Microstory 129 – Remembering Maradona 1986 — 86th minute.
My grandfather was a football fanatic. In his drawer, I had seen pictures of Pele. I picked up an interest in football from him in the mid-’80s. Then my father bought the Dyanora colour television and we could watch football in all its glory. I recollect those moments when my grandfather and I would sit in front of the TV and rave about Maradona. In fact, we even justified the “Hand of God”. It was the first time I had watched football in my life. I still recollect the pass given by Maradona. Although Diego Maradona was heavily marked by Lothar Matthäus in the entire game, his superb pass to Jorge Burruchaga in the 86th minute allowed Argentina to regain the lead at 3–2 when he slid the ball past the advancing goalkeeper from the right and into the corner of the net. My tribute to a great footballer who will go down in my life as the one who gave me some wonderful memories with my grandfather. I liked this golden nugget from him:
Microstory 130 – Malleability
Just after our marriage, I used to hate qawwalis when my wife used to play tapes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Sometime back when I was staying in a hotel, I was almost asleep when I heard a certain part of a qawwali and I jumped out of my bed and looked for my iPhone to record that piece ( I didn’t have that app that can instantly recognize the music). After reaching home I gave it to my wife as she is good at putting the right keywords to get that track. She also struggled initially until a clue from my elder daughter (which we initially dismissed) turned out to be correct. My daughter said, “I guess the singer is a female one”. It turned out to be that she had a very unique voice. For a couple of days, we all had this song in our head and it kept humming. I told my wife one thing, that If I can change from a type who hates qawwali to someone who jumps out of the bed to record, search, and gets a qawwali we are all malleable. The last time I had enjoyed a Sufi song was Tajdar-e-Haram . In fact, it was by accident that I saw the video and I liked it instantly. YouTube has got to that algorithm and every day it keeps pushing its recommendation engine with new ghazals and qawwalis for me in my feed. If you change your internal feed, YouTube changes your external feeds as well. Have you checked your YouTube feed lately?
Microstory 131 – “Hall-own-tween” 2020
We get that 2020 has been a horror show in itself. So when my younger daughter and her friends were planning a Halloween party we were only giving limited support. The tweens arranged our hall on their own and let their creativity run riot. I called it as “Hall-own- tween. “
I read in a paper that this time around there were these four themes for Halloween, V for Vendetta, Spirited away, Scream, and Money Heist. So that evening when I came into my home office room they had posted this image below on my cupboard. I am wondering whether this was their time for a Hall-own-tween fun with me. I wondered whether this was V for Vendetta?!
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