Stand up and salute Iraq

Iraq's totally fabulous AFC Asian Football Cup victory against Saudi Arabia has left my emotions seeking sanity. I could only stand up and salute their team and fans, who are hungry, thirsty, dieing and yet emerged winners.

The buck doesn't stop there. The national team haven't been allowed to play at home, don't have training facilities and are not even heralded or cherished by their fans. But now, every Iraqi would feel deeply happy with this triumph.

This isn't the triumph of sport. This is the triumph of human spirit in times of adversity. It is a triumph of hope. To top it all off, an Iraqi mother dedicated her dead son to the team as a sacrifice, which was too much to take in all at once.

So before going to sleep tonight, I will only think, dream and be inspired by this truely Godly feat. It even makes the impossible seem possible....

Developing or Transforming

The US has recently claimed that due to India's higher growth rate, the country shouldn't be called "developing". Rather they have coined a new term for us, a fourth category called "transforming".

Considering how unpredictable the Western "powerhouse" is, you have to be cynical about this particular comment. Certain purists argue that this could be because they want to refuse aid to the nation from on, or at least reduce it, under the UNO's programme.

India is definitely racing ahead, leading to all the "positivitism" in our less-than-gifted lives. But I had rather be developing than developed. Because once your developed, you never know how to improve more. In the case of developing, you have no boundaries and success is no destination. That way, maybe your more successful than even the developed.....

A Woman President

So finally the crisis paved way for the elections to take place and Pratibha Patil has emerged as the first woman President of the country. A remarkable era initiates, then. With the currently-ruling Congress also powered by the brain of a woman, India is now heavily reliant on these two to set the pace.

But, the race dragged on for too long. Eventually, what was to happen happened. Despite all the crises and controversies surrounding her appointment, it did happen. Congratulations to her of course.

The Glossary of India

Here's a set of definitions that I've come up with in relation to what are said to be the passions of the nation :-

Cricket - A 12-hour "sport" played by 11 of our own breeds against 11 foreign breeds and watched by approximately 1 billion people on the minimum, leading to a total loss of an estimated 12 billion man-hours of work. It was willingly played in either our land or their land, but now seems to be moving towards no-man's land.

Bollywood - An enterprise controlled by a set of families, whose sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters will automatically inherit their legacy, irrespective of being talented or not, and will churn money out of the pockets of a billion so-called "fans" to break their own bread, and that too on a silver platter.

Superstars - People conceived as "special", but their only basic contribution apart from Income Tax(which I am not certain about each and everyone of them) is adding to the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor.

More later.....

The Kid is The Man

After one of the most exhilarating finals in the history of Wimbledon, 5 times straight winner Roger Federer should be more afraid than pleased and happy. Because the inevitable looks to be approaching sooner rather than later.

The amazing show by Spanish "superkid" Rafael Nadal will have left Federer stunned at how good he is becoming on grass. With Federer highly unlikely to ever push Nadal off clay, it seems like the prey is getting the better of the hunter's familiar territory.

Federer did give an amazing tribute to Nadal after the game, which speaks for the Mallorca man's brilliance at just a mere 21 years of age. One of my friends recently told me that he believes the Federer-Nadal era is similar to the Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi one. But the difference then was that Sampras always ended up winning. While now, the equation seems to equal to Federer, but is slowly tilting towards a certain young talent, who can happily say that "the show has just begun".....

Defying Realism

If you can pack truckloads of pure bullcrap into a 180-minute nightmare and still earn a glaring profit out of it, then you must be definitely having more magic in you than David Blaine, huh?

After reading the total gross income of Bollywood movie Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (something I dare not see) and seeing it make a healthy profit, the guys in Mumbai have certainly devised a formula more powerful than Einstein's E=mc2, I guess. The total gross stands at Rs. 12, 57, 64, 120 so far. Amazing. Mind boggling stuff.

And when you consider the fact that the tens of thousands of engineers in the country struggle to make a living, after having stretched their souls out in search for a livinghood, you can feel the imbalance of life.....

Quote Unquote (Original)

- Beauty lies within. But that is something that only doctors and surgeons can see. So I rely on the outside one.

- In actuality, the only purpose of life is to delay death for as long as possible. To speed up this process, indulge into smoking, drinking etc. Or else, just be calm, cautious and healthy.

- I sleep in the night's darkness, looking forward to waking up to a better day's brightness.

- The best part of an experience, whether good or bad, is that you learn something, again whether good or bad, from it.

- In the end, only the truth makes a difference. Lies just fade away.....

Whipping the hockey stick on ourselves.....

I picked up the paper today morning and went through an interesting piece. It was about Bollywood bad shah(sorry, did I leave a space ;-)) Shah Rukh Khan and his soon-to-be-released movie Chak De India. The movie is about him being a coach of the Indian women's hockey team.

It is with despair that we can note the fact that we need a movie to promote a national sport. India must be the only country in the world, which is imbalanced in such a way. We have our own hockey stars but most of the country doesn't even recognise them. Only keen followers and GK enthusiasts know something about the game.

Imagine this situation. You play hockey for your country. Your a star. You just helped the team finish 3rd at an international tournament. And still if you walk down the street, no head is going to turn in appreciation. It hurts, doesn't it?

Well, that's reality for you then. But my ego definitely hurts. To see a fake, hypocrytic and apparently useless industry about to help promote the national game is something that cannot be digested. Even the fact that they are bound to earn crores of rupees from the movie's success. But our hockey stars will still walk in the open at night, with life as normal as can be.....

Learning from China

My father recently shared some interesting titbits from a trip of his to our great "world's fastest growing economies" rival, China. He visited a few cities in the country(which are difficult for me to name completely, you can ask him for the exact names) and a few of their industries and factories.

The points he shared with me left me wondering whether we are even capable of considering rivalling them, despite all the talk of us being head-to-head in the race to be Asia's No. 1. He visited a few factories and admitted that people are so transfixed to their work that they dont even look around to see what's going on. Since he arrived in a delegation, you would normally expect the workers to throw glances. But such is the commitment of the Chinese, that they dont give an absolute damn to what goes on. All that matters to them is their work. And work too in such a professional way.

They have perfect timings for arrivals, their lunch breaks are not peppered with gossipy conversations and their tea breaks are way too short for us Indians to even imagine. Maybe, this is what we lack. A true professional approach, a whole-hearted one too.

Even if most of us spend half the time that we spend on gossiping and fooling around in the way that the Chinese do, then definitely they'll have a strong rival.....