Some things in life just don’t change.
While in tenth grade I hopped on a stage and screeched at the top of my lungs, trying to personify Eliza Doolittle, I now join the throngs of fancily clad people on Broadway and 45th to watch someone do the screeching. While it was the perfect fermentation of Indian rice-bread I insisted on as a devout vegetarian at age ten, it is the grilling of religiously-incorrect filet mignon to medium rare perfection that now holds my fancy. And while I contentedly slipped into the shoes of a tomboyish George Kirrin time after time in fifth grade, I now find a Vittoria Vetra or Dagny Taggart – a lot harder to fit my firmly entrenched feet now, but satisfying nonetheless.
And just like all else, those three weeks that stretch from the last couple in June to the first in July continue to be my favorite time of year, thanks to the green grass of Center Court and the promise of the greatest tennis player at any given time wielding his racket to create the kind of magic only the supernatural can.
So, while I await that time of year with some anticipation, the USTA drops a friendly mail in my mailbox. I have long since learned to treat a USTA notification with as much interest as I would a supermarket brochure (50 cents off a bag of chips that costs $3.99? Some good that does to my wallet). Similarly, a godforsaken tournament to be played between two unknowns in a forgotten part of the world doesn’t come anywhere close to captivating my tennis senses, even if my membership affords me a ten percent discount (a hundred wouldn’t matter when the match is between a Koukalova and a Safarova – in case you’re wondering, they exist).
So, I slid out the leaflet with practiced dispassion, only to discover that the picture was neither that of an unknown nor the place sited unfamiliar to me. The former belonged to the sportsman that could easily be the reason I watch the sport with so much passion and the latter, the city I have happily inhabited for the past year. And so the twain shall meet!
Yeah, folks, Pete Sampras is playing at the World Team Tennis Tournament in Philadelphia in July and my first order of business last morning was to book my date with destiny.
My long-uncherished dream, of course, was to watch Pistol Pete in action at Wimbledon (I have that on record in every slam-book I’ve touched since seventh grade) and this is as close as it gets.
Granted, this is no Wimbledon, but let’s wink at geography in the face of peerless genius. My due apologies to the strawberries-and-cream folk at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, but leopards don’t change their spots depending on the land they walk on (as long as that land isn’t clay!)
I can hardly wait….
Egotism ....a lifelong romance
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Setting sigh(!!)ts on Pete...
Posted by Karthika at Sunday, June 04, 2006
Labels: Keeping the Eye on the ball
8 comments:
excellent! watching pete sampras in action even now should be quite the experience. perchance i might be treated to a small photo in the philadelphia inquirer of a brown skin in the first row of the stands screaming "rain in spain wont keep me from samprain":)
eliza dolittle in tenth grade?!!! sure beats my mr.principal act in same grade:) who was mr.higgins btw?
devout vegetarian - HA!!! what happened - how DID you get corrupted?;-) sounds as oxymoronic as devout "pick your religion";-)
do you have to call Idli, "Indian rice-bread". I cant stand that. why not rice patty, or rice cake? ugh! We need to stop demystifying local dialect. why? because fermented indian rice bread could be - idli, oothappam, dosai or any other variation...which is why the local dialect has diff. names for each. Would it make sense if James Joyce changed the Irish vernacular in order to "translate"? or call the paisano "spanish peasant"?
:)
lol, rain in spain...a downpour in center court wouldnt have kept me from samprain if i had ever had that chance! btw, I thought you weren't a big fan of Pete?
hehe, i got all the 'crazy woman' parts in hi-skool for obvious reasons. and my height (or lack thereof) was a key factor. 'iggins was one of the taller girls. i'd have killed for that role, but wudda needed stilts & couldn't have put my decibels to good use there :)
uhmmm, i was vegetarian only cos i didn't know better and the rest of my family was and is still fanatically vegetarian. so, except for some "accidental" lunch sharing, I hadn't had a scrap of meat till I was 15. and I have decided to spend the rest of my life making up :) so, obligate meat-eater is where i am on the food chain now :D
the rice-bread was 'dosa'!!!! rice-cake is idli. I am jus trying to cater to maximum readership here; the blogosphere, as you know, is open to about 191 countries that dont understand dosa ;) [had to do a quick google for the # btw. didnt know that!]
where did you get the idea that i was not a big fan of pete? i just think he is one dimensional compared to federer. federer rules!!!!! but not admiring someone who has risen to the top of his sport! would it help to put it into perspective that i admire Lendl as well?:)
so what if there are 191 countries? I would ask you to write as is, not for an audience that wants to be fed with a spoon.
