Right Said Freddie


I wasn’t supposed to start with him. But he just refuses to leave my mind space. So I decided to give him the due respect of the day.

There is something about Andrew Flintoff that makes me go mmmmm… Till about three years ago, the only aspect I noticed about him were his lascivious lips (cherry red and so full that it’s criminal.)

Yeah yeah, he can hammer a few and bowl a couple too. But that don’t impress me much…at least when he’s giving it to My Men In Blue!

I like Freddie because he’s conquered his mid-twenties life crisis and come into his own. He enjoyed his phase of beach bummin’. Lived in the fast lane. But eventually chose to answer the knock of his true calling—cricket.

He fought substance abuse___in his case beer and chocolates. (The latter I couldn’t care about even if God forced me to… But the former…oh man, I understand Freddie!!!!)

He faced the Weight Devil and from a very huge maan (as Geoffrey Boycott would say), he became Inzamam-ul-Haq’s role model.

Currently, he’s International Cricket’s latest blue-eyed boy. But does Freddie give a damn? You bet the Union Jack, he doesn’t. And that’s what his appeal is.

Does it bother him an iota that he has been given a half-baked team to captain? That he was the last minute choice of captain after Michael Vaughan took ill? No way.

Freddie just goes about his job…taking each day as it dawns. With the trademark chewing gum in his mouth and those blasted strokes in his armory… he just plays.

Now, here is a man who will go on even after he hangs his bat n’ ball. Cricket doesn’t define him. Fun and enjoying the game that he truly loves does.

And that’s what I like in a man who matters.

Of course there are those lips too! But that’s for another game…

Men

Some like watches. Some dig heels. I like men.

Nah, it isn’t an Electra complex. I’m a psychology major so I’ve analyzed all my leanings quite neurotically. Yeah, yeah…you never really know! But life is all about premises right? What appeals right here, right now…that’s what we go with.

Anyway, now that I’ve sufficiently proved my premise, let me inform you (if you haven’t guessed already) I have very strong likes. And even stronger dislikes. But that’s for another day.

I dedicate this space to the men who matter. The little boy in my nursery class who told me with the best intensity of a four year old---“You have pretty teeth.”
The university friend who once recited Robert Frost’s A Rose Is A Rose with a strange look in his eye.
My cosmic twin because of whom I send a prayer of thanks to my family that they forced me to spend the summer after my Xth boards in Delhi.
The lighthouse of my life who…just is.
The brother who makes me laugh when I most want to kill him.
The dad (ahem…can see Lady Electra sneering) who makes me believe every day I’m the king (we don’t believe in gender here, you know!) of the world.

This space is also devoted to the men in my head. Those who engage me in such seductive conversations that I forget they are in my head. The screen heroes, the book characters, the actors, the singers…who help me find the magic in life everyday without fail.

Here’s to all of them.