More Brown less Blue, Susan thanks to you!

While Gordon Brown is being battered back home, the cartoonists are having a ball of a time(pun intended). Well, you must've heard of Susan Boyle, the singing sensation who got popular through the popular British Talent show 'Got Talent'. She crashed out of the show in the semifinals and suffered from what many would call, mental stress. Brown shares one other similarity with her, they hail from Scotland. This cartoon published by the Times bears a satirical joke wherein Gordon Borwn dressed as Susan Boyle(note: not the other way round) is trying to get some of her talent passed onto him, to fill in for the Labour votes as he'd have wished. Here, not Boyle but Brown uses her clout to attract votes. It's so comical how they've gotten to draw this parallel so much so that it was Brown who was the laughing stock, contrary to what would've conventionally suited Boyle as she had a nervous breakdown, after her defeat. It truly singals how his popularity has suffered the worst ever stance and how he's at immense stress. Aparently the Business Secretary standing beside him says, "People aren't voting for Susan Boyle just because she's Scottish, Gordon—she's talented and popular!"

Adopting her much-weighted talents, I hope Mr. Brown you go a long way!

On an identity chase

It’s kinda funny how we always need some plank to define ourselves to the world. It’s a much compelling trail that never leaves us, irrespective of what identity one really has. So much that we get inevitably entangled in a crisis less innocuous than we really think. I’d been on a visit to the U.K and Italy last month and this impulsive need to distinguish myself on various grounds such as place of birth, cultural association, belief system, social background and even behavioral pattern has been very predominant. This distinction has not been in any self-demeaning fashion, but is a reflection of identifying what one is not when in a dissimilar society.

The more recent attacks on students in Australia has focused on the country of birth they hail, as opposed to whether these attacks were consciously intended on Indians. There are fewer people, who would give a fair chance to the notion that these attacks may not have been based on cultural lines. Rather may have resulted due to some mischief makers, more commonly called criminals, and the victims happened to be Indians amongst the many others living in not-so-high class areas of the country. I am not being defensive of Australia, but just trying to reflect on how seriously we take to our identities. If there were to have been a similar crude attack in India by uncivilized Indians then we’d treat it like an act of crime.

As one would hear more often that we live in a globalized society, it brings me to ask what does it really imply? Sometimes I wonder if globalization has truly made boundaries less significant. Ironically, I think it has made people cling on to their civilizational base more vividly in the fear of its disappearing in this laissez-faire. At every level we ascend, our identity doesn’t diminish but only takes on a form encompassing a greater homogenous society. For example if I went to Delhi, I would invariably identify myself as South Indian there. But if I with a Delhiite friend went to Japan, we’d like to identify ourselves as Indians. Further on, I with the Delhiite and Japanese friends were to go to France then we’d impulsively identify ourselves as Asians. But does this culminate under one single canopy? Is there a non-dividing homogenous society? That invokes the theory of the ‘clash of civilizations’, a concept put forward by Samuel Huntington. I’ve been reading the Huntington book and he spells out the nine civilizations in the world that stand non-overlapped and by and large conflicting. Every single day we’ve had scores of reasons to believe it. Conflicts based on ethnic lines in various parts of the world, representative of their civilizations have occurred time and again.

Having said this I would like to reiterate what I mentioned before, the identity chase is truly a greater imposing affair than we really think.

Ramblings...

Trivial things have kept me busy, like staring into space, switching channels mindlessly, eating biscuits, calculating the number of lines on my palm, re-reading the same paragraph of a book I started two months ago and mostly biting my nails for my visa to come through. Having said that, I discovered last week that not only H1B visas but the VAF1series(UK visa) can also make as much headlines, if someone would only try. Having taken the initiative to gather frivolous news I shall throw light on how VAF1s can be so worthy of "breaking news". Well, before I get started, a disclaimer first.

"Anyone from the British Visa Office, ever accidentally bumps into this space, then I'd like to state that I am in no way responsible for this preposterous content, however if you are adamant then please give me enough time to run."

Now that I've stated the obvious, let me get started in the true sense.
It was the 17th of April, and it was a morning, as early as 7:30 a.m and I was, no, not snuggling in my blanket, instead standing in a queue that was to lead to a bigger queue in the middle of the day, and then another of its kind, only to know the wait's extending three weeks. People stand in three queues to get a visa to the UK? We're not even getting to meet the Queen! In the first queue you are moving fast, you realize you're close and then you're handed over this coupon which gets you nauseated when you read the 3-digit number on it. It's pressing to ask at the counter, "is it possible that I'd get home for dinner tommorrow night..oh okay, it's really okay, I don't mind it here either!"

