Monday, December 1, 2008

Andha-dhoondh Strike

Have you ever played carrom board?

Have you ever tried taking a particular coin (say the Queen, or the Queen cover), and found that you are never ever able to take that particular coin. For e.g., you may be successful in all your attempts to take the Queen, but all these times you'll find that you somehow mess up with the Queen cover coin (only for that Queen coin to come on board again!!).

This happens to you, say, n number of times, and there you are frustrated to the core. And then you say, that enough is enough, and you get into a 'clear-all'/'re-arrange all' type of mentality where you just take the striker coin and make a very random and arbitrary, yet a very powerful strike that will re-arrange all the coins that are on the board currently. You might just have made a strike with your eyes closed and with all the power that you could have mustered at that time. You might have taken a lot of your frustration out at that time. That is called an Andha-dhoondh strike.

The strike would have been so forceful that some coins will go into pockets (much to your chagrin, most of those coins will be of your opponent), some will fly out of the board, some coins near the pockets will be nowhere near the playing zone, some coins in the difficult playing zone will come near the pockets, etc.

Depending on your luck, you'll find the coins re-arranged in a manner suited to you or your opponent. But most of the time, it will provide equal opportunity for you both to start all over again. Even if you are not in a good position after that, you will find a sadistic pleasure of being a destructor, and will at least seek solace from the impact that your destructive act had on the game.

Have you ever tried something similar in your real-life actions (other than on the carrom board)? How many times have you done such a thing? How many times have you found yourself with viable options after you have done such a thing?

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