Screw it Just do it

Well folks, here it finally is! My long delayed and long-awaited(by myself of course) blog. Aptly named “Screw it Just do it”. Well first of all to all the plagiarism minded folks out there, yes it’s stolen from the title of Richard Branson’s book. But as of now, Richard Branson is too rich and famous and I’m too poor & unknown for it to be of any concern.

Why did I name it so? Well firstly, I’ve been waiting to write a blog for so long that my mind, heart, subconscious, superconscious ,in fact everything which are not constrained by my lazy hands and feet, revolted and said “screw it fella, just do it you lazy bum”. Secondly the school I’m attending (IIMC to be precise) yanks the procrastinator out of you and stamps it till it’s declared dead. Stuff that we used to think will take months materialize in a matter of days. In span of a single month, you do four live projects, complete a research paper, participate in competitions and recommend market strategies for major corporations, arrange sponsorships for your festival and dozens of other stuff. If anyone in the IT world is asked to furnish an estimate for the list of tasks we do in a month it’ll probably be a year in the best-case scenario( no offence meant IT folks, I used to be one too and if things go at such a maddening pace in the IT world, everyone will be dead in 5 years). Anyway, doing so many things at the same time doesn’t leave you time to ponder over the best course. You just screw it and do it. Doesn’t matter if the end result is actually screwed up which is the norm anyway (Just take a look around and tell what percentage of well-studied & well-resourced, properly estimated projects see the light of the day the way they’re supposed to ?). The bottom-line is you gotta do it. It becomes your philosophy whichever religious or spiritual doctrine you subscribe to.

Little bit of what this blog is about. As a rule, this blog won’t contain any cricket or movie related stuff except in a purely academic sense. Even though I confess seeking a little guilty pleasure in watching some matches especially when India is playing well, I still believe cricket to be an utter waste of time, a sedate outdoor activity masquerading as a game. If you can play a game for a whole day and still live, then it’s not a game at all. And this thing can actually run for five days! Heck people won’t be able to play chess for five consecutive days all through. It’s the only game I know where only two people in one team (batsmen) and two-three persons in the other (bowler) really wrestle it out while the others are mostly spectators on ultra-front row seats. It would’ve been fine if a thousand or even hundred thousand people wasted their time on this game playing or watching it for days together. What is not fine is hundreds of millions doing the same. It’s not the national sport of any country simply because it’s not a sport. Only in the subcontinent where all nations share a 100+ ranking on the UN Human Development Index does it thrive as it provides succour to multitudes of unemployed/underemployed who find it as a palliative to relieve them of their plentiful idle time. Cricket fans will surely cite golf as a game which enjoys massive viewership and sponsorship and which is surely more sedate than cricket. Point taken but golf is kept on its own high pedestal – a rich man’s game. It’s not a game of the masses and never tries to be. Similarly cricket was not meant to be a game of the masses. It was meant for the white sahibs who after finishing off India’s wildlife were searching for some other way to engage them. In the subcontinent they did not have to contend with a violent resistance movement and they couldn’t care less about administration, hence they were always thinking of new ways to utilize their idle time. And they found the answer in cricket – it was not physically demanding, took care of a huge chunk of their time and distinguished them from the natives. Scan the English literature in nineteenth century and see how many references to cricket you can come up with. Only intellectuals like P.G Wodehouse or G.H Hardy followed cricket. The industrious British middle class never had the time for it and neither should we. I would love to analyze how much of our productivity is actually lost due to cricket and I’m sure this will come to a decent percentage of our GDP. When faced with this line of reasoning, the usual response I get is that “Hey but cricket is such a big industry. Its generating so much money”. True but who is the money going to? Few mandarins in the cricket establishment. Less than a hundred players. Some big TV channels and franchisee owners. That’s it. How much employment is it generating? Close to nil. Few players have become super rich while even Ranji trophy players fight to get a sustainable livelihood. How much money is trickling down to the grassroots(local cricket clubs, coaches,small stadia) to further the game. Nil or close to it. And money is not new to Indian cricket. We’ve had the richest board since 1996 world cup. Then why is cricket at the grassroots still languishing? Cricket is not an industry. Industry generates employment, furthers productivity. Cricket is profiteering – plain and simple.

Okay, so in speaking of what this blog is NOT about, I’ve roughly given an idea of what this blog is about. It’ll be usually my observations which will unfortunately be supported by mostly anecdotal evidences. I’ll try to substantiate with facts as much as possible but the nature of the blog is to convey one’s judgements and inferences. Hence it’s pretty much open to sensible attack and I’ll love to change my opinion in the face of convincing evidence. For instance if you can show me that cricket is actually good for us as opposed to other sports like football,hockey then I’ll be your debtor and maybe buy you a beer.

A final word. I’m not much of a blog reader with few exceptions like Joel Spoelsky, Paul Graham etc and I don’t expect much readership/comments for my blog either. In fact this was one of the reasons why I took so long to start writing because I felt that since I don’t read any blogs why should anyone bother reading mine? Well I’ve realised my folly as I’m reaching the fag end of the first post. A blog is for oneself. It allows one to put a structure to numerous directionless meandering thoughts in his brain. It documents and codifies them and stores them for future reference. By doing so it allows new thoughts to come in and neatly stacks them in the appropriate places. As the newly evangelised preach the most, so shall I extol the benefits of blogging for a long time to come. But please stop me when I start saying that blogging is good for your sex life as well :)