Surtees!

John Surtees carried on for his journey yonder and my timelines flooded with RIPs and obituaries to the only man you who surmounted the biggest championships on both two and four wheels. Frankly, even I do not know much about the life of the racing legend, the trivia or the wow stories. But one thing I know for sure is that the man enjoyed his time at the helm of those machines. Under those half face helmets and goggles was an expression that showed the resolve to excel and the happiness of challenging your limits nested in the tiny smirk hidden underneath.
We say there will be no Surtees anymore and that is a sad truth. We, over the years, have taught ourselves to be the ace of one than a king of many. We bury ourselves within the limits of our tasks and not go beyond to learn, to help, to admire. The poignant masturbating nature of social media has added to it. You want to click faster pictures of yourself than take efforts to go faster. Like they say, going to Alibaug is not wanderlust.
It is rare to see the incessant want of going fast, on two or in four. It takes courage to accept that good looking mediocracy is not better than the ugly face of pursuing excellence. It takes courage to not evaluate every move by the measure of success but learning. It takes courage to accept defeat and get back up gathering what is left for the second attempt, or the third, or the fourth. It is a matter of belief, belief in yourself and belief in your goals.
Fanaticism as it may be branded or mere stupidity, it is better than the stoic political correctness and idealism that seems to have riddled our generation, stopping them from clean achievements. Schemes, politics and conceit then arises as a part of the competition and that is why you will not see the Surtees or the Sheenes or the Hunts for that matter. May be we could learn from Surtees and push ourselves to be more capable than acceptable!

http://photos.motogp.com/2017/03/10/surtees_31.small.jpg

Why Ken Block is not a circus joker

This is an era of posers. The people who can pretend to be good and pull off a few moves to their credit. The people who can gauge your nonchalance towards the real. The people who can lie to themselves. Surprisingly, because the percentage of such people is steadily growing thanks to the moronic nature of social media and your alter egos on the web, posing has become mainstream.

You may not be liked by the people at work with because you didn’t bother to ask them about the utterly nonsensical deep quote they posted yesterday night. You may not be considered to be ambitious because you do not cry those eyes dry when you err. But eh, that’s not the point. The point here is Ken Block.

Well, coming to the jokers – the jokers are probably one of the most talented artists out there. Making people laugh is not a joke – especially when you cannot speak a word. I know. I know. Rahul Gandhi has that unfair advantage because ‘sab jaante hai uska baap kaun hai’. But on a serious note, the joker has to have a repertoire of tricks up his sleeve, the tricks which he has mastered. Well, he has to master them because you have to pull out a trick to match the mood and constantly read the crowd and not waste a moment on the trick itself.

You might be thinking that apart from the headline, I have mentioned Ken Block only once and gone all about posers and jokers. Am I trying to establish a correlation between the three? Hell yes, I am. Yes, I cannot even properly drive a car. But being born in India, I have the divine right to judge. Like we tell Sachin how to play out the nervous nineties.

And I pass that judgement for my own reasons. Ken Block is an immensely skilled driver. No two ways about it. The kind of car control he displays is flabbergasting and kind of stunts he pulls off is mind-blowing. But then that is the catch. He, methinks, is a master of stunts. My definition of a great driver is largely influenced by my Youtube education in Group B rallying. The way the Vatanens and the Mikkolas ran riot in those death traps is the mark
of a real driver.

The pedigree of a driver, methinks, is defined by the ability to sustain unrelenting assault of pure pace over a distance where your body wanes out towards the end but you still do not cut pace. And here is why Ken Block’s Race of the Champions or RallyCross wins do not count for me. The ultimate proving ground for him is WRC where he has failed to succeed at the highest level more often than not.

No doubt the Gymkhanas are a visual treat, a wow thing for those who do not feel the nuances of the art of driving. And I am immensely pained when a young kid comes up and says, I will be a great racer like Ken Block. Has it all boiled down to what a good show I put up?

Why #IAmCapable is not feminist?

We, in this modern age of easy access to information and opinions, have come a long way from what we all were a decade back. Ignorance and illiteracy had kept us away from what happened on the other side of the globe. With social media now offering internet as Free Basics, the web has spread deep amongst us. The question is – are we mature enough to grasp the gist of the trends that are catching up.

Feminism, in my very frank opinion, is one of such trends. There are no two ways about the much needed gender equality, absolutely not. But feminism is not gender equality. In fact, in my opinion, feminism has done more bad than good in the case of gender equality. Feminism is exactly what is wrong with Deepika Padukone’s video or Priyanka Chopra saying ‘I need a man only for the sperm’.

I see the poor side of feminism in every relationship I come across. Let us take the case of marriages. The ladies want a man that is successful, rich, older and taller and can take good care of the lady. This is totally acceptable and if the girl is pretty, that can be her only achievement in life for such demand. But if a guy says I am looking for a girl who earns more than me, is fairer and an inch taller than me – he is labelled a loser, gold-digger, a good for nothing twat.

I see women justifying reservations for them, a bogie in the locals, seats on the bus, education and what not. Yes, it is a male dominated society and we guys can’t help because we are born into it. And if you ask for reservation, you are going to be looked down upon because you get it without deserving it. We all hail Darwin for his theory of evolution and the theory of survival of the fittest. We use it to add weight to our arguments at the high teas, the card clubs and the kitty parties. But we fail to understand what lies beneath.

Survival of the fittest is the nature’s law for self-improvement. It means that the weaker species or weaklings in a species are wiped off the radar so that the world grows into a fitter tomorrow. If we ask for reservation, the first thing we give out is the lack of ability. And then if you talk about equality you can imagine what kind of a hypocrite you turn yourself into. The women today can very much run conglomerates and probably in a better way. But this is not a game of one-upmanship for the genders. This game of one-upmanship has been running since forever and the results are here to be seen.

The want to prove that you are at par itself defies the claim of being equal. The equality has to be felt within and not spoken or written about. If you feel inferior, that is not because of physical ability but more of a mental block. Men feel inferior to other men and even women too and that may be because of stature, status, personality, strength or ability. And if a woman feels inferior, there has to be one of these reasons only. Attributing it to one’s gender makes you more sexist than you can think.  

The idea of feminism should ideally be replaced by individuality. You have to fight for your own sake, take your own decisions and make your own roads. Blaming your generation older parents or society will not help you anyway. They have been brought up that way and the change you want will not happen overnight. The mentalities will change over generations. And imbibing individuality in the coming generations will turn fare much better than feminism.

Imagine your kids learning ‘We all are equal’ and ‘Women are as capable as men’. Your choice here will define our future, the future that #IAmCapable wants.