Common Man Files

Yashasvi Jaiswal to LSG: A move that could benefit both the player and the franchise. The rumours of Yashasvi Jaiswal moving to LSG have been around for what feels like an eternity, but there is still no concrete indication that the move is happening. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting possibility. At RR, Jaiswal was until recently arguably the biggest young batting star. But Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s extraordinary rise has shifted much of the spotlight away from him. He isn’t the regular captain either. While we don’t know how he feels, a young Indian superstar might understandably want to become the face of a franchise rather than gradually being overshadowed. And LSG could offer him exactly that. Jaiswal could form a credible opening partnership with Mitchell Marsh. LSG also have a strong Indian bowling core in Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Avesh Khan, Mayank Yadav, Mohsin Khan, Prince Yadav and Digvesh Rathi. This gives them the flexibility to use overseas slots to strengthen their batting at Lucknow, while accommodating a foreign fast bowler in away matches. Their biggest weakness, however, remains the lower middle order. Badoni and Samad are talented but haven’t established themselves as consistent finishers. Mukul Choudhary has shown promise, but still has plenty to prove. Jaiswal alone won’t solve all their problems. LSG still has some work to do in the transfer market and auction. Finding a reliable Indian middle-order batter who can finish games should be a priority. That would give them much greater flexibility in balancing their overseas players. And with Rishabh Pant gone, I would seriously consider making Jaiswal captain. He already has limited IPL captaincy experience and, at 24, could become the long-term face of LSG. Of course, everything depends on what RR would demand in return. But a move like this could give Jaiswal greater prominence while providing LSG with an Indian superstar to build around. Could this be a win-win move for Jaiswal and LSG? Share your thoughts.

I’ve been watching street dogs since my childhood. Back then, they spent much of their time roaming around looking for food. Many stayed around the outskirts of colonies, near places where waste was dumped and food was easier to find. Even the dogs that lived inside our colony seemed more domesticated. Being comfortable around people was probably part of what helped them survive there. From what I remember, they weren’t as aggressive as many of the street dogs I see today. So what changed? I think regular feeding by street dog sympathisers has taken away their hardest daily job - finding enough food to survive. Their food requirements are now met with relatively little effort, often inside residential societies themselves. Dogs therefore have less reason to roam elsewhere looking for food and can establish themselves around these reliable feeding spots. In a way, dogs became jobless, only for them to find another job: guarding their patch aggressively and chasing vehicles and even people they perceive as threats. Could this abundance of easily available food, combined with territorial behaviour, be one reason we see these conflicts more often? Would stopping regular feeding, alongside sterilisation, reduce such conflicts? I think so, quite strongly. When their primary job becomes finding food for survival, they probably have much less time and energy to aggressively guard a patch where food arrives every day. They may also move away from residential societies towards locations where finding food becomes easier. Of course, I’m not touching upon the ideal solution of moving them to dog shelters because I don’t expect our governments to do this. Open to arguments and hear other thoughts as well.

Well, I had an arranged marriage and not one person from either family told us, “You should have sex tonight.” For some strange reason, she has reduced the tradition to sex and is now arguing against it. And funnily enough, she says a honeymoon is OK, but Suhagraat isn’t, when essentially the purpose of both is the same, getting comfortable with each other.

Equality cannot mean the freedom to hit a man without consequences. We have seen several videos where a woman repeatedly slaps or physically assaults a man. The man initially exercises restraint. He tries to avoid confrontation, but the aggression continues until he eventually reacts. And suddenly, the question becomes how a man could hit a woman. A man is expected to remain calm, control his anger and walk away. Why? Because he is a man. Because he is physically stronger. Because a real man doesn’t hit a woman. Fair enough. Physical strength comes with responsibility. But where is her responsibility? If you believe in equality, why do you also believe that being a woman gives you the freedom to physically assault someone without consequences? You cannot demand to be treated as an equal and then expect traditional gender privileges to protect you from accountability. Nobody has the right to initiate violence. And nobody should be expected to tolerate physical abuse simply because of their gender. A man’s restraint is not a woman’s licence to violence. Empowerment does not give you immunity from accountability.

More than school mornings I remember this weekend ritual. Survival mode at its peak.

