WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-34

About: the world this week, 15 August to 21 August 2021, India’s Independence Day, the Taliban steam-rolling through Afghanistan, and a beautiful world heritage temple in South India.

Everywhere

India

At the top of this week, on 15th August, India celebrated its 75th Independence Day. It may be an off-beat thought, but I think it’s time India stops celebrating Independence Day: only keeps reminding us of Colonial Rule and the antics of the British in India, when they plundered its riches and cooked their own one-sided, make-believe stories. It’s meaningless beyond a point. Forget the unsavoury past, learn and carry forward the lessons it taught, turn the pages; open a new book.

For example, the story of the brave exploits of Kongu Chieftain, Dheeran Chinnamalai, who fought the British between the late 1700’s & early 1800’s, and was considered undefeatable in battle, was hidden by the British least he becomes a stirring example and inspires others. In the end Dheeran Chinnamalai was not defeated by the British, but by his own cook who gave him away, leading to his capture and hanging at Sankagiri Fort, near Salem, Tamilnadu. Indians were always their own best enemies.

Commemorate 15th August 1947 as a Remembrance Day to pay quiet homage to those who suffered, fought for freedom from foreign rule, sacrificed their lives; and those irreparably scalded by partition and the bloody exodus that followed.

Instead, divert energies to celebrating Republic Day with great gusto, with re-dedication to nation building, and improving the quality of life. Reimagine the ancient, rich culture of India, its plurality, traditions, and yesteryear greatness. And think about the reasons of how India allowed foreign invaders to invade the country and plunder at will, despite fantastic natural boundaries. If only India’s Kings, of the pre-invasion era, had stayed united! Resolve never to repeat the past mistakes of history.

Prime Minister Modi heard, and has declared 14th August as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day to take cognisance the scarifies of people due to the violence that followed partition of India into the two countries of India and Pakistan (which further broke in two-with Bangladesh becoming an independent country). A tragic period in history when millions were displaced, and the killing, looting, and rape still vivid in many memories.

Afghanistan: enter the Taliban

The Taliban just strolled over, almost cat-walked, and took control of Afghanistan in one of the coolest ever take-overs of a country. The Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, fled; the Afghan Army-trained for nearly two decades by the United States-crumbled on the mere sound of the Taliban approaching; and there was a rush to exit the country through the Airport, fearing the worst of times. On the contrary, the Taliban marched steadily, paused, and just walked-in brandishing their guns, and flaunting their beards. Almost everyone had a deadly gun in their hand; some, menacing rocket launchers too.

The media decried the decision of the United States (US) to leave Afghanistan. Some even said hastily – after 20 years? I think it was the right thing to do, and I support the decision to pull-out US Troops from over two decades of fighting someone else’s war and training the Army and Police to defend the country. See the results! No country likes foreign occupation and control. The best time to leave was 19 years ago (after knocking out Bin Laden); the next best time is today.

Only the people of Afghanistan can decide what they want. If they want the Taliban, so be it; and by the looks of it, the Taliban could not have make such a naked comeback without the tacit, fully-clothed support of Afghans. If eventually they discover the Taliban to be unfit to govern – with their beards, guns, whips, and antediluvian beliefs and laws -they need to get together and find a way to throw them out.

Well, who are the Taliban, anyway?

The Taliban was founded in Kandahar, Southern Afghanistan, in 1994, by Mullah Mohammad Omar, of the Pashtun Tribe. He was once a Mujahideen (Islamic guerrillas who engage in jihad) Commander that helped push the occupying Soviets out of the country in 1989. Mohammad Omar formed the Taliban with about fifty followers, who rose up to challenge the instability, corruption, and crime that consumed Afghanistan during the post-Soviet-era civil war – they lived by a code.

The Pashtun constitute the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan and bore the exclusive name of ‘Afghan’, which came to represent Afghanistan.

The Taliban, or ‘students’ (in the Pashto language) are also linked to Northern Pakistan. The predominantly Pashtun movement-that the Taliban is- first appeared in Pakistan’s religious seminaries-mostly funded by Saudi Arabia-which preached a hardline form of Sunni Islam.

The core Taliban fighters are Afghan refugees mainly drawn from the ‘madrasas’ of Pakistan. These refugees had moved across the Border into Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. And Pakistan established religious schools and seminaries in these refugee camps to gain influence by indoctrinating the refugees. Over many years, these seminaries were converted into Arms and Bombs making factories, and terrorist training centres by the Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Typically a Mosque had a labyrinth of factories in its underground floors. These madrasas provided numerous cadres of Al Qaeda and fighters for the Afghan Taliban using enormous funds from the Middle East and Pakistan.

The promise made by the Taliban was to restore peace; provide a corruption-free government, and security; and strictly enforce their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power. Perhaps this become a ‘catch word’ and many Afghans fell for these early charms, after years of struggle against an outside force. The Taliban quickly subdued local warlords who controlled Southern Afghanistan and gradually swarmed all over the country. They climbed into the seat of power in 1996 by capturing Kabul and forming a Government with Mohammed Omar as the Emir and Head of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – as they called it.

Following the 9/11, 2001, terror attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City, the US began hunting down the terrorists responsible and nailed Osma Bin Laden as the brain behind the unbelievable attack on America. They tracked Bin Laden to Afghanistan where he was in hiding, harboured by Mohammad Omar’s Taliban.

When the Taliban refused US demands to hand over Bin Laden, American forces invaded Afghanistan, in 2001, and quickly toppled Mullah Omar’s government. Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders escaped the country and found sanctuary in neighbouring Pakistan from where they mounted an insurgent campaign to regain power in Afghanistan.

Mohammed Omar died in 2013 of tuberculosis, while in hiding, and his death was kept secret by the Taliban, for almost two years. Following his death, Mullah Mansoor, the deputy of Mohammad Omar, became the leader. And following his death, in a US drone strike in 2016, his deputy Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada took over and is now the reigning supreme leader of the Taliban.

A new interim Afghan Government was formed after the defeat of the Taliban, in 2001, headed by a local chieftain, Hamid Karzai, until the county could put in place a democratic process to elect a President and a Parliament, to form a government. He went on to becoming an elected President for two terms and was then succeeded by President Ashraf Ghani who was into his second term when the Taliban breezed-in.

Meanwhile, the Taliban were re-building and became a consistent thorn in the flesh – with relentless killings and assassinations – throughout the terms off Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani until the present ‘coming of second age’ and return to power. The Taliban had also opened a political office in Doha, United Arab Emirates, to enable talks and facilitate their return from the fringes to the mainstream.

In February 2020, the US and the Taliban signed a historic deal that laid out a 14 month timetable for America to withdraw all of its forces from Afghanistan. In the interim, talks between the Taliban and the Afghan Government meant to end the war gained little traction. By leaving Afghanistan, the US has kept its commitment, and not much is known about the ‘terms of endearment’ except that the Taliban will not attack US troops; that they will not harbour terrorist groups…and the kind.

