Author: Kumar Govindan

I am the first Graduate - an Engineer - in the family; the first to be employed in the Government Sector, India; the first to go overseas for work - USA; the first to throw it all and become an Entrepreneur (and fail); the first to get back to work - this time with the Tata Group, India - after 4 years of chasing 'business dreams'; and, the first to pick-up the Entrepreneur thread again. I now run a Women's Apparel design and styling Boutique - Mavira Designs - along with my wife. The objective of my Blog is to tell my story, intermingled with news stories from all corners of the World, with wit and pun - to squeeze a few laughs, perhaps a smile. I'm sure you will enjoy the reading.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-47

About: the world this week, 14 November to 20 November 2021, bombs smoke, cities smoke, people meet to change the smoke, snails slither, a singer gets freedom, and the mathematics of life.

Everywhere

Terrorist acts such stabbings or firing an explosion seem to be happening with a certain ‘staccato steadiness’, in the United Kingdom (UK). And the Police too are fired-up, and right behind them.

This Sunday a homemade bomb exploded shortly after a taxi pulled up outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital, UK. The passenger, who appears to have brought the device with him died at the scene. The taxi driver, quick on his wits, just about managed a heroic escape from the car, seconds before it was engulfed in flames. Police were able to find leads and have arrested four men, all in their 20s; they have identified a suspect and named him too. A key finding was that the bomb was made with homemade explosive, which had ball bearings attached and could have caused significant injury or death if it had detonated in different circumstances.

What exactly do these guys want? The Police are searching for clues.

This week, India’s capital, New Delhi touched dizzying heights becoming the worst polluted city in the World with an Air Quality Index (AQI) score of 292. The second worst, Lahore, Pakistan, was hid by less dense fog at AQI of 212. India’s Mumbai and Kolkata dusted themselves to the top ten with scores of 163 and 157 respectively.

What do these AQI numbers mean? Let’s check out the scale of unhealthiness of the air we breathe.

On the AQI scale, 0-50 is Good – breathe easy; 51 to 100 is Moderate – don’t start worrying, not yet; 101 to 150 is Unhealthy for sensitive groups – careful; 151 to 200 is Unhealthy for all – time to start worrying; 201 to 300 is Very Unhealthy – time to find a solution, use temporary measures, start covering up; and 301 to 500 is Hazardous – act on a solution, or scoot from the place!

Further, Politicians added noise to the pollution, bickering over the causes: stubble-burning, farm fires, in farms surrounding Delhi was touted as one reason in addition to the ‘must blame’ automobile pollution caused by the city’s dense vehicular traffic, industries, and dust. Even India’s Supreme Court added voice, trying to see through the smoke: hope they do not make a blurred judgement.

Now that we have become experts in handing-out, ‘enjoying’ lockdowns, and wearing all kinds of layered masks in all kinds of places, there is a talk of locking down New Delhi to control the pollution. This, after previous odd and even attempts could not clear the air. With smoke in your eyes, you find new directions every season!

Last week, down South, the city of Chennai was battered by incessant red-alert rains and people tried to find or even make their own shells to hide. This week the shells started moving about only that there weren’t people in them but slimy mollusk fellas, called The Great African Snails– an invasive species. The city became infested by scores of snails seen on walls, gardens, rooftops, and waterlogged roads. The story goes that the Great African Snail, native to East Africa, made its way to Chennai on the Trade Ships during the time India was colonised by the British and other Europeans. The snails then did their own colonising and conquering on touching Indian soil, eating all kinds of plants and crops, and even construction material such as paint.

These snails are hermaphrodites and hence have 100% reproduction skills – both ways. They mate with one another or with themselves laying eggs during the rainy season, which are covered inside mud and hatch during the next spell of rains. The Great African Snail has a life of about seven years and gets into the act quickly, starting to lay eggs by their first birthday. Wow, that’s a quick-gun snail!

There is another rainy angle too: researchers say the shells of these snails offer brilliant information – to those willing to study them – on the rainfall rate of a particular region. The shells grow faster during the rainy season and the bands on their shells hold a lot of data, telling their own stories – living as they are from one rain to another. Amazing what we can learn by just looking deeply as the ‘snail’s space’.

This week, the 26th Meeting of the Conference Of Parties, COP26, ended in Glasgow and in the 11th hour of negotiations, India (and China) had their way on fossil fuels – read as dirty coal. Now, Governments have agreed to ‘phase down’ not ‘phase out’ coal – the largest contributor of greenhouse gas -mostly Carbon-dioxide (CO2)-emissions. Call that tinkering with words-word pollution? This is the first time, at a COP conference, that an overt plan to reduce use of coal, which is responsible for 40% of annual CO2 emissions, has been made. World leaders also agreed to phase-out subsidies that artificially lower the price of coal, oil, or natural gas.

The outcome document, known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, calls on 197 countries to pyramid their progress towards more climate ambition points next year, at COP27, set to take place in Egypt. It was agreed that when countries meet again they will pledge further cuts to CO2 emissions. I reckon, next year you may get a better perspective looking from the top of a great pyramid, climbing up and standing on the dead and buried.

In previous World Inthavaarams, I had talked about Pop Star Britney Spear’s life-shackling conservatorship of 13 years where her father Jamie Spears controlled much of her personal life on issues related to her career, health (making babies too), and wealth, on the grounds that she was incapable of taking care of herself. Then Britney fought for freedom and pleaded with the Courts that her father be removed from the conservatorship. A ‘Free-Britney’ movement was also started by fans in her support. And finally last Friday, a court in Los Angeles, United States, ended the draconian conservatorship. And said, Britney doesn’t need to undergo a mental health evaluation. She is now free to spear-ahead her life, and, baby, we can listen to her sing one more time! Oops, surprising that freedom can sometimes be freely snatched away just like that!

Please Yourself

Reading is the never-ending fuel for writing and to keep-up with my reading goals I ordered by next set of books for the season, on Amazon. They arrived in double-quick time, before the rains could start pouring. And what better way to spend a rainy day, curled-up on your cosiest sofa, book in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in another?

Without making a calculation, I started reading Hardy’s, ‘A Mathematician’s Apology’ and found it to be one of the best possible accounts on what it is to be a creative person. It revealed many equations and theorems on living your life. And also multiplied thoughts from another of my all time favourite books, Ayn Rand’s, The Fountainhead.

G.H. Hardy is one of the twentieth centuries’ finest, ‘pure and real’ mathematicians and is famously known as the one who discovered (described as the most romantic incident in his life) the genius lurking inside India’s brilliant mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan. And gave him the means to exhibit his super-powers by drawing him to England: to tutor, guide, and collaborate with him.

Some of Hardy’s thoughts goes like this, I quote, ‘I do what I do because it is the one and only thing that I can do at all well. It is a tiny minority who can do anything really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.

If a man is in any sense a real mathematician, then it is a hundred to one that his mathematics will be far better than anything else he can do, and that he would be silly if he surrendered any decent opportunity of exercising his one talent in order to do undistinguished work in other fields. Such a sacrifice could be justified only by economic necessity or age. It is quite true that most people can do nothing well. If so, it matters very little what career they choose, and there is nothing more to say about it’.

Think it over: the reference here is Mathematics but I would apply it to any field.

Hardy apologises for not having done anything useful at all except, ‘having created something worth creating – with a question only about its value’, and that he has ‘added something to knowledge, and helped others add more; and these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of’ other creators and inventors…who have left some kind of a memorial behind them.

The candidness and humility of his brilliant mind was oozing through every word of his writing and I was spellbound. He listed the most decisive moment of his life as having collaborated with two other great mathematicians, Britain’s John Edensor Littlewood and India’s Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Hardy says that a serious theorem is one which contains significant ideas with two essentials, a certain Generality – to be widely applied, and a certain Depth – go deep, leading into other domains. Wow, I was awestruck!

On Ramanujan, most of us must have come across the famous incident of the taxi-cab number. Ramanujan lay dying in Hospital and Hardy had gone to visit him, arriving by a taxi-cab. On entering Ramanujan’s room, Hardy remarked, ‘I thought the number of my taxi-cab was 1729. It seemed to be rather a dull number’. To which Ramanujan replied: ’No, Hardy! No, Hardy! It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways’. That was the exact exchange as recorded by Hardy.

Check this out:1729 is the sum of the cubes of 10 and 9 (1000 + 729) and also the sum of cubes of 1 and 12 (1 + 1728).

Ramanujan died of tuberculosis at the young age of 33 in the year 1920. Hardy says that all great mathematicians died young, and adds, ’I do not know of an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty’.

On the sidelines: Hardy was an atheist. He loved cricket-could talk endlessly about it- and often he would carry his mathematics to the stadiums, watching the play and working on the sums. He shunned the limelight and disliked getting awards – hated going on stage and receiving it in front of others. He never married and so did his sister who spent much of her life looking after the great man. Hardy died in December 1947 at the age of 70.

More freedom and mathematics stories coming up in the weeks ahead at more than a snail’s pace. Slide and slug it out with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-46

About: the world this week, 7 November to 13 November 2021, the world flies again, hybrid warfare on the borders, India’s highest civilian awards, floods in Chennai, and a Penguin gets lost.

Everywhere

This week the United States opened its borders to vaccinated international travellers, after nearly twenty months of being under the Covid-19 pandemic covers – with or without masks. And swarms of hugs and kisses stung the Airports. Looked like the old times were back, again. But it’s not over, say Epidemiology Experts and this week we saw a surge of cases in Germany, in Austria, and some other parts of the world. When will the spike break down?

