The story in the Ramayana goes like this - Jatayu was a magnificent bird with huge wing span bearing greatest of strength. He also had a brother possessing equal, if not more, strength and propensity to show off. They both would roam the skies touching the stars at will. Then they decided to get closer to the Sun. By then they were flying on ego rather than their strength. Obviously their time had come. In their quest to assent the sun they lost everything. Jatayu’s brother was burnt to ashes but Jatayu survived. As if to teach the lesson to the future generation he was destined to pathetic life with burned wings squatting in earths’ dust.
This story is so apt for Lalit Modi and IPL and I wonder if only he had read this story and learned his lesson then things would have been much easier right now. Actually, things are still easy for him. He is still commissioner of IPL happily twittering and still arrogant in his insistence of innocence. Given the humongous amount of money raised and played around by IPL and involvement of Bollywood and given the general tendency of corruption prevalent in upper echelon of Indian society it would be incredibly stupid to think that he is clean. But right now he is just accused, not yet guilty. I think whether he is clean or not is irrelevant because his functioning rubbed so many people in a wrong way that they will do everything to bring him down. He thought he has figured out antidote for everything and in his stupefying self-importance he forgot the Sun that was coming down on him. That is, the Indian political class.
Actually it’s wrong to term those leeches as a Sun. They are black holes where incredible amount of money vanishes. They are the people who will paint their mother young and sale it to their father for profit. They are the Mafia, albeit the elected one! They want share in everything. Their blessings especially count most when you embezzle money or kill somebody. I am not sure if Modi paid his ‘dues’ to them because what Lalit Modi did was actually worse than killing or stealing.
Instead he brazenly created an empire that generated billions of dollars and needed no license, no new infrastructure and no government assistance of any sort to run. And even though BCCI is ruled by a politician, Modi managed to keep even him off the track too. Mind you, when it comes to cricket BCCI is still the supreme authority but with rapid advent of IPL they were left with lowly job of selecting Indian team for international tournaments. How sad! No big money (the selectors gets paid only Rs. 25 lakh per year for their job), no Hindi movie stars and absolutely no skimpily clad cheerleaders. Obviously they were upset and all they were waiting for was one misstep. And to their delight they found a huge blunder!
To be honest Lalit Modi is correct in his demand of Kochi franchise disclosing partners in the venture. Any professional institution should not have anything to hide. It’s their obligation to inform general populace (and the Tax folks!) the kind of people involved and the kind money paid or made. Except that for some reason Mr. Modi wanted that information only from Kochi franchise. Another complication was the involvement of a Union Cabinet Minister in Indian government. His girlfriend or future-wife got a sweet equity in the franchise and he just happens to be mentoring the franchise in their quest to win the bid. This dude, who also ran for the UN Secretary General position, is either dumb enough to actually believe in what he stated or dumb enough to think that public would believe in his story. Either way he is dumb. He lost his position in the government and his future wife had to forgo her equity in the franchise. Talk about pain! But he accused Modi of siphoning money in this fiasco.
Instead of dealing with this issue with level-headedness Modi decided to take ‘high’ road and in his dense arrogance published the detailed ownership of Kochi franchise on his Twitter. I mean common, the deal was worth$300 million and the best possible medium you could find is Twitter! Those 140 characters may prove to be the most expensive words ever spoken by him. By twittering he grabbed attention of vultures. And he is going to play heavy price for that. He will be forced out of his position for sure and once that position is gone he will fade out of the picture so fast that he won’t recognize himself in the mirror. Life without cheerleaders, four cell phones (he carries four cell phones to keep track of the business!), after-game parties, desperate hotties from Hindi film industry will sure suck.
The thing Mr. Modi forgot is that even though he single handedly created an extremely successful business model that churns out money in bushels, he is expendable. The IPL will run just fine without him at the helm. There are so many self-interests involved and so much money invested that even if he is sacked the engine will keep humming. But that’s not it. See this whole tamasha is for the viewing public and as long as they are glued to the TV or flocking to the stadiums, IPL will keep chugging forward. Modis will come and Modis will go, the king is the public and he was merely the servant.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 09, 2010
In Us we Trust!