Now you are playing this slithering snail, crawling, pretending to know where you are heading. After a long, lethargic wait you find yourself addressing this awfully curt person(the agent), who can't get enough of needling you, giving you just the glimpse of the "powerful" guy to come, the one who may reject your visa and ask, where do you shop for your shirts?(under my breath: dude, you like the pink one instead?).

If that's not enough, Brits like being generous. The biometrics test stands testimony to it. They want your fingerprints, I mean your thumb, left and right, your index, middle, ring and the little one, again left and right, well I hope that satisfies them. No, don't be so cruel, they don't take your toe prints.

It's at this moment, the defining moment when you feel you've been rescued from the edge-of-the-cliff experience, when you are going to be handed over with a receipt which contains your reference number, so as to follow-up the status of your visa. Yes it's coming and bang! tragedy strikes! The guy forgets to give you the receipt, and you're dying, you have no previous memory of what you were seeking out to get. You feel strangulated, and you just need to free yourself of the "UK paranoia", you decide to run, you are running really really fast. It's at this final moment, when you are beginning to be released from the clutches, the realization sets in and you feel cheated, disillisioned and alienated. You want to go back at the counter and tell them, "I'll skip dinner, however do you mind if I play frankenstein tonight?"

What do I want to ask myself at the end of this exercise? Will I get my visa?

Ideology what?

It's pretty amusing how the Third Front is taking shape. Elections are round the corner and political alliances are just as likely as snow is in North America. The media has to seldom search for a breaking story, there's always one round the corner. Grabbing the greatest space are the Third Front stories-"What's cooking? Parties hosting lavish dinners", "Lalu Paswan strike a deal", "BSP will not align with any party: Mayawati", "Third Front takes rebirth yet again", "Alliance should lead to increase in seats: Pranab", "Shocked BJP blames BJD for alliance breakdown" and needless to say the list continues.

However, this particular emergence of an amalgamation of smaller parties has greater paralells with the 1977-1979 government led by Morarji Desai. The situation back then resulted due to iregularities in the administration and bureaucracy, the reigning Gandhi herself coming under the scanner. The Emergency indeed was a very uneventful event leading to circumstances abetting small fishes to capitalize on it, the big names being Morarji Desai (Congress(O)), Charan Singh (Bharatiya Lok Dal),Atal Behari Vajpayee(Bharatiya Jana Sangh) and Jayprakash Narayan (largely from the Socialist party). Now this kind of an alliance, symbolizes one that results not under a common ideology but under a strategic agenda. This kind of an approach is rather deterring as the objective is only to come to power and fulfil the immediate issues. Further on gradual bickering in the alliances would result in as much a dysfunctional government as a single party with not so pro-labour, pro-farmer policies. There lay a strategic agenda, yet again, this time to abate the powers of the two largest political parties in India.

The common ideology in the third block is simply non-existent. It is in very simple terms power politics. The TDP once a part of the NDA, is now very much in alliance with the the Third Front. The AIADMK never puts its cards on the table until the right time, leaving you constantly guessing. Once been in alliance with the NDA, their doors are now claimed to be open to the present UPA construct or even an emerging Third Front. Simlarly the SP which sided with the Congress during the Indo-U.S nuke deal has recently opened its arms to Kalyan Singh, once a very staunch right winger. The BSP appears to be eyeing the South Block, on Raisinia Hills, irrespective of the course. NCP's Sharad Pawar is no different. Mr. Pawar had this to say, "there was a feeling among the people of Maharashtra that the state should get an opportunity for the top job". Oh, I hope Raj Thackeray has no problems, it's only a job for the Prime Minister's post! Not to mention the JD(S) which is a predominant part of this Third Front is hoping for a 1996 like situation, where Deve Gowda will emerge from the ashes to be crowned.

The point I'm making here is that there is no common forward looking ground to this block. If the existent political parties are inefficient, a new party with jigsaw pieces is not the solution. We need an effective opposition, not one that is flawed in its attempts to improvise the government, but one that would support it when policies are genuinely constructive, and criticize it when policies are inpalaltable.
Ofcourse a coalition government seems more plausible in the present scenario, so parties which offer support can always read the riot act when the majority ruling party goes offtrack. The big shots will feel more accountable if they are constantly in check both by the opposition and the parties giving support from outside.