Hybrid Warfare, heard of the term, have you? How about ‘encouraging a migrant crisis’. That’s what Europe’s last-standing Dictator, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko seems to be doing. He has been ruling the country since 1994, and he kept winning election after election with fluent ease in what is considered ‘simple electoral fraud’ by most of the world. Last year’s Presidential Election-the sixth-went the same way, which independent digital exit polls said that Lukashenko might have lost to the opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya – who later had to leave Belarus and take refuge in neighbouring Lithuania. The results of the election also led to widespread protests in Belarus.

Numerous countries refused to accept the election results, as did the European Union (EU), which imposed sanctions on Belarus to punish it for violence, repression and election fraud. Subsequently, Lukashenko was accused of hounding political opponents, displaying strong-man tactics, following that story of forced diversion – from Lithuania to Belarus-of a Ryan Air Jet carrying an opposition journalist and his girlfriend. And more sanctions were screwed-in.

On the heels of the such kicking sanctions, Belarus seems to have adopted a different kind of silent, retaliative action, called hybrid warfare by Poland-one of the affected countries. Belarus encouraged migrants mostly ethnic and religious minorities from Iraq, Africa, and Asia to travel to Belarus with easy Tourist Visas and then drove them to the Border of the three neighbouring EU Countries of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia where they simply cross on foot. Funnelling migrants in this manner, over the week, thousands of migrants piled up on the Poland – Belarus Border looking to cross over. They have set up makeshift camps in freezing conditions near the border and the pressure is on Poland to whether to yield to their charms.

This is a new kind of warfare, happening in other parts of the world too, and weapons have to be found beyond the barb-wires, water cannons, tear-gas, and pellet guns!

India’s Highest Civilian Awards

The highest civilian awards in India are, the Bharat Ratna, followed by what is called the Padma Awards: the Padma Vibhushan, the Padma Bhushan, and the Padma Shri, awarded each year about the time of India’s Republic Day, in January. The awards recognise people who have made pioneering contributions across diverse sectors, delivered outstanding service to humanity.

Over the years, I’ve never paid much attention to the Padma Awards: It was a kind of rigmarole, year after year. But this time, I was forced to look-up and take notice: such was the stunning achievements of many of them, who came from extremely humble and variegated backgrounds. It finally showcased a deeper, honest, and vibrant India.

Previously, selected persons recommended the nominations, and departing from tradition India opened-up the nomination process to the public at large, thereby making it a people’s movement. The ‘People’s Padma’ marks a paradigm shift for building a New India recognising India’s unsung heroes – those working quietly at the grass root levels.

This week India’s President presented The Padma Awards to 141 awardees for the year 2020, as the ceremony could not be held last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The list of 141 awardees included 7 Padma Vibhushans, 16 Padma Bhushans and 118 Padma Shri Awards.

And for the first time, in a very long time, I got the feeling that the people who received them, without doubt, truly deserved them. With the Awards being India-centric, I did not expect non-Indian citizens to be accorded the honour. However, not just one or two, but ten foreign nationals, Overseas Citizens of India (OCI), Non-Resident Indians (NRI), Persons Of Indian Origin (PIO) have also been honoured this year.

Here comes some stories, about some of the ‘melange of winners’.

Known as the ‘Tree Goddess’ in her Halakki Tribe, Tulsi Gowda, 77 years old, hailing from Honnali Village in Karnataka, won a Padma Shri. She is an environmentalist who has planted over 30,000 saplings and has been diligently involved in environmental conservation for the past six decades. Tulsi looked after the nurseries of the Karnataka Forest Department where she spent over 50 years, starting-off working as a daily wage earner and later as a permanent employee. She has extensive first-hand knowledge of the trees and plants of the forest, which she learnt by seeing, feeling and smelling, earning her another nickname, ‘Encyclopaedia of the Forest’. That’s hard to beat!

She walked bare-foot in Rashtrapathi Bhavan to receive the award, wearing only a sari-the traditional dress of her tribe-draped to cover-up as a blouse as well, with multiple coils of black beads and corals adorning her neck. It was an image, which will stay green -growing like a tree-in the mind, for time to come.

Another spectacular person, Transgender Manjamma Jogati, theatre actress, singer, and performer of Jogti Nritya – an ancient folk dance form of Karnataka won a Padma Shri for her contribution to Arts. She is also the first transgender President of the Karnataka Janapada Academy, which is the State’s top institution for folk arts.

Born as Manjunath Shetty but aspiring to be a woman, she became a ‘Jogappa’ at age sixteen realising her true sexual identity. Jogappas are an ancient transgender community who dedicate themselves to the service of Goddess Renuka Yellamma – they are considered married to the Goddess and leave their family homes.

She was disowned by parents and took to the streets, begging for a livelihood; was sexually assaulted multiple times and even attempted suicide by drinking poison. Manjamma learnt to perform the traditional folk dance Jogati Nritya for survival and became so good at it that she took the dance to platforms across the nation popularising it, to wide acclaim. Manjamma became a permanent dancer in a Jogati dance troupe called Kaalavva and performed on over 1000 stages. She later took over the troupe, on the death of her mentor, making the dance even more popular.

On walking up to receive her award Manjamma Jogati made those unique gestures, which is a signature tune of her community, to bless and drive away the evil eyes on the President of India.

I shall cut short the long story on the multifaceted winners of the Padma Awards with Dwarf Athlete K J Venkatesh receiving the Padma Shri for excellence in para-sports.

Venkatesh is an Indian para-athlete and shot putter from Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. – It’s just a coincidence that there are so many winners from the State of Karnataka. Is there something about the State? – He won his first gold for India in the shot put in 1999 in Australia. Earlier, in 1994, he represented India at the 1st International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Athletics World Championships in Berlin, Germany. Venkatesh entered the Limca Book of Records when he made a world record by securing six medals in various sports at the fourth World Dwarf Games in 2005.

Venkatesh suffers from Achondroplasia and stands short at a height of 4 feet 2 inches. In a rare gesture, the President came down to his level when handing over the Award. Achondroplasia is a genetic disorder with dwarfism being a primary feature. In this condition, the arms and legs are short, while the torso is typically of normal length. And the faculties of the brain and intelligence are not reduced in any way.

There are so many other uplifting stories of great resilience, but I’ve decided to ‘stay short’ enjoying this space, and leave the rest for you to delve into. For e.g., the story of a 65 years old, Orange Fruit Vendor, Harekala Hajabba, who saved from his daily sales to build a School in his Village is awfully inspiring. He was recognised with a Padma Shri. And yet again, he’s from Mangalore, Karnataka. Get these stories across to your family and friends so that they learn the lessons of struggle and climb their own ladders.

Floods in Chennai

It was almost ‘deja vu 2015’ for the city of Chennai, Tamil Nadu with incessant rains for over ten days, caused by the North-East Monsoon and a depression in the Bay of Bengal, battering the city and water rolling over many floors and unchartered areas. The City was once again caught ill-prepared and the usual blame game muddied the waters further: the previous Govt did this…did not do that…kind of stuff. Whatever, it’s time to stop passing-the-buck, get down to the drawing board, and talk to finding solutions that float or stay well above the water level.

Going beyond the usual, oft-spoken, rain managing infrastructure, my solution is to make the Buckingham Canal, River Adayar, and River Cooum a combined Thames of Chennai- get water to flow in them so that we ‘boat round’ Chennai; establish a well-connected superb storm water drain system; evacuate people from frequently flooding low areas; and designate certain lands – as ‘rain-soak parks’ to absorb the spills… If you can’t get the water out, get it in and learn to live with it!

We ride on the shoulders of those before us and there is no reason why we cannot keep our head above the waters. Pick-up a book – an old story- turn a leaf, find a solution.

A Rare Visitor

This week, Birdlings Flat, a small settlement on New Zealand’s South Island had a rare visitor, an Adelie Penguin. The ‘permanent resident’ of Antarctica had traversed 3,000 kilometres of icy waters to find himself far from home and looking sad and lost on new and puzzling shores: the South-Eastern coastline of New Zealand. Locals immediately found a name for him, ‘Pingu’ – they called.

It’s only the third recorded instance of a live Adelie Penguin – a species that makes its home on the Antarctic Peninsula – making it to New Zealand. Its arrival is a reminder of the threats the birds like Pingu face from warming waters, increased competition over food supplies, and changing habitats.

Pingu wasn’t trying to get back into the waters and fearing he could be vulnerable to dogs, the locals called the Christchurch Penguin Rehabilitation Centre, who promptly send an Official to give a look-in and talk to Pingu. ‘Apart from being a bit starving and severely dehydrated, he was actually not too bad, so we gave him some fluids and a fish smoothie’ said the Official. Pingu was then released into the Bay, hoping that he may be able to make the journey home. Must have brought his ‘penguin compass’ with him?

I wish he had come over with his partner. It could have been a dream honeymoon trip, and Jacintha Arden willing, could perhaps have settled-down in New Zealand.

More hybrid stories coming up in the weeks ahead. Stay afloat with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-45

About: the world this week, 31 October to 6 November 2021, warming up to climate change – the heat is on humankind to save the Planet; let’s do it with G20, COP26, with a new star called Hydrogen…among other things, while India drums its plans.

Everywhere

Weather is what we experience every day: and we watch and soak-up the predictions of, the day, the week, month, and the year, to plan adventures outside the safety of our cozy homes. Climate is the average weather in a place over many years. Climate Change is a shift in these average conditions – deeply studied by Scientists and other Masters of the climate change game, all over the world. Their study results tell us about the health of our Planet: whether it’s overworking itself in the gym to keep those toned, tiered, economy packs of countries in shape or whether it’s mostly in bed, under the blankets, and wearing ice caps.

