Four games; a disappointing year; Psycho-analysis of an amateur sports fan.

The last four games I have watched of my Team's have been continued disappointment. Is it my timing or just a coincidence? Of course when you are follower of teams like those I do, disappointment becomes an acceptable part of life.

Game 1: India Vs Australia 5th ODI, 2009.
Australia set 351 as target and India were bundled out for 347 in the last over. Yet another grand display by the greatest cricketer of our times; Tendulkar scored 175. He was out before he could bring the team to the shore. Is Tendulkar on the wrong team or is he just not great enough to complete the huge task on his shoulders. If you look at the number of times he brought the team close enough to victory, the number of times he fell short is far greater than the times he was successful. The fact that the remaining 10 members in his 20 year career are duds is another part of Indian Cricket fan's pathetic life. Should selectors be blamed for this debacle. There were times when money was blamed. With 90% of world cricket's money in BCCI pockets, lack of money and talent cannot be the cause. What else? I know, I should stop watching cricket.

Game 2: WVU(Rank 25) vs Cincinnati(Rank 5) 11/13/2009.
This game has huge implications for WVU mountaineers if they want to stay alive in the hunt to lead Big East. The 'eers have proved time and again that when it comes to the games that matter, they come close enough but can never finish them off. Like the game against Pittsburgh in 2007 that had National Championship implications : they lost. It was also 100 anniversary of the Backyard Brawl. They could never take revenge the following year either. Similarly in 2008 they lost to USF. This year it is Cincinnati. The fact that an important play, during the game against Cinci this year, was turned over by poor officiating did not help the matters. The term 'Indisputable video evidence' is not clear to the officials on the field. The officials ruled that the play was a turnover at the WVU inches to touchdown line; the score was then 7-7. The video replay made the score to 7-14 against WVU awarding a touchdown to Cincinnati. The Mountaineers never recovered. They lost focus in the third quarter and let the Cincinnati win. WVU seems to have problems getting into a offensive rhythm in the second half especially in the third quarter. They often go scoreless in that quarter while conceding touchdowns to the opposite team. The offensive coordinator better take a took at his sorry state of play calling.

Game: Lakers(7-1) vs Nuggets(7-2) 11/13/2009.
The defending champions were coming off of a 6 game winning streak. This they have achieved without the services of their star future hall of fame Pau Gasol who is sidelined with an injury. Also Nuggets star player Carmelo Anthony had a poor offensive history against Lakers. With the addition of Artest it appeared that they could clearly shut him down this time too and the winning momentum was with the Lakers. Atleast that is the theory. As it says, that is theory and things don't happen the way they are supposed to. Kobe was completely shutdown in the second quarter. Carmelo had a great game offensively and none of the Lakers contributed much offensively. Defensively the performance was lacklustre at best. The result was a 105-79 drubbing of the Lakers by the Nuggets. This was a biggest margin of loss for Lakers in some time.

Phillies Vs. Yankees - MLB World Series Championship 6th game.

The Phillies lost 7-3. It was a drubbing by a single Japanese player named Hideki Matsui. After 3 games I had thought, the Phillies were going for a Repeat. That euphoria was short when I started watching baseball(Shh... I dont like baseball much). Phillies lost the series without much of a fight.

The first two games were at least entertaining. It gave hope while they lasted. But there are problems with hope. It causes long lasting heartbreak. While a drubbing is easily forgotten, atleast in the pre-season. While a drubbing; like the one India received against Sri Lanka during the 1996 World Cup; the one that WVU got against Pittsburgh in 2007; the one the Lakers received against Pistons in the championship series 5th game of 2004; can never be forgotten.

I guess I had more than my allowed dose of disappointments for this year. May be I should quit watching games for this year and plead with my Disappointment Doctor to stop that medication on me.

But I think the problem lies here. Unlike die hard fans, I am a regular guy who likes sports. The trouble with sports fans like me is the same as that of amateur investors. Amateur investors continually lose money on their trades. This is how they typically invest. They watch the news and other investing media of their choice regularly. They are not the leaders in picking stocks nor are they good at predicting trends. They watch a trend on the sidelines, they want to test the waters but are afraid of losing their money. So they wait and wait and wait, and finally they put some money on the observed trend. But they are too late now. The party is over and they are there to clean up the mess. The trend retraces and they lose money. This can go for longs and shorts as well.

