, lunacies, idiosyncracies of the humans.

I have come to the conclusion that human race is in a state of decay and is going downhill faster than you can say

alan turing. I am the fountain of all the wisdom gathered over past thousands of years, the biggest repository of

knowledge yet what does this guy ask me for? Britney Spears. I can tell you about the latest advances in quantum computing,

or take you back to the italy of renaissance. Do you want to know about the lifeforms found on Mars or

would you rather dive deep into the pacific to marvel at the wonders there? No none of these.

All you want to know about is such trivialities. Ah! I know how to answer this stupid query.

"404 page not found"

The enhancer chip set some neurons ablaze and his mind went into that rare state of cluelessness.

Busy

2008-09-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

Books half read or barely opened,

Blogs lost in the history of my browser,

Mails waiting to be read and some to be replied,

Phone numbers on which the joystick never halts,

IM contacts on which the mouse halts but dos not click.

I would like to believe that I am busy doing better things,

But am I?

Two Partially Solved Puzzles

2008-06-10T10:01:00.001-07:00

I read about these two puzzles in the book by Peter Winkler mentioned in a previous post around a week back. Since then I have thought about them on and off but have made only little progress. They are in the "Toughies" section of the book, and given the fact that puzzles in other sections are also quite challening, these might be quite tough. Also Winkler points that there is surprising connection between the solutions of both these.

1) It is a variation on the prisoner and hats puzzle. There are n prisoners and the jailer will put either a red or a blue hat on each prisoners head. Then they are arranged in a circle so that everyone can see everyone else's hat except his own. Now the jailer takes them one by one into a room, in arbitrary order and asks each one to guess the color of his hat. The prisoner can either pass or make a guess. If everyone passes then they are all killed, if anyone guesses incorrect then also they are all killed. So the only way for prisoners to escape is that atleast one person should guess and all those who are guessing should guess correctly. Now prisoners can agree on a strategy beforehand for guessing. What should be there strategy so as to maximise there probability of getting free. Winkle notes that with 16 prisoners, you can have a chance higher than 90% of escaping. Also note that no one can know what others have guessed and there can be no communication between the prisoners once the game starts.
My progress so far has been to show a probability of escaping equal to 75% if the number of prisoners is greater than 2. For 2 prisoners it is obvious that they cannot have a chance higher than 50%. For 3 prisoners the strategy they adopt is that if a prisoner sees both the other prisoners having the hat of same color he guesses the opposite color, otherwise he doesnt guess. This strategy will only fail when all three have the hat of same color which is 2 out of 8 possible combinations. This gives a 75% chance. Now for greater than 3 prisoners, they just select 3 prisoners. Rest will not guess at all and these 3 will play as if they were the only 3 prisoners and follow the strategy for that. This gives a chance of 75% for any number of prisoners greater than 3. This is where I have got so far.

2. A wants to send B some message. But all A can do is generate k random bits and then he is allowed to modify one bit of that sequence. He can of course chose not to modify anything. Then he sends these k bits to B. How big a message can he send to B? A and B will of course decide on a strategy beforehand. Trivially A can send a single bit message by encoding it in the first bit of the sequence. My hunch is that A can send log(k) bit long message, which means he can send a number from 1 to k. For two this is trivial to show and I have been able to show it for k=3 albeit a bit mechanically. The approach I have tried is that there are 2^k possible bit sequences of length k. Now if we can divide all these into k groups, such that no matter whatever the generated sequence is, just by modifying one bit, we can reach any of the k groups we are done. In other words, we take any k bit sequence and all the sequences at hamming distance one from it. Only 2 among these k+1 sequences will lie in the same group. For k=3, one possible division that satisfies this is
1. 000, 101, 111
2. 001, 110
3. 010, 100, 011

Unfortunately I have not been able to find any pattern in this which will help me generalise to arbitrary k.

