Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The Successor..

As President Kalams term comes to an end, the question once again arises as to who shall be an able successor to someone who has made such an impact in his term, someone with a similar outlook, and yet with an approach as dynamic and unique as the person himself. Certain names have already started doing the rounds. Amitabh Bachchan ?!?! (ya rite!), I even heard Shashi Tharoor somewhere..
But the person who I, n I'm sure many more people would like to see become the President of the Republic of India is Co-Founder and ex Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies, Mr. N. R. Narayana Murthy. He has already found support in the current president Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, n Shobha De (not that she even remotely matters, but still!) amongst others.

The man personifies the statement 'Simple Living, High Thinking!' A visionary par excellence. His views on almost all issues are exemplary. His thought process crystal clear, his morals absolutely rock solid. He stands for what he thinks is right and doesn't budge. He is the man WE need right now.

Personally, infact I would like to see him becoming the Prime Minister of India, because ultimately a President is only a titular head, but for him to become Prime Minister would require him to be affiliated to a political party which in Indias current scenario, I'm sure he wont do, because then he doesn't remain an independent voice, he is bound by the agenda of the political party and its vested political interests.

Take up the chair Mr. Murthy and make India what it should have become long ago. A DEVELOPED COUNTRY!

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Sepang!

Todays post is solely dedicated to the Malaysian Grand Prix ' 007..

The hottest race of the year, conditions most cars arent accustomed to.. And if the pre-race testing was anything to go by, Ferrari was just edging out McLaren by that little bit..

But McLaren McLaren McLaren.. Oh What a race it was.. From the moment the 5 lights went off, the race had MCLAREN written all over it.. Alonso outraced Massa to the first corner and took the lead, and Hamilton (This guy is special, real special!) very smartly, first took his position behind Kimi, and when the corner came, saw the space to move through and took it Brilliantly.

It was quite evident that Hamilton was on a heavy fuel load because Alonso after taking the lead just flew, and Hamilton had the two (as he put it in the post race interview) red blobs right behing him, whenever he saw the mirrors.. The amount of pressure Hamilton was absorbing was tremendous. He was holding up two of the fastest cars in F1 right behind his ass. And then Massa (who started at pole) tried this fancy move on Hamilton, and royally screwed it up.. Hahahaha.. I was in splits.. Massa (Bah!) out of the picture and Kimi started to close in. Kimi (A McLaren Product!) and Hamilton(easily one of the best finds of F1 in years, and as mentioned before, very very special).. They fought it out. Kimi within .5 secs of Hamilton. I was very sure Hamilton would concede.. But No! He didn't budge! And Kimi had to retreat temporarily and hope that the pitstops would give him the edge.

Come pitstop time and Alonso drove in and out safely. Kimi went in and out. And when Hamilton pitted, it was perfect (I have very rarely seen McLaren falter with a pit stop. They may screw up with construction, sometimes even strategy but as far as the pit stop goes, they are usually precision perfect!) The pitstop almost gave him a 6-7 sec advantage over Kimi..

The mid race was quite uneventful. With Alonso and Hamilton taking almost a 20 sec advantage over the rest of the cars. That was till the post 2nd pit stop stages where suddenly Kimi started steadily catching up on Hamilton. He was easily bettering Hamiltons time by almost a half second every lap. 13 laps left, the gap was 8 odd secs and by the time 7 laps were left the gap was 3.5 secs.. Oh! Was Kimi suddenly gonna snatch it, i thought?! I hoped not. I genuinely hoped not! The gap kept reducing 4 laps 2 secs, in the next 2 laps it came down to just over a second. I was like Fuck! No No No.. But thankfully Hamilton showed the mettle he's made off managing to fend off Kimi and came 2nd. Alonso obviously coming 1st.. A McLaren 1-2.. Ages since i had seen that.. I was ON TOP OF THE WORLD..

It was so heartening to see Alonso and Hamilton celebrate. Dancing like Abhishek Bachchan n Zayed Khan did in 'Chham Se'.. The podium, post race.wonderful.. And the most special moment of them all? When Hamilton on the radio just after coming 2nd to the team said.. "Someday very soon, I'm going to have one!"

I'm sure you will Lewis..

HAmILton ALONSO!!
MCLAREN FOREVER!