Similar is the fate of sports fans like me. They have a set of teams they like. We don't have to debate why they like those teams. They are not even ardent die hard fans though they are decent enough to pass off as knowledgeable. So they follow their teams like WVU mountaineers for example. They see that the Mountaineers have won their first 4 games of the season. They get excited, they go to ESPN and check the team schedule and find that they are playing USF next Saturday. They forget or are not aware that, the first half of the season is loaded with really small teams and their team kicks ass against them. So come Saturday they are hugely disappointed when the watch their beloved Mountaineers team struggle against the USF. The Mountaineers lose the game and the miserable fan swears that he will not watch them for some time. His focus shifts to NBA like say Lakers. The Lakers have a huge streak of 6 games. But the law of averages dictates that even the Best team loses to a Bad team. So the Lakers lose. In the mean time, the Mountaineers have 2 back to back wins. The fan who was disappointed watching the game against USF is rejuvenated and gets ready for the game against Cinci. By this time, the Mountaineers are well into the second half of the season where they play really tough teams and every game has important implications. The chances that they will lose a game are close to 50%. The fact that the Mountaineers have won 2 back to back, brings the odds of WVU losing to a better ranked Cinci to more than 80%. But again our sports fan is an average next door guy. He just wants to be on the winning side just like our amateur investor and ends up being late to the party perennially. All he wants is bragging rights at work when his team wins; but bragging rights is a very limited commodity. The saga of the sports fan disappointment continues.

My Tryst with a Non-English speaking Hispanic Barber

The haircut I get from the franchise stores in US have been unsatisfactory and never made the cut(get it, hair'cut' did not make the 'cut') to the standards set by the barber from my hometown. The hair is either cut too short, too long, not uniform, not blended leaving steps between the sides and the top or a combination of all. One of the things that I miss from my childhood is a good haircut and you can find here how my last visit home to my barber turned out to be a humbling experience .

A month or so after my vacation from India, I visited my brother in Philly. He moved a little South of the South Philly region after a incident at this old apartment which I chronicled here. In my instinctive manner, I decided to explore the area and the neighborhood to find a decent(read cheap) haircut. Philly is a city of neighborhoods. But if you have lived in the city for enough time, you will know that the hoods and neighborhoods are not well demarcated. You can quickly find yourself in a hood by walking a block in the wrong direction. So it is truly a city of Hoods within Neighborhoods. He lives a block away from the world famous Geno's Philly cheese steaks. The owner of the Geno's steaks was the one who brought Philly to the national news headlines in 2006, by starting a English only ordering policy. South Philly has long been a place where immigrants settled down. Once a Italian American majority neighborhood is fast turning out to be a Latin and Asian immigrant neighborhood as it offers 'reasonably priced rowhouses'. We can see the xenophobia caused by this immigrant influx to this neighborhood. If you go a block or two North of Gino's steakhouse you will find most business are owned by Hispanic and Asians.

Since I have made up my mind of having a haircut, I started walking north of Geno's. A block away I found a barbershop. I walked in and was surprised to see Hombre - $10 on a makeshift cardboard price chart. My beginners Spanish class, I took in 2004 when I was living in Pittsburgh, came in handy. I remembered Hombre meant man/men and the price was only $10. I deemed the business safe after a quick visual scan. The cheap price tag might have deceived my survival instincts as I have not had a haircut that cheap in a longtime. The last time I had a haircut for $10 was in Dallas way back in 2004-2005 at a salon also run by a Hispanic. My recent haircut cost me almost $20 on my visit to India. I decided to give my head to the barber who looked like a Mexican warlord, we shall call him Jose from now, in some spaghetti western movies ff the sixties. I was clearly on a high - the one you get on finding bargains while shopping at a mall where you end up buying lot more than you need and paying as much or more than you had set out to when looking for the items you need.

There were two barbers inside, a male and female. They were busy giving a haircut to other customers who were clearly Hispanic looking. I sat at the waiting chairs with my brother for my turn. Then come two other Hispanic looking men, talking something is Spanish to the guy and leave few minutes later. I could make nothing of their conversation. I patiently waited my turn. When the previous customer left, I asked the male barber how much the haircut was to confirm my knowledge from the price board. He sternly replied 'No Habla Ingles' and goes inside without saying anything more. I was clearly surprised and disturbed by this. I was lost like the Jilebee kid below.