It’s a fact that temperatures across the world are shooting-up because of human activity caused climate change now threatens every aspect of human life. If left unchecked, Earth-the only Planet in the Solar system known to support life – will experience catastrophic warming, with worsening droughts, greater rise in sea levels and mass extinction of living species. We face a gargantuan challenge, but there are potential solutions.

The sinister climate change we are now experiencing is caused by us humans using oil, gas, and coal to get various things done in our homes and factories, and for transport. When these fossil fuels burn, they release greenhouse gases – mostly that much maligned guy called, Carbon Dioxide (CO2)- which trap the Sun’s heat and cause the Earth’s temperature to rise.

The world is now about 1.2C (degrees centigrade) warmer than it was in the 19th Century. And the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen by about 50%. Temperature rises must slow down if we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, and global warming needs to be kept under 1.5C by 2100, say Scientists – that’s the target, which we all need to own up. Remember, if we keep burning ourselves at the current pace we are looking at a whopping rise of 2.7C by the end of the century. That would be Hell!

One of the effects of climate change is that many small Groups are forming all over the world to discuss the future of Planet Earth. It’s almost like small clouds gathering to block harmful global warming sun-rays or send meaningful showers of rain down on to Earth.

Most of the Groups have a thread of climate change woven into them. And that’s the ‘hot and melting’ topic this week. Let’s start with a Group, leaning more towards the economics side.

G20 Italia 2021

The G20 or Group of Twenty is an intergovernmental forum consisting of 19 of the world’s major economies, and the European Union. It works to tackle major issues related to the global economy, such as international financial stability, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development.

The G20 was founded in 1999 in response to several world economic crises. Since 2008, the Group convenes at least once a year, with Summits involving each member’s head of government or state, finance minister, foreign minister, and other high-ranking officials. In addition, International organisations, and nongovernmental organisations are invited to attend the summits, some on a permanent basis. The group’s chair rotates annually among the members and is selected from a different regional grouping of countries.

This year’s G20, the first G20 Summit hosted by Italy, was held in Rome on 30 October 2021 and 31 October 2021. It was the culmination of the work carried out during the whole year of the Italian Presidency through various initiatives and get-togethers.

What was the outcome?

Climate Change: The G20 committed to the key Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C and pledged action against dirty coal plants-agreed to stop funding new dirty coal plants abroad by the end of 2021- but fell short on a target of zero emissions.

Taxation: The G20 agreed to subject multinationals to a minimum 15% tax, as part of an effort to build ‘a more stable and fairer international tax system’. Internet giants of the United States, such as Amazon, Google’s Alphabet, Facebook’s Meta, and Apple – which have benefited from basing themselves in low-tax countries to minimise their tax bills – are particular targets of the new global regulation.

Vaccination: G20 vowed to support the WHO’s goal of vaccinating at least 40% of the world’s population against Covid-19 by 2021, and 70% by the middle of next year -2022, by boosting the supply of vaccines in developing countries and removing supply and financing constraints. They also promised to work together towards the recognition of Covid-19 vaccines deemed safe and efficacious by the WHO.

Others: Still reeling under Covid-related disruptions, G20 leaders ruled out a hasty removal of national stimulus measures. G20 set a new target of channelling USD 100 billion towards the poorest nations, coming from the USD 650 billion fund already made available by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) via a fresh issuance of its Special Drawing Rights (SDR).

SDRs are not a currency, but can be used by developing countries either as a reserve currency that stabilises the value of their domestic currency, or converted into stronger currencies to finance investments. For poorer countries, the interest is also to obtain hard currencies without having to pay substantial interest rates.

Now, onto our next Group on Climate Change.

COP26

Conference of the Parties (COP) is a United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference initiated to tackle climate change, and COP26 is the 26th summit held this year in the city of Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom (UK).

The first COP meeting was held in Berlin, Germany, in March, 1995. Historic, path-breaking decisions and goals were made and adopted in COP3, Kyoto, Japan, December 1997, the outcome of which was The Kyoto Protocol, and in COP21, Paris, France, November-December 2015, the outcome of which was The Paris Agreement. Both these conferences set tangible targets which nations took home to work out on the treadmill.

Over the week, the bandwagon of world leaders flew directly from G20 Italia to COP26 Glasgow in what was a back-to-back meeting: wonder how many planes had to lift off and how much more gas they pumped into the poor atmosphere?

There is a new term we need to get familiar with: Net Zero. We heard it all the time over the past week.

Net Zero means a fine balancing of the gas books on our naughty gross climate affecting businesses. It means the greenhouse gas emissions pumped into the atmosphere by humans is balanced by creation of new carbon sinks – such as forests – to absorb an equivalent amount. You clean-up and mitigate your own muck!

How about other solutions?

Enter the Hydrogen Kid

There is a new star on the block an it is beginning to get famous – Hydrogen. Many say it is the answer to our climate change woes.

Hydrogen can be produced from diverse domestic resources with the potential for near-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Once produced, Hydrogen generates electrical power in a fuel cell, emitting only water vapour and warm air. It holds promise for growth in both the stationary and transportation energy sectors.

In a Hydrogen Economy, Hydrogen would be used in place of the fossil fuels that currently provide four-fifths of the world’s energy supply and emit the bulk of global greenhouse gas emissions. This could aid climate goals because of the obvious benefits of Hydrogen and the fact that it does not release CO2, on burning.

There are three main types of hydrogen fuel. First, ‘Grey’ Hydrogen, which is vast majority of Hydrogen in use-and there is plenty of it, mainly in industry-is made from natural gas. But the process emits CO2. Second, ‘Blue’, or as the gas industry likes to call it, ‘decarbonized’, Hydrogen is made from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS) attached. Finally, ‘Green’ or ‘renewable’ Hydrogen, which every Hydrogen advocate says is the ultimate goal, is made from the electrolysis of water powered by electricity from renewable energy sources. Wow, I’m for green!

Hydrogen’s energy content by volume is low. This makes storing Hydrogen a challenge because it requires high pressures, low temperatures, or chemical processes to be stored compactly. Overcoming this challenge, and others is important in making Hydrogen more friendly.

A lot more needs to be done to make Hydrogen work: at the moment it’s just a kid that needs to grow up quickly.

India: Hear the Drums Boris?

India’s Prime Minister (PM) Modi was at his eloquent best beating drums and singing with the Indian diaspora in Italy and Glasgow before delivering India’s Climate Control targets.

India pledged to achieve Net Zero by the year 2070; achieve 50% of all its energy uses from renewable, non-fossil, clean-energy sources; increasing the total of such power generation to 500 Giga Watts (GW) by 2030; cut one billion tonnes of carbon emissions from the total projected emissions, again by 2030, and reduce carbon intensity by 45%. The PM also thumped his chest to say India is the only country that is delivering on the Paris Agreement targets.

These are indeed sexy figures to look at and a bold & beautiful statement by India.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the hosting country, UK, said PM Modi understands climate change and the power of sunshine very well, and has done some extraordinary things in his country. There is one sun, one world, one grid, and one Narendra Modi, he said. Later, trying to sit under the sun, the PMs warmly talked about a unifying future Solar Grid.

India’s Covaxin

This week the World Health Organisation (WHO) finally granted approval for India’s home grown Covid-19 Vaccine called Covaxin – made by Bharat Biotech – for emergency use. To use WHO’s technical jargon, it says, ‘the benefits of the shot, known as Covaxin, significantly outweighs the risks and it met the WHO standards for protection against Covid-19’.

The decision had been significantly delayed as the Advisory Group kept seeking additional clarifications every time data was submitted by Bharat Biotech, and it was beginning to look like a dark tunnel – without the end in sight. With the final risk benefit assessment successfully made by WHO, the vaccine can now be rolled out for global use. And it is expected to benefit many poor countries.

In India, Covaxin was given emergency-use authorisation in January 2021 before the completion of the last-stage trials, which later found the vaccine to be 78% effective against severe Covid-19. The approval, by WHO, is a shot in the arm for India’s indigenous vaccine manufacturing industry.

Diwali

This week, the Festival of Lights – Diwali was celebrated by Hindus and other faiths as well, all over the world and especially in India. India’s Courts grew a new kind of nose, poking too much into religion, in banning bursting of firecrackers – which is integral to celebrating the festival – based on petitions linking the bursting of crackers to air-pollution and other kinds of disruptions. It did not bang well with most people and suddenly it has fired a debate of prejudice against the majority faith!

More stories of change, fire and smoke, coming up in the weeks ahead. Celebrate, and it’s all right to burst with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-44

About: the world this week, 24 October to 30 October 2021, lighting-up a festival, two unfriendly countries face-off in sport, trying to butterfly a ‘meta’morphosis, and a Princess cherishes her love and marries to become a commoner.

Everywhere

Fabindia: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

Fabindia is an Indian chain store retailing garments, fabrics, furnishings, and ethnic handmade products of traditional craftsmen in rural India. Established in 1960, Fabindia operates near about 327 stores across India and 14 international stores.

With the Hindu Festival Season of Diwali approaching, Fabindia wanted to try on some new costumes and sewed-up an advertisement to pay ‘homage to Indian culture’- it said so. Models showed them off and we watched. It named the collection ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’ – an Urdu phrase that means ‘celebration of tradition’.

But the celebration generated outrage in culturally sensitive India, on giving an Urdu name, rather than a Hindi one, to the collection. Further, the female models in the advertisement were not wearing the traditional colourful bindi – a dot – that a Hindu woman normally wears on her forehead. Some even thought that Diwali was being stolen – lock, stock, and barrel. Sensing the mood and not wanting to further tear into the Hindu fabric, Fabindia quickly sewed-up and smoked out the advertisement.

