He came, He saw, He conquered!

Veni, Vidi, Vici, (I came, I saw, I conquered)! wrote Julis Ceaser. After his quick victory at the battle of Zera.

Virat Kohli did that! He came, He saw, He conquered; He need not know who the opposition is. It does not matter whether he is in the blue or the whites. Dusty Guwahati or the windy Lord's. West Indies or England or Srilanka or even China. He will conquer and will walk on! For the next conquest.

For Virat Kohli is a beast! A beast bent on winning over everything that comes in his way. And the greatest enemy that man has ever faced, the mind, is also conquered. And the mind, the fickle mind, which wins over every man at some point in life crawls in front of this conqueror.

The opposition is Windies. Not the famous West Indians of the yesteryears. This team is just a pale shadow of the former self. Virat could just blow them away. The fickle mind said, "Easy peasy" when he took guard. He taps the pitch with his marauding sword, the bat. Then with watchful eyes, saw the ball on to the keeper's gloves. Then left another. And then slowly took a single. There is a method to playing ODI cricket. And Virat is a master at that. He will play by his method. Nothing else will change him. Even if his mind tells him to go easy and play a lofted drive against a weak opposition he won't. For he is the master and the mind does what its master tells it to do.

He was 18 when his father died. Virat was batting on 40 overnight against Karnataka in a Ranji Trophy game. Kohli went to bat that day. Scored a 90. Saved the match for Delhi and came back to do the final rites. What went through that young mind that day I don't know, for my mind was numb for months on when I went through a similar crisis. But this is Virat. He told his mind to bat. And he batted. Plain and simple.

When he was 23 he saw his face in the mirror. He did not like what he saw. The chubby cheeks embarrassed him. "I cannot be an international athlete and be this", he told himself. Five years later he is the fittest cricketer around. Yes, there would surely have been days when his mind would have told him not to get up from the bed. oh yes, there definitely were days when his body was aching and his mind said, 'quit, 'not today'. But this is Virat. And his mind obeys him. Not the other way round.

Virat will come out to bat. He will score another century. And another and another. Till his body will give way because he has conquered man's greatest conqueror. The mind! 

Debating from the wrong platform!

He walked out angrily! "My country has done enough to protect its people and you are still complaining. You will never be satisfied" Bang! The door closed. Nobody spoke for a few seconds.

Then the activist took over. It is difficult for people to comprehend the pain of the minorities. The Kurds have been badly treated. There have been brutal killings. These guys won't know the pain of it all. The pain of being relegated. The pain of having 'No Voice'. The Pain of living in a place where you don't belong. There was silence again!

The man had a Kurdish flag in front of him! He spoke passionately about the injustice of arresting the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was the lone prisoner at the Island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara for many years. "There is a CIA hand in it. And unless this Kurdish movement does not succeed, this might lead to the third world war". His passion came through in his voice!

Then the professor took over. As soon as he started talking there was a calm! He spoke on the hows and whys of a revolution. He had the influence MSD had on the mad Indian cricket follower. The tension in the air subsided. People breathed easy.

What am I doing here? Don't I have any other work rather than listening to these political debates? Lots of reading to complete and there is the presentation to finish, said the inner me! Oh ya, 'Turkey' and the 'Kurdish' movement has nothing to do with my life, I told myself.

Then it hit me hard! Aren't these debates meant to happen at the universities? I mean, isn't it proper that the social scientists sit together and talk about the problems of the people. It is only right if the students during the university days listen to the happenings around the world, Ain't it?

Ah! My college days had it all wrong. We never spoke about the nation's problems, leave alone the world's problems. Yes, we spoke about manufacturing cars and lorries, but never once did we spoke about the politics of Industrialisation and the labour movement. The conversations on climate change were for the after college gasbags.

We have closed the doors for important issues on the college campuses and that is why we end up listening to them in the noisy NEWS rooms of the wheeler-dealers and the crony capitalists.

Of course, if the sound is coming from the wrong platform, it may not be the train you had to catch!