Forgotten hobby

Reading is a very favorite hobby of mine which had taken a back-seat for quite sometime now, except my reading the Times of India newspaper daily and reading news articles on ibnlive.in.com. Till a few years back I used to read novels very frequently, mainly from fiction (crime, detective, mystery) genre apart from a couple of biographies also. The part reason for this hobby of mine taking a back-seat are the genres themselves. You need continuous time to read them, as it's very difficult to break in between, at least for me.

But very recently I got a chance to bring back this hobby of mine to focus. On my journey back to New Delhi from Kolkata on Rajdhani express I had all the time in the world. So I decided to pick up a novel to read on the train from the Howrah station. I choose The Chamber by John Grisham. Genre wise (legal thriller) it was new to me. I did manage to read a substantial part of the novel in the train but finished the remaining part at my home after reach New Delhi. I liked novel and I think I am very soon going to buy some of the other titles by John Grisham. But more than that I very excited that I went back to my hobby after a long while.

Today while browsing the net on Google search (another hobby of mine), I found a nice site which has a good collection of some of the beautiful works. www.readprint.com. It claims to be a free online library with about 8000 online books by 3500 famous authors. Not bad! Though it also carries a strange warning on the homepage - "The surgeon general reports that having these many free online books at your disposal can be highly addictive."!! I do not think the addictive part is bad but surely I would avoid it as already due to my job I sit in front of computers for better half of my day, and if I start reading books online, I am sure my eyes will pop out in revolt. And anyway, I love buying books and preserving them, after reading, in my collection.

Go down to come on the top

I am referring to the recently concluded IPL T20 tournament in South Africa. After a close fight between Hyderabad Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers in the finals, Deccan Chargers became the champions. I usually do not follow cricket matches ball by ball because they are bit longer, even T20 format to some extent, but I do follow the results. Anyways that's not the reason for this post, something else caught my attention.

Both Hyderabad Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers are the teams which finished bottom of the table in the last edition of IPL, and this year they both did a perfect turnaround. Well lot of credit goes to there respective new captains Adam Gilchrist and Anil Kumble. Interestingly, in the last edition of IPL Rajasthan Royals who were virtually written off, surprised everyone by reaching the finals and eventually winning it also. Credit of that win surely goes to Shane Warne, captain and coach for Rajasthan Royals, who did a good job of making champions out of the underdogs. This year Royals were the defending champions and even better organized with a new sponsor, but couldn't re-create the magic.

Not very surprising these facts, might be even concidences, but rags to riches stories are not very uncommon. I guess winning is easier if you are at the bottom than at the top because one has nothing to loose at the bottom. Nevertheless it does need a huge amount of mental strength and determination come out as winner from behind. I guess Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders can have their hopes for the next year but it will need lot of hard work and regrouping!