Urdu is a language which has its origins in India and is recognised in the Constitution as one of the country’s official languages. Some of India’s most celebrated poems and love songs are written in Urdu. Yet in recent years its use has become increasingly politicised in the public domain, often decried as the ‘Muslim’ language of the rival, neighbouring Islamic country of Pakistan.

Many religious boundaries are invisible, and we need to wear special laser glasses to find them. Certain risks are not worth taking. Let them be!

Facebook: Let’s Book Another Name?

This week the spotlight is on social media giant, Facebook, which also owns Instagram – the photo and video sharing platform, and WhatsApp – the instant messaging and voice-over-Internet Protocol (well, simply talking) Application.

Facebook, has been in the news over the past year(s), and quite some time back too, all for the wrong reasons: violating user privacy, selling user data, and making tons of paper with those famous faces printed on them telling and promising you their worth. Most of us were confused on what exactly was happening.

Finally, the pages are turning in the book of Facebook and even the paper is being felt by hand, while the company itself is attempting a makeover by doing the name-change thing. What next, Heartlook, or Mindhook?

An ex-employee Product Manager of Facebook, Frances Haugen, turned into a whistle-blower and she’s blowing a lot of heat and dust, which is being carried by the wind to all parts of the world. And Facebook is scurrying to mask its face.

A clearer picture of how Facebook was vividly aware of its harmful effects came to light, both at Frances Haugen’s testimony in front of the British Parliament and through a series of reports based on internal documents that she leaked, called ‘The Facebook Papers.’ And a collection of news organisations published stories based on the thousands of these documents, after working through them.

The reading is that Facebook puts ‘growth over safety,’ particularly in developing areas of the world where the company does not have language or cultural expertise to regulate content without fostering division among users. Facebook has a ‘strategy’ of only slowing down harmful content when ‘the crisis has begun,’ deploying its ‘glass break measures’ instead of making the platform ‘safer as it happens.’ The ongoing ethnic violence in Ethiopia and Myanmar was mentioned as an example: the ‘opening chapters of a novel that is going to be horrific to read.’ – drink the juices to the bottom and then break the glass?

To summarise, here is what we learnt: Facebook fails to moderate harmful content in developing countries; it’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm fails to accurately detect dangerous content in non-English languages; Facebook labeled election misinformation as ‘harmful, non-violating’ content; Facebook was aware that maids were being sold on its platform in the case when Filipina maids complained of being abused and sold: internal documents show that Facebook admitted it was ‘under-enforcing on confirmed abusive activity’.

Facebook internally debated removing the Like button in 2019. It examined how people would interact with content if it no longer had a Like feature on Instagram, suggesting that the company was aware that this feature could have a negative impact on well-being. According to documents, the Like button had sometimes caused the platform’s youngest users ‘stress and anxiety’ if the posts didn’t get many likes from friends-but when hidden, users interacted less with posts and advertisements, and it failed to alleviate social anxiety as they thought it might. Facebook hasn’t made Instagram safer for children as the company knows ‘young users are the future of the platform and the earlier they get them, the more likely they’ll get them hooked.’

Wow, that’s a whole book coming up. Perhaps a name change might trick us into forgetting the face… and reading many more books of the past?

Facebook has perhaps hit the ‘Dislike Button’ on a certain kind of lawlessness in our social fabric, which we are unable to figure out, but given a face by Facebook. And it seems to be making the best of it – let’s face it – liking and thriving. One of my favourite Western Novels is Oliver Strange’s, ‘Sudden: The Marshall of Lawless’, where a former outlaw turned law-keeper – Sudden- brings to book a lawless Town called Lawless. Let’s call Sudden to Marshall Facebook?Jim Green wears ‘em two guns strung low on the thighs and fires at blazing speed from the hip.

Towards the end of this week, founder Mark Zuckerberg, found his voice, showed his face, lifted an alphabet from the Google book, and rebranded the holding company as ‘Meta’ – with a blue infinity symbol – meaning beyond. The mother hen is called Meta while the chicks under its wings, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp…hold on to their original names.

Who remembers the mother anyway, with the chicks around? Google, we remember all the time, but Alphabet? Strange indeed are the winds of change. Reminds me of the often used Chinese way of explaining change, ’same same, but different’.

Japan: A Princess Loves, Marries, and Leaves.

Royal families all over the World sit upon rich thrones of wealthy traditions, which rather than make meaningful change, they keep alive, scrupulously following them for fear of losing their identity, ‘royalness’, and for reasons we may never really know. Guardians of ‘wealthy’ traditions?

In Japan, female members of the Imperial Family are not allowed to marry a commoner and if they choose to do so they forfeit their royal status and title, and become an ordinary citizen. Male royal members have household names and female royals only have titles. Further, Japanese law requires married couples to use only one surname, almost always the husband’s.

The current Emperor of Japan is Naruhito who has just one child – a daughter. The male-only succession tradition of the Japanese Royal Family leaves the Emperor’s younger brother, Prince Akishino – declared heir to the Throne and Crown Prince- and his son, Prince Hisahito, in line for Japan’s Royal Chrysanthemum Throne.

This week, Princess Mako, the first child and eldest daughter of Prince Akishino married a commoner, Kei Komuro, who she said had won over her heart with ‘his bright smiles like the sun’. She will now be simply know as Mako Komuro.

Mako skipped the usual rites associated with a royal wedding, and turned down a traditional payment of about USD 1.3 million given to a female member of the imperial family upon their departure from the household. It was another break from tradition, as Mako became the first woman to do so.

Mako and Komuro had met five years earlier when they were both university students, and shared their plans to get married, the following year.

The former princess initially followed royal tradition and attended the elite Gakushuin School, where members of the Japanese imperial family usually study. But she broke with custom by leaving and joining Tokyo’s International Christian University, where she studied art and cultural heritage, and spent a year at the University of Edinburgh. Later, she earned a master’s degree at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.

The Newly-Weds are expected to move to the United States, where Komuro works as a lawyer. The move has drawn comparisons with British royals Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, earning the newlyweds the nickname ‘Japan’s Harry and Meghan’.

Before the couple got to this stage there were media reports of fishy money dealings in the Komuro family, but Mako stood by Komuro saying the reports were incorrect. There was another ‘tale’ added when Komuro return to Japan sporting a pony-tail and the media saying he was unfit to marry the princess. Whatever, the pony-tail got chopped off at the Wedding and they indeed made a handsome couple.

“Kei is irreplaceable for me,” gushed the Princess. “For us, marriage is a necessary choice to live while cherishing our hearts.”

Mako is expected to remain in Tokyo for some time preparing for the move, which includes applying for the first passport of her life.

I admire the princess for giving up her royal status for the love of her life: that makes her more royal than ever!

Sports: Clash of Religions

The International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Men’s T20 (a match of twenty overs each for the two sides) World Cup 2021, which is held every two years, is underway in the United Arab Emirates. It started on 17 October 2021 and is scheduled to end on 14 November 2021.

Six T20 World Cup tournaments have so far been played: the last Tournament was held in 2016 and there were delays on the start of the next Tournament, which was further amplified by the pandemic. And here we are at the seventh edition.

The inaugural T20 World Cup was staged in South Africa, and won by India – defeating Pakistan in the Finals. The current title holder is the West Indies who beat England in the 2016 Finals and claimed their second Title win. We have had five champions from the six tournaments: India, Pakistan, SriLanka, West Indies, and England.

This Sunday traditional arch rivals India and Pakistan played each other, in their opening game, and India lost, which generated all kinds of extreme reactions in many parts of the country, with religion being bowled – spin, googly, and fast – and smashed across the media, in addition to showing knee-support to the Black Lives Matter Movement. Many argued that other issues such as the Kashmir Pandits being targeted in killings in Kashmir should have taken a better knee. That’s a pot-boiler in one match!

I would always support my National Team as they represent us in the sporting arena. And find it disgustful that some in India supported and celebrated the Pakistan win – standing on the podium of religion. Religion should have no place in sport. The way I look at it, do admire the talent of a player of another country and enjoy his performance, but when the National Team plays we should alway be behind them, cheering them on to beat the best talent of the opposition. In the process we grow and become better – on the playing ground and maybe off it too!

More uncommon princess stories coming up in the weeks ahead and about breaking and keeping traditions. Grow with World Inthavaaram.

Happy Diwali – be the light that you want to be!

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-43

About: the world this week, 17 October to 23 October 2021, Haiti’s waywardness, shooting in Space, Hindus under attack, floods in Kerala, India reaches a vaccination landmark, and a shooting gone bad.

Everywhere

Haiti

Haiti is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles Archipelageo of the Caribbean Sea, to the east of Cuba and Jamaica and south of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Haiti is the world’s leading producer of vetiver, a root plant used to make luxury perfumes and essential oils among other things. Vetiver is derived from the Tamil word ‘வெட்டிவேர்’ meaning ‘root that is dug up.’

About half the population of Haiti have roots in the agricultural sector but it still relies upon imports for most of its food needs. And Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the World.

In July this year, its President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in an attack on his private residence and the ‘root’ of the forces behind is yet to be dug up. Mercenaries appear with ease and ‘rowdy gangs’ seem to be able to spring-up from the ground at will and get away with whatever mischief they do.

Last Saturday as many as seventeen American Missionaries were kidnapped for ransom by gang members in Haiti, including three minors. The missionaries were travelling by a vehicle to Titanyen, north of the capital Port-au-Prince, after visiting an orphanage, when the kidnapping occurred.

Haiti may need to import help, to root out this ‘dangerous plant’ of violent gangs that is spreading through the country, keeping it the grip of violence, and strangulating its rise.

Russia

In a first of its kind, the Russians are ‘shooting’ in Space. Well, really!

