15 things you didn't know about Human Body

From Letters in the Economist

SIR – You rightly note that one element of the good governance of Texas is that our legislature meets only every two years for a 140-day session (“Too much of a good thing”, February 23rd). Many of us believe governance would improve further if the legislature met for two days every 140 years.

Jay Bute
El Lago, Texas

Auto Rickshaw Experiment in Ahmedabad...

http://www.g-auto.org/ is the website ::RSK

NAGPUR: A degree from IIM Ahmedabad could have easily landed Nirmal Kumar a job with a fat pay packet at a multinational company. However, Kumar chose to earn Rs45,000 a month, managing a fleet of 10,000 autorickshaws in Gujarat. Haggling with an autorickshaw driver over fare changed the course of life for this physically challenged, 2008 batch graduate from the country's premier management school. Kumar was in the city on Sunday to speak at the TIECON meet on promoting entrepreneurship. Kumar comes from a modest background, with the family based in Siwan district of Bihar. His father is employed as a primary schoolteacher. Kumar was overcharged by an auto while coming back to the college from a restaurant. He felt cheated, and the idea for a business came to him. He entered into a deal with the auto drivers who park outside the IIM campus. He assured them free newspapers and an health-cum-personal insurance cover, for which he spent his own money. In return, they only had to give an undertaking that they would charge proper fares. The idea clicked, and the next tranche of funding came from some companies in Gujarat. The companies happily agreed since the expenditure also accounted for their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, he said. "When I needed more funds, I contacted Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. The access was easy, and Modi was keen too. I requested his presence at the inauguration too and he obliged. He allotted funds and designated a senior bureaucrat to ensure we got the money," says Kumar. With funds, Kumar increased the facilities for drivers, and developed the brand 'G Auto'. The drivers got benefits like subsidized health care and education for their wards, besides the insurance. Today, revenue comes from mixed sources, including government, corporate as well as advertisement. "The vehicles carry ads, from which a sizeable revenue is generated, and we can break even. We have formed a trust, which pays my salary and also 21 of my colleagues," he said. Kumar is the managing director of the Nirmal Foundation. "Even now, anyone flouting the rules loses the benefits and membership of G Auto. But we also fight for the drivers if the cops wrongly harass them," he says. G Auto was voted second in the SMART Mobility Awards by the University of Michigan on transportation solutions. Recently, the union urban development secretary has written to all the states to emulate the model. Kumar, who also wants to expand, recently met Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit with plans for the national capital. Use of technology has enabled better monitoring of the vehicles through GPS. The vehicles also have computerized meters, which cannot be tweaked, says Kumar. Like a radio cab, customers can request a G auto from a call centre or through a free mobile phone app. Kumar's analysis is that a day's income for an autorickshaw driver does not go beyond the minimum wage of Rs250, after all expenses and vehicle maintenance is taken into account. Nirmal Foundation's system ensures they get more trips with the help of the call centre facility. The volumes compensate for the low margins, he said. On whether he regrets not having chosen the beaten path, Kumar says, "Today, my batch mates want to emulate me, but it is not the other way round."

Features of Genuine Indian Currency Notes

Easier way to get back into India at Airport Immigration

Indians won’t need to fill up landing forms

 

No delay for genuine flyers, but suspicious persons would be questioned

By Nilima Pathak, Correspondent

Published: 16:19 March 17, 2013 Gulf News

 

New Delhi: Immigration authorities are set to make life a bit easy for Indian air travellers. The bureau of immigration has decided to do away with disembarkation or landing forms.

 

An official told Gulf News, “The advance information system is being introduced from July 1 and is likely to be fully functional at all airports by September 2013.”

 Under the new system, NRIs (non resident Indians) and resident Indians flying home to India, will not have to fill disembarkation forms, nor will the immigration officials waste time going over the details and make the passengers wait.