What does the Taliban want? Their aim is simple, they want what they lost in 2001 to America. They want their Islamic Emirate to be back in power and their vision of Islamic law enforced. They don’t want a parliament. They don’t want electoral politics. They will have an Emir and a council of mullahs (a learned muslim of Islamic theology, practices, and law), and that’s the vision they see for themselves, guided by Islam.

The Taliban says, they will rule Afghanistan according to a strict interpretation of Islam’s legal system called Sharia law. What is Sharia?

Sharia literally means, ‘the clear, well-trodden path to water’. Sharia law is derived from both the Koran, Islam’s central holy text, and fatwas – the rulings of Islamic scholars. It acts as a code for living that all Muslims should adhere to, including prayers, fasting and donations to the poor. It aims to help Muslims understand how they should lead every aspect of their lives according to God’s wishes.

In simpler implementation terms, it means that if you get caught stealing, your hand could be cut off – as punishment, and if you commit adultery you may be stoned to death. If a woman wears nail polish, the tip of her finger may be cut-off. Women need to be fully covered when they venture out of their homes – allowed only with a male companion. Girls aged 10 years and over cannot go to schools and are practically slaves to men. And men have to grow and keep beards. Newspapers and Television are taboo…the list goes on. Archaic, medieval? This is just the beginning and has a lot to do with interpretation of Islamic Laws. And the Taliban have their own peculiar way of doing it.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head -and survived-by the Taliban, when she was 15 years old, for campaigning for girls’ education in Pakistan is a monumental symbol of the Taliban Effect. And, remember, this happened in Pakistan.

There is wild speculation on what would happen. Are the Taliban freedom fighters? Are they militants? Are they terrorists? They are definitely militant: we have read stores of their inhuman brutality, in the name of religion. Will Afghanistan become a hotbed for hot-heads and terrorists who want to impose a new world order- their order? The Taliban, for example, wants to see the whole world follow Islamic law. We have to wait, watch, and be prepared at the same time.

Like getting used to living with the coronavirus; with North Korea, with Burma; maybe we, rather the Afghans, should get used to living with the Taliban?

The story is not over. There is still one region, which has not given up as yet, which has not fallen into the hands of the Taliban: the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan, near the Hindu Kush mountain range, 150 kilometres north of Kabul.

Panjshir means ‘five lions’ in Persian and local folklore says it refers to the five Pandava Brothers of the Mahabharatha Epic who are believed to have based themselves in the Valley and defended it. There is another legend which tells about five brothers who managed to contain the floodwaters in the valley by building a dam, for Mohamud of Ghazni. Is it the same five brothers? Let our imaginations run wild.

Local commander Ahmad Shah Massoud famously and successfully defended the Panjshir Valley from being taken during the Soviet-Afghan War from 1980 to 1985 and also defended it from being overrun by the Taliban during 1996 to 2001. The Panjshir Valley is considered a natural fortress and one of Afghanistan’s safest regions: it has never been conquered by any foreign force or the Taliban.

In this imbroglio, Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s Vice President, has declared himself the care-taker President of Afghanistan. He hails from the Tajik-dominated Panjshir Valley, and is a member of the Northern Alliance which is opposed to the Taliban. He is currently lodged in the Panjshir Valley and along with Ahamad Massoud, the son of slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, and Bismallah Khan Mohammadi, Afghanistan’s Defence Minister in the Ghani cabinet, is mobilising forces to counter the takeover of Afghanistan and offering the only known resistance to the Taliban.

You guessed it, India has leaned towards the Northern Alliance in the past being supportive of its fight against the Taliban. Watch this space.

Please Yourself

The Ramappa Temple, also known as the Kakatiya Rudreshwara Temple, located in Palampet Village, about 200km from Hyderabad, in the Mulugu District of India’s Telangana State recently made it to United Nations, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) list of World Heritage Sites.

The 800 years old Temple is dedicated to Lord Siva and is known for its intricate sandstone and basalt sculptures of high artistic quality that have stood the test of time: they illustrate dance customs, postures, and Kakatiyan culture. The Temple has decorated beams and pillars of carved granite and dolerite with a distinctive pyramidal horizontally stepped tower made of lightweight porous bricks – called floating bricks – which reduce the weight of the roof structures making it bearable for the unique sand stone and sand box foundation on which it stands to this day.

The Temple sits on a six foot high star-shaped platform provided with a 10 feet wide corridor with walls, pillars, and ceilings adorned with elaborate carvings. There is a hall in front of the sanctum sanctorum with four polished black pillars, which are placed with mathematical precision.

The Temple was built in the year 1213 CE, by Recharla Rudradeva, a Military Commander of the Kakatiya Kings Dynasty. And named after the chief sculptor Ramappa, who completed the job is 14 years. There is also an inscription, which mentions the name of the Builder and the year. The Temple has survived wars, plunders, natural disasters including an earthquake. That sure is foundation worth standing on.

The hidden stories of India are marvellous, fascinating, and truly incredible. And there is still so much to discover.

More stories will be sculptured in the weeks ahead. Float with the World Inthavaaram: you are on a strong foundation.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-33

About: the world this week, 8 August to 14 August 2021, irreversible changes, running out of Greek letters, the end of the Tokyo Olympics, New York, and India’s stuck Parliament.

Everywhere

My maid who helps with the cooking and house-keeping returned after a month long hiatus babysitting her just-born second grandson. After a few days with the pots and pans, she took a quick break to attend the Baby Shower of her close relative. It’s gonna be a boy she beamed, on returning. A customer dropped in to our store yesterday. Her daughter had married early this year-we had done the bridal dresses-and she is already in the family way. It’s gonna be a boy – I can guess from the ‘dark look’ of her face, she said, with bright knowledge lines written all over her own face.

A doctor friend dropped by for an evening chat, and we discussed, among other things, the booming baby boy-boom and wondered what could be the reason. Perhaps, Climate Change is to blame – easy? Wow! That’s my next story.

Irreversible

Over the past few months we have witnessed weird weather stories bursting around the world: the Americas, North Africa, and Europe saw deadly heat waves and wildfires – America met with a lot of hurricanes; Asia saw pluvial floods and landslides caused by extreme rainfall; Australia too saw lots of water and we read stories of snakes, mice, and spiders spreading all over dry land.

We have become clever enough to acknowledge that climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying. That’s exactly the key finding of the latest scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It finds changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system. Many changes are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. Some, such as a continued sea-level rise, are irreversible. That’s a great word pregnant with meaning. More boys tumbling out?

What do we do? The only way is to do whatever is required for sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Benefits for air quality would come quickly, while global temperatures would take 20 to 30 years to stabilize.

The IPCC was created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as an organization of Governments that are members of the United Nations or WMO. It currently has 195 members. The IPCC has the objective of providing Governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. It’s reports are also a key input into international climate change negotiations.

That’s a code red alert on climate change. And ‘it promises’ that things will only get worse unless nations of the Earth get their heads out of the clouds and start on an action plan at the soonest.

More Greek

The Coronavirus is still as bold as ever and surging in the United States, especially in the Sunshine State of Florida. That thing called the Delta Variant is shining the most, but other variants are on the prowl and looking to grab a throat-hold on defenceless passers-by. Please Get Vaccinated.

