Where have they all gone?

It was one of those typical grey, bleak, wintry London mornings when you go through the motions of the whole day, having seen nothing but different shades of grey. I had woken up later than usual and later than what would leave me with a decent amount of time to get ready and go to office – I decided to work from home. So, it was that I had the luxury of time in my hand and was standing in the balcony of my 11^th floor apartment overlooking the expanse of Croydon, when a house sparrow decided to pay me a visit. It flitted on to the railing to the right of me, hopped around my legs a couple of times, wandered along the length of our balcony in a rather forlorn manner and then took flight and disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

It was there for a mere 5 minutes, but it suddenly made me realize how infrequent sparrow sightings have become in urban areas (and I am not speaking of London alone – I was in Bangalore and Mumbai for considerable periods of time before coming to London and try as I might, I couldn’t recollect seeing a single sparrow ever). Yet, they had been such a familiar sight when I was growing up that one would pass by without even a glance or not notice their chirping amidst the general din and even, I guess, get irritated at times, when too many of them would hover around, on the balconies and the rooftops.

What exactly is the reason for their diminishing numbers in the cities, I do not know. But what I definitely do know is that their numbers must be drastically falling for I do not see them up and about ever and I doubt my children, when they grow up, would ever see one outside of a text book.

My guess is that they have fallen prey to technology and have lost their nestling sites – how many houses do you see today that have holes and nooks from which, straws are sticking out?

How I wish mine in London had not been a modern apartment, but an older house with its sealing not so tight. That fleeting sparrow visit definitely made my day, a lot less greyer.

Sports and the Brits – A Media & People Circus

I have been in the United Kingdom for a few months now and thankfully, I have been blessed to see quite a few important sporting events happen during this time. In fact, one of the reasons I was keen to come across to the UK rather than the US was the very simple fact that while I have never really followed the sports that set American pulses racing (NASCAR, MLS, Baseball, NBA etc), the Brits have been our close cousins when it comes to the games that they follow (of course, in most cases, we just inherited their likes and dislikes – except perhaps Rugby, which is not so popular back home and is thus, duly deleted from the list of games that I discuss, for the purpose of this post).

And so it was that in the few months that I have been here, the English Premier League came to its closing stages, the Champions' League football followed, EURO 2008 rounded up the football season, the Kiwis came to English shores for cricket, Ricky Hatton and Amir Khan boxed foreign opponents and Wimbledon is reaching its climax, as I write this post - In short, enough sporting events to observe the peculiar traits of the English media and the English people when it comes to sports.

Peculiar because I have never really come across a more biased view of one's own country's superiority in sports as the ones expressed with impunity time and again by the British media and echoed through different channels, by the gullible junta. Let me state my case –

1. In the days leading to EURO 2008, I was surprised to see a football crazy country like Great Britain put on a charade of complete indifference to a continental showpiece – the reason for such petulant behaviour was obvious – England had not qualified for the tournament and the likes of the Rooneys, the Lampards and the Gerrards had been overshadowed by the Modrics and the Villas of the continent – such an ignominy for six-figure earning superstars to be shown their places by relative paupers from the backwaters of Bucharest and Thessaloniki. No surprise that the English found solace in feigning ignorance of the tournament at large!!!
   
2. However, when the tournament got underway and the media here realized that the flowing football on display was winning hearts and rave reviews from the world at large, the media pundits at BBC and the newspaper sports editors chose to focus on the exploits of EPL stars and made them the lynchpins of their teams' displays – thus Fernando Torres was crowned the "King of Spain" in newspaper headlines, while the wily exploits of Andres Iniesta and the goal scoring prowess of David Villa were conveniently glossed over
   
3. In between the football mania, the New Zealanders came visiting for a summer of cricket – and yeah, they got thrashed by the English in the test matches. Great news for cricket in a country where it is by far a much poorer cousin of football – and then, that's where the coverage stopped. The ODI series that followed saw the Kiwis overrun the English and typically, the media chose to look the other way proclaiming that Test cricket was still the ultimate and the English were, in any case, ranked just above West Indies and Zimbabwe, perhaps
   
4. And then came Wimbledon – and the British press never stops reminding you that it is the Mecca of Tennis – never mind that the grass court season is shrinking every time the ATP comes out with its new schedule. And if it is Wimbledon, it comes associated with that eternal Brit mania of trying to find out a home grown hero who can give Great Britain a singles' Wimbledon champion. Now, when was the last time, somebody amongst the men, who supposedly "gave the world the game of tennis", win the Wimbledon Singles' title? Has it been 15 years, 25 years, 35 years since a British bloke last held aloft the trophy? No, it is going to be 70 years now and still counting – but nonetheless, Andy Murray was given all the hype and support he could dream of – in fact, apart from Roger Federer, Murray was the only other guy to be given the privilege of playing all his matches in Centre Court this year. And what did he do with all this pampered treatment? He made heavy weather of the likes of Xavier Malisse, Tommy Haas and Richard Gasquet [does that sound as if he has scalped any worthy pretender to the crown?] before being summarily dismissed by Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals, as if he was a speck of dust bothering the Spaniard!!
   

The Olympics are approaching and something tells me that I need to read newspapers back home and catch Indian TV news channels to get a fair picture of what is happening J