 

 “Passengers’ details will be sent digitally to the destination airport approximately 15 minutes after a flight takes off from any country. This will reduce time spent at the immigration counter and allow passengers to leave the airport faster,” the official informed.

 

 Dr B.N. Shetty, Deputy Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC), said, “The system is already in place and we can implement it as soon as the government announces it. The ministry of home affairs and the bureau of immigration is closely involved in the project.”

 

Shetty said the procedure would not only help passengers at the airports, but would also result in huge savings in terms of unnecessary paper work. Millions of NRIs and resident Indians arrive from abroad every year and the immigration authorities have to deal with piles of disembarkation forms.

 

 According to an NIC official, “This ambitious project was planned about two years ago. We have been steering government departments at the federal and state levels to adopt new technologies in line with several foreign countries, as these ensure both speed and transparency.”

 

 The disembarkation cards contain information, including name, sex, date of birth, nationality, passport details, occupation, final destination and purpose of visit, which is already available with the airline.

 

 Since many passengers fill up the forms illegibly resulting in delays at the immigration counters, these serve practically no purpose and rather result in further delay, as officials begin to correct and re-enter names or passport details.

 

Even the security agencies say the system would be a major boost in controlling crimes. While the genuine flyers would not face any delay, any suspicious person could be held for questioning, as the intelligence agencies would already have scanned their detailed information..

 

 In normal circumstances, suspects get away easily, taking advantage of the rush at the immigration counters.

​Peter Nazareth, TNN | Mar 24, 2013, 02.25 AM IST

The dargah of the soldier-saint of Colonel-Shah Pir.

RATANPUR VILLAGE (KHEDA): When villagers in Kheda get trapped in debt or
 want their children to do well in studies, they travel to the Colonel-Shah Pir. This is perhaps
 the only dargah of its kind in Gujarat which is dedicated to a British army officer from the Raj.

Lieutenant Colonel William Carden of the 17th Regiment of Light Dragoons had died here
 in November 1817. But his legacy as a kind of Robin Hood of the time has survived almost
 200 years after his death. Interestingly, both Hindus and Muslims revere this soldier-saint
 who helped the people during famines and epidemics and also gangs of Pindari robbers.

"He would give away government money to help the poor and fought for exploited people
 against the rulers of the time," says Dashrath Chauhan, who owns a field near the
 hillock in Ratanpur village, 3 km from Kheda, where the tomb stands.

"All our wishes are granted here," says Sanjay Jhala, another farmer who lives nearby.
 "The Muslims offer boiled eggs and cigarettes, some offer English liquor (IMFL).
 Hindus, generally, offer stuffed toy horses if a wish is fulfilled."

"The period from 1808 to 1820 saw political instability as the Maratha empire was waning.
 Famines and outbreaks of cholera and other diseases were common. It is likely that 
Carden was a compassionate officer," says historian Rizwan Kadri.

According to Irish genealogical records, Carden was born in 1768. He may have
 had a spiritual outlook as he was the son of reverend Richard Carden. He 
graduated from Trinity College, Dublin University, in 1789 with a bachelor's degree in arts.

He may have been just a soldier with big heart, but the local villagers have turned him 
into a patron saint. "When he died, he came back as a ghost to help the people, as he
 thought he hadn't done enough. Occasionally people claim to have seen him on a splendid 
white horse. As he used government money to help others, the government had his
 spirit bottled up by a witchdoctor and buried it in the tomb," says Haji Malek, a shepherd
 at Ratanpur, who learnt of the stories from elders and neighbours.

Deliberate Encounter With Poverty

Late last year, two young men decided to live a month of their lives on the income of an average poor Indian. One of them, Tushar, the son of a police officer in Haryana, studied at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for three years as an investment banker in the US and Singapore. The other, Matt, migrated as a teenager to the States with his parents, and studied in MIT. Both decided at different points to return to India, joined the UID Project in Bengaluru, came to share a flat, and became close friends.