India is doing good bringing down the cases to around 30,000 per day, but the State of Kerala is an outlier owning more than the 50% cases of all India. Once it was was on a different league altogether, a Model worth emulating across the country, but then they have swing to the other extreme end – not worth liking or sharing, at all!

Following up on his announcement, last month, to get people into the vaccination mode, French President Emmanuel Macron introduced a Health Pass in France. Starting on 9 August 2021, French citizens will have to show proof of vaccination, immunity, or negative COVID-19 test for outdoor activities such as, riding on trains, dining in restaurants, and going to various kinds of venues. While post-announcement the vaccination rates did rise up considerably, it in turn brought more than 230,000 people – anarchists, far-right activists, and anti-vaxxers – across France on to the streets to protest the Health Pass. It is now a fourth straight weekend of demonstrations. Many have decried the Health Pass as a violation of freedom and Government overreach.

France is not alone, with Italy and Germany also having faced similar protests. While health experts are driving themselves to bring the virus under control, many others are finding fault lines, to nudge open.

In these weekly posts, I often worried that variants of the coronavirus could outnumber the 24 letters of the Green Alphabet. Well, The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Technical Chief of COVID-19, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, seems to have heard me. The WHO is already looking at new names for mutations amid fears there will be more variants trying to get past out steadily improving defences. Star Constellations are the front runners to take over the baton in what is turning out to be a relay race. And we could see variants known as Aries, Gemini… Greeks Gods and Goddesses have also been lined-up, but they are being discussed with the Gods themselves – copyright issues!

Thus far, 11 mutations have been named: four ‘variants of concern’, including the infamous Delta, and Beta; four ‘variants of interest’, such as Eta and Lambda; some which have since been downgraded, on losing the spike momentum and fizzling out, such as Epsilon, Zeta, and Theta.

I reckon that by the time the pandemic turns endemic we could all be full of the Greek Alphabet and the Stars in our heads! And surely we don’t want to think beyond the Greek, should we?

Curtains on The Tokyo Olympics 2020

The Olympic Fire is out in the cauldron, with the Games coming to an end on 8 August 2021. The United States (US) won the most number of medals, 113 (and most gold, 39), followed by China, Britain, Japan.

Tokyo 2020 saw world records broken in 24 events, with swimmers and rowers making the most breakthroughs, shattering six world records each. Four world records were broken in weightlifting and three in athletics and cycling track events.

With no spectators being allowed in the vast majority of the venues, the Organisers resorted to digital engagement to create an atmosphere which made athletes feel they were not alone. A cheer wall was established in the stadiums with more than 250 million videos coming from different corners of the world, supporting athletes from their National Olympic Committees.

Tokyo 2020 social posts have generated more than 4.7 billion engagements, with the majority of them happening during the Games time.

Twenty-seven year old Australian swimmer Emma McKeon’s seven medals (4 gold and 3 bronze) win, stood-up as the most among all athletes in the Tokyo Olympics.

Some US highlights are: track star Allyson Felix is now the most decorated US track and field athlete in Olympic history; Caeleb Dressel took home the most gold medals with five victories from men’s 50m and 100m freestyle, 100m butterfly, 4x100m freestyle and medley relay. He is the most successful male swimmer in the pool in Tokyo; the US women’s basketball team won its seventh gold medal in a row.

After decades of trying, India finally won a Gold medal in Athletics with Neeraj Chopra throwing a winning distance of 87.58 metres, in the Javelin event. Neeraj is only the second Indian athlete ever to win individual Olympic gold. Indians are traditional javelin/spear throwers and finally it’s showing, why not?

India ended the Olympics with its best ever haul of 7 medals and while Indians were enthralled, it rained cash and goodies on the medal winners.

On COVID-19, it’s not clear that the Games served as the super-spreader event as many in Japan had feared.

The Summer Paralympics will be held between 24 August and 5 September 2021, 16 days after the completion of the Olympics.

Up next: The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, kicking off in February.

I would give a huge Gold Medal to Japan for fearlessly conducting the Games. Keep it up Japan.

See you in Paris 2024.

New York and America

With the Olympics having concluded and the weightlifting events having different winners, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gave up lifting weights on the sexual harassment charges. Of course, he thought about this three daughters and their future and said he will resign in two weeks. A new Governor – in a first, a woman – New York Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, is getting ready to pick-up the broom and clean-up the toxic environment. Good luck to her.

Keeping the story running on the United States, its decision to quit Afghanistan is turning out to be disastrous, as the very Taliban they sought to annihilate are making a ferocious comeback. The Afghanistan Army that America nurtured and trained for over a decade is unable to offer resistance and Towns and Cities are being flooded with the Taliban. Another Climate Change effect?

India’s Parliament

While climate change induced fires engulfed many countries, India’s Upper House-Rajya Sabha, and Lower House-Lok Sabha, of Parliament, saw Opposition Party fire freeze serious business leading to a lock-jam for most of this Monsoon season. This was to protest alleged snooping by the Government on its citizens and a demand to repeal already passed laws. The Chairman of the Upper House tried to douse the fire with his tears – but such clouded thinking didn’t work. He should have called for Hercules to divert River Yamuna to fight the fires – and clean-up as well.

More herculean and fighting stories coming up in the weeks ahead. Stay locked to World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-32

About: the world this week, 1 August to 7 August 2021, a Governor’s fight for his reputation, blazing fires, and fabulous stories from the Olympics.

Everywhere

With the Olympic Games now showing in Tokyo, Japan, drawing to a close on 8 August 2021, it was sporting news that galloped through the week, overwhelming and submerging most other events in the World.

New York

In New York, USA, Governor Andrew Cuomo could not lift the weights on sexual harassment, misconduct, and toxic environment creation allegations – of touching, groping, kissing, and hugging women without their consent – against him. The charges were laid on the table by New York’s Attorney General (AG) – on concluding an investigation in to the allegations. The AG said the Governor had violated State and Federal Laws.

In response, Cuomo denied doing anything out of the ordinary – whatever he did, was part of the job of being in public life, which has been misconstrued, and vowed to stay on in office. Occupational hazard?

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and the political class, added more weight, lit the fires to turn the heat on, and called for his resignation.

The great fall comes after Andrew Cuomo’s popularity reached dizzying heights in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as millions of Americans tuned in to his daily no-nonsense TV briefings, when New York was the epicentre of the virus spread. I too, from faraway India, religiously watched his daily sermons, to learn about the pandemic and enjoyed the camaraderie that he brought to such talk, with stories of his daughters, one of his daughter’s boyfriend, and the family dog. I trusted his words more than the India’s honchos – who hardly dished out anything at all in the early days – and I believed Andrew Cuomo led by example.

I particularly admired Cuomo’s Secretary, Melissa DeRosa, who was seemingly always by his side, working her smartphone, shuffling paperwork, and offering responses to any questions passed to her by her boss. She brought a brilliant, unruffled diligence to the job and I confess I sometimes used to watch the briefings more for Melissa than Andrew Cuomo. Like her boss, DeRosa’s developed a national reputation as an avatar of competence and calm and steered the Governor’s ship awfully well, over troubled waters.