Over the course of 12 days Producer-Director Klim Shipenko, Russian Actress Yulia Peresild, and cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy filmed a movie, called, ‘Challenge’ – the first feature film shot entirely in space – working from the International Space Station. The had docked on 5th October and undocked on 16 October 2021, to safely return to Earth.

The movie tells the story of a surgeon, played by Peresild, who has to operate on a sick cosmonaut in space, portrayed by Novitskiy, because the cosmonaut’s medical condition prevents him from returning to Earth to be treated.

Previously a few films have been shot on board the space station, including a 2002 IMAX Documentary that Hollywood Actor Tom Cruise narrated. ‘Apogee of Fear’, a 2012 science fiction film running for about eight minutes, was also filmed in space by entrepreneur and space tourist Richard Garriott. Tom Cruise and Director Doug Liman revealed in 2020 that they were working together on a movie to be filmed in space, with NASA’s cooperation. The project is being developed in collaboration with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It’s a ‘mission possible’ that Tom Cruise could stay in the Space Station sometime this October. And he probably got the hang of it during a chat with the all-civilian SpaceX Inspiration-4 crew during their recent trip to space.

But, Russia has become the first nation to do this kind of shooting: they always seem to be one small challenging step ahead of America’s NASA. Some Big Steps coming up?

Bangladesh

Muslim majority Bangladesh – a nation which India enabled to come into being, in the first place – in under severe stress with radical Islamists unleashing violence against the minority Hindus, under the garb of blasphemy.

Brutal attacks, vandalism, looting, and arson has returned to haunt Hindus in Bangladesh’s Noakhali district, as close to 150 households were attacked and at least three killed in a deadly clash on 13th October. A day later, a frenzied mob of radical Islamists attacked the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) temple in the Noakhali district in the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh. The sculpture of its founder, was burnt down during the arson attack on the temple. In another incident, in Hajiganj Upazila, Chandpur District in the Chittagong Division, Islamists also brutally raped an entire Hindu family including a 10 years old girl.

Attacks on Hindus is increasing at an alarming rate across the free World. In America a three-day online conference, ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva,’ which was held last month with at least 30,000 attendees generated a lot of heat & dust. Some said it failed to adequately distinguish between Hindutva, generally defined as Hindu nationalism, with Hinduism, the religion, which is a way of life.

Hinduism is the oldest religion in the World and has been harmlessly coexisting -even baby-sitting- with all the newcomers, over centuries. And it should be respected – left to be.

India

God’s Own Country, Kerala, as been on the Indian News headlines for many reasons, from initially being an example in tackling the pandemic – during the first wave- to having outrageously high and consistent daily infections – the highest in India – and maybe earnestly trying to set an example of how not to tackle the coronavirus – during the second wave. Poles apart, with the virus caught in between?

Now, Kerala is among the rains, with floods causing havoc, killing people and cutting off towns and villages when rivers started to overflow their banks. For eg.,several houses were washed away and people became trapped in the district of Kottayam. Days of incessantly heavy rainfall has caused deadly landslides and the Indian military has joined rescue efforts.

Akin to its experience with the pandemic, Kerala sees heavy rains every year bringing with it deadly floods and landslides- happening almost religiously despite its best efforts at managing the situation. Kerala probably has to do something new and different to prevent the effects of this almost recurring too-easy-to-predict event. You cannot expect different results doing things the same way. Can you? Stronger construction and clever selection of places to build Houses would be one approach; better preparedness and forewarning residents in flood prone areas would be another. Maybe moving-in to the famous backwater boats – with stronger moorings- during the rains, would be yet another? God and his country should decide!

COVID-19 Vaccination

India scripted history this Thursday by crossing a huge milestone in having done 100 crore or one billion vaccinations in less than 9 months, for a population of 1.38 billion.

So far, India has fully vaccinated about 30% of its adult population and given one dose to about 75%.

China is at the top spot with over 2.25 billion vaccine jabs and Russia is close behind India, having itself crossed the 1 billion mark, a day after India did.

Please Yourself

This Thursday, Hollywood Actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun that accidentally killed a 42 years old woman Cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and injured the Film Director while shooting for his latest movie ‘Rust’, in a New Mexico set. For now, the film production’s been put on hold indefinitely as authorities investigate what happened.

Alec Baldwin famously played ex-US President Donald Trump in the Television series, ‘Saturday Night Live’. Some of the movies he has acted in are, The Hunt for Red October, The Marrying Man, The Getaway, Pearl Harbour, The Aviator, and Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation…

What are prop guns? What comes to mind is a non-functional weapon or a toy gun that fires caps to produce smoke. Actually the term refers to real guns used as props. The reason a film production company would use a real gun is to lend authenticity especially in close-up shots. Prop guns are used with blank cartridges that have all the elements of a real bullet/cartridge except the projectile at the tip, which strikes the target. When you pull the trigger, you only get the bang, the recoil, the muzzle flash, and an ejected shell. Tragedy can strike if the prop gun isn’t loaded properly – or from ‘rusty’ planning-say when a cartridge with a projectile tip had unknowingly become stuck and when fired the projectile hits the target.

This is not the first instance of a fatal accident on a film set due to a prop gun. Actor Brandon Lee, son of the legendary Bruce Lee, was fatally shot by Actor Michael Massee with a prop gun during the filming of the movie, ‘The Crow’ in 1993.

Similarly, in 1984, actor Jon-Erik Hexum fatally shot himself with a blank discharged from a Magnum Pistol, while jokingly playing with the pistol on set, amid repeated delays in the filming of the television series ‘Cover Up’.

More real shots coming up in the weeks ahead. Nothing to cover-up: it’s all in the open and everything to crow about. Stay with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-42

About: the world this week, 10 October to 16 October 2021, education in Afghanistan, wide-eyed America, a quiver full of arrows, a stabbing, lots of India, a Nobel Prize, star trekking, and a stunning Sinhala song.

Everywhere

World

Afghanistan was becoming quite silent when a suicide bomb blast in a mosque in Kandahar late this week, and another one, the week before, rocked the country. The former was deadly, killing at least 37 people, in a place of worship. I was beginning to think that the silence was a time to reflect and get the country back on track. And maybe Afghanistan was growing a beard and looking to cover-up as many things as it could (One of my favourite, worn-thin expressions is, ‘it’s so silent I can hear my beard growing’).

The Taliban’s Religious Police have been instructed to be more moderate-wonder what that means in Taliban land-but vulnerable Afghans say brutal justice is still being meted out and blood flows easily. It’s almost a month since the Taliban ban on girls returning to secondary school in Afghanistan took effect and millions of teenage girls across the country are unable to return to their classrooms. In what is a tragic exclusion, they continue to be deprived of an education. Is not right to education a fundamental human right?

America appears to be getting crazier by the week. To give an example: the Governor of Texas – of the Republican Party opposed to the ruling Democratic Party – on Monday, issued an executive order banning all state entities from enforcing vaccine mandates, the latest escalation in resistance to public health measures during the pandemic. The order also included private employers. The Governor’s argument is that the COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and the best defence against the virus, but should remain voluntary and never forced. This is using a lousy definition of freedom, and deploying politics, to fight a pandemic, instead of science.

Keeping up the act in America, removing a condom without consent – called stealthing – is now illegal, and signed into law, in the State of California. This brings attention to nonconsensual condom removal during sex. This is the first law of its kind in the United States and gives victims a legal avenue to sue perpetrators in a civil court for damages. Advocates of the law said it highlights ‘the importance of consent’, and sex-workers, who are most impacted by stealthing, applauded the measure. Wow, that’s a new word that has been rubbed-in this week: keep the word in mind, when you have the rubber in your hands or in the right place!

The winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics – not really called a Nobel- was announced on Sunday. They are, David Card, ‘for his empirical contributions to labour economics’ – he played his cards well: gets one half of the prize amount; and Joshua D Angrist and Guido W Imbens, ‘for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships’ – they share the second half of the prize money, in a casual relationship building exercise. Lots of economics out there! I’m but a David in a Goliath of Economics:do these head-spinning equations actually work!

China’s renewed assertiveness at the Himalayan border with India is getting worrisome. Thirteen rounds of high-level military talks aimed at easing tensions has achieved little and with the deadly winter looming ahead it’s becoming increasingly frosty on both sides. The standoff, which at times has exploded into deadly clashes along the about 3,490 km Border – the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – is now in its 17th month. India has moved more troops into the area and so has China. And the relationship between the world’s two most populated countries is at its nadir. Can it sink further? It’s a wait and watch ‘shifting’ border at the moment.

Norway

This Wednesday, a man with a bow and a quiver full of arrows, slung on his shoulder, moved about, over a period of half an hour, in several locations in the Norwegian Town of Kongsberg shooting at people. He killed four women and one man, all aged 50 to 70 years and seriously injured two, including an off-duty policeman.

Police were quick to arrest the suspect, a 37 year old Danish citizen, who lives in the town of about 28,000 people. The suspect appears to have been acting alone and the reasons behind the bow and arrow shooting are being investigated. His actions are suspected to be an outcome of some kind of religious radicalisation. It is also being talked about as an act of terrorism.

This is the first such incident in a long time in Norway. In August 2019, a man stormed an Oslo mosque armed with guns before being overpowered. That year, the country’s intelligence service reported that right-wing terrorism was on the rise globally, and warned that the country would likely be targeted in the near future. Going further back, in July 2011, Norwegian far-right extremist Anders Behring Brevik killed 77 people, many of them teenagers, in a bomb attack and gun rampage. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum possible term in Norway.

Mass killings are rare in low-crime Norway and the incident arrowed back almost forgotten memories.