The idea suddenly struck them one day. Both had returned to India in the vague hope that they could be of use to their country. But they knew the people of this land so little. Tushar suggested one evening — “Let us try to understand an ‘average Indian', by living on an ‘average income'.” His friend Matt was immediately captured by the idea. They began a journey which would change them forever.

To begin with, what was the average income of an Indian? They calculated that India's Mean National Income was Rs. 4,500 a month, or Rs. 150 a day. Globally people spend about a third of their incomes on rent. Excluding rent, they decided to spend Rs. 100 each a day. They realised that this did not make them poor, only average. Seventy-five per cent Indians live on less than this average.

The young men moved into the tiny apartment of their domestic help, much to her bemusement. What changed for them was that they spent a large part of their day planning and organising their food. Eating out was out of the question; even dhabas were too expensive. Milk and yoghurt were expensive and therefore used sparingly, meat was out of bounds, as were processed food like bread. No ghee or butter, only a little refined oil. Both are passionate cooks with healthy appetites. They found soy nuggets a wonder food — affordable and high on proteins, and worked on many recipes. Parle G biscuits again were cheap: 25 paise for 27 calories! They innovated a dessert of fried banana on biscuits. It was their treat each day.

Restricted life

Living on Rs.100 made the circle of their life much smaller. They found that they could not afford to travel by bus more than five km in a day. If they needed to go further, they could only walk. They could afford electricity only five or six hours a day, therefore sparingly used lights and fans. They needed also to charge their mobiles and computers. One Lifebuoy soap cut into two. They passed by shops, gazing at things they could not buy. They could not afford the movies, and hoped they would not fall ill.

However, the bigger challenge remained. Could they live on Rs. 32, the official poverty line, which had become controversial after India's Planning Commission informed the Supreme Court that this was the poverty line for cities (for villages it was even lower, at Rs. 26 per person per day)?

Harrowing experience

For this, they decided to go to Matt's ancestral village Karucachal in Kerala, and live on Rs. 26. They ate parboiled rice, a tuber and banana and drank black tea: a balanced diet was impossible on the Rs. 18 a day which their briefly adopted ‘poverty' permitted. They found themselves thinking of food the whole day. They walked long distances, and saved money even on soap to wash their clothes. They could not afford communication, by mobile and internet. It would have been a disaster if they fell ill. For the two 26-year-olds, the experience of ‘official poverty' was harrowing.

Yet, when their experiment ended with Deepavali, they wrote to their friends: “Wish we could tell you that we are happy to have our ‘normal' lives back. Wish we could say that our sumptuous celebratory feast two nights ago was as satisfying as we had been hoping for throughout our experiment. It probably was one of the best meals we've ever had, packed with massive amounts of love from our hosts. However, each bite was a sad reminder of the harsh reality that there are 400 million people in our country for whom such a meal will remain a dream for quite some time. That we can move on to our comfortable life, but they remain in the battlefield of survival — a life of tough choices and tall constraints. A life where freedom means little and hunger is plenty...

Plenty of questions

It disturbs us to spend money on most of the things that we now consider excesses. Do we really need that hair product or that branded cologne? Is dining out at expensive restaurants necessary for a happy weekend? At a larger level, do we deserve all the riches we have around us? Is it just plain luck that we were born into circumstances that allowed us to build a life of comfort? What makes the other half any less deserving of many of these material possessions, (which many of us consider essential) or, more importantly, tools for self-development (education) or self-preservation (healthcare)?

We don't know the answers to these questions. But we do know the feeling of guilt that is with us now. Guilt that is compounded by the love and generosity we got from people who live on the other side, despite their tough lives. We may have treated them as strangers all our lives, but they surely didn't treat us as that way...

So what did these two friends learn from their brief encounter with poverty? That hunger can make you angry. That a food law which guarantees adequate nutrition to all is essential. That poverty does not allow you to realise even modest dreams. And above all — in Matt's words — that empathy is essential for democracy.

