Teen Thay Turnips…

I have still not fully recovered from watching a Tushar Kapoor interview on the tele (he does something weird with his spelling right?…what’s it, TUSSSHAAR or something??? …Just wondering if he has started adding a “K” to his first name…but that won’t change a thing!).

So we saw yet again, what an abysmal bunch of turnips our cricket team is…I mean for Gods’ sake don’t they have the common sense to even look heaven-wards in their quest for answers?…because that is literally all they had to do, to get an answer this time around! With the heaven’s also all set to shed more than just a tear at their turnipy state, it could have well been a blessing in disguise (a watery grave).

So I am sure each one of you esteemed reading fraternity has mentally flogged these guys to your own kink and liking (as you bloody well should…!) and each one of you has different levels of enjoyment imagining your chosen ones in different stages of agony, depending of course on how creative you are (my personal favorite is hanging Dhawan upside down with two identical 1-tonne cannon balls tied to the two ends of his up-twirled mouche…)

Which brings us to the first turnip – DHAWAN. (Notice how subtly I got you – the reader – from your chosen turnip to mine!…experience counts you see!)

He reminds me so so much of a certain ex-captain now commentator…who in his time had to be flogged on his back side to move in the field, yet was so so nimble to run off and even fake injury, to avoid playing the real fast stuff. (gotta be careful here…I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Kolkata brigade…lovely guys and all really, but…ahem…a bit more on the perpetually-opinionated-and-argumentative side, right?…). By the way, you should hear him commentate about India’s fielding…hysterical coming from somebody who, in his time, celebrated after taking a dolly, with the elation of somebody who has just discovered a new life-form! (See how subtly I referred to the guy without actually naming him?…experience).

But let’s be fair to Dhawan. He’s good in the field. But the problem is that he is just not good enough to do what he is in the team to do. This is the main problem with all the turnips you see ( 18 turnips on this tour right?…excluding the always-frowning big daddy turnip Fletcher).

Let’s now get to the second and third turnips, as subtly promised by the title of this piece. Well, turnip two and three are step brothers. (Some of you geeky ones must have already started googling to see if Pujara and Kohli have a common fore-bearer…calm down…they don’t..so cut their family-tree some “honest” slack and settle down in your arm chairs or whatever it is that offices these days provide you guys with)

Pujara is not the second turnip. Surprised? Well here’s more…Pujara is not even the third turnip!…

It all goes like this – the second turnip is Kohli and the third turnip is Kohli’s ego.

I could well end this piece here and the really sensible one’s will agree with me. But I quote the iconic Ledger again, “It’s a funny world we live in”…so some people will still look askance for an explanation. Now we all know that Kohli is a supremely gifted model. He has done really well in cricket too. But give me a break – calling him the next Tendulkar, is way way too pre-mature, if not being down right weird. (I’d love to know what these people were smokin’ up!)

And it is these very people who are to blame for this herculean fall-from-grace, if you can call it. Well one more person plus these very people but we will get to that person (subtly) at the fag end of the piece. And it’s hush hush and a wee bit sensitive, so…

It is one thing being super confident (which he has every right to be…I mean he has all the endorsements and commercials in the bag for some time to come…!) and another being arrogant to the point of nursing an ego the size of the parathas of the state he hails from. I mean, I understand the natural “aggro” that most people from that territory are born with, and you know like all things, it grows as you do. But in his case it “graduated” with distinction to the arrogance stage and “post-graduated” with honors, into ego, and that cannot be good for any nation’s GDP. (Ah, see how subtly yet again I’m referring to economic jargon, using that as a reference point for my own vocation?…blogging experience you see!)

So there was this very amusing dialogue that prompted the scripting exercise of “Teen Thay Turnips”. A guy at work walks up to me and says, “I hate the Akhtar’s.”

I go – “Akhtar’s who?”

He shoots back – “Farhan and Zoya, you dumb so and so…!”

I look away from my “boring” screen, straight at the guy’s face and go – “Dude, what have they done? I mean in this nutty country of farcical film personalities (subtly referring to my first blog), the Akhtar’s are among the few respectable folks left!”

Suddenly he got emotional…”Then why did she do this?”

I was like “She?…who? Zoya???”

“Why did she cast Anushka with Ranveer in a much anticipated film where the longest shooting schedule was on a yacht, when she knew India was playing England on an important away tour?”

It took me a minute to take it all in, and another (enjoyable) minute to decipher…I gave a strengthening pat on his shoulder…I turned back to my “delicious” screen and gave a wry smile to myself!

See you folks in the fourth edition!