It was very disturbing and frustrating to see US agencies apprehending Mr. Hadley from Chicago and then convicting him for his role in orchestrating Mumbai massacre and actually, make him sing about his activities. And in the mean time we are still grappling to convict the terrorist who was caught on camera spraying bullets in innocent Mumbaikars. To say that our judicial and political system is rotten will be an understatement. But that’s not the worse part. The worse is that we are basically prepping ourselves for another ghastly murder rampage by Pakistanis in very short future. And if not convicting the terrorist isn’t the nadir then we are actually starting peace dialogue with Pakistan.
I think the real culprit is the Indian populace. Divided into thousands of castes and not ready to expand horizon. And, instead of using the democratic institution to the best of their advantage, they waste their precious vote on nothing. One would think that after thousand years of constant warfare, subjugation and widespread destruction Indians would treasure their freedom. They would fight for it, they will stand by it and they will do everything in their power to maintain it. We have huge standing army and those brave souls protect us so that we can sleep peacefully in our beds. And sleeping is what we exactly do. Do we realize how lucky we are? WE GET TO VOTE. There’s nothing more powerful than voting in the world. Not even the Nuclear bomb. None of our neighbor get to vote. But we do and that too in every five years. We are the masters of our destiny. We can choose our government. We can demand the change; rather, we can enforce the change. And, all that without shedding a drop of blood. Just look across Himalaya. Those poor souls can’t even use Google freely!
But we have decided to sell our vote for cheap. After thousand years of subjugation we have are yet again ready to gamble our freedom for superficiality. There is rarely any introspection on the national level, there is rarely any dialogue for positive change and there is rarely any collective action towards common goal. Instead we opted to have media frenzy, which apart from the fact being divisive, is also inaccurate for most part. Then we have musclo-cracy. Where angry mob- after burning few buses and ably imposing a Bandh- can get their demand fulfilled even if it’s detrimental to the society. Then we have wide swaths of middle class soundly asleep and readily available for slaughter to the wile praying politics and AK-47 wielding terrorist. And of course there is epidemic of consumerism aptly witnessed in IPL matches.
I sometimes believe that we deserve this treatment. We don’t respect ourselves. How are we going to get respect from others? We don’t care about our own brethren. We don’t care how many people are killed in a bomb blasts or in the killing rampages of terrorists. We simply don’t care about our society, our culture and our country. We still keep voting the most inept, inane and anti-national politicians to the helm. To expect anything from this morose, filthy and putrid political class would be a folly. And we love to be foolish, misguided and myopic. We elect these bastards again and again.
Forget about people in Bihar or Tamilnadu or in Bengal demanding justice for Mumbai massacre, what did Mumbaikars do after suffering the terrible events of 26th Nov? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! They went to bed thanking god that they weren’t the unfortunate ones facing the AK-47’s. And then they got up next morning and went to work as if nothing happened. Sometimes you wonder if they lost the touch with reality and the shared sense of humanity; and failing to realize the fact that with ever increasing population and straining resources, their existence depends more on mutual interests. I think herd mentality gives them false sense of security. As long as it ain’t me, I ain’t going to worry. Well, you better keep praying buddy because you never know!
Or you can use democratic machinery to demand justice.
There is no point in saying all this. Because I have said it numerous times before. In fact my commentary on 2006 Mumbai bomb blasts (yes there was a huge bomb blast in 2006 too!) was published in Indian Express. And I pretty much said the same thing. History doesn’t repeat without any reason.
P.S. – We are not only starting peace dialogue with Pakistan but our media hollered when none of the Pakistani cricket players got the IPL contract. Worse, one of our tennis female star, the so called icon for young woman, has decided to marry a Pakistani. I would love to know how on earth she couldn’t find a suitable match out of 14 crore Muslims in India. I can understand Love being blind (he is twice married and divorced!) but in this case, anti-national too.