On 7th November 2023, Australia were 91/7 chasing 292 against Afghanistan before Glenn Maxwell took matters into his own hands. Cramps. Barely able to run. Hitting boundaries while almost standing still. Afghanistan were seven wickets into a famous victory. Maxwell hopped his way into the history books. He finished on 201* off 128 balls - the first double hundred in a men’s ODI run chase. One of the greatest ODI innings ever. 🤯👏

Cyberattacks are no longer just about stealing passwords or customer data. Across Europe, supermarkets are dealing with something rather different: Hackers attacking their refrigerators. The modus operandi is fascinating. Modern supermarket refrigeration systems are connected to the internet so technicians can remotely monitor temperatures, receive alarms and perform maintenance. That convenience also creates an entry point. In the recent attacks, hackers gained remote access to refrigeration control systems and manipulated their settings. Freezers normally run periodic defrost cycles to remove ice from the cooling coils. The attackers reportedly exploited exactly that function. They switched systems into defrost mode, changed temperature settings and, in the earlier French attacks, even extended defrost cycles and interfered with alarms. Some systems reportedly went from around -20°C to as high as 50°C. By the time employees discovered what was happening, large quantities of refrigerated and frozen food had to be discarded. Hundreds of French supermarkets were hit in October. Now similar incidents have appeared in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden and Estonia. No bank accounts emptied. No customer database necessarily required. Just someone sitting remotely telling a supermarket freezer: Stop freezing. A fascinating example of how cybersecurity is increasingly becoming physical security. When everything becomes connected to the internet, almost everything becomes hackable.

Story of a Middle Class Salaried Man: Waiting for a Normal Month At the end of December last year, my wife said: This month was unusual. From next month, we’ll save properly. January had the insurance renewal. February had an unexpected dental bill. March had school fees. In April, the fridge decided it had served the family long enough. In May, of course, the planned holiday. By end of May, we started wondering what exactly a normal month looks like. Apparently, it’s a month where nobody falls sick, nothing breaks, no annual payment arrives and everyone politely agrees to stop needing things. Some expenses genuinely catch you off guard. Others you knew were coming, but knowing about a bill doesn’t make the money appear magically. So we move things around. Postpone a purchase. Save less than we planned. Sometimes, dip into last month’s savings. We’re relieved we could pay for it. Then we look at the balance and realize how little room we have left if something else happens. At the end of the month, we sit down together and make a fresh plan. Just as we say, Next month should be better, we hear a strange noise from the washing machine. My phone lights up with a financial tip: Build an emergency fund now.

False rape accusations can destroy more than a man’s freedom A man may fear a false rape accusation more than even a murder accusation. Not necessarily because of the legal consequences. Because of what the label means to everyone who hears it. A person accused of killing someone may still be asked: “What happened?” People can imagine and ask about the circumstances surrounding a killing. A violent confrontation. Revenge for something horrific. Protecting someone. There is still room for a story. There is no imaginable justification for rape. And sometimes that disgust attaches itself to the accused before the allegation has even been established. Suddenly people believe they know his character. Even defending his right to due process can become suspicious. You may be questioned: “Why are you defending a rapist?” And even if he is eventually acquitted, how does he get his name back? The accusation may have reached thousands of people who will never follow the case again. They may remember the allegation and never hear the outcome. That is what makes a deliberately false rape complaint such a serious concern. India’s gender-specific rape laws make the consequences of such an accusation extraordinarily serious for a man. Yet accountability for a deliberately fabricated complaint is neither automatic nor uniformly pursued. We have even seen repeat complainants file case after case against different men before the pattern is finally recognized by the courts. Where deliberate fabrication is actually established, “he was eventually cleared” cannot possibly account for the damage caused to him in terms of lost time, money, humiliation and relationships. And then comes the uncomfortable part. Women say: “But not all women would do this.” Of course not. Women also often say: “Not all men. But we don’t know which men.” Fair enough. In a similar way, a man may also believe that not every woman would falsely accuse him. He just fears trusting the wrong one. When a man believes one relationship going catastrophically wrong could leave him fighting for both his freedom and his name, don’t be surprised if men eventually decide that distance feels safer than companionship. Question: Should those proven to have deliberately filed false rape complaints face severe punishment to deter others from doing the same?