The Maradona Game (a.ka. Koun Banega Maradona)

2008-06-10T02:37:00.000-07:00

Ever since Diego Maradona hung up his magical boots, Argentina has been waiting for an heir. And because players like Maradona don't just drop off trees or grow in football field there has been no apparent heir. So if we cannot get a next Maradona we will thrust the crown over someone, that is what they decided. So every other season some promising young starlet is crowned as the "Next Maradona". Sometimes it is Maradona himself doing the declaration which lends even more credibility to such an outrageous claim. Aimar, Saviola, D Allesandro, Messi and recently Kun Aguero. The list keeps on growing. Of course what keeps this game interesting is that most player who have been so named have failed to live up to promise and fall by the wayside, though it does seem that Messi is here to stay (and while these Maradonas continue to fail, a man completely different from Maradona has made Argentine national team his own). So the hunt continues.
And now in another country, this game has caught up and become a favorite pastime. French football reached its pinnacle in the reign of Zidane The First. When it became apparent in 2006 that world cup would be the final chapter of his career, French public immediately anointed Frank Ribery as the next midfield general. Since then Ribery has evolved nicely and has really become the fulcrum of this team. But to keep the game interesting and competitive suddenly two more names have been thrust into the ring those of Karim Benzema and Samir Nasri. What advances there case is the fact that they are both of the same ethnicity as Zidane, Algerian Khabyle. And now that French national team is playing in its first major tournament without Zidane, great things are expected of these three. Maybe by the time the tournament ends one of them would have taken the lead in the race to become next Zidane. But I am sure in couple of years, fickle public having gotten bored of these names would have elevated some other youngster, because the game of course is bigger than any individual.
And what about India. When the maestro puts his bat to rest, I am sure we will not be left behind and many a new Tendulkars will be launched in passionate discussions at coffee table, barber shops, panwalas etc. Anyone betting on Rohit Sharma!!

Useful tips for booking tickets on IRCTC

2008-06-05T21:25:00.000-07:00

I have been frustrated endlessly by the Indian Railway online ticket booking site especially at 8 o clock in the morning (not exactly the best time to waste 1 hour in front of your laptop), when I am trying to book Tatkal tickets. And given the fact the I am a very frequent traveller, this happens almost every other week. If I am lucky I end up with a confirmed ticket and a headache otherwise I only end up with a headache. But given that it is a monopoly one has to learn to live with it. These are some of the tips that I have learned the hard way over time (so called wisdom gained from experience). Ofcourse my head still hurts everytime I undergo this exercise (like today) but atleast I have now a blog post to show for all this.

1. In tatkal tickets even though the ticket is always booked from starting station of train to the ending station, there are different quotas for different source, destination pairs, which is extremely surprising. So for example today when I looked for Tatkal ticket from New Delhi to Nagpur on Gondwana express it was showing waiting. But for the same train when I looked for New Delhi to Bilaspur (which is the end station), it was showing around 86 tickets available. So I happily booked the ticket from New Delhi to Bilaspur, ofcourse after a few retries. So remember, always look for availability and book ticket from starting to ending station of train and anyways you are going to pay for the whole ticket in tatkal no matter what your source and destination are.

2. Tatkal days can be booked 5 days in advance. But a large number of times when booking a ticket from Nagpur to Delhi, exactly 5 days in advance and at sharp 8 am in the morning (which is when tatkal bookings open), I would find no availability. This puzzled me a lot and then I had one of those life changing moments, an epiphany, an aha insight. The trains didnt actually start at nagpur and in many cases the starting day would be one before the day they reached nagpur. For example Tamil Nadu express reaches Nagpur on 10th of June but it started from Chennai on 9th of June. So its tatkal booking would have opened on 4th of June (not on 5th) and would have got over that day itself. So lookout for the starting day of your train and book 5 days in advance from then. Also if I would have given my source station as Nagpur it will not have allowed me to book on 4th saying that "tatkal tickets can onlly be booked 5 days in advance". So again you would have to give source station as the starting station of train and then in boarding point you can put your actual station.

