People From Mumbai

"Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy are doing some nice songs."

"I could not take up Dil Chahta Hai. Also, Bunty Aur Babli. But I am glad that Shankar Ehsaan and Loy were able to shine in these films. I love their work in these films."

"Shankar Mahadevan: Classical music is a great advantage you have. Be it during composing or arranging, classical music is like grammar."

"Ehsaan Noorani: (on R.D. Burman) He thought light years ahead of everyone else. He was very global in what he did. Even with limited technology and media coverage, RD did exemplary work."

"Loy Mendonsa: I'm often asked how we function within a trio. I tell them you must try sitting on a two-legged chair."

"Shankar Mahadevan: We come from different musical backgrounds. It's our USP too. We work more like a band rather than just composers. All our compositions come out during jam sessions. I am sure we will never spilt because we understand and respect each other's creativity."

"Loy Mendonsa: Technology has changed a lot and has made copying easier. People are not morally hassled by it any more. Morality has changed."

"Loy Mendonsa: Ehsaan gets very upset if it sounds remotely like anything else. Then he'll get sleepless nights. Then next morning we'll see him with dark circles"

"I seriously say to you that business or job as an engineer is not the thing for me. It is totally foreign to my nature and radically opposed to my temperament and opinions. Physics is my line. I know I shall do great things here. For, each man can do best and excel in only that thing of which he is passionately fond, in which he believes, as I do, that he has the ability to do it, that he is in fact born and destined to do it... I am burning with a desire to do physics. I will and must do it sometime. It is my only ambition. I have no desire to be a "successful" man or the head of a big firm. There are intelligent people who like that and let them do it. … It is no use saying to Beethoven "You must be a scientist bybye for it is great thing" when he did not care two hoots for science; or to Socrates "Be an engineer; it is work of intelligent man." It is not in the nature of things. I therefore earnestly implore you to let me do physics."

"I know quite clearly what I want out of my life. Life and my emotions are the only things I am conscious of. I love the consciousness of life and I want as much of it as I can get. But the span of one's life is limited. What comes after death no one knows. Nor do I care. Since, therefore, I cannot increase the content of life by increasing its duration, I will increase it by increasing its intensity. Art, music, poetry and everything else … I do have this one purpose — increasing the intensity of my consciousness of life."

"My success will not depend on what A or B thinks of me. My success will be what I make of my work."

"I feel that we in India are apt to believe that good scientific institutions can be established by Government decree or order. A scientific institution, be it a laboratory or an academy, has to be grown with great care like a tree. Its growth in terms of quality and achievement can only be accelerated to a very limited extent. This is a field in which a large number of mediocre or second rate workers cannot make up for a few outstanding ones, and the few outstanding ones always take at least 10-15 years to grow. Too many of our National Laboratories have been established by deciding upon the field in which it was desired to work and by drawing up an organisational chart on the pattern of some corresponding large laboratory abroad. It was then assumed naively, that the posts in the chart could be filled by advertisement, forgetting that workers of the appropriate and high level either do not exist in India, or can only be obtained at the cost of some other institution, which thus becomes weaker of it. Our Universities, weak as they always were, have been further weakened in this matter."

"There is at the moment in India no big school of research in the fundamental problems of physics, both theoretical and experimental. There are, however, scattered all over India competent workers who are not doing as good work as they would do if brought together in one place under proper direction. It is absolutely in the interest of India to have a vigorous school of research in fundamental physics, for such a school forms the spearhead of research not only in less advanced branches of physics but also in problems of immediate practical application in industry. If much of the applied research done in India today is disappointing or of very inferior quality it is entirely due to the absence of sufficient number of outstanding pure research workers who would set the standard of good research and act on the directing boards in an advisory capacity … Moreover, when nuclear energy has been successfully applied for power production in say a couple of decades from now, India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand. I do not think that anyone acquainted with scientific development in other countries would deny the need in India for such a school as I propose. The subjects on which research and advanced teaching would be done would be theoretical physics, especially on fundamental problems and with special reference to cosmic rays and nuclear physics, and experimental research on cosmic rays. It is neither possible nor desirable to separate nuclear physics from cosmic rays since the two are closely connected theoretically."

"No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted words "failure" and "success." and measure them by the eternal, not by the earthly standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be preeminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross — was that a failure? Nay, my brethren.it was the death of Him who lived that we might follow His footsteps, it was the life, it was the death of the Son of God."

"then, indeed, the Hindoos no less than ourselves would have recognized the bond of unity between us because of the common ancestors from whose loins we both alike are sprung, and we no less than they should have seen that in coming to Hindostan with our advanced civilization, we were returning home with splendid gifts to visit a member of one common family, and that the meeting between us was but the meeting of Esau and Jacob after long years of separation, – who met each other with mutual affection and the kiss of peace, although from the womb it had been prophesied respecting them that ‘the elder should serve the younger.’"

"When we look at the table which is before us [showing the branches of the Indo- European language family], [ . . . ] it is but a concise statement of the astonishing truth, that we Europeans, together with the Persians and Hindoos, however wide may be the apparent and superficial differences between us, are, nevertheless, members of a close and common brotherhood in the great families of nations. First westward and northward, afterwards eastward and southward, the Aryans extended; they forgot the rock from whence they were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence they were digged: they became wholly ignorant of their mutual relationship; and when, in their various emigrations, they met each other – like the lion-whelps of a common lair – they met each other no longer as brothers but as foes: yet brothers they were; and now, at least, the science of language has restored to them the knowledge of this unsuspected truth."

