Re: Book Cricket, age unknown, R.I.P

This blog wants to just add on to this amazing blog by Ashok.As he says the IPL reminds the generation that was in shcool before the period when ‘what’ became ‘wat’ and ‘colour’ became ‘color’ , about the Book Cricket.

I think Ashok is not the first person to see the similarities….Probably he is the first to write a blog on it. I remember Sherry (Navjot) telling to Sonali of NDTV about the similarities of Book Cricket with the twenty Twenty format of the game during the T20 world cup.

The similarities, I see is that the way the runs are scored are never cared for….the shot selection is never a thing to be technically discussed by the Cricket Experts sitting in the TV room.
And the most important similarity of them all ; In both forms of cricket i.e. the OMI ( One Minute International) and the Twenty Twenty ….the number of runs scored by the batsman is always greater than the number of balls faced , even if it is the most boring batsmen like Dravid,Laxman. Really nice to see Dravid scoring 38 off 31 balls.

Well, I will come to the point.I just want to show some other forms of book cricket that were prevalent in my school days …atleast in my school.

TYPE 1

The First one was almost the same as the one mentioned by Ashok, but in that form …when the last digit of the page number is ‘0’ , the batsman was considered Out.Nobody cared , how he got out …run out , bowled, lbw …nothing.

But some of the cricket enthusiasts also listened to the expert talks by Sunil Gavaskar ,Ravi Shastri, Tony Greig and Geoffrey Boycott after the match,wanted to raise the level of Book cricket equal to the standards of the real ones,so that the book cricket can also be analysed by the (hidden) cricket expert in them.Hence, they designed a new way of playing Book Cricket.

The last digit of the page number was taken as the number of steps to go forward in the runs and wicket maze as shown below.Whenever we got ‘0’ as the last digit,we considered it as a ‘DOT BALL’. Hence, the DOT BALL in book cricket was introduced.

It’s quite evident from the picture that the various way the batsmen got out was also introduced to Book Cricket.Experts now had loads of things to talk about the batsmen’s poor run of form.

TYPE 2

The other form of Book cricket was perhaps born out of influence from the metro channel’s superhit game show “Metro Dhamaka”.The picture below shows why

This game demanded a Safety Pin to be used as Willow.Boys didn’t have the Safety Pin.

So , the boys got some reason to talk to the girls in the first bench and ask them a safety pin for playing this form of book cricket.

Somehow , this form of book cricket never took off as it was mostly being distracted my the curious girls (owner of the Safety Pin) who come to the last bench and see what these guys are playing with the Safety Pin.Hence, the games mostly resulted in NO RESULT due to Kadalai ( putting groundnuts) sessions that lasted as long as the CCA periods ( Co-Currivular Activity periods on Thursdays).

Anyway, none of these forms of book-cricket nor the most basic form of book-Cricket now exists.Thanks to Video Games and various other factors…

Hollywood Ramayana

Recently I saw a fresh flick by Warner Bros. , 10,000 B.C. It was really a mind-boggling movie after a long time that really challenged my imagination. It reminded me of the days when I was in 9th grade when I used to think seriously about the coincidences of possible UFO landings in the pre-historic era and the dawn of human civilization.It was Eric Von Daniken’s book “Chariots of the Gods” that time and this time it’s the movie 10,000 B.C. by Ronald Emmerich.Though the movie got a huge amount of negative reviews , for me , it recreated the same thrill which I got reading Danikken’s book back in 1997 (A.D.)

Shtory:D’Leh the hero of the movie who is the son of the leader of a clan somewhere in the Russian (or Mangolian) snow desert during the time when last ice age ended;10,000 B.C. He loves a refugee girl from another clan whose members were killed by “Four Legged Demons” ( invaders from Egypt) who massacered the weak and took the strong as slaves for making them work in the Atlantian’s(Stranded Aliens on Earth who claimed themselves as Gods to the Human beings on Earth) effort to build huge pyramids that will serve as signs to their own kind on the other worlds beyond the stars.