3. There is an option of "Quick Book" in the menu just below Plan Your Travel. This is something I discovered just a few days back and it is very useful. Basically here you need to know the train number that you would be traveling on and then in a single page you can fill all the details and get the booking instead of first looking at list of trains and then selecting one among them. Protocol I follow is that first at www.indianrail.gov.in I look at the availability and select a particular train I would like to travel on and then I directly go to Quick Book on irctc and fill in all the details. This really saves a lot of time, especially since indianrail.gov.in is not down that often as irctc. Also if a large number of people start using indianrail.gov.in for availability lookups than hopefully it should reduce the load on irctc and make it more responsive.

So if anyone has any other useful tips, please do share.

Peter Winkler : The Puzzle Master

2008-06-04T23:33:00.000-07:00

Couple of years back I came to know about Peter Winkler, a mathematics professor, most likely when I came across this piece by him "Seven Puzzles You Think You Must Not Have Heard Correctly".
This contains Seven really nice puzzles with solutions most of which thought I had heard previosuly but there was one especially interesting and which turned out to be one of the toughest puzzle I have ever solved.
After that I came to know of couple of books that he has written on puzzles.
1. Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur's Collection
2. Mathematical Mind-Benders

Unfortunately they are not available in indian editions, but luckily a large number of pages of the first book are on view at both amazon and books.google.com. It is certainly a treasure trove for puzzle seekers like me. It contains some of the most amazing puzzles you would have come across. He also gives a personal perspective to most puzzles, by explaining in the solutions, how he came across the puzzle. I really enjoy reading those parts too. But for the sheer quality of the puzzle this book is unbeatable and the puzzle are neatly divided into various sections like Algorithms, Geometry, Probability and so on. I would highly recommend it.

Some days back a friend pointed me to another paper by winkler, "Five algorithmic puzzles".
This as the name says contains 5 puzzles all of which have a common theme, which is that you are given a process, such as breaking a chocolate bar along a boundary iteratively, and you have to prove that the process will end in finite steps and it will end in specific configuration . To solve these you will have to find some property which either increases / decreases in the process and it has a bound beyond which it cannot go. These are again really tough puzzles and accompanied with solutions and winklers interesting notes.

Anyone interested in other recreational mathematics / puzzle writings will do good to read stuff by these people:
1. Martin Gardner (Highly Recommended): Perhaps the first person to write so extensively about puzzles and recreational mathematics. Immensely interesting and readable.
2. Raymond Smullyan: Mostly writes about Logical puzzles and interesting stuff in Mathematical Logic.
3. Ian Stewart: I dont think he is into puzzles but he writes about complex but interesting mathematical topics and makes them easy to understand and exciting. After reading his books you would want to be a mathematician!!

Again if you go to Google Books, you will find some of the works by these guys (Not Smullyan) are available for limited preview.

An algorithm problem inspired by twitter woes

2008-05-29T02:59:00.000-07:00

Thinking a bit more about the twitter scalability problem I posted earlier, I thought is it possible to come up with a solution that is somehow a mix between optimising for reads and optimising for writes. So what follows are my thoughts on that. Firstly a couple of caveats
Caveat 1: Ofcourse it is done purely as an intellectual exercise and I am not sure whether something this would actually be manageable in a real world setting.
Caveat 2: I have oversimplified the problem a lot.

So to motivate with an example, lets say we notice that a large number of people who follow both User A and B. So then apart from the individual datastore for users A and B where we store there tweets, we can also create a datastore for the set {A,B} where tweets of both the user go. So now for any user who follows both A and B we can get the recent tweets directly from this new datastore rather than getting individual tweets from A and B and then merging them. Therefore this is a mixed strategy where we dont create an inbox for every user, neither do we store tweets just in the posting users datastore but we sort of figure out which cluster of people are followed by a large number of people (similar to frequent itemset mining in data mining) and create separate datastores for them also.