"Fifty years ago, few would have believed that Dutch, and Russian, and Icelandic, and Greek, and Latin, and Persian, and Mahratti, and French, and English, were all indubitable developments from one and the same original tongue, and that the common ancestors of the nations who speak them were – in times that may almost be called historical – in times, at any rate, the reality of which can be rigidly tested by the microscope and the spectrum analysis of Philology – were living together as an undivided family in the same pastoral tents. In the present day, no one doubts the fact, except a few intrepid theologians."

"We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will."

"India's fortune will depend on how many runs the little champion scores. There is no doubt Tendulkar is the real thing."

"“The last time I watched Sachin was last week when he was on his way to a spectacular 175 and once again I felt that I was watching a player who comes but once in a century. It can be said that he is the Bradman of our times and I do feel privileged to have played a lot of cricket against him,”"

"There is no shame losing to such a great player."

"I don’t think anyone, apart from Don Bradman, is in the same class as Sachin Tendulkar."

"With Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara, it was better to be friends and make them smile rather than wind them up."

"Sachin Tendulkar is, in my time, the best player without doubt - daylight second, Brian Lara third."

"I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing us to breathe the same air as you do."

"We didn't see at that time and you cannot visualise 20 years down the track what the player is likely to do in the context of the history of the game. When you score as many runs as he (Tendulkar) has in Test and one-day cricket and score as many centuries and half centuries as he has done, it makes him arguably the greatest player ever in the history of the game. Statistics speak volumes of his contribution to Indian and world cricket. He is a phenomenal player."

"On a train from Shimla to Delhi, there was a halt at one of the stations. The train stopped by for few minutes as usual. Sachin was nearing a century, batting on 98. The passengers, railway officials, everyone on the train waited for Sachin to complete the century. This genius can stop time in India!"

"His mind is like a computer. He stores data on bowlers and knows where they are going to pitch the ball."

"The more I see of him the more confused I'm getting to which is his best knock."

"The more I see him, the more I want to see him."

"Don't bowl him bad balls, he hits the good ones for fours."

"Test cricket is bloody hard work, especially when you've got Sachin batting with what looks like a three-metre-wide bat."

"This little prick's going to get more runs than you, AB."

"I have seen God, he bats at no. 4 for India."

"Irrespective of the score, whenever Sachin Tendulkar comes to bat he is under pressure. The pressure comes from all those people who look up to him, who pray that he gets a century, who cheer like India has already won when he comes in to bat, and who silently troop out of the stands once he gets out. When a visiting team comes to India, they know whom the Indians look up to. While they love watching India play, there is no doubt that Tendulkar is the player they love watching most. There is a buzz when he comes in to bat and if he fails, the crowd goes quiet for the rest of the game."

"We did not lose to a team called India, we lost to a man called Sachin."

"When we were growing up, we all used to watch Sachin. He was like God to us, he had that aura around him."

"He continues to give more than 100 per cent and his schoolboy-like enthusiasm for the game is something I envy and admire. For the team he is the best available coaching manual."

"He is just a legend of the game. To score 20 or even 30 Test hundreds would represent a magnificent career, but to go on and score 50 is remarkable. He has set the benchmark for other batsmen to follow, but the truth is it is hard to see how anyone can truly follow him because he is moving the bar so high. It is not simply about ability where Sachin is concerned, it is about longevity, fitness, and hard work. And to cap it all he is such a gentleman. I watch him bat and sometimes I wonder how he makes it look so easy. He has an unbelievable gift and he has made the most of it and long may he continue. I’m lucky to have been able to get to know him."

"There is no doubt he is the greatest batsman. In the last 13–14 years, he has worked so hard and has proved to the world he is outstanding and when he is playing so well, you can only wait to get his wicket."

"I know that the new ball is due, but I am saving it for that "Chotu" (Sachin) who is coming next."

"It did dawn on me at the end of the series that he was something special."

"Nothing bad can happen to us if we’re on a plane in India with Sachin Tendulkar on it."

"I actually feel very embarrassed because I rejected him as a fast bowler. I think I did him and the game of cricket a favour."

"I had to remind Gary Kristen often that he was in the covers to field against Sachin and not to applaud him."

"I am one of those fortune people who have seen Bradman and Tendulkar bat in my lifetime and in my opinion Tendulkar is the best batsman I have seen in my life."

"In the early years, especially around the mid 90s, I had this feeling you could play around on his ego and get him out. He believed he could attack bowlers at any time and anyone who could bowl maidens to him stood a good chance. Things are of course different now."

"If I’ve to bowl to Sachin, I’ll bowl with my helmet on. He hits the ball so hard."

"I saw him playing on television and was struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come look at him. Now I never saw myself play, but I felt that this player is playing with a style similar to mine, and she looked at him on Television and said yes, there is a similarity between the two...his compactness, technique, stroke production... it all seemed to gel!"

"He is definitely someone who is miles ahead of his competition. In our days, cricket was played less, but in Sachin’s time, there is relentless pressure to perform. And the way he has carried on batting throughout his career is phenomenal. As for myself, I have many videos of Sachin’s best innings which I will watch from time to time to reminisce about his batting achievements when he has retired."