Whatever the case at the end of the day its the voter who calls the shots!

Herstory

This was long due, meant to have been a post on the 8th of March, sadly I got busy with other things.

Well I spent International Women's Day with Jean Harlow, Kalpana Lazmi, Dorris Lessing, Mother Teresa, Marie Curie and our very own 'Pink Chaddi' mascot, Nisha Susan. Well not to perplex my readers anymore (hardly doubt if there's any more than one, counting me) I was at a Ladies Quiz the same day battling it out to get some questions right. I teamed up with this really smart geek, Rashmi who runs a consultancy and has two children getting trained to be BBC masterminds. Nonetheless what spells out as the most interesting thing is that Arul Mani was the quizmaster, the quintessential Arul Mani! Quite a predicament, as he was quite abashed at the naive'ty of all of us-the particpants. Nevertheless it was a great time as you just can't get enough of the kind of questions AM hurls at you, so subtle yet so discrete.

What resulted was even better as we coaxed him into having more number of ladies quizzes, and not wait for the auspicious day, which but comes only once a year. So hopefully we shall see the inception of a series, truly of its kind.

By the way Rashmi and me were runners-up at the quiz.

Number theory.

I'm incredibly enamoured by certain arguments put forward in Richard Dawkins' book-'The God Delusion'. Richard Dawkins is a British atheist and his reasons to be, is spelled out very vividly in the afore mentioned book. Most of his arguments in the former part of the book, are counter thoughts to the frequently encountered conventional notions for the existence of God, many of which you would've heard or read before. However there was one which was very engaging and startling for the area it comes from- Mathematics!

This mathematical notion mentioned in the book was borrowed from an English writer Aldous Huxley's notable work 'Point Counter Point' which goes like this:

'You know the formula, m over nought equals infinity , m being any positive number? Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by nought. In which case you have m equals infinity times nought. This is to say that a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn't that demonstrate the creation of the universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn't it?'

Now whether a mathematical flaw exisits in this equation, can be overlooked for the sheer brilliance in deducing such a result. By this I don't mean, for all theists there is a safe haven to defend their stand, but it can be contibuted for numerical prestidigitation to those agnostics who'll buy it. It is indeed tricky and yet appears very daft for those who'd question the logic of the method involved. Whatever be the case it gives an insight into the fact that a question as God's existence can perhaps be answered in the most sought after ways such as the revelation of scriptures, the inexplicable design of the Universe, miraculous happenings in our personal lives OR through the absurdity of a relationship in mathematics!

Losers aren't subject to an eternal loss.

Roger Federer, indisputably the heir to Peter Sampras suffered a devastating blow in the Austarlian Open Finale. I personally ain't a Fedex fan, in fact I'm always on the side of Rafael Nadal, whether winning or losing. But having to see Federer move to tears after losing the match lead to a somewhat sympathetic inclination towards him. I can't be accused of defection, Nadal himself felt empathetic for Federer.

Well the fact is I didn't watch the match, the media was too engrossed reporting about Hesh-Mirza making it to the Mixed Doubles Final and consequently winning, that I managed to overlook the mortal combat that lay ahead. Nevertheless the morning news is no less dramatic than the match itself. Federer is one short of equalling Sampras' record of 14 Grand Slam titles and as he claims it must be killing him every moment for losing the bus to make it there. The next Grand Slam is at Roland Garros, which happens to be a clay court and even God can't choose to vanquish Rafa on that court.

The attitude towards winning a match or winning anything else in life, is vital. I'm not giving lessons to Federer or anyone else who wasn't the winner at this match, but what I see as the greatest threat to anyone's failure is their fear of failure itself. When one is so engrossed with the thought that he/she is incapable to overcome his/her opponent, the task loses its purpose. Sometimes I wonder why do we let ourselves be intimidated by people who were on that same ladder, also that same rung, where we now stand. Tommorrow can always be better day for a struggler or perhaps an unlucky day for a winner. There always will be a successor to the current ruler however that successor also sees the last day of his reign.

Honour is your name, Fame can be your friend, Love your backdoor vendor but Eternity, never your guest!