Fifteen facts you probably never knew about vitamin D and sunlight exposure.....

•  Fifteen facts you probably never knew about vitamin D and sunlight exposure.

• Vitamin D prevents osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer,and even effects diabetes and obesity.

• Vitamin D is perhaps the single most underrated nutrient in the world of nutrition.That's probably because it's free: your body makes it when sunlight touches your skin. Drug companies can't sell you sunlight, so there's no promotion of its health benefits.

The truth is, most people don't know the real story on vitamin D and health. So here's an overview taken from an interview between Mike Adams and Dr.Michael Holick.

1. Vitamin D is produced by your skin in response to exposure to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight.

2. The healing rays of natural sunlight (that generate vitamin D in your skin) cannot penetrate glass.
So you don't generate vitamin D when sitting in your car or home.

3. It is nearly impossible to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet.
Sunlight exposure is the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body.

4. A person would have to drink ten tall glasses of vitamin D fortified milk each day just to
get minimum levels of vitamin D into their diet.

5. The further you live from the equator, the longer exposure you need to the sun in order to generate vitamin D.
Canada, the UK and most U.S. States are far from the equator.

6. People with dark skin pigmentation may need 20 - 30 times as much exposure to sunlight as
fair-skinned people to generate the sam e amount of vitamin D. That's why prostate cancer is
epidemic among black men - it's a simple, but widespread, sunlight deficiency.

7. Sufficient levels of vitamin D are crucial for calcium absorption in your intestines.
Without sufficient vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium,rendering calcium supplements useless.

8. Chronic vitamin D deficiency cannot be reversed overnight: it takes months of vitamin D
supplementation and sunlight exposure to rebuild the body's bones and nervous system.

9. Even weak sunscreens (SPF=8) block your body's ability to generate vitamin D by 95%.
This is how sunscreen products actually cause disease by creating a critical vitamin deficiency in the body.

10. It is impossible to generate too much vitamin D in your body from sunlight exposure:
your body will self-regulate and only generate what it needs.

11. If it hurts to press firmly on your sternum, you may be suffering from chronic
vitamin D deficiency right now.

12. Vitamin D is "activated" in your body by your kidneys and liver before it can be used.

13. Having kidney disease or liver damage can greatly impair your body's ability to activate
circulating vitamin D.

14. The sunscreen industry doesn't want you to know that your body actually needs
sunlight exposure because that realization would mean lower sales of sunscreen products.

15. Even though vitamin D is one of the most powerful healing chemicals in your body,
your body makes it absolutely free. No prescription required.

On the issue of sunlight exposure, by the way, it turns out that super antioxidants greatly  boost your body's ability to handle sunlight without burning. Astaxanthin  is one of the most powerful "internal sunscreens" and can allow you to stay under the sun twice as long
without burning.

<http://www.naturalnews.com/002156.html>
<http://www.naturalnews.com/002156.html>

Other powerful antioxidants with this ability include the super fruits like Acai, Pomegranates (POM Wonderful juice), blueberries, etc.

Diseases and conditions cause by vitamin D deficiency:

* Osteoporosis is commonly caused by a lack of vitamin D, which greatly impairs calcium absorption.

* Sufficient vitamin D prevents prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, depression, colon cancer and schizophrenia.

* "Rickets" is the name of a bone-wasting disease caused by vitamin D deficiency.

* Vitamin D deficiency may exacerbate type 2 diabetes and impair insulin production in the pancreas.

* Obesity impairs vitamin D utilization in the body, meaning obese people need twice as much vitamin D.

* Vitamin D is used around the world to treat Psoriasis.

* Vitamin D deficiency can cause schizophrenia.

* Seasonal Affective Disorder is caused by a melatonin imbalance initiated by lack of exposure to sunlight.

* Chronic vitamin D deficiency is often misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia because its symptoms
are so similar: muscle weakness, aches and pains.