And for all the mofo (like Indian Express and Times of India) who thinks she has right to marry a Pakistani I want to ask a simple question to her - If Pakistan is to attack us tomorrow, which it does on regular basis anyway, then who is she going to fight for?
I think the real culprit is the Indian populace. Divided into thousands of castes and not ready to expand horizon. And, instead of using the democratic institution to the best of their advantage, they waste their precious vote on nothing. One would think that after thousand years of constant warfare, subjugation and widespread destruction Indians would treasure their freedom. They would fight for it, they will stand by it and they will do everything in their power to maintain it. We have huge standing army and those brave souls protect us so that we can sleep peacefully in our beds. And sleeping is what we exactly do. Do we realize how lucky we are? WE GET TO VOTE. There’s nothing more powerful than voting in the world. Not even the Nuclear bomb. None of our neighbor get to vote. But we do and that too in every five years. We are the masters of our destiny. We can choose our government. We can demand the change; rather, we can enforce the change. And, all that without shedding a drop of blood. Just look across Himalaya. Those poor souls can’t even use Google freely!
But we have decided to sell our vote for cheap. After thousand years of subjugation we have are yet again ready to gamble our freedom for superficiality. There is rarely any introspection on the national level, there is rarely any dialogue for positive change and there is rarely any collective action towards common goal. Instead we opted to have media frenzy, which apart from the fact being divisive, is also inaccurate for most part. Then we have musclo-cracy. Where angry mob- after burning few buses and ably imposing a Bandh- can get their demand fulfilled even if it’s detrimental to the society. Then we have wide swaths of middle class soundly asleep and readily available for slaughter to the wile praying politics and AK-47 wielding terrorist. And of course there is epidemic of consumerism aptly witnessed in IPL matches.
I sometimes believe that we deserve this treatment. We don’t respect ourselves. How are we going to get respect from others? We don’t care about our own brethren. We don’t care how many people are killed in a bomb blasts or in the killing rampages of terrorists. We simply don’t care about our society, our culture and our country. We still keep voting the most inept, inane and anti-national politicians to the helm. To expect anything from this morose, filthy and putrid political class would be a folly. And we love to be foolish, misguided and myopic. We elect these bastards again and again.
Forget about people in Bihar or Tamilnadu or in Bengal demanding justice for Mumbai massacre, what did Mumbaikars do after suffering the terrible events of 26th Nov? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! They went to bed thanking god that they weren’t the unfortunate ones facing the AK-47’s. And then they got up next morning and went to work as if nothing happened. Sometimes you wonder if they lost the touch with reality and the shared sense of humanity; and failing to realize the fact that with ever increasing population and straining resources, their existence depends more on mutual interests. I think herd mentality gives them false sense of security. As long as it ain’t me, I ain’t going to worry. Well, you better keep praying buddy because you never know!
Or you can use democratic machinery to demand justice.
There is no point in saying all this. Because I have said it numerous times before. In fact my commentary on 2006 Mumbai bomb blasts (yes there was a huge bomb blast in 2006 too!) was published in Indian Express. And I pretty much said the same thing. History doesn’t repeat without any reason.
P.S. – We are not only starting peace dialogue with Pakistan but our media hollered when none of the Pakistani cricket players got the IPL contract. Worse, one of our tennis female star, the so called icon for young woman, has decided to marry a Pakistani. I would love to know how on earth she couldn’t find a suitable match out of 14 crore Muslims in India. I can understand Love being blind (he is twice married and divorced!) but in this case, anti-national too.
And for all the mofo (like Indian Express and Times of India) who thinks she has right to marry a Pakistani I want to ask a simple question to her - If Pakistan is to attack us tomorrow, which it does on regular basis anyway, then who is she going to fight for?
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