Mumbai Diary page: Sunday shorts

The 2014 General Elections threw up a rarity, if not an unprecedented instance, where two cricketers by the same name and who have played together, contested elections representing the same party. The similarity of both of them losing is another matter.

Mohd Azharuddin and Mohd Kaif both faced defeat in the recent elections

Mohd Azharuddin and Mohd Kaif played for the India cricket team in the Bangalore Test against South Africa in 2000. Both Congress flag bearers experienced heavy losses against the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Politics hasn't been kind to cricketers. Even the most charismatic one of our times - the late Tiger Pataudi - couldn't win at politics. After being replaced as captain by Ajit Wadekar in 1971, it is learnt that Pataudi contested the Lok Sabha polls from Gurgaon for Vishal Haryana Party and lost. Twenty years later, he contested as a Congress candidate in Bhopal and lost again.
Moral of the story: Politics is indeed a different ball game.

How the time's flown, Carl
By the time you read this, the World 10K, will already be over, done and dusted with in Bangalore today morning. The 10K is organised by Procam, the same people behind the Mumbai Marathon, and boasts of some of the world's best runners. It is another indication that the running boom has come to India. Yet, this is not about the race. It is about how surprised we were to see former world and Olympic sprint champion Carl Lewis as the event ambassador. The American, like all of us, seems to have aged - look at his grey hair. Sporting icons are a bit like actors really, they always startle us when they age. Those of their generation are forced to hold a mirror up at themselves and introspect: ‘Do I look that old, too?' Yes, you do. Time has flown, Carl, just the way you used to fly down the track all those years ago.

Alphonso acronym
Now that we are simply drowning in a sea of saffron and the atmosphere is distinctly political, we think even our regular mango metre must take on a political hue. So this, from a clever, shever observer who says: Now that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) says that these elections are only a learning experience for them, we say: what if Arvind Kejriwal and his supporters did not have a broom but a crate of mangoes as their symbol? They would be called Aam Aadmi Peti.

A thousand and one words
Lift kara de

Construction workers queue up one on top of the other, occupying all the floors of an under-construction building to co-ordinate installing an equipment lift. PIC/SAMEER MARKANDE