Before the sexual harassment allegations climbed-up the headlines (and down their backs), the dream team of the Governor and his Secretary were whiplashed on allegations of tampering with the data on COVID-19 cases in private hospitals. These were about under-counting COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents in New York State.

Melissa has not been affected by the sexual harassment allegations on her boss and has stood steadfastly by his side, defending him.

A skimpy brief on Andrew Cuomo: He has previously served as Attorney General of New York State and is a two-time Governor of the State. He married Kerry Kennedy, one of the seven daughters of Robert F Kennedy, and has three daughters with her. The couple first separated and then divorced in 2005. Cuomo’s brother, Chris Cuomo, is a CNN News Anchor.

Now, I am devastated that such a solid public life person could do so much harm and am left clueless on what to believe. But I still cling on to the good in Andrew Cuomo…and the brilliance of Melissa DeRosa.

Israel Strikes Again

Lebanon has multiple problems of its own making, and despite that dared to launch rockets into Israel this week. And in a first, after seven years, the Israeli Air Force carried out retaliatory air strikes on its neighbour following a second of rocket fire from across the border. Lebanon’s militant group, Hezbollah, claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks and said it fired the rockets into ‘open areas’ of Israel. There were no casualties on both sides, but this is provocation enough to trigger ‘open’ retaliation, isn’t it?

Why do they keep doing this? This is such a fragile region that even the snap sound of a gun is enough to invite return fire!

Blazing Turkey

After stories of getting wet in the rain, swept away by floods, and carried away by landslides, it’s the turn of getting dry by fire – wildfires, turning into towering infernos.

Most than 100 blazes have erupted in the Southern parts of Turkey over the week, many of which have been watered down. The blazing fires in Manavgat, Marmaris and the inland town of Milas, prompted the evacuation of some residential areas and hotels.

Wildfires in forest in Turkey are common in summer in the Mediterranean and Aegean regions, but May 2021 was the hottest May for over 50 years and followed a drought in Turkey. There were earlier fires in Kas, Tarsus and Marmaris on 26 and 27 June, and the maximum temperature for 60 years occurred in Cizre at over 49 degrees Centigrade,

You just need to look beyond the tip of your nose to find the reason: climate change, of course. These fires follow other extreme weather conditions recently reported around the world.

The Tokyo Olympics 2020

Once upon a time, the only gold medal guaranteed for India in the Olympic Games was the Men’s Hockey Event, winning as much as eight gold medals, over the years. That was when the game was played on natural grass and stick-work mattered the most. Then astro-turf was invented, the game became faster, India could not keep pace with the change and ended up losing to smarter countries, especially Australia and Germany. This Olympics, India finally got the closest to winning gold, reaching the semi-finals and going down to Belgium. However, they got their sticks together to beat Germany 5-4, and to win the bronze medal. This is the first medal win for the Indian Hockey Team after a 41 year Olympic medal drought. Well done India.

Indian Women are known to bring Home the gold – a great Indian Family tradition – and true to nature they almost did it but ending up losing in the semi-finals to Argentina. And then the fight for the Bronze, to Britain. Whatever, the fact that they made it this far is testimony to their new-found capabilities, and are a bellwether of better outcomes in the future. Leave alone the gold medal, the women won our hearts – that’s real gold!

Wondering how India’s hockey fortunes are suddenly looking bright again? Behind the success lies the ravishing support of the Odisha State Government, who has since 2018 sponsored both the men’s and women’s national hockey teams, stepping in as sponsor when business group Sahara withdrew. Naveen Patnaik, 74, who has been the Chief Minister of Odisha for the past 21 years, without a break, is the invisible force keeping the goal – He was a hockey goalie during his school days!

This is truly a ‘high jump’ in sportsmanship. Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim, 30, and and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi, 29, both cleared the highest bar of 2.37 meters (m), but when it came to deciding a winner, the two Olympic high jumpers opted not to take it to a tie-breaker. Instead, they asked to share the gold medal, prompting cheers beyond their home countries of Qatar and Italy.

After both jumpers cleared the highest bar, they attempted to match the Olympic record of 2.39 meters for sole ownership of the title. However, after three attempts, neither succeeded. The two athletes then approached a Games Official. “Can we have two golds?” Barshim asked. The Official nodded in agreement, and the rest is Olympic History.

Australian swimmer Emma McKeon won seven medals in the Tokyo Olympics. And adding to her previous medal stock of four, she now has a total of eleven Olympic medals – five gold, two silver, and four bronze – making her the most successful Australian Olympian at the singles Game events.

Amazing stories of grit, perseverance, and fortitude on display at the Olympics beginning with the determination of Japan to go ahead with the Games. Shows how much we are capable of if we lend a shoulder to ourselves. Never underestimate yourself, we are capable of doing more than we think we can.

More gold, silver, and bronze stories coming up in the weeks ahead.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-31

About: the world this week, 25 July 2021 to 31 July 2021; stories of unrest, of change, and the thrilling Olympic Games testing our skills and resilience in various dimensions.

Everywhere

It started with the former South African President, Jacob Zuma pleading ‘not guilty’ to various kinds of corruption and fraud charges, during the period he was Deputy President, and President as well. He refused to appear before a Commission investigating the charges and questioned the integrity of the country’s top judges, accusing them of political bias against him. He was then arrested for contempt of court.

The arrest sparked unrest and protests leading to frenzied looting, arson, riots, and catastrophic violence – one of the worst and never before seen in South Africa, since the advent of democracy in 1994. The past weeks have been engulfed in ruthless anarchy, with the Police struggling to control the situation. Some blamed the poverty situation of the people, others said it was orchestrated, having an element of undermining the State, the Rule of Law – an Insurrection. Adding fuel to fire, racial fault lines became awfully exposed, while the mayhem ‘speared ahead’ in South Africa.

The positive outcome was that communities ended up coalescing together to protect themselves – with their spears sharpened and ready to use. And I’m confident that normalcy will return, in the coming weeks.

In India, a Mechanical Engineer who once worked for the iconic Tata Group was chosen to become Chief Minister (CM) of the State of Karnataka. This, after an old indefatigable war-horse made way for him after ‘wearing himself thin’, bringing his Party to rule the State. Basavaraj Bommai appears to be a ‘picture’ perfect choice and took oath as CM on 28 July 2021. His father, S R Bommai, too was once the CM of the State. He may thank the stars, but it’s also time to thank Dad – more real.

Meanwhile, in North-Eastern India, two States, Assam and Mizoram came to blows over their hazy looking borders killing six Police personnel in the process, and injuring many others. I wonder how people can descend to such a border level. India is one huge country, the State Boundary lines are for administrative convenience and can be drawn tight, can’t they? Why not declare such disputed territory as belonging to the Government of India and allow equal visiting rights to the fighting States?

Mizoram was carved out of the State of Assam, first as a Union Territory in 1972 and then as a full-fledged State in 1987. Could it not be handled on friendlier terms? After all, the States are not different countries. And trespassers can always be warned to mind ‘some’ line. But shooting to kill is unacceptable.