Does the Jewish community "translate" - schlep, nosh and shikse to name a few.
i would like to see more indian words creep into the colloquialism and to keep it on track...how about "trisai" (roasted thrice)
here goes - George Bush was trisaied at the national press club conference.
how about "fingered" as in "mess up" (for eating with ones fingers).
here goes - man, after that trip to the facial she looks fingered.
alright, so it is geeky as hell, which is why i wasnt tasked with coming up with new terms. still, there is a point in here ... somewhere:)
btw, dosai is not baked, is not made of flour or meal, and is not mixed with a leavening agent. Perhaps indian rice-pancake would have been apt but my point still is...;-)
ROTFL. Trisaied. I wudda thought ‘twas a word if MS didn’t point it out with that ugly red squiggle. Though for anything to do with Dubya, it’s gotta be no less than multisaied :D
Point well taken on ‘indianization’, but I don’t believe in the mixing of languages in a form that makes it incomprehensible to the reader; absolutely can’t stand the “ifying” that goes on in Chennai and certainly not the infusion of anything (be it Tamil or French) into the chastity that is English :)
However, if I ever write from a position that can decree changes in the English language (read The (NY)Times), I’ll be sure and anglicize some tamil words (the catamaran is still my favorite incorporation). The English language is sadly lacking in some words that the ancient languages use so abundantly.
Literal translations of some of the Dravidian languages do result in some unintentionally funny communications though – one that I remember distinctly from my not-so-savvy professors in college was “headline”!!!! you’d think waking up to it every morning wudda given them some kinda clue?!
As for my sticking to “bread” – sigh! -- should have known you’d get your definition straight from dictionary.com! well, in my defense, if bread can be “money” it sure as hell can be “dosa”. It’s paper thin and disappears in a jiffy ;)
Btw, I am still looking for your point...you were pretty generous with the literal ones though…….....[and I thought that was my area of expertise! Always leave room for more, lest the other party thought you were done :))))))))]
sigh!!! the part i dislike about indian authors writing in english is explaining things in great verbosity as if the readership would not take the time to assimilate. this is what makes all the difference between reading a work in tamil and one in english about tamil culture. you simply cant explain certain things.
chastity that is English :)
c'mon - english itself is dynamic because of incorporation of new words - greek, latin, french, you name it (something i learnt the hard way with greek and latin roots). yes, "ifying" things ranks among the top of my peeve list and others as well - such as - "you should see. from the tree he jumped down":)
It’s paper thin and disappears in a jiffy
:):):):):) thats the last and good word - no more literal mindedness. everything will be parsed and assumed in a metaphorical way.
and I thought that was my area of expertise
naaaah!!! you are not literal minded. there is a long way between "b" and "t";-)
Ahhhhh, life is but metaphoric. I’d sooner live the metaphoric one than the real one. How cool it would be if kick the bucket were indeed jus “kick the bucket” or cheesy were really cheesy. yum :)
knock ‘em dead wouldn’t be too pretty though….
lol, there sure is a huge difference b/w the liberal and the literal…cos the literal are the ones that take a set of laws written in stone (literally ;)) and allow no room for change :)
yeah, totally second ya on the English being a dynamic language thing – therein lies its charm and its ease of communication. But I think these words that come in from other languages need to go through an “anglicization” process so as not to remove from the fluidity.
"ONE DIMENSIONAL" - Sacrilege!!
14 Grand Slams, in the face of stiff competition from some of the all-time greats of the sport...is no mean feat.
Federer, in comparison hasn't come up against anybody like Agassi in his prime.
Oh wait...this one time at the Australian Open he faced a fully-fit Safin and....
Federer - OVERRATED and future fodder for Rafael Nadal. :-).
"ONE DIMENSIONAL" - Sacrilege!!
my bad. how could I?:) so here is a paean, an ode, a lampoon to sampras at the risk of offending some open admirers as well as closet ones (you know who you are):)
===============================
o, petey, petey, petey, my boy,
where have you gone?
like a candle burning in the wind
and leaving us all alone
we loved you so much, that ice-cold
demeanour, those huge serves.
at wimbledon, it was a one-two punch
that shattered your opponents nerves.
hardly a smile disfigured you, perhaps
a lick of those lips, was it the chaps?
no wiggle of the butt that we eagerly
looked for in the povas and kovas, deliciously.
that serve, almighty thunderbolt from heavens,
then a rush and volley, begone you heathens.
you didnt let the grass grow under your feet,
those serves like meteors, burning and sweet.
you came from the cally sunshine,
the state of oranges and lime,
but as well you could have been "iceman", no peer,
wait, that part was taken by van kilmer!
where have you gone, petey my boy,
like a candle burning in the wind.
all you had to was hold serve, and your opponent withered,
a couple of mental errors, one break, and the match was yours.
love from your admirers, guy, gal, gay, and bles(anagram) your soul
:)
================================
please notice that all i seemed to talk about was "the serve";-)
no offence, although I think petey is/was a great, i just never seemed to be able to sit through a full match of his, perhaps because he crushed his opponents like the aussies seem to do. federer seems positively bored at times, sampras always intense. if we can draw an analogy from chariots of fire i would compare federer to eric liddell and sampras to harold abrahams. i am of course open to being convinced otherwise;-).
the following analysis by agassi who is an all-time great and has played both says it all (agassi talking about federer) :
While Agassi doesn’t have a good track record on his side in this match-up against the defending champion, he has managed to keep a humorous perspective. “The guy plays great defense, plays great offense. He has a great hold game and he has a great break game,” said Agassi. “You play a bad match against Pete (Sampras), you lose 6-4, 7-5. You play a good match against Pete, you lose 6-4, 7-5. You play a good match against Federer, you lose 6-4, 7-5. You play a bad match against Federer, you lose 1 and 1.”
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