a lil' bit of everythin'

Thursday, July 13, 2006

What is the hype about football anyway? Twenty uniformed men running after a silly looking ball while two stand on guard before a huge net that they call goal. And those twenty lunatics try their level best to push the ball into that thing called goal, and the twelfth man ( which by the way is the footballers nickname for the spectators) goes berserk. I sure never did understand this term called football frenzy. Well, until now.
Yeah, I too have succumbed to the mysterious charms of football. And like millions of other devout football fanatics across the globe, I can establish no logical reason as to why the sport brings out the very worst in me, why it doesn’t let me concentrate on more important tasks at hand, why it forces me to stay awake till the wee hours of dawn when I should be getting at least seven hours of sleep to recharge my system for the day ahead, why it makes me sit with the newspapers sports section for at least half an hour every morning before letting me proceed to the more important world affairs and financial news and why for the first time in my seventeen year and five month existence on this planet ( not counting the foetal days) I have not watched any other TV channel other than ESPN for a period almost exceeding three days. Weird, but true.
Now the most important question is, why this absurd preoccupation with something as ridiculous as football. I agree that I am a neophiliac but that cant be the reason really. If I did need something new, I would have gone in for bungee jumping or whatever, why the age old favourite of beer buddies a.k.a. football. As countless of other lunatics like me will reason, football is a way to relieve their insurmountable stress, to calm their minds after a hectic day of work. But come on, at least in my life, this bloody sport has caused nothing but tension, with the ever increasing guilt of not putting adequate amount of studies mounting high. So I guess that explains it all. Football causes stress, stress causes the secretion of adrenaline which in turn makes you feel energised and charged by just sitting on the couch and watching a blaring idiot box till the wee hours of dawn. Someone once said, Religion is the opium for the masses. I would like to make a slight correction, football not religion, is the opium for the masses.

Rahul Mahajan’s antics have been hogging the headlines for quite some time now. After Papa Mahajan’s murder, newspapers had splashed photos of his weeping family all over the front pages. His rather immobile facial features reminded one of freshly botoxed faces, but that of course we assumed was his way of dealing with grief. Dead silence in both words and expression. Just as the Mahajan family’s distraught faces faded into a small corner in the national section of the newspaper, and the BJP began having meetings of whether to give master Mahajan a membership in the youth wing, Rahul jumped into the spotlight again. Only this time he was in Apollo Hospital, in critical condition due to drug overdose, his friend dead. And so the drama began to unfold. First there were hushed murmurs about Rahul’s supposed cocaine intake. No one could state the fact categorically since the hospital claimed to have found no signs of cocaine in their blood test report. It was certain though that Vijay Moitra’s death had been through drug overdose. A couple of other men were also involved, neither of whom had displayed any symptoms of drug intake. Quite mysteriously however, a second report from the hospital confirmed the presence of cocaine in Mahajan’s blood. The drama didn’t end there. Mahajan was arrested on charges of drug consumption and possession, drug dealing and tampering with evidence. All national dailies had at least five pictures of Rahul in his trademark white shirt blue jeans, either being led away from the hospital, or towards the police station etc.

Not surprising eh? With the ever multiplying number of high society brats, it would be foolish to be surprised or rather scandalised at such a revelation. While most of the orthodox minds will be rather peeved by the situation and call it blasphemous to the betterment of society, it should be noted that Rahul is no exception here. He simply is a representative of a certain class of elite urban youth that is slowly spreading to other parts of the country from its focal points Delhi and Mumbai. And while the BJP will have a hard time making up its mind about the Mahajan controversy, it will surely end with Rahul being ousted from their party’s growth plans since his tainted reputation will definitely tarnish BJPs image and wipe away a major chunk of the highly spiritual vote bank who had been voting for the Lotus due to their rigorous Hindutva campaigns and saffron propagandas. And while the younger Mahajan just sits and sulks, we the plebeians wander how anyone could throw away a multi million dollar career which had literally been handed to him on a silver platter. Some people just have more luck than brains.

The doctors and medical students of All India Institute of Medical Sciences ( AIIMS) have lifted their 19 day strike following an order from the Supreme Court which stated that their failure to do so before midnight of 31st of May would bring them under custody with the charge of Contempt of Court. This is yet another example of the fallacy of Democracy. What is democracy then? A government of the people ( yes, the hoodlums, criminals and thugs of society), by the people ( hmm… you have to count booth capturing and rigging too) and for the people ( yea right, the government is the best route to becoming a millionaire, by just attending some lousy meetings at the Lok Sabha). The whole concept of Democracy now seems to be an elaborate hoax on the gullible race called mankind. It advocates high morals, principles and elaborate philosophies but when it comes to bringing these so called philosophies to practice, they always seem to fail miserably and subsequently manage to extricate themselves from the situation by ridiculous explanations and excuses.
Introduction of the 27% reservation for the OBC’s in all government and government aided institutions, is fundamentally against the tenets of democracy. A government which preaches equality among the masses, whose constitution states quite emphatically that all citizens will have equal opportunities as to where public services are concerned has failed to keep up to its dogmas. It would be logical if the reservation was made on the basis of financial position of the students family rather than on the basis of caste. It is not correct to assume that just being an OBC means the student is financially disabled and hence cannot possibly compete with the other meritorious students from the upper echelons of society. In fact, the biggest loophole of this policy is that it will be unfairly exploited by the relatively richer of the caste, who have the same if not better standard of general education than most of the others, rather than the poor and the oppressed. It is in other words a double edged attack on merit.
But the most shocking aspect of the whole situation was the response from the government to the protest against the whole quota system and the strike organized by the doctors at the medical colleges. They hardly paid any attention to what they demanded and instead issued a supreme court order for them to lift the strike or face dire consequences. Of course, it was a careless on the part of the doctors to leave the hospitals unattended. Government hospitals are the only health centres available to the poor and financially disabled of the country. So it cannot be commended as a good move. But the fact that the government did not pay any heed to the demands of the youth and the protestors was a slap on the face. Yet another illustration of the biggest practical joke that the Greeks played on humankind… dēmokratia.