Olympics, Tokyo 2020

India was off to a quick medal-winning start on Day 1 of the Olympics, lifting the Silver Medal in the 49 kilogram (kg) Women’s Weightlifting Category. Mirabhai Chanu from the State of Manipur, heaved a total weight of 202 kg, to be placed second. The gold in the event was won by China’s Hou Zhihui, with a combined weight total of 210 kg.

Mirabhai picked a total of 87 kg in the Snatch part of the event and ended with a lift of 115 kg in Clean & Jerk (totalling 202 kg). She is the second Indian weightlifter, after Karnam Malleswari, to win an Olympic medal.

The win may be attributed to her ‘Olympic Earrings’ which she wore brightly. It was a gift from her mother who had lifted her to this stage, from ‘carrying-the-firewood-days’! The story goes that when she was 12 years old, she helped her brother carry firewood, which they had gathered from the forest: she did it so easily, that it was noticed as unusual for a woman, and someone said she must get into weightlifting. Ever since, her mother ensured she trained hard to become the one who lifted the weights!

The Govt of India had arranged a training stint for her, in the United States, ahead of the Olympics, and this was one of the main reasons for her weighty performance.

This time it was tears of joy, five years after the 2016 Olympics when she left the same platform in tears of sorrow following a disastrous debut. That’s heavy work done. Way to go, Mirabhai Chanu.

While a new hero was ‘biting’ her Silver Medal, a boxing legend of India, Mary Kom, 38, gave her absolute best before going down to the reigning Olympic Bronze medalist, Columbia’s Ingrit Valencia, by a split verdict 2-3 in the second round of the 51 kg category. Mary Kom was at her sporting high when she welcomed the decision with a smile and hugged her opponent. Mary’s story will ring for years to come.

With the USA, China, Japan, and other large countries leading the medals tally, tiny Bermuda, with a population of about 63,000 sneaked-in with its 33 years old Flora Duffy decisively winning the triathlon, securing a historic gold for her country – the smallest country to win gold in the Olympics. Tokyo 2020 is Duffy’s fourth Olympics.

A triathlon is an endurance multi-sport race consisting of swimming, cycling, and running over various distances. Triathletes compete for fastest overall completion time, racing each segment sequentially, with the time transitioning between the disciplines included.

Duffy battled a near career-ending injury, anaemia and depression to reach Tokyo 2020. She did not finish her race at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing after crashing her bike, and even quit the sport for a short time. Her preparations for Tokyo were hampered by a foot injury that prevented her from competing for a year.

Duffy was coached by her husband, South African triathlete Dan Hugo, who was there to see it all happen. And she gave him the medal!

Condoms come in handy and can be ingeniously useful-depending on the user. And women seem to be discovering better ways of putting them to work than men. Ask Australian Slalom Canoeist Jessica Fox, 27, who recently won a bronze and a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics – and she has a condom to thank for it. Earlier this week – before Fox won her first Olympic gold medal in the women’s C1 Canoe Slalom and bronze in the Canoe Slalom K1 final – she was filmed fixing her kayak with a condom. A video shared by the athlete shows her carefully sliding the condom over the front of her kayak after applying a carbon mixture to the area – to secure it. We learn something new every day! Condoms can be an inspiration.

She is called GOAT (Greatest Of All Time): US Gymnast Simone Biles, 24 years old, withdrew from the Gymnastics Event, saying, “I have to focus on my mental health.” After scoring 13.766 – her lowest Olympic vault score – Biles left the arena, but returned to support and cheer her team-mates as they took the silver medal.

Biles is a 30-time Olympic and World Championship medallist, and needed four podium finishes in Tokyo 2020 to become the most decorated gymnast – male or female – in history.

Sportspersons across the spectrum praised her decision for prioritising mental wellness over everything else. It was a courageous decision given that Simone Biles has reached all five individual finals in the Tokyo Olympics.

We live with ‘that thing between our ears’ and we need to give it the respect it deserves. Sometimes stepping back for a while may actually be a great leap forward.

Please Yourself

After months of COVID-19 lockdown induced strangulating travel restrictions, I took a drive to the small Town of Tiruchengode near Salem, Tamil Nadu, for checking out a new Fabric Supplier. And to get back into the groove, as they would call it.

Tiruchengode is famous for the ancient hill-top Ardhanareeswarar (man-woman) Temple, mentioned in one of the five Great Tamil Epics, Silappadikaram, as Neduvelkunru. Ardhanareeswarar is a manifestation of one of the Hindu Trinity Gods, Lord Shiva, representing the unity of Shiva and his consort, Parvati. The equally famous Chenkottu Velavar Temple, dedicated to Lord Murugan (son of Lord Shiva), is situated on the same hill.

Tiruchengode is also home to the Rig (bore well digging) Business and Truck Body Builders, which is a thriving business – blessed from the hill above.

With the Gods watching over me from their Rocky residence, I took the road from Ariyanur, going through Attayampatti, Mallasamudram to Tiruchengode. On the way I stopped by at Attayampatti to grab the famous ‘murukku’ ( a rice flour fried snack wearing a twisted shape)- bought a ton – and cracked upon it, through the drive.

There is also the famous Kalipatti Temple, on this route, which is run by a classmate of mine from Boarding School. He is the high priest of the Temple, owned by his family, for generations. He succeeded his ‘also high priest’ father who used to come over to the School, in Yercaud, driving a Fiat Car with an Apache-feathered head on the bonnet. I guess, Apaches are closer to the Gods-they talk to Him in mysterious ways.

The two-lane route was verdant, having some of the best stately trees growing on either side, forming a natural umbrella. And the undulating profile of the hilly area probably kept the roads naturally clean. The Mahendra Educational Institutions are planted on the sides, beyond the trees, and it seems an ideal location for learning and study, with the stillness of the nearby hills and the quietness of the neighbourhood permeating the soul.

On reaching Tiruchengode, I was stunned to see well-laid, clear roads, marvellous shops and business establishments, and the Paramathi Vellore Road even had a wide pavement (a rarity in these parts) on one side looking like a movie set. I almost expected an Actress to jump out dancing and singing, and grab a pole. The place I was visiting was a large mansion on one of the by-streets and the location was a delightful place to be in. The Owner besides showing us Fabric (and her 11 years old precocious kid) also showed-off a great roof-garden with plants hanging out their stems and leaves, banana, pomegranate, lime, and orange ‘trees’ crowded the terrace.

It was near about five years since my last visit and I must give credit to the previous Government, that ruled Tamil Nadu for the past ten years, for the stupendous development. They have done a fabulous job. It speaks on its own. And I caught the story, didn’t I?

On the return, after lots of munching, my stock of murukkus was down by a few kilograms and I chose to replenish it on my next drive, which I must make. I’m sure the Gods will approve.

More road and ‘murukku’ stories coming up in the weeks ahead. Stay flexible and keep pace with the Olympics.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-30

About: the world this week, 18th July to 24th July 2021. Floods of water, fish, spying, flying into Space; Faster, Higher, Stronger.