* Your risk of developing serious diseases like diabetes and cancer is reduced 50% - 80% through simple, sensible exposure to natural sunlight 2-3 times each week.

* Infants who receive vitamin D supplementation (2000 units daily) have an 80% reduced risk of developing type 1 diabetes over the next twenty years.

Shocking Vitamin D deficiency statistics:

* 32% of doctors and medical school students are vitamin D deficient.

* 40% of the U.S. population is vitamin D deficient.

* 42% of African American women of childbearing age are deficient in vitamin D.

* 48% of young girls (9-11 years old) are vitamin D deficient.

* Up to 60% of all hospital patients are vitamin D deficient.

* 76% of pregnant mothers are severely vitamin D deficient, causing widespread
vitamin D deficiencies in their unborn children, which predisposes them to type 1 diabetes,
arthritis, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia later in life. 

*81% of the children born to these mothers were deficient.

* Up to 80% of nursing home patients are vitamin D deficient.

The Big Question: Ian Jack finds the smell of one place evokes the whole country

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, March/April 2013

I lost my sense of smell several years ago. I suppose it must have happened gradually, the subtle ones going first—the smell of an empty bath, say, followed a couple of days later by that of the pages in a new book; and then on and on, a new piece missing every day, until the olfactory landscape, so infinitely various, became nothing more than a few stinks that a wine writer might describe as big and bold. And even those were distorted and not as I felt they should be. When we passed a field of sileage on a country road, my family would pantomime a stench by holding their noses and grimacing, but what I smelt might have been roast lamb. And vice versa, regrettably: when lamb was in the oven and people were saying "Mmmm" like the Bisto Kids as its aroma drifted into the living room, I was wondering how a barnyard had got into the kitchen.

I remember noticing that something was wrong at the pier where we take the ferry to our summer holiday at an island in the Forth Clyde. To reach the pier takes at least six hours by train or car, so we step out of our enclosures ready to be braced and refreshed. "Ah, the sea, the sea," my wife said one year, sniffing the air, and I realised that the fragrance of salt and seaweed was now just an out-of-reach memory for me, like an old tune that no amount of humming can recall. 

Worse, or at least more dramatic, was India. I hadn’t been to India for several years and then one day in December 2005 I stepped off the London plane at Bangalore and moved down corridors and halls that were completely odour-free. No disinfectant, no joss sticks, no sandalwood at the tourist stall; then, once outside and looking for a cab, no cheap Indian cigarettes, no heat-dried urine, nothing. 

I think of myself as lucky to have known smells, once. My historical favourites would include our babies, freshly bathed, an opened orange and Indian railway junctions 30-odd years ago, when I stepped down to the platform from an overnight train and drank tea from one of those little clay cups during the ten-minute stop that allowed the steam locomotives to be changed. Coal smoke, engine oil, sweet milky tea, cooking fires made from dried cowpats: if only I could smell that combination again. When a person can’t smell India he knows his nose is really in trouble.

What do you think is the best smell? Have your say by voting in our online poll. Read Ann Wroe on Wild roses, Edward Carr on Baking bread and Rose Tremain on New-mown hay.

Ian Jack is a columnist on the Guardian and author of "The Country Formerly known as Great Britain" A book of his articles about India is due this year

Memories of Virender

Now that his best is likely behind him, let us look back on some Sehwag classics

Ramachandra Guha

March 20, 2013

Comments: 11 | Post yours as  Ravi Khot | Text size: A | A

	Never another like Sehwag © Associated Press  Enlarge

I was in southern China when I heard Virender Sehwag had been dropped. The news didn't leave a mark, for cricket is not something much spoken of in the People's Republic. Then, a week later, on the plane back home, I began listening to Bismillah Khan, and the memories began to crowd my mind. As my playlist went through "Nand Kedar", "Shyam Kalyan", "Yaman", "Durga" and the rest, I thought only of the maverick genius from Najafgarh, of his walk, his demeanour, the coloured cloth tied around his head, and, from time to time, of the range and subtlety of his strokeplay. Every innings of his that I ever saw was replayed in as much detail as the mind of a 55-year-old will allow.