The script is about D’Leh’s journey across Asia and the middle east till the Egypt to rescue his love Evolet where the first Pyramids are being built by the early Egyptians with the help of the Aliens(or Atlantians) who have taught the mankind the extraction of metal and various other things on which human civilization transformed itself from Stone Age to the Bronze age.On the way D’Leh meets Giant Animals(now extinct Moa bird,Saber tooth tiger,Mamoth) and Naku Tribe whose men later help him to raise an army against the Egyptians ruled by the Atlantians whom they considered as Gods.

On the way he also discovers the secret of life, that will transform his clan’s lifestyle from Nomadic Hunters to Settled Farmers ,once he returns from Egypt.For more information on the movie see here. What really thrilled me was the script’s close resemblance to the most famous epic of South Asian cultures , The Ramayana.

Induction to the Original version of Ramayana

As an Induction to the thought process of comparing Ramayana with the 10,000 B.C. I will be using the character names in both the stories interchangeablyYes Ramanyana . D’Leh resembles Rama , Evolet is resembling Sita , and the Last Atlantian(Alien) in the movie is Obviously Ravana and the Naku Tribe who helped D’Leh (alias Rama) in rescuing Sita (er Evolet) is the Vanar Sena of the Hampi Empire somewhere in Karnataka and Nakudu himself is Hanuman , D’Leh’s (Rama’s) best friend.



Now for the Original Version of Ramayana what might have really happened

Rama as a Leader of a Nomadic Tribal Clan:

Phew !!! I just couldn’t sleep for two days at the discovery of probably the most important piece in the JIGSAW puzzle of UnRecorded Pre-History.Here is my description of What might have been the original version of Ramayana which got modified by the various generation of oral story tellers of the tribal groups that descended from the Rama’s tribal.Long after that when Valmiki first thought to capture the tacit legacy of Rama into written form , it became to be known as the original Ramayana.So Valmiki’s ramayana itself was a hugely tainted version of the original Rama’s Legacy.

I am not saying Robert has portrayed Ramayana in it’s truest form, nor I am saying that Ramayana in India is the original one because we have got so many versions of Ramayana in India itself, apart from the other south asian counterparts.

Here are some points to support the fact why 10,000 B.C. looks more closer to real Ramayana

(A) Rama’s legacy dates back long before Indus Valley Civilization , may be during the end of Ice-Age.

(B) There is a strong indication that Rama brought back a lot of happiness back when he returned from his epic journey for truth(perhaps not exile).That truth is the Agriculture.Imagine the stature of a man who would have revolutionized the lives of people by the discovery of Agriculture.He is like God.

(C) Rama’s culture and costumes as represented in Valmiki’s version resembles those of Aryans which is not true; Aryan getup was given to Rama just to keep alive the legacy of Ramayana even in the Post Dasyu period.

(D) Before Valmiki tamed the tacit version of Ramayana , it was told millions of time to each generation;In each generation the Ramayana got slighly modified to suit the tastes of the changing society.

Billa/Don Analogy why remix versions change the story line

Just like our Billa.The old Billa kept a “Billa Diary of Contacts” but if the same diary is used in the 2007 version, people will simply not accept.Also there were many many many many minor changes in the very nature of Don/Billa. SRK’s version showed the cruel Don winning in the end , exactly opposite to the other versions.Similarly , Ajith’s version was suitably modified due to Anbumani Ramadoss.In Ajith’s version Billa never smoked , whereas SRK and Rajini’s version “smoking was the secret of Don’s Energy”.

Southernification

Regarding the exact location where Ravana (or the Last of the three Atlantian) lived is quite debatable.There is a strong evidence that the Atlantians landed from space on the somewhere in the mediterrainean.With the time passing and the access to the west beyond the Indus became difficult , the story tellers had started refering to the island nation of Lanka instead of the Atlantis or Egypt.

With so many versions of Ramayana , we also have that many versions of Ayodhya and Lanka like Authuya and Langka in Thai versions.The Lankan architechture probably never belonged to Sri Lanka but Egypt.

It’s not a surprise to see Hollywood being inspired by one of the most compelling stories of all times (which marks the change of man from Hunters to Warriors , Nomads to Farmers , Clans to Empires ) as it has inspired every generation since then.

Contents in the above blog are my views about the original version of Ramayana …Genuine comments are welcome……:)

Also read this on the amazing possibilities of using the indian epics for the good of World Cinema

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