United Kingdom

A ‘political surgery’ or constituency surgery, in British politics, is a series of one-to-one meetings that a Member of Parliament (MP) holds with his constituents to give people an opportunity to meet him and discuss matters of concern – to find solutions.

This Friday, Conservative Party MP, Sir David Amess, 69, representing Southend West, was holding one such surgery at the Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex when he was attacked and stabbed several times. He was treated by emergency services but died at the scene. A 25 years old man was quickly arrested after Police arrived at the scene on suspicion of murder.

Sir David served as an MP for 38 years and was knighted in the 2015 New Year’s Honours List for political and public service. He was known politically as a social conservative, a prominent campaigner against abortion, a committed campaigner on animal welfare issues, and supported a ban on fox hunting. He was a Brexit supporter and vocal champion for the town he represented, particularly in his long-running campaign to make Southend a city.

Every week brings a new kind of violence and law enforcement across the World is becoming on helluva challenging job. We need to get better with it – there is no other way. Or, do we need to get back to school and re-educate ourselves?

India

One of India’s movie superstars Shah Rukh Khan is spending sleepless nights in his vast mansion, in Mumbai. This follows the arrest of his son by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), on 3 October, after drugs were seized from a rave Party on a Goa bound cruise, where the son was an invitee. The Courts have denied him bail after the NCB established sufficient evidence for the arrest. The superstar will require all the ‘Mannat’ and superpowers to get his son back home – to the safety of his room.

Meanwhile, this Monday, India’s indefatigable Prime Minister (PM) launched the Indian Space Association (ISpA) with the objective of making India a global leader in commercial space-based excursions… and milking the Milky Way. The Virgins, the Musks, and the Amazons, beware!

The stakeholders in the Association include Government bodies such as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Bharat Electronics Limited, and private business heavyweights such as Bharti Airtel, the Tata’s, Larson & Toubro, MapMyIndia, OneWeb, Walchandnagar Industries, Ananth Technology Limited, Azista-BST Aerospace Private Limited, Alpha Design Technologies, Godrej, Huges India, Centum Electronics, and Maxar India. Get ready for a ride to Space?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected India becoming the fasting growing, post-pandemic Economy, in the World, with GDP(Gross Domestic Product) growth expected to be 8.3% in 2021 and 9.6% in 2022 – readjusted to the calendar year. Perhaps, with this in mind the Prime Minister launched the PM’s Gati (Speed) Shakti (Power) Scheme – a National Masterplan for Infrastructure, for multi-modal connectivity – on 13 October. It aims to bring together sixteen Ministries and seven core infrastructure sectors, on a single platform to synergise project planning across ministries to avoid duplication, plug gaps, and expedite clearances. It will act a multi-modal connectivity platform and will ensure seamless movement of goods and people, cutting logistic costs, increasing cargo handling capacity and reducing the turnaround time. This way, the infrastructure schemes of various ministries and state governments will be designed and executed with a common vision. Further, the tax-payers money will be put to better use, which in the past was ‘insulted’ through a lethargic approach to development work, with departments working in silos and there being no coordination between projects.

The way I see it: Someone lays the road, someone else digs it up for laying power cables; someone else digs it up again for laying telecom cables; someone digs it up yet again for laying internet cables; someone digs it up again for laying water supply lines; someone digs it up yet again for laying sewage and drainage lines, all staggered with yawning gaps for obtaining permissions. Finally, you have everything but a road. I hope, all this is done at one time by ‘one someone’, and this is what the Gati Sakthi means!

Please Yourself

Most of us must have watched, or heard about ‘Star Trek’, the TV Series and the movie series, as well. Many must have grown up with it. It follows the voyages of the starship USS Enterprise built by the United Federation of Planets, in the 23rd century, with a mission ‘to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before’. Commander Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy and Captain James T. Kirk played by William Shatner are memorable characters in the original series.

After all the years of reel acting and living in a dream space craft, Actor William Shatner, now 90 years old, finally got his real chance to actually fly into Space – well, almost. This week he endured a 10 minute, rocket-powered ride to the edge of space in a suborbital space tourism rocket built by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin. And became the oldest person ever to travel to space withstanding those g-forces and experiencing weightlessness. Anybody can become an Astronaut. Age is only a number, ask Captain Kirk!

I’ve always liked William Shatner’s role as the ‘becoming-eccentric-and-senile’ Denny Crane in the TV Series Boston Legal and enjoyed his ‘Balcony musings’ sitting with protégée Alan Shore over many drinks, overlooking the City of Boston.

Now, over to some kind of music.

Ever since I heard Yohani & Satheeshan’s adorable, bewitching, and hummable Sinhala song, Manike Mage Hithe… which broke the internet after its re-launch in May 2021, I have asked many, during start-up conversations, whether they’ve heard the song. While the oldies threw a blank white-screen look, the young ones lighted up in technicolour: caught the tune and came out grooving to the song. And a six year old girl even reeled out the lyrics with amazing ease.

The song is a ballad about a man’s admiration for a woman: her character and beauty, and how close she is to his heart. Yohani’s soprano tone, Satheeshan’s rap, and the engaging music, are highlights of the infectious song, which leaves an indelible impression on the mind.Music knows no boundaries…and there are no China Walls or borders! Mind it!

More star treks coming up in the weeks ahead. Stay with World Inthavaaram: I’ve been telling my stories -without a break-for over a year, with this post!

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-41

About: the world this week, 3 October to 9 October 2021, opening Pandora’s box, sexual transgressions in a religious establishment, violence in an Indian State, a vaccine for Malaria, the Nobel Prizes, and an Airline returns home.

Everywhere

In Greek mythology, the first woman created by the Gods was called Pandora. The Gods gave her a closed box, which they said contained special gifts, and which, they warned, was never ever to be opened – The Gods temptingly do this all the time in different stories in various religions.

’Curiosity killed the cat’ goes the age-old saying. And one bright day the ever curious Pandora decided to see what’s inside the box, after all. She opened the box, and to her dismay found every kind of evil – greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, and death, etc.,- which ails mankind today, flying out into the-until then-peaceful world, sowing the seeds of constant discord and turmoil. Pandora quickly gathered her wits and just managed to slam-shut the box – you guessed it – before the only remaining ‘gift’ – Hope – could escape. That means, whatever challenges mankind faces and problems he is confronted with, hope always remains. And there is always a chance that we can make good and move ahead. There is also another message: some secrets are best kept secret. And we should keep our own Pandora’s boxes tightly shut forever! Pandora’s Box now means anything that is best left untouched, for fear of what might come out of it.

Getting rich, famous, and powerful is not easy on Earth and it is a chequered, riddled, and often secretive path. Now the secret deals and hidden assets of some of the world’s richest and most powerful people have been revealed in the biggest leak of offshore data, in history. Branded the Pandora Papers, the cache consists of about 11.9 million files (comprising 2.9 terabytes of data) from companies hired by wealthy clients to create offshore structures and trusts in tax havens such as Panama, Dubai, Monaco, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands.

The Pandora Papers was published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) beginning on 3 October 2021. The leak exposed the secret offshore accounts of 35 world leaders, including current and former Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Heads of State as well as more than 100 billionaires, celebrities, and business leaders. They also shine a light on the dark finances of more than 300 other public officials such as government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals, in more than 90 countries.

The news organisations of the ICIJ described the document leak as their most expansive expose of financial secrecy yet in nations, surpassing their previous release of the Panama Papers in 2016, which had 11.5 million confidential documents.

Now, onto another Pandora opening.

The Roman Catholic Church has been under tremendous fire, in the recent past, over sexual abuse scandals – often involving children – rocking the worldwide establishment.

Speaking at the release of a lengthy report into sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church, this Tuesday, the head of a Panel investigating abuses by Church members, says French Catholic priests abused 216,000 victims since 1950. The number could rise to 330,000, when abuse by lay members of the Church was included. One victim called the report a turning point in France’s history.

The French inquiry was commissioned by the French Catholic Church in 2018. It spent more than two-and-a-half years combing through court, police, and church records, and speaking to victims and witnesses. It said that until the early 2000s, the Catholic Church had showed a profound and even cruel indifference towards the victims. The commission found evidence of a minimum of 2,900 to 3,200 abusers – out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics. Its report, which is nearly 2,500 pages long, says the vast majority of victims were pre-adolescent boys from a wide variety of social backgrounds. The Catholic Church is, after the circle of family and friends, is the environment that has the highest prevalence of sexual violence.

The report is certainly damning and the Church needs to wake up, confess and make course corrections. The Pope actually heard me: he said that this is a ‘moment of shame’ and called upon leaders of the Church to ensure that ‘similar tragedies’ never happen again.

This week, a region called Lakhimpuri Kheri stormed the headlines of India and is still running berserk.

Lakhimpur Kheri is the largest of 75 districts in the State of Uttar Pradesh (UP), India, and borders Nepal. Its capital is the city of Lakhimpur. Kheri is a town about two kilometres from Lakhimpur.

This Sunday, one of UP’s Deputy Chief Ministers, Keshav Prasad Maurya along with Union Minister of State for Home, Ajay Mishra Teni were scheduled to visit Lakhimpur Kheri District to lay foundation stones for upcoming Government Schemes in the area. The plan was to arrive by helicopter at a makeshift helipad in Tikonia and drive to the Tikonia-Banbirpur Road for the event(s).

A farmers group, which was against the implementation of the path-breaking, new Farm Laws – passed by India’s Parliament – apparently chose the occasion to register a protest against a recent statement made by Ajay Mishra Teni against farmer leaders. And to protest the Farm Laws as well.

Around 300 farmers from nearby villages gathered in Tikonia and gheraoed the helipad, holding black flags. The Deputy Chief Minister got wind of the brewing problem, changed plans and chose to reach the Tikonia-Banbirpur Road, by road, instead.