Everywhere

A ‘Deluge of Floods’

Over the years we have heard of innumerable Weather Satellites launched by various countries, to endlessly circle the Earth and send back tons of data, from up above the clouds, that enable us make humble weather forecasts and foresee potential natural disasters.

It is over 60 years since the first Weather Satellite, TIROS-1 (Television Infra Red Observational Satellite), was launched by the United States’, NASA, and surely mankind has made great leaps of faith – breaking into the clouds and beyond – in predicting the weather, using Satellites, among other things. But, now I wonder if all of this is actually working. Or am I missing something? Have the Weather Satellites become Aliens of a kind?

Over the past weeks, Europe – especially Germany and Belgium – has been devastated by unprecedented flash floods generated by torrential rains. Rivers, in turn, receiving the copious run-offs, became dissatisfied with the fixed deposits and bursted their Banks sending the water dashing into precious Homes. This is being touted as Germany’s worst natural disaster in more than half a century. Over 140 people died. Particularly hard hit were the German States of Rhineland Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, and Eastern Belgium. Around 700 residents were evacuated after a dam broke in the Town of Wassenberg, near Cologne.

On the other side of the World, parts of the United States have also felt the wetness of water. On 19th July, flash flooding occurred in Birmingham and the surrounding Jefferson County, Alabama, following heavy rains, disrupting otherwise dry lives. Cars could not become boats and people lost their legs, below the knees, to the water.

Jumping to Asia, on 21st July torrential rain pounded the Central Chinese province of Henan, bursting the banks of major rivers and flooding the streets of a dozen cities, including Zhengzhou. The sudden flooding inundated and trapped people in shopping malls, schools and even subway trains, leaving locals in a perilous situation. The region has seen the heaviest rain since record-keeping began 60 years ago. Zhengzhou experienced the equivalent of a year’s average rainfall in just 3 days!

In early July, a landslide hit the popular resort of Atami, in Central Japan: a torrent of black-mud crashed through the city. Several houses were swept away by the mudslide, which followed torrential rain. Atami has had more rainfall in the first three days of July than it usually sees in the whole month!

As communities devastated by the catastrophic flooding swam out and started drying themselves, they are wondering how it all went so wrong, so fast. Europe, for example, has a world-leading warning system that issued regular alerts for days before floods engulfed entire villages. The Copernicus Emergency Management Service sent more than 25 warnings, for specific regions, of the Rhine and Maas river basins in the days leading up to the flooding, through its European Flood Awareness System (EFAS), well before heavy rains triggered the flash flooding.

But few of these early warnings appear to have been passed on to residents early and clearly enough, catching them completely off-guard. Now questions are being raised over whether the chain of communication from the Central European level to regions is working. This is one example, in a modern developed country loaded with fabulous surveillance systems.

If we keep our heads above the water and look up to The Netherlands, just across its borders with Germany’s and Belgium’s flood-devastated areas, the picture is entirely different. The Netherlands too experienced extreme rainfall, maybe not be quite as heavy as in Germany and Belgium. And it has not escaped unscathed. But its towns are not entirely submerged and not a single person has died. Officials were better prepared and were able to communicate with people quickly.

The Netherlands’ water strength lies largely in its organisation. The country’s infrastructure is managed by a Branch of the Government devoted solely to water, the Directorate General for Public Works and Water Management, which looks after some 1,500 km of man-made defenses. And they are doing a damn good job of it.

Moving closer to home, in several States of India, Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka – to name a few – the story is about the same, with the rains battering cities, towns and villages and sending people scurrying to elevated dry land.

In one of the smaller Towns, in the State of Telangana, the nearby River, tired of sleeping on its bed, got up and started running on the streets. In a revenge mode, the people descended and flooded the streets armed with nothing but fishing nets: many caught giant fish, in the Indian Stream, that could put ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ to shame-of the Gulf Stream. Who said The Planet of the Apes is up ahead? Welcome to The Planet of the Fish!

Even while we are sinking in the floods there are several parts of the World, say, Western North America and Canada, being fried by a flood of heat waves. These places boiled this week in all-time high temperatures that have caused dozens of deaths.

Hold on… we have been flooded with stories of such breaking of records, frequently these days: worst ever, first time in a century, never-before seen, goes on…and of course that dreaded word, ’Climate Change’ and its good friend, ‘Global Warming’ as being the ubiquitous villain responsible for all of this.

We need to think beyond hurting each other with guns and nuclear weapons and instead build weapons against nature to prevent and avoid the mass destructions we are witnessing. With a gun in my hand, can I shoot down a wave, a flood, a hurricane? Are we up to the task of being responsible and making meaningful change? Only the ‘rise of the water levels’ will tell?

How about getting a Noah’s Ark ready! Ship ourselves to another Planet?

Snooping

Pegasus, in Greek mythology, is a divine winged horse, an offspring of the Olympian God Poseidon, usually depicted as pure white in colour. It is a mysterious creature capable of everything symbolizing the divine inspiration or the journey to heaven: in modern times it has been regarded as a symbol of poetic inspiration.

Leave alone being a poetic, I am inspired by the ‘mysterious aspect’.

In the real world, Pegasus is a spyware developed by Israeli cyber-arms firm NSO that can be covertly installed on mobile phones running on iOS and Android.

The NSO (named after Niv, Shalev, Omri – The founders) Group develops best-in-class technology to help government Agencies detect and prevent terrorism and crime.

Simply put, Pegasus hacks computers and smartphones, in order to gather data and serve it to a third party. It is malicious because it gathers such data without the consent or the knowledge of the person owing the device.

Once installed, the Pegasus spyware can turn the Android or iOS phones into surveillance devices. The earliest version of the hacking software Pegasus would infect phones through text messages or emails containing a malicious link that the target would click on. However, the technology has grown more discreet and dangerous since then. And now, Pegasus could infect a phone without any user interaction or with ‘zero-click’ – vulnerabilities, flaws and bugs in a phone’s operating system – that the phone’s manufacturer is unaware of, or has been unable to fix.

India was rocked by a deluge of reports, that a flood of people were on the Pegasus list of ‘Persons of Interest’ without any evidence whosoever on what was found, or not found, and whether it had any effect on the political or safety climate of India. Some even considered it an honour to be on the List!

However, with the mystery and the secrecy involved, this will be a very hard nut to crack unless we hunt down another offspring of Poseidon to ‘talk to and infect Pegasus’, or should we, at all?

Amazon adds Space

This week, Amazon founder, Billionaire Jeff Bezos, flying on the generous bounty of Amazon Staff and Buyers, lifted off in his Blue Origin, New Shepard Space Craft to Space. He was keeping one eye on the Virgin trail left by fellow Billionaire, Sir Richard Branson, who did a similar feat in the week gone by. He was accompanied by his brother, Mark Bezos, an 82 years old Space Race pioneer, Wally Funk, and an 18 years old student, Oliver Daemen. The flight lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds.