The required rate would climb, the wickets would fall, and in millions of living rooms, someone would say, “He’s still there.” And we would stay. Virat Kohli gave the words “He’s still there” a life of their own. A quick single here. A second run stolen there. A cover drive racing to the boundary. A six we scarcely believed was possible. Slowly, another near-impossible equation became something we could believe in. He was out there facing the bowling, but somehow we were a part of the chase. Then came the winning runs. The roar. And the release of a breath we hadn’t realised we were holding. For a little while, our scattered lives shared the same heartbeat. Happy birthday, Virat Kohli. Thank you for all the nights when “he’s still there” was enough to keep hope alive. 🏏🇮🇳

Gender equality cannot mean modern rights combined with traditional privileges. Women should have the same freedom as men in education, careers, property, marriage, divorce and personal choices. That part is absolutely fair. But equality cannot stop exactly where traditional expectations start benefiting women. A man is still expected to earn more. He is still expected to pay. He is still expected to provide. He is still expected to initiate. He is still expected to protect. He is still expected to absorb financial hardship. And his worth is still routinely tied to his income and his ability to provide. These expectations came from traditional gender roles. And traditional gender roles were reciprocal. Men had obligations. Women had obligations. You cannot modernise one half of that arrangement while freezing the other half in the past. Equality means the same dignity, the same agency and the same accountability. Traditional gender roles cannot be optional only for one gender.

Turning 25 is a milestone in everyone’s life. In Denmark, being unmarried at 25 can make it a seasoning ceremony. 😂 Your friends might celebrate by covering you in cinnamon. It’s a birthday prank practised by some groups, for both men and women. Still unmarried at 30? You enter black-pepper territory. But why spices? The older tradition is commonly linked to travelling spice merchants who remained bachelors. The Danish word “pebersvend” - roughly “pepper fellow” - became a term for an unmarried man. Unmarried 30 year olds were later teased with pepper-related gifts, including enormous mock pepper mills outside their homes. The cinnamon shower at 25 is a newer addition, documented from the 1960s in northern Jutland. Its exact origin is uncertain, but it may have developed as a younger version of the pepper tradition. Today, it gives friends an excuse to make a spectacle of a milestone birthday. When someone turns 25, in India, relatives ask, “When are you getting married?” In Denmark, your friends arrive with seasoning. 😂

The match where Rohit Sharma scored his first ODI double hundred also gave us an absolute monster of an innings from James Faulkner. Chasing 384, Australia were 211/8. Faulkner smashed 116 off just 73 balls. Rohit made history. Faulkner made sure we remember the chase too. 🔥🏏

The world has some wonderfully absurd competitions. People chase a wheel of cheese down a steep hill in England. There’s even a World Toe Wrestling Championship. Then there’s Finland. They have a Wife Carrying World Championship. 😂 Held every summer, usually in early July, in Sonkajärvi, the event is called Eukonkanto. Competitors carry a partner through a 253.5 metre course with two dry obstacles and a water obstacle roughly a metre deep. The minimum weight carried is 49 kg. If your partner weighs less, extra weights are added. They take their absurdity seriously. The traditional prize? Your partner’s weight in beer. 🍺 So a lighter partner might help you win. A heavier partner makes winning more rewarding. Participants can come from any country. The carrier must be at least 18, and the person carried at least 17. And despite the name, you don’t even have to be married to each other. The next edition is scheduled for 2–3 July 2027, if anyone is interested. Enough time to find a partner and work on your core strength. 😂

Some batsmen needed room to play their shots. He seemed to find it where none existed. A ball aimed at off stump would disappear through midwicket, guided by wrists that appeared to know a gentler set of rules. Even with fielders gathered around his bat and a scoreboard we could barely bring ourselves to look at, there was time for that little flourish, that impossible touch of beauty. And there was hope. As long as this Very Very Special Rescuer was still there, we would sit a little longer. Delay switching off the television. Believe that a tailender could survive another over and a lost match could somehow be brought home. Australia knew that feeling from the other side. He wristed his way into the history books. Into our hearts, he just walked in. Happy birthday, @VVSLaxman281. Thank you for all the times we stayed watching. 🏏🇮🇳