Seabiscuit

My all time favorite and a true story in America "Seabiscuit", I thought I should share some thoughts on this movie.

This is a story of an Undersized Horse and 3 men who not only change their lives but also influenced the people around them. For years this horse fought with his trainers and his owner grappling at low level of racing, he was misunderstood and mishandled and the owner had decided to kill him, but a millionaire comes to his rescue and buys him at the cheapest rate.
He makes a team with a mustang breaker and a prize fighter who is also a failed Jockey. But the thing is that these men had no horse sense but the only thing they had was that they believed in Seabiscuit and believed in themselves, they believed with little direction this horse can accomplish great barriers. These three men put in all they had and use all the techniques to train Seabiscuit, and what they discovered was behind this hostile horse there is a gentlemanly horse with keen intelligence, frightening speed and ferocious will to compete. Later on Seabiscuit develops an inseparable attachment with the Jockey, the love and bonding between them made them win all the races. He became all time hero breaking all records.

I am sure that we all at least once in our lives must have undergone through such times where we have grappled on a specific issue, felt disown, rejected, demoralized. Here we have something to learn from this movie, I am not comparing each of us to Seabiscuit, his will power and determination is far above the rest, but all our lives revolved around him. Little direction and a belief in ourselves will change our life for ever.
Once in a Sunday mass sermon I remember a priest saying, “Our life is built on what we believe and not what we see. Christ also says, “Happy are those who haven’t seen me and yet believe in me”.

This movie teaches us never to under estimate the power of small group of people, with little believe in them and a sense of direction can create wonders. What we need is not 100% knowledge in one field but 1% knowledge in 100 fields.

There is a fantastic quote in the book “Monk who sold his Ferrari” awaken yourself to the power of your own mind to make things happen and the entire universe will conspire with you to work magic in your life.

I hope we all become like Seabiscuit and gallop our way to the Victory.


"All that matters is how you finish and not how you start".

Letting Go....

Whenever there is a question, undoubtly there is an answer. It may not be the answer that we are looking for but there is an answer. The key to know the answer is being able to accept the truth. Sometimes we don’t want to know the truth because it hurts, it hurts coz we want things our way just like we dreamed of. Unfortunately life cannot always be the dream we want. For most of us life was never a dream. There are few ppl I know how have struggled all their life to reach where they are today and struggle all alone. Among them the closest I know is my Dad.

As a growing child whenever I was worried of something and things didn’t turn out right for me my dad would always tell me “Just let it go”. As a kid I really didn’t understand what he really meant and till yesterday I never let things go easily as I always believed in Giving up was the easiest thing to do, but to hold it together when everything seems like falling apart that’s true strength. But there are few things in life that needs to be let go.

In the movie Indianna Jones, the hero was in a pursuit of the Holy Grail, in the end he had to choose to let go the Holy Grail even though it was so close to his hands. Today like Indianna Jones I choose to let go my Holy Grail. Since past one year I was grappling onto an issue, life has those kinds of issues some are very close & personal. I was unable to decide whether I should hold on or move on.
There comes a time when we have to let go certain things in our life, it hurts tremendously but……..

Sometimes change can be deterrent to out personal progress, it is not that ppl don’t change but the change should be for better, not for the worse.

So many things and issues we deal on daily basis which often require change and letting go. No one is perfect we all make mistakes from time to time but we truly fail when we try to be better. The best thing to do is accept your mistakes, pick yourself up and move on

Just let it go……

A Class Act Forever

Returning home after having spent the entire day playing football I thought I should pen this event in my Blog. The year 2005 was rollercoaster ride for me as an ICICI pru captain; I was unable to pull off any wins that year. But last month I silenced all the critics by bringing home the Runners up trophy at the Barclays Cup, one of the prestigious events in the city. Though we were not the winners but the runners up title was enough to regain the disappointed team members. Definitely my team members were the stars behind this win.

I never expected to come this far with a team where only 3 members were experienced soccer players. But today’s victory is much sweeter for a quiet a few reasons, we were not only second in the Champions Cup but I scored my first official goal as a ICICI Pru captain and this is also a first back – to – back win making me the only captain to achieve this in ICICI Pru..

For this tournament I had my squad decided and made few alterations. The time we reached the venue and preparing ourselves for the first battle I said to Jason “pls be lenient to the opponents and don’t score too many goals”. This was just to cheer my team and build the confidence because I believe “if we play the way we are capable of, we are going to win”. But Jason did exactly opposite of what I had said and we thrashed the opponents with 7-0 win. Later in the second game our key player (‘Salvito’) was missing as he had some official call and I was left out with 5 players and no one to rotate, but again this was our baby and we beat the opponents by 3-0. By the time we were gearing up for the quarter finals news came in ‘Salvito’ is on his way back, that put me in a relax mode. From now on the real test starts, the Fedex were in good form and they striked us with their first goal in first few minutes of the game, that means demoralization of the team. And the quarrel between Jason and the opponent made me wilder and we had to do something to put our team back on track. No sooner we got a free kick and Jason pass the ball to me and I kicked it with all my might and banged in the goal like a bullet. With this goal our team was back in the game. Later in the second half just after the kick off FedEx score one more goal and were leading but Jason was smart enough for not allowing the opponents to enjoy their success for a minute and gave a reply with a classic goal.

Then came the penultimate moment, Sal had opted that he will keep in the goal and he was the savior and the hero of this game as he saved all the 3 penalties and also scored one putting us into semifinals. Once more we clawed our way towards the victory and now face the undefeated Mid-Day team.

I knew this is our game coz I could see all the other teams in my rear view mirror. Semifinals were a Childs play for us winning with 3-0 goals. Now comes the final hour we had to face a very difficult team “Intelenet” but we were confident and had our strategy in place, but failed to make our mark in the finals and lost by 3-0.

But our spirits were high and did not loose our confidence, we played like true heroes and definitely for us the hero was ‘Nishanth’ who for the first time keeping in the goal and what a fantastic goal keeper I must say. With the combination of patience, intelligence and skills in this game we made it this far.
If in one sentence I had to say it would be “ we all scored a goal in this event”

“Losing doesn’t make u a loser unless you think u r a loser”