Two minutes into the flight, the capsule carrying the Space travellers, separated from its rocket – at a height of about 76 km-continued its upwards trajectory towards the Karman Line, crossed it – going up to about 106 km – and curved back to achieve a safe, parachuted landing on the West Texas Desert floor in the United States. Jeff Bezos stepped out wearing a Texas Cowboy hat, and I almost expected him to grab a horse, hit the trail, and ride into Town. Meanwhile, unnoticed, the launch vehicle-booster return-landed at about 3 km away from the launch pad.

Looks awfully easy. Maybe there is a message out there that the Earth is unsafe and we better start flying up to grab a better place to settle…and escape the ‘water spills of Earth? Overall, the signal I get is we all need to lift ourselves (with or without rockets). Let’s say, move up in life.

The Olympics

The COVID-19 pandemic stumped and badly bruised Tokyo Olympics 2020, rescheduled to start on 23 July 2021, is itself a testimony to the spirit of sport, having weathered a great deal to get the Games started. I salute the persistence of the Organisers and Japan for leaving no stone unturned – as they say – to get the Games going.

The easiest and the most sensible way to face the pandemic would be to just cancel the Olympic Games. And it requires mind-boggling effort to carry on with the COVID-19 prevention protocols. On our part, we should encourage a safe Olympics, pressuring infected Athletes to quarantine and go home, and the others to blossom. Support our teams remotely, watching on Television or any other physically-distanced media.

Finally, this Friday, the Tokyo Olympics was officially declared open by Japan’s Emperor Naruhito. Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka lit the Olympic cauldron to mark the formal start of Tokyo Olympics 2020. The opening ceremony took place in an almost empty Stadium, witnessed by about 1000 spectators, without the glitz and glam normally associated with such ceremonies. It was celebrated as a moment of global hope – we need every ounce of it to make the Games a success.

Citius, Altius, Fortius.

Please Yourself

Over the past year I went to war with the Vikings, fought to save The Last Kingdom, Resurrected myself with Ertugrul, played the Queen’s Gambit, and went on to wear The Crown. In the process, my body received a pounding, and the wounds of battle were hurting. It’s then, I decided to see ‘The Good Doctor’ on Netflix. It’s been great healing ever since. And I’m fighting fit again.

The Good Doctor is an American Television Series, about Dr. Shaun Murphy, a young autistic, savant, surgical resident at the fictional San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital, California. Dr. Shaun’s brilliant savant abilities include near-photographic recall and the ability to note minute details and changes. It’s about how he finds acceptance in the Hospital and goes on to contribute to life-saving decisions and surgeries…and making wonderful friends on the way. I was inspired.

More savant stories coming up in the weeks ahead. Stay inspired and keep your head above the water.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-29

About: the world this week, 11th July to 17th July 2021 – a truly ‘incredible’ week. Read on to find out how ‘incredible’!

Everywhere

The Netherlands

Last week I wrote about the assassination attempt on prominent Dutch Crime Reporter-Journalist, and TV Presenter, Peter R de Vries, 64, who was shot, minutes after leaving a TV studio, in a Central Amsterdam Street. Five shots were fired at close range and he was hit in the head. Over the past week, he was struggling for his life in Hospital and this week the fight came to an end – he died due to injuries of the shooting.

Since 2019, Peter de Vries was on the hit list of the Netherlands’ most wanted criminal. Police now need to hunt down the killers and make the most wanted, not wanted any longer.

His family said that Peter lived by his conviction, ‘On bended knee is no way to be free’.

Truth-Unravelers are always on the cross-hairs of those wanting to stay hidden forever. And it’s a dangerous life they live.

America Quits Af’gone’istan

United States (US) President Joe Biden has decided that 31st August 2021 will be the end date for the nearly 20 years war in Afghanistan, days earlier than his original 11th September deadline. The US put boots on the ground after the 9/11 attacks in the US, to end the rule of the deadly Taliban and take down the terrorist Al-Qaeda Organization.

Later, the US along with the North Atlantic Treat Organization (NATO) Allies facilitated setting-up an Afghan Government leading to adopting of a new Constitution, Presidential, and Parliamentary Elections – happening in Afghanistan after at least 30 years. But America’s longest war has claimed the lives of more than 2300 US troops and about 35000 Afghan civilians.

President Biden said, ‘The US cannot sacrifice any more American lives in an un-winnable war. We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build. And it’s the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country’. I couldn’t agree more. Fighting another Country’s dirty war has never been easy. You set your own targets and move on. What, with Osama Bin Laden finished-off (in Pakistan) and Al-Qaeda ‘reasonably contained’ long ago – that’s victory enough to celebrate.

The US definitely did its best. Together, with the NATO Allies, the US had trained and equipped near about 300,000 military personnel-of the Afghan National Security Force and hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Defense and Security Forces over the last two decades. It ’s now over to them to engage in battle with the Taliban and force an outcome on the seemingly endless, fruitless war.

However, with the official Afghan Security Forces failing to quickly fill the vacuum created by the US Troops withdrawals, the Taliban got sucked-in and began capturing vast swathes of territory. And enforcing its archaic rules and hard-line Islamic Laws. Looks like Afghanistan is going back to where it was twenty years ago.

India has temporarily pulled out its staff from its Consulate in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in the wake of intense fighting near the city.

In other heartbreaking news, Reuters photo-journalist Danish Siddiqui was killed on Friday, caught in a crossfire, while covering a clash between Afghan Security Forces and the Taliban near a border crossing with Pakistan.

Siddiqui was part of the Reuters photography team to win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize of Feature Photography for documenting the Rohingya Refugee Crisis. It was a series described by the judges as ‘shocking photographs that exposed the world to the violence Rohingya refugees faced in fleeing Myanmar’. RIP Danish Siddiqui.

It may be a long struggle, but I wish the Afghans are able to grow the muscle to fight-off the Taliban and gain the confidence to build themselves a strong, developed country.

Cuba

Cuba was discovered by Christoper Columbus in October 1492: he found himself on the Island while searching for ‘that famous route’ to India. Cuba then came under Spanish rule and served as a staging ground for the exploration of the nearby North American mainland. In 1898, the United States having grown in to a powerful nation, defeated Spain, which gave up all claims to Cuba, ceding the Island to the US. Thereafter it was ruled by US popped-up Governments.

In a fiery revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro led a 9000 strong guerrilla army into the Cuban capital of Havana and seized power, nationalising all American businesses in Cuba.

In 1961 Castro proclaimed Cuba a Communist State allying with the then USSR, following the disastrous, abortive US sponsored invasion by Cuban Exiles, in the Bay of Pigs Incident. The US went on to break off all diplomatic ties with Cuba.

There was also the much-talked about Cuban Missile Crisis, when Castro agreed to allow USSR to deploy Nuclear Missiles on the island (obviously targeting the US) but was subsequently resolved, with the USSR removing the missiles in exchange for the US secretly withdrawing its nuclear missiles in Turkey and agreeing not to invade Cuba. That is touted as one of President John F Kennedy’s (JFK) famous acts of adroit leadership.

Ever since, Cubans have been living under a communist government.

Nearly one million people emigrated to the US, leaving the island and its troubles behind. Those who have stayed have dealt with oppression and economic instability, driven in part by US sanctions.

