Everyone loves receiving gifts. It is a token of appreciation, a memento of the blissful relation, the wonderful bond the recipient shares with the giver, a reminder of the wonderful times spent together. It often serves to be an object of inspiration during turbulent times, to pull you through a tough phase, to consistently be a beacon of hope that not everything is wrong with this world, and with this life; that we still have those memories, and for many, that person to fall back upon, to motivate us and make us smile (however, if the gift is from your psychotic and over-possessive ex, with whom you’ve had a brutal & bitter break-up, then it’s another matter altogether). You should have burnt them while you had the chance.

Speaking of gifts, I still possess the farewell gift given to me from my secondary school, right before the board exams. I’m sure most of the guys in my batch still do, as would most people receiving them from their respective institutions. Our first school always holds a special place in our hearts. It’s the place where you receive your most blissful memories, because they are pure, undiluted, not corrupted by the grim realities of life or grown up people. The words etched on to that gift, in the form of a memento, hold a special place in my heart. They go like this: when the going is tough, everything seems against you, and your back is against the wall, do not panic, and do not lose hope; for that is the precise time & place when the tide is going to turn. In tough times, when the life is at the crossroads, these words keep me going.

The reason I’m talking about motivation and feel-good emotions, is that these are tough times that we live in. it is not especially flowery being an Indian at present. Our ‘neighbors’ are battering our forces from across the borders, as our Government continuously tries to appease them with ‘talks’. The economy is in doldrums, the currency is receiving a walloping, Indian stocks are cheaper than onions in the market, and the employment levels are not reassuring, no matter what the official figures tell you. The cost of living is going through the roof, and the family income is sinking through the basement. Instead of rising to the occasion and serving as inspirational figures, our political leaders are bickering like grumpy housewives with one another. In personal life, we Indians have never been the vociferous and boisterous types, wearing our hearts on our sleeves; rather we seek to suppress the turbulence within, to fill up the emptiness inside with a vacuous smile and the ‘chalta hai’ attitude. We males especially feel that the ‘strong and silent’ type forever appeals to the opposite gender, and youth turns into middle age holding to that thought, before you realize that it might have been a good thing, after you had landed the girl. Sometimes I do wonder, that so many words, so much ink, so much print has been invested to prepare the guidelines on how to woo a girl, how to land the woman of your dreams; it would serve good, especially in India, that some print be wasted writing the code that cracks the mindset of a typical Indian guy. Some health magazines have been bucking the trend of late; but there’s a long way to go before the female society’s stereotype of today’s Indian Male is broken.

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Should we rejoice or should we worry?

Another day of cricket in India, another belter of a pitch, another plethora of records and again an improbable chase achieved with minimum fuss by Indian cricket’s crown prince, Virat Kohli. Ably supported by Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma, Kohli has made what was considered a Mount Everest of a challenge even a couple of years back, a walk in the park, that too twice in two weeks. Seventeen centuries in ODIs, eleven of them in chases, all this before he has even reached twenty five years of age; we can only marvel at where he is going to take his career if he continues this rich vein of form, before  the law of averages finally catches up with him. What is more commendable is how he has taken his  temperament to an altogether different level, seldom losing his focus or patience even while facing an uphill battle. Having Captain Cool at the helm does help though and Dhoni’s calm demeanor has spread like magic throughout the team.

After the euphoria has settled, one should really introspect at where the 50-over version of the game is headed. The impact of the T20 format on the players involved is evident to all concerned, with 300- plus scores being achieved with minimum trouble and with alarming regularity. The new set of rules by the ICC to revive a supposedly dying format, are instead at the risk of pushing the ailing patient in to the coma. Twenty overs of field restrictions with only two fielders outside the inner circle, and even after that, only four are allowed outside; as Dhoni correctly wondered aloud at the post-match presentation, people are not likely to sit through seven hours to see only fours and sixes.

Initially it would add to the entertainment value, but gradually the interest would dwindle, as people wouldn’t prefer a repeat of what they already see at the shortest version of the game, that too at half the time. Increasing the number of bouncers each over wouldn’t help change the tilt of the game mercilessly stacked against  the bowlers. It is unfair that bowlers like Mitchell Johnson, consistently bowling at over 150 kmph and  visibly swinging the ball both ways even on a deadpan pitch, end up conceding 70-odd runs in ten overs.