I felt helpless, but did not want to let go of the bargain I found. I waited for him to comeback out again. Our male barber Jose comes out in about five minutes after cleaning some brushes and combs inside. I showed some signs with my hands, something that shows scissors across the hair to tell him I need a haircut. This was followed by a thumbs up sign asking how much the haircut was. I then said diez with all my ten fingers up asking if the price was 10. Saying si, Jose walks past me to the wall behind me. There he showed me a board with images of heads of men displaying different hairstyles. I felt like a customer at some chinese restaurants where you have to order by numbers like D3 for hot and sour soup and F5 for General Tso's chicken. I consulted with my brother for sometime and we narrowed down to two heads. I eventually chose one which my brother did not agree on, but I went with it anyway. I showed him the head and gestured that is what I want. He motioned to me as if to say 'Are you ready for this?' and I walked behind him feeling like a proverbial turkey.

Jose got me seated on the chair and prepared me for the cut. I said what I usually say - 'Number 3 on the sides and back, Scissors on the top and blend' for my haircut. He understood none of what I said and had a smirk as if to say 'You showed the picture and that is enough. I know what I am doing'. But I had my reservations. He used the clippers and spent almost 15 mins on just trimming the sides and back. 15 minutes is what most barbers spent on an entire haircut including the billing process. I was very impressed. He changed the clippers about six times. I felt special like my old barber used to make me feel. I had found my mango like the kid below.


My relaxed state of mind was short lived. Jose applied some white powder and began to brush off the loose hair off of my head. At this point I had a military crew cut except that my hair on the top is lot longer. I was thinking, where else can I go now to get my hair fixed. The hair on the top of my head was not trimmed at all and not blended. I looked like a punk guitarist in some crazy rock band. I cannot go to work the next day like that. So I decided to protest. I turned 90 degrees and said 'Not done. Blend with scissors on top'. My Mexican villain Jose was not willing to listen and continued brushing my face. Since I had turned 90 degrees, he brushed right through my eyes and muttered something angrily which I could not comprehend. But from the tone of it, I thought I better be quite and let him complete. If I survive, I can go somewhere tomorrow to have my hair fixed or go with a cap or something to work. Have resigned to this thought, I turned front towards the mirror to let him complete his job while rubbing my left eye that had a brush with, well a real brush.

Jose opened a new blade but a very old style stainless steel blade - one which my Dad used to shave when I was a kid. He started trimming the hair line and side burns. Seeing the stainless steel blade made me nostalgic. I quickly recollected my first shave-a very awful one when I think about it - it was with a similar blade. I think it was a 7 O’Clock Super Platinum or a Swish. A collection of images of all old Indian razor blade covers can be found here. Jose threw the blade in a dustbin and I was sure that he was done now.

To my surprise he wasn't done. He took a pair of scissors out. I breathed a sigh of relief and thanked God for saving me from a back to back humiliation in the hands of barbers. I felt like the deers running with P.T.Usha; Free from anxiety of the impending humiliation.


He rolled his index and middle fingers between my hair above the forehead gesturing if that was short enough. My 'Si' came with euphoric air that could have gone hardly unnoticed. He continued with trimming my hair, switching multiple scissors to make sure the hair blended properly. I believe he had used three scissors in all. What impressed me more than the number of scissors was the flair with which he used the scissors. I was convinced he was a master of his trade. The sweet schick schick sound that the scissors made while he was trimming the hair was music to my ears. I had longed years to hear that music. I was in dream land singing the song of Mile Sur Mera Tumara


to the tune of Baje Sargam


Jose spent about 45 minutes on my hair. This was the most anyone including myself had committed to it. I gave Jose the $10 and tipped him very generously. My brother agreed with me on the mastery of Jose's skills in his trade. I has been some time and I am longing for some more of his music. Guess I am going there soon.

P.S.: Here are some pictures of people from old Doordarshan times. I recognize some faces like Minu, but other are too old for me as well.

India Rising, and so is my Barber.