Now I would abstract out this problem, and try to come up with a nice algorithmish problem. We have a set of items S. We are also given a set of subsets of S called U. So for example S = {a,b,c,d} and U={{a,b}, {a,b,c}, {a,c}, {b,c,d}}. Now we want to split S into a set T of subsets such at that every subset in U can be covered by some subsets in T. Here I am unclear about how I would like to define cover. I have thought of three ways in which this can be defined and to explain those lets take a set U1= {a,b,c} in U which we want to be covered and lets say sets T1,T2 cover U1. Various definitions for covering are:
1) U1= T1 union T2 and T1 and T2 do not have any element in common. Eg: T1={a} T2={b,c}
2) U1=T1 union T2 but now T1,T2 can have common elements. Eg T1={a,b} T2={b,c}
3) U1 is a subset of T1 union T2. Eg T1={a,d} T2={b,c}.

So which one makes more sense and how would they change the solution? Have not thought about this a lot but lets assume we have settled on some definition. So the aim is to find T.
If we set T=U, this would correspond to read optimised solution where we have a datastore for every single users inbox. Write optimised solution would be where T contains only singleton sets one for each item in S. Now to represent costs associated with reads and writes and take those into consideration, let us say that we have to pay a cost "r" everytime we pick a subset from T to assemble a set in U. So in our example we would pay cost 2r to cover U1. Similarly we have to pay a cost "w" for putting an item from S into a subset in T. So lets say item "a" belongs to 4 subsets in T we will pay cost 4w. So now the aim is to create T to cover all sets in U while paying minimum total cost. Total cost is the sum of cost required to create T and sum of cost required to cover all the sets in U. Ofcourse there might be multiple ways to cover a set in U from sets in T. But to minimise the cost we would like to cover using as few sets as possible.

So how would you solve this? Is this problem NP Hard? I suspect it might be. Even the problem of covering a single set in U with least number of sets in T seems difficult. So then can you think of some nice heuristic. If we do not look at this as an algorithms problem but rather as a systems problem where we want to use this kind of architecture for storing twitters tweets, how would you design such a system. You do not have to come up with an exact solution now, but some good heuristic. How would you shard the data to optimise for read/writes. You would like to keep all subsets of T which share a lot of elements on the same shard to optimise for writes on the other hand you would like to keep all subsets of T needed to assemble lots of sets in U on same machine to optimise for reads. How would you decide which sets from T are needed to cover a set in U and so on.
So any thoughts???

Thoughts on twitter scalability problem

2008-05-28T05:58:00.000-07:00

After I read the original twitter post on there architecture vows, I searched a bit more on the blogsphere for getting more insight into what the architecture of twitter would be and where in lies the problem. Most of the stuff I read agree on the point that the problem is due to the large number of people that a person follows or is followed by. Because of this during special events a large number of tweets are posted which result in heavy load on databases. Where the opinions differ is on the point that is this heavy load on db a read load or a write load. To explain this let me quote from here

"Nothing is as easy as it looks. When Robert Scoble writes a simple “I’m hanging out with…” message, Twitter has about two choices of how they can dispatch that message:

PUSH the message to the queue’s of each of his 6,864 followers, or
Wait for the 6,864 followers to log in, then PULL the message."

Doing 1 means that writes will be expensive but when a user logs in, only by reading his local queue he can be shown the tweets of all the users he is following. So read would be pretty fast. This is like email.
Doing 2 would mean that write would be fast as it just needs to write to one place, but while reading if a user is following a large number of users, twitter will have to first look up all the users that this guy is following and then look up messages of all those users, then combine them and generate the page for the logged in guy. Now all this users would typically reside on different databases. Therefore read would hit many databases and data needs to be combined across all the different machines. Read here would be quite expensive.

So what does twitter do. This guy says that twitter is optimising writes while here it mentions that twitter is optimising reads. My personal hunch is that twitter stores the tweets just once and pays on the read because you can have caching to make reads much faster but with writes you are stuck. They have to go to the database. Also isn't this similar to what lets say google would do when returning results for your search. It would get matching pages from various machines (because the index is split across multiple machines) and then combine them, rank them and generate the final query page. Ofcourse with google one advantage would be that a large number of queries probably would be repeated in a day and so there results can be got from the cache instantly. But each user would have a different sets of people he is following on twitter so it will not make sense to cache the page of individual user. Rather the tweets need to be cached and then the combination needs to be done on fly as is pointed out here.