The protesters, in turn, learnt about the change and spilled themselves on to the road to keep-up their drive. This brought them into direct confrontation with a convoy of cars, which was heading to welcome the visiting dignities and participate in the event.

What followed in unclear – with the protestors and the Government shouting out their own versions- and in the senseless melee that followed eight people were left dead. Videos showed Farmers pelting stones on the convoy; a car ramming in to the people and running over a few of them; a man being mercilessly lynched; a vehicle being set ablaze. And suddenly uncontrolled violence took the drivers seat; Politicians are all over the place stirring the cauldron and making links to their own parochial agendas.

I quote Editor, Author, and Publisher Minaz Merchant, “The Lakhimpur Kheri violence unpeels what is right and wrong with our journalism. The facts remain blurred behind conflicting video images. The narrative can, therefore, be easily fixed. The first principle of journalism is getting the facts right. The second principle is speaking truth to power.” None of these principles appear to have adhered to.

An investigation has been ordered into the sequence of events and it’s better we wait until they uncover the facts of the gory incident.

Protesting is a right in a democracy of our kind, but violence in any form is simply unacceptable – including protesting in other than peaceful ways, throwing stones, and running over people.

Meanwhile, there is an alarming increase in another kind of violence in the Indian State of Kashmir – the targeted killing of Hindus and Sikhs by jihadi terrorists from across the border. Seven civilians were murdered in cold blood this week: on Tuesday, a Kashmiri Pandit businessman was shot dead in his pharmacy while a street food vendor and the president of a taxi stand were also gunned down. Then terrorists stormed into a government school in Srinagar and shot dead the Principal and a teacher who were from the Sikh and Hindu communities.

We all, especially Politicians and Journalists, need to be more outraged and vocal in such targeted killings. Kashmir must heal and return to normalcy.

Heal we must from disease too. Malaria, the mosquito-borne disease, has been around for millions of years. It is one of the world’s oldest and deadliest: up to 30 million years old! It kills over 400,000 people each year, and can seriously weaken the immune systems of those who survive it. Nearly 95% of malaria deaths happen in Africa – mainly among children under five years. Mosquitoes thrive in sub-Saharan Africa in part because of its mosquito-friendly tropical climate. And the region’s been waiting for a miracle.

There is no vaccine for Malaria, but well into the COVID-19 regime when Vaccine is a word we have learnt by heart and thanks to Pandora’s hope we might finally have a Vaccine for malaria – the miracle is here!

In a historic move, the World Health Organization (WHO) backed the world’s first malaria vaccine for children. After decades of research, the vaccine named Mosquirix got the green light for distribution in Africa and other high-risk regions. Also called RTS,S, the vaccine has been more than 30 years in the making. Created by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in 1987, it was subsequently developed and tested with support and funding from PATH, (formerly known as the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health), a Seattle-based global health group, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Whatever, the WHO still suggests using things like medications and insecticide-treated bed nets and other preventive measures we have been using all along to keep those pesky, buzzing insects away from our skin.

In recent years, lack of funding and political support have snagged malaria eradication efforts around the world. And while there are still some unknowns with Mosquirix, the world’s celebrating a scientific breakthrough that could save millions of lives.

The Nobel Prizes for 2021 are being rolled out and the winners announced this week by Swiss based, The Nobel Foundation.

Ardem Patapoutian and David Julius won the Nobel for Physiology or Medicine ‘for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch’; Benjamin List and David MacMillan received the Nobel for Chemistry ‘for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis’ – a tool for molecule building.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded ‘for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems’: to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann ‘for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming’, and to Giorgio Parisi, ‘for discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scale’.

Maria Tessa and Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel Peace Prize ‘for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace’.

The Nobel for Literature was awarded to Abdulrazak Gurnah, ‘for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents’

Abdulrazak is a Zanzibar born Tanzanian novelist living in the United Kingdom. He began writing as a 21 year old English exile and even though Swahili was his first language, English became his means of expression. He is the author of ten novels and several short stories and essays with the theme of refugee disruption running through most of his work. Some of which are, Memory of Departure, 1987, By the Sea 2001, Gravel Heart, 2017, and Afterlives, 2020.

Only the Nobel for Economics – not on the original Nobel list – and called The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences has not been awarded as yet. The winner is expected to be announced in the upcoming week. I reckon they are still working out the equations?

Many are not very impressed by the Awards. Said one, “In terms of the gap between the world’s population and the winners – the biggest gap is a gender one. The number of female prize winners is really, really tiny.”

Should we look at everything through a male or female tinted magnifying glass? May the best person win – based on the exacting selection standards of the Nobel Foundation, on outstanding excellence achieved by humankind to improve life on Earth.

The Tata Group is one of India’s largest and most respected privately run salt-to-software business conglomerate. I would call them the original pioneers of Make-In-India. The Tatas also started India’s first Airline, Tata Airlines, before it was nationalised and became Air India. It was once the world’s best Airline, under the Tatas.

Now, after 70 years Air India flew back to the hanger of the Tatas – becoming the winning bidder for the debt-laden state-run airline. This comes on the wings of the Government’s strategy of not being in the business of business. Way to go!

More, once boxed-up stories are flying out with World Inthavaaram. Stay with hope! Fly with Tata.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-40

About: the world this week, 26 September to 2 October 2021, discovery of new ancient human footprints, solving a murder in London, no drivers no fuel, a King of R&B music is found guilty, and a secret service agent just cannot find time to die.

Everywhere

The more foot steps mankind takes, trying to move ahead, the more he finds his lost footprints, left behind – fossilised too- on the sands of time. And discovers more leg on how he evolved to getting his feet of the day.

North America and South America are said to be about the last continents that were inhabited by humans, but exactly when is unclear. The commonly held view is that people arrived in North America from Asia through Beringia, a land bridge that once connected the two continents around 13,000 to 16,000 years ago. But many recent discoveries have suggested humans might have been in North America earlier than previously thought.

Researchers studying fossilised human footprints in the Tularosa Basin, White Sands National Park, New Mexico, US, say that they have the first unequivocal evidence that humans lived in North America at least 23,000 years ago. They were able to accurately date sixty-one footprints by radiocarbon dating layers of aquatic plant seeds that had been preserved above and below the prints. The footprints were most likely made on soft ground, at the edge of a wetland. Wind probably blew dust over the surface, silting in the prints. The hunter-gatherer man of ancient times would have done about 10,000 steps a day, meaning at least a few footprints would survive in the fossil record.

The analysis of the the footprints reveal they were could have been made by teenagers and children between 9 and 14 years old: a pattern that’s seen at other fossilised footprint sites. Tracks of mammoths, giant sloths, wolves, and birds are also present at the site. One hypothesis for the presence of ‘teenage prints’ is division of labor, in which adults are involved in skilled tasks whereas fetching and carrying was delegated to teenagers, who literally ran around. Children generally accompany the teenagers, and collectively they leave a higher number of footprints.

Times have changed, and we now leave footprints on the internet. And before it becomes fossilised, Google just licks it up and takes it to the clouds!

Brexit effects spilling out? Over the weekend thousands of fuel stations in the United Kingdom (UK) closed down amid fears of a nationwide shortage, putting up, ‘sorry out of use’, sign boards. There are many reasons and one of them is, when the UK said goodbye to the European Union, Long-Haul Truck Drivers in turn decided to exit the UK. And adding the COVID-19 pandemic situation, an ageing workforce, and delays in licensing of new drivers, the UK was left with a shortage of about 100,000 drivers. Now the fuel is not reaching the stations and the UK is reaching out to overseas truck drivers with promises of providing temporary visas, to drive them out of the crisis. Some say the writing was always on the wall and the present situation has only highlighted an existing fact – sorry, the footprints were discovered awfully late!

In World Inthavaaram 2021-12 https://kumargovindan.wordpress.com/2021/03/20/world-inthavaaram-2021-12/

I talked about the murder of Sarah Everard, a Marketing Executive, in London, and made a case for a return of the Sherlock Holmes detective kind. Looks like he wasn’t needed, after all.

Everard disappeared on 3 March as she walked home after visiting a friend. She was reported missing by her partner the next day when she failed to meet him as arranged. Her body was recovered seven days later from a woodland near Ashford in Kent, London, UK.

Police solved the case with the arrest of Wayne Couzens, a serving Metropolitan Police officer at the time of the murder. He pleaded guilty to the kidnap, rape and murder of Everard. The sentencing is awaited.

Wayne Couzens used police equipment, including his warrant card and training about COVID-19 rules, to deceive Sarah Everard into getting into a car with him before he raped and murdered her. He had also handcuffed her during the arrest. He then burned the body and moved it to green bags that he had specifically purchased for the purpose.

The Met Police said: “We are sickened, angered and devastated by this man’s crimes, which betray everything we stand for”. Scotland Yard said people stopped by a lone plainclothes officer should challenge their legitimacy and could try ‘waving a bus down’ to escape a person they believe is pretending to be police. But then, its extraordinary to wave down a bus at the sight of a policeman or call 999 to check whether a policeman is indeed a policeman. And rather, is it not time to curb the powers of the police?

What made a seemingly responsible man do this? On the surface, Wayne Couzens was a dedicated police officer and a devoted family man who was never happier than when playing with his children or tinkering with his motorcycle. But underneath the veneer of respectability was a sexual deviant who, fuelled by extreme pornography, was driven to depraved actions to fire his weird desires – a dark behaviour he hid very well from his colleagues. Despite being an armed officer tasked with protecting politicians, dignitaries and VIPs, Couzens admitted regularly using prostitutes and was also suspected of taking dangerous body-building steroids. What about the Met Police’s vetting and monitoring procedures that failed to spot his descent into crime? To begin with, the Police ought to be policed from within – crime detection begins at home.