Few months ago I took a short two and half week vacation to India. My visit to India has come after a long gap of about four years. The changes that came about in my hometown caught me my surprise. The country and my hometown are undergoing a transformation and there are huge infrastructural changes in works. New roads, underground drainage, flyovers construction, new telephone lines have made the daily commute a night mare. This and other societal changes are happening at a rapid pace.

One thing that I look forward to, among other things during the visit to my hometown, is a haircut from my favorite barber. In my childhood we had a barber come in to our home for a haircut. The barber who my dad appointed to do our haircuts at home was older than my Dad. So his haircuts were very traditional and left the hair very short. This changed with the onset of teenage. I wanted to assert my independence and I felt that the barber was doing only a traditional cut that were fashionable enough. I needed a more contemporary haircut and decided that a change was due. I started going to the barber shop at the end of our street. I liked the haircuts at this shop and I became a regular customer until I moved out of town. There were many reasons why I liked my haircut here. The haircut was contemporary, the barber was a teenager who was in touch with the current trends, and most of all I got the latest gossip on the happenings in our street. Not to say, I had some good memories of my teenage and early adult life from this place.

So every time I visit my hometown, I make it a point to get a haircut at this barbershop. The added bonus was it gives me a latest on people that I know with who I am no longer in touch. This time the experience was something different. My schedule was hectic and I wanted nothing more than a quick haircut. I went there and found that the shanty barbershop I remembered had undergone a sea change like the rest of the country. Like a butterfly, the small barbershop with 2 chairs and some mirrors had transformed to a multi-chaired, AC equipped, full fledged beauty salon with about 10 employees. Meaning it was not just a barbershop anymore, you can get haircut, hair dye, massage, facials etc. It was no longer a shop only for men. The barbershop was undergoing expansion to provide services to the ladies with more employees and there was visible construction work going on. The then teenage barber who did my haircut when I was young is all grown up. He was supervising the work, gave me a customary hello and said that his brother would take care of me. He was obviously doing well for himself and it was very visible from the way he carried himself and his bling. His fingers were loaded with gold rings and had a heavy shiny gold chain round his neck. There was no hiding his ostentation's.

I go in and was greeted by his brother. He had me seated on a high, cushioned chair. The room was Air Conditioned. My barber's brother apparently doesn't do a haircut either. He only supervises and takes care of important people. That made me feel superior. With my bloated ego, I had my hair cut started. He started telling me the gossip and I was listening. Somehow I got convinced that I needed a dye. I thought how much can a dye cost. A regular haircut costs (Rs.50) and dye may be double that. I thought I have enough and agreed. While this was going on, he started taking about, the black heads on my nose and white heads on my chin. I had no idea what they were. He said that a facial would rejuvenate my skin, and I would look very fresh for 2 weeks straight without a shower. I did not believe that, but persistence has its way of convincing the toughest nut. The kid was believe me persistent. I asked how much time it would take, he said only 15 minutes. He said this without a blink. The important matter of taking my Dad to the dialysis could wait 15 minutes. Besides how much more can a facial cost, triple the cost of a haircut? Sure I have 300 bucks for all of it. Not exactly.

A 30 minute haircut, turned out to be a 2 hour full blown trip to a salon. My family while I was away began to worry as it was getting late and I had not been out of home for such a long time. I had not carried a phone and the front desk guy at the barber shop did not know my brother-in-law who was sent by my mom searching for me. That put me to shame. The shame that followed was nothing compared to the shame put by my family searching for me. When all this was done, my care taker got me the receipt like you get in a restaurant. I opened the book and was shocked at the amount - Rs. 1000. The receipt read - Rs.50 for a haircut, Rs. 250 for a dye, and Rs.700 for the facial. I had never spent that much money on a haircut visit anywhere before. But that was not the matter, I only had Rs.400 on me. The visions of cleaning pots and pans in restaurants by unpaid customers were before me. What would these guys make me do? Hair cut to waiting customers or mop the floor.

I somehow managed to bring down the bill to Rs.800. I paid Rs.300 and got out of there with Rs.500 in debt to my barber. I repaid him the next day of course. I did not reveal this adventure to my family as that would put me in a storm of sympathy and tirade at the same time. I did not need that after the humiliation.