Pitch the same bowler against the same batting lineup at Melbourne or at Perth, and we might possibly see an altogether different story. Eight consecutive losses on responsive pitches the last time India played a test series away from home are testimony to the fact that the faulty techniques of the modern- day Indian batsmen due to the advent of the T20 have hampered their progress. The board is not doing the team and the cricket fans of India any favors by arranging for unnecessarily long ODI series on designer pitches to produce one-sided encounters. The fans wish to see an even  contest between the bat and the ball, after the chutzpah provide by the month long IPL tournament.

The dwindling crowd response to the Champions League T20 is an indicator of too much cricket playing  into the mindset of the people. However, it’s all about the money, honey.

Photo: BCCI

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It was only a few months back, when a survey by a leading market research firm concluded that Mumbai is the leading city in India when it comes to women safety. It could be fairly assumed that the participants in the survey were women, or else the basic agenda of the survey would be futile. One would wonder if the same survey is retaken this week, what results it would throw up. That Mumbai would lose its share of dominance is a foregone conclusion, but I do not believe it would lose its numero uno status as a safe city immediately.

What could be said of the grievous incident that occurred last week at the heart of the industrial hub in South Mumbai, that hasn’t been already said? Words cannot possibly even begin to assuage the scar that has been left in the psyche of that unfortunate but brave woman, perhaps for the rest of her life. As eminent columnist Shobhaa De laments, “it’s just another day for the people in this great country.” Pessimistic? Yes. Disturbing? You bet. Overstatement? Hardly. As this so-called great nation moves towards an attempted higher standard of living in the twenty first century, trying to bridge the gap between the developing and the developed nations, it has only regressed in the field of gender equality.

As someone who has lived in Mumbai for quite some time, one would know that the Maximum City has a great heart for everyone who moves his/her base in search of an identity in life. Work hard and you shall get rewarded, flounder and you shall perish. However, in all its rush, constant scavenging for a better morsel of life, its mechanism churning 24*7, one has never seen Mumbai lose its dignity in trying to help tripping souls, always stopping in between its maddening rush to pick them up. So as one sees all news channels and papers make this great deal about ‘Mumbai not being safe anymore’, ‘Mumbai losing its safe haven identity amongst women’, a question crosses the mind, is it always about the city? Do these incidents actually depict the law and order situation of the city, and its basic safety provisions for women and life in general? I’m afraid it doesn’t. For all the gruesome incidents occurring with an alarming regularity in the national capital, some disturbing incidents in the Eastern Capital of Kolkata and this one-off incident (I sincerely hope so) in the financial capital of the country, it always is about the people, irrespective of caste, community, creed or nationality.

There are a couple of disturbing realizations that one encounters, as one tries to analyze the mindset of the Indian society and the scarily increasing proportion of disturbing incidents against women that have crowded our conscience since the last decade. First, the parochial and patriarchal society in India never had a place reserved for women in the higher strata of society. The prehistoric belief about the female gender being restricted to the inner parlors of the households, in the kitchen and in the bed, has been instilled in our mindset for centuries. Unfortunately, our grandmothers and great grandmothers had not done much to resurrect the  fortunes of the future generations of their gender, contributing to this wide-spread contagion by spinning yarns and preaching principles about the good and acceptable behavior of a woman as she grows up. So as women in the modern times try to break that stereotype and attemptto etch out a new identity for themselves, the Indian society would as an inherent nature, try to oppose this anomaly.

The general belief about women being weak, at least physically, leads to the thought process among men that they can be dominated by physical strength; and when this show of strength breaks barriers when opposed to, it turns into physical violence, at times sexual. Men are insecure beings, and the rise of a working woman, is often seen by them as a threat to the existing social structure where they held positions of superiority. Hence the lewd comments, the physical violence, the sexual harassments at home, parks and workplaces;  outbursts of insecurity and frustration at the threat of a changing social structure.

Second, the long standing hypocritical stance of the Indian society as being traditional & pure has led to the belief that acts of amorous nature are dirty, unnatural to the human eye and taboo to discuss about, let alone display in public. Therefore adult magazines and graphic videos of the act are looked down upon as abhorrent objects and people indulging in them as a shame upon the family and society in general. Consequently, there is a huge underground market for pornographic material in the country. The acts performed in such videos, found in the secret cupboards and mobile phones of today’s youth, give an impression that women are nothing but sexual objects whose sole purpose for existence in this world is to satisfy the male desire, whim or fancy. This misinterpretation, coupled with suppressed sexual desire, clamped down by social taboo about premarital sex and healthy relationship between genders of opposite kind, gives rise to a perverse attitude towards women. One cannot justify the act of rape in any way whatsoever, but the mechanism or thought process working in the background cannot be hard to fathom. When the desire takes over, a man is nothing more than a dangerous beast which, in the reserves and game parks of Africa, is generally gunned down for the safety of others. Unfortunately, we stay in a civil society, and a human being cannot be treated like an animal (bear the irony of it!!!), and so following the procedure of law is the only feasible option.