American Singer and Songwriter R Kelly (Robert Sylvester Kelly), aged 54, is credited with redefining Rhythm & Blues (R&B), and Hip-Hop Music, and in the process earned nicknames such as the King of R&B, The King of Pop-Soul, etc. He is know for songs such as, ‘I Believe I Can Fly – which won a Grammy Award in 1998, ‘Bump N’ Grind’, Ignition Remix, and ‘Gotham City’. He had a Grammy nomination for writing Michael Jackson’s song, ‘You Are Not Alone’.

Now coming to real life music, it’s been almost ’30 years of drumming’ since allegations of sexual harassment were made on R Kelly, and finally, this week a US Court found him guilty of charges levelled against him. The sentencing is scheduled for May 2022 and he faces up to 20 years in prison.

Kelly has been accused of sexual abuse, manipulations, and inappropriate relationships, sex trafficking, racketeering – including kidnapping & bribery. Previously, he escaped the long arm of the law and was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008.

This is the highest-profile case of the Me Too era. Prosecutors called him one of the worst and dangerous sexual predators, who used fame and superstar status to groom and exploit women and girls, over decades.

Please Yourself

There is definitely, ‘No Time To Die’, with the latest – the 25th, over 60 years – James Bond movie finally premiering this 28th September at the Royal Albert Hall, London. And this is the last, which will be having Daniel Craig playing British Secret Service Agent 007… Bond… James Bond. The release was postponed at least three times from its originally planned April 2020 as the coronavirus outbreak forced cinemas around the world to close.

‘No Time to Die’ is Daniel Craig’s fifth Bond movie after first stirring & shaking it up with ‘Casino Royale’, finding tons of solace in ‘Quantum of Solace’, falling and rising again in ‘Skyfall’, and holding-on in ‘Spectre’.

‘No Time To Die’ opens with a haunting piano motif, with Singer Billie Eilish’s voice weary as she sings, “I should have known I’d leave alone”. A familiar tremolo guitar ushers in the chorus, where the singer builds-up her theme: “I’ve fallen for a lie… Are you death or paradise? Now you’ll never see me cry,” she concludes in a crescendo, “There’s just no time to die.”

Billie Eilish, at 18 years, is the youngest singer to record the theme song for a James Bond Film. It is a dramatic, unsettling ballad that hints the plot will centre around Bond’s betrayal. The lyrics of the song refer to lies and deceit, as Eilish sings, “You were never on my side”.

The theme song is considered as one of the best in a long time. The flourish of violins, electronic guitar, and faint brass all pay tribute to the classic Bond signature tune, but Eilish’s subtle synth motif makes this song her own. After winning the Grammy this year, for ‘Everything I Wanted’, I reckon this is more than Billie Eilish ever wanted.

After the world premiere the movie’s theatrical release happened on 30 September 2021 in the United Kingdom and will be 8 October 2021 in the United States,

’No Time To Die’ is a traditional Bond Film. Watch it for the Bond Pleasure.

More investigative action-packed stories, which leave footprints, coming up in the weeks ahead. Walk with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-39

About: the world this week, 19 September to 25 September 2021, doing your own research, Canada Elections, moving about in disguise, population competition, Space Tourists returning home, and The Emmys.

Everywhere

With the COVID-19 pandemic appearing to slightly dim, it’s lights-on for the anti-vaccination mob who live by the now famous credo, ’I’ll Do My Own Research’ to convince themselves and those willing to lend an ear – on not getting vaccinated. If everyone was to do his own research I wonder how one would find common ground and stay on the same page on matters concerning deadly infectious diseases, which require a huge coordinated effort to contain. Often one’s work is the starting point for another: we ride on the shoulders of research done long before we came on the scene. Should each one of us independently find out why the apple fell on Newton’s head when the great Scientist had already ‘caught the apple’ and discovered gravity? And confirmed by many other Experts!

Doing your own research may lead you astray with the Google algorithm designed to help you find and confirm the negatives that you are looking for. And you ending up swallowing tons of fake information, which you are no expert to digest – and then throw up!

What do we do on decisions such as to get vaccinated or not? Just follow the Experts. Don’t do your own research and expect to find anything different from what the Experts did. And don’t trust anyone who tells you to do your own research: they’re out to bamboozle you. We need to respect learning and hard-earned knowledge, don’t we?

We have vaccines against measles, mumps, pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, and others, which is mandated by most countries to take. Anti-vaxxers should realise that it is actually a good thing to get vaccinated. Kindergarten should change a person!

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau drunk on his government’s excellent performance during the pandemic gambled on a snap election hoping to win a majority in Parliament. Won he did, but fell-short of the hoped-for-majority. His Liberal Party won 158 seats to the Opposition Conservative’s 119 and the target of 170 suddenly looked higher than it did before the Elections. Well, the snap decision snapped; it backfired.

In medieval times it was not uncommon for Kings and Queens to wander about their Kingdom, in disguise, to see for themselves how ordinary folks are going about the business of their lives and to sense the mood- doing their own royal research, in a way? India’s newly-minted Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya went back in time to do exactly that, when he made a surprise visit to New Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital, in disguise, as a general patient. During the visit, a security guard chided him and hit him for trying to sit on a bench. He found a 75 years old woman pleading with the guards to get a stretcher for her son, as she couldn’t find one. And not one of the 1500 security guards was willing to help. How do you find a vaccine for this behaviour? Mandaviya gave up his disguise and talked to the Prime Minister about the incident and what he had uncovered, and instead of adopting a Rambo style suspension of the guard, Mandaviya decided to try improve the system and not just one person. That sure is a healthy outlook on affairs in the Kingdom.

While China and India are on a different league when it comes to population – occupying the top two positions – good old United States of America is being challenged by Nigeria, for the third position. And according to a United Nations report, Nigeria is expected to surpass the US and become the third-most populous country in the world by 2050. Planet Earth is not enough, let’s try space?

The SpaceX Tourist Mission including (other than the lift-off to the edge of Space, and landing) three days of orbiting around the Earth, and enjoying the sights, ended successfully on the 19th September, with the return of the crew of four safely to Earth. The Capsule named as Resilience, harbouring them made an automatic re-entry and then parachuted into calm seas off the coast of Florida. It was a sight to behold with four speed-breaking parachutes – first two and then another two opening up-holding Resilience to carefully touch down onto the calm waters. And after a ‘hold dip’ the Capsule buoyed and floated before being suspiciously watched, inspected – it had a visibly scorched exterior – escorted, and rigged by the recovery crew, after which it was lifted onto a Recovery Vessel. The weather was extremely friendly and gave space to the Space-returnees to enjoy the moment.

Within an hour, the four smiling crew members were seen emerging one by one from the capsule’s side hatch. Each stood on the deck for a few moments in front of the capsule to wave and a give thumbs-up before being escorted to a medical station on board for checkups at sea. Afterwards they were flown by helicopter back to Cape Canaveral for reunion with their families.

Please Yourself

What the Oscar Awards are for the Movies, and the Grammys for Music, The Emmy Awards are for Television – recognising the best that Television has produced. And what we watched – often binged – with delight in our Homes.

The Emmy Awards officially called the Primetime Emmy Awards are awards bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) in recognition of excellence in American primetime television programming.

The 73rd edition of the Emmys was held this week at the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, USA. Cedric the Entertainer, actor, and standup comedian who has been a sitcom staple from ‘The Steve Harvey Show’ to ‘The Neighbourhood’, hosted the show.

Apple TV’s, ’Ted Lasso’ – a superb American football comedy, which you can enjoy without knowing anything about football- came into the night with the most nominations of 13 and could lasso only four heads. Netflix’s, ‘The Crown’ – about the story of the British Royal Family- received 11 nominations and ended up with the biggest haul of seven crowns.

Kate Winslet, who we know as the famous ‘Rose’ of Titanic-the movie – rose cleverly to win Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or Movie, for the ‘Mare of Easttown,’ a HBO production on crime detection. Maybe we should put her on the job of finding out if it indeed was an iceberg that tippled the Titanic. Netflix’s chess based classic drama, ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ check-mated the award for the Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ won the Outstanding Variety Talk Series, this week; ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ won the Outstanding Competition Program, without dragging further. ‘Saturday Night Live’ won the Outstanding Variety Sketch Series, and lived another night. I’ve mentioned the key winners to aid your navigation on Television and decide what to watch.

The over three-hour telecast squeezed in twenty-eight live awards, including one notable stretch to present the lifetime Governor’s Award to Debbie Allen, a consummate multi-skilled – dancer, choreographer, actor, director, producer, and singer – whose career spans such pop culture staples as ‘Fame’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, and ‘The Cosby Show’. The 71 years old Allen said, “It’s taken a lot of courage to be the only woman in the room a lot of times”.

More courageous stories to sing, dance, sit or stand, and watch in the coming weeks. Stay with World Inthavaaram.

This is my Blog where I essay stories on life about and around me, on subjects that stir and shake me up, as I turn, and make life's pages count: hoping to inspire you to live your own story!

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India’s Highest Civilian Awards

Floods in Chennai

A Rare Visitor

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G20 Italia 2021

COP26

Enter the Hydrogen Kid

India: Hear the Drums Boris?

India’s Covaxin

Diwali

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Fabindia: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

Facebook: Let’s Book Another Name?

Japan: A Princess Loves, Marries, and Leaves.

Sports: Clash of Religions

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Russia

Bangladesh

India

COVID-19 Vaccination

Please Yourself

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