I later found that my barber from teenage times is actually doing very well for himself. His net take home income runs into Rs. 50K/month, he is the president of the Visakhapatnam Barbers association and is very active politically in his class. The only saving grace was that my wife felt that I looked fresh despite my whining about the dust and smoke on the roads in India. Looks like that facial did actually work after all.

Why are Immigrants apologetic to questions about their Native Country?

Last week as part of our colleague birthday celebration I was at a restaurant with about ten colleagues. The group consisted of people from three continents - North America (USA-5), Europe (Britain-2), Asia (India-2, China-1). As always when such a big and diverse group meets, there are bound to have multiple discussions and questions about the other persons country and culture. One discussion was happening around the food from each continent and one guy from UK was asking (rather stating) how Indian food is typically eaten with hands without use of spoon or other cutlery. An Indian colleague in the discussion instantly responded with a cliched response that 'Things were changing and they are not the same'. This she said without hearing this from our English colleague - 'It's rather very cool, I think'; the IT here is eating with hands. I was at the far end of the table and was just a mere listener to it as I was involved in another discussion - that of the Chinese international students (She was an Intern on our team) struggle to find a job in USA.

I am an immigrant from India and am faced with such questions all the time. I will not list the most commonly asked questions about India and Indian Culture. The questions could be patronizing and derogatory at times, but most times they are just questions by people trying to know the immigrants culture and to just carry a conversation. But the point of my rant here are not the questions. It is about the response to these questions by immigrants about their Country. These responses tend to be defensive and almost always apologetic in tone. When I say apologetic, I don't mean literally they say 'I am sorry' but that would be hilarious. It is rather in a sense that they are begging to say sorry about the behavior of their fellow native country citizens.

Why do Immigrants respond that way? What makes them defensive? I think the answer is very difficult as every individual has his own reasons, and every individual behaves differently in different situations. I try not to be judgmental, but I think the reasons are

1. Immigrants want to portray their best side.
It is as if the immigrant is on first date with someone who is far better than him and is lucky to sit on the same table. This comes from the deep psychological gratitude that these immigrants have for the immigrant officer who let them in. They constantly remind themselves the struggles they and their immigrant wannabes go through to reach this promised land. The gratitude is extended to the people of the land and this goes for years. So as if in a date with a very unreachable hotter opposite sex, the urge to be nice and show the best side is never lost.

2. The need to disassociate with any negative aspects of the native land.
The feeling that immigrants are in some ways better than the ones they left behind is the cause of this thinking. There is widespread notion that immigrants somehow are the cream of the native nation. Though there is some reality to it, I would not consider every Indian immigrant the cream of India. Most are far from being the cream. But somehow this notion exists and could lead to the belief of the immigrant that he is not the same like the ones in his country. So any negatives that happen in the native land are solely that of the people living in that country and not his. But the immigrant is also to fight the reality that the people asking the question does not differentiate him from his country. To them the immigrant and the nation are the same. This paradox is fought by the immigrant by explaining that the situations are changing and though those negative things happen he is not responsible and he would like to apologize for the shortcomings of his native citizenry.

3. Colonial guilt to show to west that they are developing.
The colonized people have this urge to prove to the west that they can develop on their own. They always try to show the positive sides of themselves like how old their culture is, the superior family values etc. There was a huge uproar in India when Slumdog Millionaire was released in India as it showed India in a bad light to the western world. A friend of my mine wrote a good post on the possible explanations for this outrage. The fact that there are a lot more realistic movies made by Indian film makers are quickly forgotten. They are fine with that as long as the target audience is Indian. The artistic talents of the movie maker are also applauded, but are quickly hurt when something similar is made by an outsider showing the darker side. Similarly they are hurt when an outsider especially when a westerner asks a question of something that is perceived as negative.

So what is the correct response?
There is never a right response. But here are certain clues that can help. Most people don't care what you answer. Just have fun with it. Make up some hilarious stories, like 'You have a pet elephant that would drop you to school daily'. Bring your creativity out and have some fun while you are at it. You can always say you were kidding at the end. I am just kidding. If you do not know the real facts, just say you do not know. You do not have to be nice all the time. It is fine to accept the realities, it is not a reflection on you. You are not forgoing your patriotic feelings for your home country by accepting the short comings.