That it was Bismillah Khan who set me on to Sehwag may not have been an accident. Bismillah was one of the Fab Five of India's Great Modern Instrumentalists, in character closer to this particular opening batsman than were the others. Nikhil Banerjee was quiet and understated, Vilayat Khan angular and complicated, Ravi Shankar focused and ambitious, Ali Akbar Khan enigmatic, even inscrutable. Bismillah, like Sehwag, was both joyful and guileless (perhaps the two must go together).

As the shehnai played all around me, I went back - as historians are trained to do - to the beginning. I first saw Sehwag bat in a one-day match against Australia, in Bangalore, shortly after the epic Kolkata Test of 2001. Known then as an offspinning allrounder, Sehwag came in to bat low down the order. To his second or third delivery, he walked down the wicket and hit the greatest bowler since SF Barnes down towards where my son and I sat in the BEML Stand. It was a statement of intent - that was how he would always play, regardless of the state of the game or the reputation of the bowler. Warne or Murali, Pollock or McGrath, they all came and went the same way. Sehwag went on here to score a fifty, and to take three wickets in an Indian win.

Later that year I saw him play a Test match against England. The scorecard tells me that he hit 13 boundaries in a score of 66. I suppose some must have been glides past point and flicks past midwicket. The boundary I remember best came early in his innings.

Sachin Tendulkar was batting at the other end. The Master had got fluently to 50, but was then tied up by Ashley Giles, bowling over the wicket. Sachin thrust his ample backside at the ball, padding up, time and again. On the other hand, Sehwag smartly reverse-swept the first ball he received from the left-arm spinner for four. We were impressed, but his partner, apparently, was unnerved. When he next faced Giles, Sachin ran aimlessly down the wicket and was out for 90, stumped for the first time in his Test career.

In the summer of 2002 I was in England on work. An indulgent friend got me a press pass for the Lord's Test. India went in to bat at tea on the second day, after England had amassed 487. Sehwag, by now an opener, played some exquisite drives and cuts off the fast bowlers. When Ashley Giles came on to bowl, he immediately hit him through and over cover for two fours. The spinner, in fright (or flight), went over the wicket. Sehwag now made room to drive through the off side again, missed, and was bowled.

After play ended, I ran into Michael Atherton in the media centre's tea room. He was critical of Sehwag. "He should have played for stumps," he said, "rather than be reckless and expose Sachin at the end of the day." I disagreed. The way Sehwag got to 84 was also the way he got out. He could not, would not, bat like a conventional opener - that is to say, like Michael Atherton.

Or indeed like Sunil Gavaskar. Which brings me to the most extended Sehwag innings I saw, which was played at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in the last week of March 2005. Pakistan, batting first, had scored in excess of 500. India had to bat ten overs at the end of the second day, during which time they got to 55, the bulk of the scoring, naturally, by Sehwag.

The next day, he proceeded crisply and elegantly to a double-century. Mohammad Sami pitched up, at 90 miles an hour; he went back at twice the pace, the ball whizzing down the ground to the sightscreen. Abdul Razzak was taken for fours past and behind point. The offspinner Arshad Khan was swept fine and hoicked over midwicket. The legspinner Danish Kaneria was cut, pulled, and driven for boundaries. It was a seamless, flawless innings, which ended shortly after tea, when Sehwag was caught-and-bowled by Kaneria.

I was sitting this time in the press box, with my friend the cricket writer Suresh Menon. During the afternoon session, after Sehwag had hit one of this 30 boundaries, Suresh turned to me and said: "Ram, either Merchant or Gavaskar has now to go from our all-time India XI." I agreed, reluctantly (the cricketing preferences and prejudices of one's boyhood are hard to shake). But which one? As Suresh and I debated the question, a former Test player of the 1970s (who must remain unnamed) said: "If Sunny [then upstairs in the commentary box] was to hear you both, he would start composing a column about how it is in the team's best interests for Sehwag to bat in the middle order."