Spreading of proper education and awareness among today’s generation is the basic necessity if one has to eradicate the perverse mentality directed towards women in India. In most of the cases observed so far, the culprits have been youths or men belonging to the lower social strata; school dropouts inhabiting the slums in the metros, who having had no exposure to proper education, have chosen menial labor or path of crime early in their lives to make a living. The existing measure of education in India is an utter hogwash and cannot be held as a benchmark; as merely being able to sign his/her own name on a piece of paper or completing four years of primary education cannot be assumed to have attained literacy. The foreign universities don’t hold a majority of our higher educational institutions as possessing any notable standard, so the state of education imparted in the primary schools can be guessed easily. The onus is with the Government and different social groups to impart proper education to the children from an early age on how to treat women and what exactly is gender equality. The parents would also have to take greater responsibilities in imparting the necessary words of wisdom to their kids and no topic should be kept taboo as we live in a digital age, and all information are available at the click of a mouse. Finally, the buck stops with the people we elect, as we have given them the right to manage our country, and they should be held accountable for every act of terror, treason or sexual violence that happens here.

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I have long admired Real Madrid. Long before the Galcticos Era set in, even before I happened to watch a live game of theirs on TV (cable connection was a luxury in my childhood), I used to read about their exploits on that favourite sports magazine of mine, The Sportstar. the first image still stuck in my memory is that of Predrag Mijatovic rounding off the Juventus goalkeeper (Angelo Peruzzi, if my memory serves me right) to win the Champions League in 1998. Then came that fateful night at Nou Camp in 1999 final, & changed everything, including my allegiance to a colourful Red, forever.

Meanwhile the Galcticos came & went, as I shrugged my shoulders at the ridiculous idea of buying a team of Superstars rather than building it, as United, & later Barcelona showed the world. My fondness for David Beckham tilted the balance temporarily towards the white side of Madrid, as the blue-eyed boy of Manchester traveled on to the other side of the English Channel. But the wily old fox in Fergie showed up his trump card in the form of a certain show-off teenager from Portugal, & I was blown away once again. But history has a way of repeating once again, & the successor of the No 7 shirt in the red followed his predecessor soon enough, but not before having the soccer world at his feet for six years.

Meanwhile, Mr Florentino Perez, the then President of the club, had changes his strategy a wee bit, by shifting his focus away from established superstars to promising raw talents. it is this strategy that I hold my grudge against, not because his ambition rides beyond soccer logic & solely on financial clout, but because the rest of the clubs around the world are helpless against it. Time & again we have seen raw talent arrive out of the blue, dazzle us in a mega sporting event, holding our memory of that event, & then disappear into the obscurity through the crowded dressing room of the Los Blancos. The initial Galcticos era had its hapless victims in the form of Michael Owen, David Beckham, Robinho, Claude Makelele (a victim of the reverse flow), Julio Baptista…the list is endless; all established superstars at their erstwhile clubs, before Real Madrid wielded their clout, & they never were to be the same players again.

Three years away from Perez gave the footballing world some respite, before he was back at it again, his re-election riding the wave of another Galactico promise. Sure enough, the wave began, with Kaka from Milan, where he was at the top of his game & Ronaldo from Manchester (sigh). The World Cup in South Africa in 2010 gave us a rare surprise in the form of an attacking, dazzling Germany who promised to gobble up everything in front of them before their famous semi-final jinx did them in again. But Mesut Ozil, Sami Khedira, Mueller & the like held our imagination. Of course, Perez would not be left behind, as he hunted down the famous midfield duo from Germany.
But Barca showed that money cannot indeed buy everything, as they reigned over the footballing landscape since 2006 with a plethora of home grown talent, and pulverized Real Madrid whenever they met, with an odd draw or loss here & there. the arrival of Mourinho did tilt the scales more favorably of late, but with his impending departure in the summer, status quo is expected to be restored.

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