Hardik Rajgor

M y father is a self-proclaimed “active person” who loves playing  “games”  and “sport”, which, for him, include (illegally) plucking cherries from the neighbour’s farm, jumping over gutters, playing with bottle caps, throwing kids into the river so they figure out how to swim, and playing with marbles in the dusty veranda. In his own words, it was a very “different time” back then. Of course, this was the ’60s and the only fitness apps they believed in back then, were glasses of milk and plates of fruits. In his lifetime, my father has witnessed the erosion and eventual extinction of things that were #lit during his childhood. And like many people of his generation, it has made him a wee bit bitter. This is evident when he occasionally bursts into rants about the “mindless”  video game  and mobile phone culture that has shaped my childhood.   But there’s one day in the year that makes my father forget all the ranting, and gets his eyes lit up like Har...

“I t’s red, round, and weighs about five ounces in case you were wondering,” said Greg Thomas to the great Vivian Richards after going past his bat with some rippers in a  county game  between Glamorgan and Somerset at Taunton. The Welsh fast bowler did get Sir Viv charged up, as the next delivery was smashed out of the ground and landed into a nearby river. The charming West Indian turned around to a hapless Thomas and remarked, “Greg, you know what it looks like, now go and find it.” Sledging is the fine art of verbal exchange among opponents. The intention is to hurt the concentration and focus of your rival, to piss them off so they can make a mistake. The Americans call it trash-talk, Indians call it bakchodi, and if you’re an Aussie cricketer, it is known as Monday morning at The Gabba. The  Australians , for long, championed both the game as well as the verbal barrage, earning a reputation as the bad boys of cricket. Australian legend Dennis Lillee had a famous...

I f a rupee was donated to the  Reserve Bank  of India every time someone said “Virat Kohli is such a great batsman,  if only  he controlled his aggression a bit…” we could bail out all the struggling public sector banks in the country. Twice. Virat Kohli is not the best batsman in the world, across formats, despite his aggression and combativeness, he is the best because of it. Like all elite sportsmen and sportswomen at the very top,  Virat Kohli  hates to lose. He hates conceding even an inch, or being bullied on the pitch. The relentless and unending desire to win every single moment in the game, to dominate every ball with the bat, to stop every single run on the field, to encourage his troops every single minute on a hot day of a  Test match , to constantly be performing at 100 per cent, is what makes him Virat Kohli. With great success comes greater criticism, and this is true for all sports. From the ranting John McEnroe, to the short...

D ear Government, Congratulations on the  Statue of Unity , it’s a marvellous structure. While I appreciate you building a statue for one Patel, I am uncomfortable with the idea that you wanted to turn another Patel (me) into a living statue. Accuse me of overreacting, but how did you expect me to feel when so much happened in the last couple of months? The independence of the  RBI  was under so much threat that I had to change the subject line of my resignation mail to Preserve Bank of India. I preferred our arguments over those long mail threads with half the office marked, but when  Arun Jaitley  decided to make the feud public, I had no choice but to awaken the Gir Lion inside me. On purpose, I chose a  guy named Viral  to issue comments on my behalf so that the message would be loud, clear, and… viral.   I get it, this is  election  year and you want more money so you can roll out some schemes and campaign across the country...

I s it an  Apple  product launch? Is it an award show? No, it’s Isha Ambani and Anand Piramal’s sangeet. This is Gujarati Coachella, the sangeet of the century, one that will set #LaganNaGoals for years to come.   Ordinary  Gujaratis  have a three-hour sangeet celebration where everyone first dances to garba and then the DJ plays “Gangnam Style”, “Despacito”, and other songs from his 2016 playlist and you once again break into a garba. But not the  Ambanis . For one, it’s not called a “function” (so middle-class); it’s called a pre-wedding bash. And secondly, they don’t play songs from a pen drive on a music tape like us mere mortals from Malad. They get  Beyoncé to sing for them and the whole of Bollywood to dance for them. The Ambani sangeet is nothing like what we’ve seen in recent times. The  Virushka  shaadi created history – this is the first time someone used an ad to announce their wedding. The  DeepVeer  wedding was f...