But an opener Sehwag remained. Close to two years later, against Pakistan in Lahore, India ended the fourth day at 403 for no loss. Sehwag had made 247 of those runs, outscoring his partner two to one. Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, writing on this site, said: "Sehwag produced an off-side masterclass - only nine of his 46 fours came on the leg side", in reaching the second-fastest double-hundred of all time.

	At his age, and given how much his batsmanship depends on his eyesight and his reflexes, we have really seen the end of Sehwag as we knew him

ESPNcricinfo focused on the cricket, whereas other journalists were looking for other stories. At the press conference afterwards, the Indian openers were asked how it felt to be a mere ten runs short of the record partnership of Vinoo Mankad and Pankaj Roy. Rahul Dravid said something about the greatness of Mankad and the burden of history. Sehwag, asked the same question, said something like: "Who is this Mankad?"

The answers were flashed along the wires to Bangalore, where a television channel demanded my reaction to the varying tone of the openers' remarks. I was in bed, with a broken foot, from where I told the reporter to calm down, to not see this as ignorance or foolishness but as a spontaneous and indeed joyous expression of the man's personality. Dravid, faced with a chest-high bouncer from Dale Steyn, would play it discreetly down to his feet. Sehwag, in the same situation, would sway his body backwards and slash the ball over slips for four. Had Sehwag ever known of Vinoo Mankad, he would never have played for India at all.

As a batsman, Sehwag was sui generis. There was, however, a bowler who shared some of the same characteristics, cricketing as well as personal. He likewise played by instinct and touch rather than by technique or tradition. He too was wayward and whimsical. On a wicket helpful to him, he might go for none for plenty; on a flat track, he might slice through the opposition like a knife through butter. Withal, like Sehwag he was a truly great player, who won Tests for India at home and abroad. Like him, he was a cheery, ever-smiling lad who played with a splendid lack of concern for the record books. This fellow would be pencilled in last in my mythical India All-time XI, perfectly complementing, in all senses, the man placed at the top of the order.

Unlike Dravid (or Laxman), Virender Sehwag has not yet formally retired from the game. Yet I sense that the act of removing him from the Test side will be decisive. At his age, and given how much his batsmanship depends on his eyesight and his reflexes, we have really seen the end of Sehwag as we knew him. Which is why I lay awake all night on the Air China flight from Beijing, recalling the times I had seen him bat.

When the plane landed, it was 1.30am in New Delhi. I had a long taxi ride to my hotel. I had thought enough about Sehwag - now I wanted to talk. Who among my cricketing companions could I speak with? Suresh Menon and Mukul Kesavan were asleep. TG Vaidyanathan and Sujit Mukherjee were dead. So I rang up my son, still awake and alert in America. We discussed the many innings by Sehwag we had seen, singly or together, and then the innings we would have liked to have seen.

We both agreed that, forced to choose only one knock, it would have to be the 155 he scored at Chepauk in October 2004, made after Anil Kumble had spun out the Australians on the first day. Recall that Anil got six wickets the second time around. At close of play on the fourth day India were 19 for no loss, Sehwag 12 not out (all boundaries). Another 210 runs were required to win. It rained all night, and not a ball was bowled on the morrow.

As the taxi entered the driveway of my hotel, I decided I must (as fathers tend to) have the last word. "The two people I feel most sorry for today," I said to my son, "are TG Vaidyanathan and yourself." Why, he asked, allowing me to express, in my own voice, the words he knew were coming. I did. "TGV did not watch Virender Sehwag bat. And you did not watch BS Chandrasekhar bowl."

Historian and cricket writer Ramachandra Guha is the author of A Corner of A Foreign Field and Wickets in the East among other books

NO this, NO that !

