Hara-kiri

Harakiri is a Japanese word which means a ritualistic suicide that the Samurai perform. I thought this might be an apt word to describe the turn of events in our very own Samurai's life.. that's right Mr. Lalit Kumar Modi. Its almost a shame if I do not dedicate a blog post to him after he pulled off a fast one on a billion people for 3 straight years.

Shashi Tharoor may have been caught in the whirlwind of things, but mostly everyone knew that game was being played elsewhere. He was a sacrificial lamb at the altar of our "holier than thou" politicians. It so played out that the very people who were gunning for Tharoor's scalp as the Minister are the ones found in bed with Lalit Modi and the sleaze money of IPL. Tharoor just paid the ultimate price for speaking up on a issue that most seasoned politicians would have not comment upon. He came out in the public declaring his mentor ship for Kochi team, his relationship to the beneficiary Ms. Pushkar and also the fact that he is not a share holder of the bid or in any form deriving any monetary benefits out of the exercises. He was dumped but not disgraced. I hope for his sake that the "hidden truth" behind failed bids of Adani and Dhoot are unravelled and we soon get official confirmation of the involvement of M/s Pawar and Son- in law(s) and M/s Patel and daughter(s) in the rigging of IPL bids.

Moving on to our Samurai in the picture; he has been the author of yet to be released book "How to lose friends and antagonise people". Long before he got the coveted post of IPL chairman he was known to burn bridges, pick up bones with powerful people; rub others on the wrong side, basically show arrogance. Somehow his personal charisma and contacts would get him out of soupy situations; contacts which he built not on basis of mutual friendship but mutual back-scratching. The disadvantage of such relationship being, you need to be in position of power perennially to scratch backs and the threat of being bumped off is always real. He used his proximity with Vasundhara Raje to win RCA elections, helped Pawar to win BCCI elections and became IPL godfather as a return favour. Then on he began his real business, involving making money for mainly one stake holder, namely Mr. Lalit Modi.

He had his finger in every pie and basically no matter what happened at IPL, he always made money out of it. Be it the bids for teams, bids for telecast rights, leaking insider information and I wouldn't be surprised if he also took cuts from players for placing them on the bid list. He did it all and did it in open. The strongest alibi for him being, he was IPL chairman and mostly the sole authority taking decisions. Such power normally gets into ones head easily and our protagonist wasn't any different; he pulled strings left, right and centre. The centre one bit him "u know where" as they have the power of institutions who can dig out the graves of done deals and flash a 1000W bulb on the dicey points.

What followed was IT / ED raids on basically everything Lalit Modi was involved with. The skeletons are still tumbling out and how. All I hope as a consumer of brand IPL is that this time let the buck not stop at him; let us see the makers of this monster who conveniently closed their eyes when he was out on looting spree. Let us see what Pawars and Patels did, what Narendra Modi did and basically what the Government did because we are bored of listening to the powers of Lalit Modi to hoodwink billions of people.

So long..

Women's day 2009

It was yet another Women's day and nothing to celebrate about. Yes, we did hear commercials screaming out celebrate your woman-hood, but the sentiment hardly resonates when we look at reality. Even the women are done celebrating one day as womens day I guess, cos any woman I wished showed a luke warm response as if to suggest "Who cares a damn". So are we to say that women have become cynical or have they just resigned to fate. I hope for the happiness of the world this is not true.

Everywhere, you hear about crime against women whether it is harassment at work, domestic violence or say teenage crimes (date rapes etc.) and what you see often, is that the attitude seems to suggest, why make sucha a big deal about something thats so regular. Even the women have accepted it as a part of life and that is a dangerous thing. I am no bra-burning feminism theorist but it is my firm belief that the maker made no difference when he moulded women as compared to men.

We have reduced women to being a holy cow, in the name of reverence towards her and protecting her, we time and again inflict blows on her self-confidence. Such telling blows, that it dents the phyche and either makes her surrender to fate or stand up to the agressor and be called "woman of loose morals". In recent past we have seen many such "stray incidents" which cannot hide a pattern underneath all pointing towards one thing "women can never be seen as equal to men".

The next time we see a woman being attacked, (in broad daylight or ortherwise) lets take a moment to think, how would you like if your sister/wife/fiancee/girlfriend/friend was attacked and there was no one to stop it. Imagine that helpless situation, and if you dont want to be in that situation, then take up the cause of any woman you see in trouble cos u never know today's incident thats left unchecked may return and harm someone close to you and maybe in larger proportions.

This women's day lets take an oath that "Even if I cannot improve the status of women in this world, atleast I will not play a role in degrading it" cos if a woman can bring you to this world, there is hardly anything that she can't do :)

So long...