Rahul Dash

An alert bartender or a prying waiter will confirm, if you enquire, people's tendency of pretending to be intoxicated so as to be able to say things that they aren't quite sure are intelligent enough to be uttered in a state of sobriety. These 'things' usually comprise of dreamy (or to borrow the parlance of intoxication while staying within the somewhat ambiguous censor-constraints of online publishing, 'insanely awesome') sequences involving juxtapositions of larger than life, cultural, societal superheroes. Such as:

- "Wouldn't it be insanely awesome if Messi and Ronaldo played together?"

- "Wouldn't it be insanely awesome if Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson made a movie together?"

- "Wouldn't it be insanely awesome if Leonard Cohen wrote lyrics for Led Zeppelin?"

Read what you may (can) of the fact that Formula One currently uses four-stroke V8, naturally aspirated reciprocating engines and that that piece of information overrides all other considerations, human, which is why it is almost impossible to fathom a global TV audience of more than half a billion, especially when you consider that the 'sport' (hereafter referred to as sport), once stripped of grotesque details about engines and tyres, has a simple man in a highly complicated car navigating simple routes according to highly complicated rules, over and over again. This is not traditional entertainment. This isn't the celebration of Messi's agility, Federer's grace or Bolt's cockiness (Think of the last time you had an impassioned debate about the kind of sole used in Lionel Messi's footwear, or the composition of the fibre used in Roger Federer's racquet). Honestly, it doesn't seem to be about any one particular 'thing'.

Unbeknownst to most, somewhere along the moneyed piece of land to the north of the river Thames, there is a billion dollar experiment being conducted by a team of Europeans, the aim -as always- being, to decode something invisible, by  finding better explanations of the visible. Every now and then one hears whispers of a breakthrough; the promised elusive particle that justifies a theoretically well defined model; and as is the case with most models, in the face of long and boring data, the whispers remain Chinese, and the theory Greek. And the whole Sisyphean iteration repeats; another candidate, another set of data, the proven pointlessness of the point that apparently awaits proof.

Here is one way of looking at Fernando Torres: When he runs, dodges, re-runs, re-dodges and scores in that special way he can, he seems to be a great ship on a calm, green ocean; for he doesn't really run, he sails. The ugly notion of terrestrial locomotion is replaced by something much more subtle and beautiful; less popliteus, more magicus. The ball at his feet assumes a life of its own, and together, master and slave stroll the length of the field, searching for common goals.

Right around the time Felix Baumgartner jumped from space, a better known individual fell from a greater height without a parachute. Cancer survival and noble charity work notwithstanding, Lance Armstrong, who called the Tour de France "a contest in purposeless suffering" in his autobiography, 'It's Not About the Bike', subjected his admirers to something similar as he landed with a thud that finally broke the hypnotic spell under which his fans operated all these years, and the saddest part of this entire exercise seems to be the fact that after waking up, we do seem to remember everything.

"We are a generation of men raised by women; I wonder if another woman  is what we need"

                                                                                             - Tyler Durden

                                     "... A good boxer is an artist ..."

                                                                                             - Norman Mailer