The Rules of Writing

(in alphbetical order)

It has come to our considered attention that in a large majority of cases, far too many people use a great deal more words than is absolutely necessary when engaged in the practice of writing sentences. If you proofread and edit your work, you can find that by rereading and editing, a great deal of redundant repetition can be removed and eliminated by rereading, proofreading, and editing, so you should reread and edit to remove and eliminate these redundant repetitions.

"Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"

a sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation

A writer must not shift your point of view.

About those sentence fragments. Remember subject, verb, object.

Also too, never, ever, ever be redundantly repetitive; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superflu-ous.

Also, always avoid all awkward and affected alliteration.

Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.

Always be looking out for "be" verbs, for they are supplying verbiage all scholars are discouraging.

Always pick on the correct idiom.

Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

Avoid colloquial stuff, and trendy locutions that sound flaky.

Avoid commas, that are not necessary, and don't overuse exclamation marks!!!

Avoid the use of dyed-in-the-wool cliches like the plague; they are old hat.

Avoid using sesquipedalian words.

Avoidification of neologisms strengthenifies your prosification.

Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.

Be more or less specific.

Bee careful two use the write homonym.

Between you and I, case is important.

Beware of and eschew pompous prolixity, and avoid the utilization of enlarged words when shortened ones will suffice.

Beware of malapropisms. They are a communist submersive plot.

Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

Continuity of thought, logical development and smooth transitions are important. Never leave the reader guess-ing.

Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.

Correct speling is esential.

DO NOT overuse exclamation points and all caps to emphasize!!!

Do not put statements in the negative form.

Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

Don't never use no double negatives.

Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

Don't use no double negatives.

Don't verb nouns.

Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.

Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.

Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

Employ the vernacular.

Eschew ampersands & abbrevs, etc...

Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.

Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms, ya know?

Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

Good writers do not use one verb tense in one part of a sentence, and then have switched to a different tense in the next.

Hyphenate between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.

If a dependent clause precedes an independent clause put a comma after the dependent clause.

If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

If the writer is considerate of the reader, he won't have a problem with ambiguous sentences.

If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million uses it correctly.

In all cases, you should never generalize.

In letters compositions reports and things like that use commas to keep a string of items apart.

In statements involving two word phrases, make an all out effort to use hyphens, but make sure you hyp-henate properly.

It is incumbent on us to eschew archaisms.

It is not resultful to transform one part of speech into another by prefixing, suffixing, or other alterings.

It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

Join clauses good like a conjunction should.

Kill all exclamation points!!!

Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.

Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.

Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.

No sentence fragments.

One should never generalize.

One word sentences? Eliminate!

Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized.

Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.

Perform a functional iterative analysis on your work to root out third generation transitional buzzwords.

Place pronouns as closely as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.

Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

Profanity is for assholes; it makes writing crappy.

Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

Puns are for children, not groan readers.

Run on sentences cause all sorts of problems for readers and people should never use them and must try to write better and divide their sentences.

Sentences without verbs--bad idea.

Simplify! How? Eliminate one-word sentences.

Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language.

The de facto use of foreign phrases vis-a-vis plain English in your written tete-a-tetes is not apropros.

The passive voice is to be avoided.

This sentence no verb. Which is not a complete sentence, but merely a subordinate clause.

Try to not ever split infinitives.

Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.

Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.

Use delightful but irrelevant extra adjectives and adverbs with sparing and parsimonious infrequency, for they unnecessarily bloat your otherwise perfect sentence.

Use hyphens in compound-words, not just where two-words are related.

Use language that includes all men.

Use parallel structure when you write and in speaking.

Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.

Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't.

Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.

Usually, you should be more or less specific.

Vary your words variously so as to use various words.

Verbs has to agree with their antecedents.

Verbs has to agree with their subjects, and the adverb always follows the verb.

When composing informal documents, employ the vernacular.

When dangling, watch your participles.

Who needs rhetorical questions?