In 2016, President Obama became the first sitting US President to visit Cuba in 88 years. And called on Congress to lift the embargo put in place by JFK. He began gradually dismantling years of sanctions. And eased travel restrictions for Americans, bringing economic opportunity to the island. But in 2017, President Donald Trump stepped-in and undid the changes.

The pandemic’s impact on tourism has added pressure to the already fragile economy. And the country’s been seeing food and medicine shortages as well as rising inflation, which could reach about 500% this year.

Last weekend and earlier this week, thousands of Cubans took to the streets across the island nation, in frustration, to protest chronic shortages of basic goods; curbs on civil liberties; and the government’s handling of a worsening coronavirus outbreak, marking the most significant unrest in decades. They also called for an end to the communist government. At least one person died during a clash between protesters and police. And over a hundred others have been arrested or reported missing.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel blamed the US Sanctions for the abysmal economic conditions in the country.

Earlier this week, President Biden said he stands with the Cuban protesters. But many want him to do more. We need to watch this space.

Space Edge

We have coolly travelled hundreds of kilometres(km) horizontally on Earth so often that a distance of 80 to 100km is ‘no big deal’. Many do it every day, on work or other kinds of travel, which should take a couple of hours to cover that kind of distance on land. But then, look up straight into the sky and say ‘Space’. They say a vertical distance of 80 km or more is the beginning of the edge of Space- a boundary we see all the time but cannot draw a line to.

It’s been difficult to pin the edge of Space at a particular altitude. In the 1900’s Hungarian Physicist Theodore Von Karman determined the boundary to be around 80 km above sea level in what is called the Karman Line. Today the Karman line is set at an imaginary boundary roughly 100 km above sea level.

To get a better perspective, ‘using the space between your ears’, the International Space Station orbits around the Earth at a height of about 400 km above the Earth’s surface. And that is well and truly in Space.

How about testing that boundary, going to the edge of Space to see the voluptuous curves of the Earth?

No better person to do that than UK Billionaire, Entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, 70, founder of the Virgin Group of Companies, who did just that on 11th July 2021. Blasting off from the New Mexico Desert in the United States, he flew high above New Mexico in a vehicle named ‘Unity’ that his company, Virgin Galactic, has been developing for the last seventeen years.

Branson was accompanied by Unity’s two pilots, Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci, and three Galactic employees – Beth Moses, Colin Bennett and Sirisha Bandla.

Sirisha Bandla, an Aeronautical Engineer, and a woman of Indian origin, became an overnight sensation in the Indian Media, and some called her the second Indian woman to fly in to Space – after NASA’s Astronaut Kalpana Chawla (who died when the Columbia Space Shuttle crashed during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003).

The flight lasted just more than an hour and included roughly four minutes of weightlessness. Branson and the crew returned safely to hug Earth again, after about an hour after lifting-off.

Unity is a sub-orbital vehicle, which means it cannot achieve the velocity and altitude necessary to keep it up in Space to circle Planet Earth. It is designed to give its passengers stunning views at the top of its climb and allow them a few minutes to experience weightlessness.

Unity is first carried, by a much bigger rocket-powered aeroplane, to an altitude of about 15 km from where it is released. A rocket motor of Unity then ignites to blast the vehicle skyward. The maximum height achievable by Unity is about 90km. Passengers are allowed to unbuckle and float to a window for the sights.

Unity folds its tail-booms on descent to stabilise its fall before then gliding home.

Sunday’s flight is the first step in Virgin Galactic’s hopes to begin commercial spaceflights with private customers next year with a reported cost of about USD 250,000 per person for a journey to space. The company has already got the necessary approvals to fly passengers on future commercial flights to sub-orbital space.

Meanwhile, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is waiting in the wings to do a similar stunt…A to Z and beyond? I’m sure the Google Brothers, the Facebook Founder, the Microsoft Founder…and others Founder are looking skywards to cross new boundaries and measure their own curves.

Football and Tennis

The finals of the Euro 2020 Football Tournament was held in England’s Wembley Stadium between Roberto Mancini’s Italy and Gareth Southgate’s England, both coming back from years of being bruised and booted out of winning an International Tournament – 55 years ago for England and 15 years ago for Italy.

England took the lead with a goal in the opening two minutes but Italy poked in an equaliser in the second half. The game played on to a goal-less extra-time period and as a consequence, into the murderous penalty shootouts. In the end, Italy beat England 3-2 to take the Euro 2020 Crown to Rome, and the hero of the game turned out to be Italian goal-keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, who made two great saves. Once again it was a bleeding heartbreak for England, failing at the penalty shootouts.

Thereafter English fans went berserk unleashing hooliganism of the worst kind inside and around Wembley Stadium, London, followed by racial abuse of the players who failed in their penalty shots. England has blackened its reputation forever. Unacceptable behaviour. You win some and lose some – you win more in the Game by showing grace in defeat.

Argentina’s Football superstar Lionel Messi has often been pilloried for failing to be part of a Tournament-Winning Argentinian Team despite earning innumerable wins for the Football Clubs he played for. That finally came to and end with Argentina winning their first major title in 28 years last Saturday with Argentina beating Brazil 1-0 win to win the Copa America Cup. Messi picked up his first ever title in a blue-and-white shirt after more than a decade of club and individual honours. He also finished as the tournament’s joint top goalscorer with four goals and was elected joint best player along with Brazil’s Neymar.

In the Wimbledon Ladies Finals, Australian Ashleigh Barty beat Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova in a gruelling three-set match, 6-3, 6-7(4), 6-3 lasting near about two hours. The women’s finals has never gone so ‘incredibly’ deep since 2012. Long hailed as the player with the perfect game for grass, Barty held her ‘incredible’ nerve to take home the Trophy.

This is Barty’s maiden Wimbledon Title and fifty years since Evonne Goolagong became the first indigenous Australian to win the Wimbledon Title. She received the Trophy from the Duchess of Cambridge who came wearing a solid green dress, matching the colours of Wimbledon. That’s style!

I’ve tried to use as many ‘incredible’ words as I could, to match Barty’s ‘incredible-aced’ post-game interview during which she thanked her incredible team.

In the Men’s Finals, Novak Djokovic went on to win his sixth Wimbledon Crown, and a 20th Grand Slam beating Italy’s Matteo Berrettini in a four-set duel, which was pretty straight, after the first set was won by the runner-up.

Overall, there were some ‘incredible’ shots played throughout the Tournament that makes you want to get back to the grass, to eat the shots.

More revealing and ‘incredible’ stories coming up in the weeks ahead. And by the way, Richard Branson said flying to the edge of Space was an ‘incredible’ experience!

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-28

About: the world this week, 4th July to 10th July 2021, a wonderful cocktail of coronavirus, happily married-ever-after, spelling, killing, political, death of a tragedy king; and ball game-football and tennis-stories.

Everywhere

Cocktail

It’s July and we have climbed over half the mountain height of 2021. Many had to use Oxygen Cylinders to breathe, to reach this top.

It seems like just the other day, in early 2020, when we first learnt to wear nose & mouth covering face masks-while some specialised in wearing stylish chin masks – wash our hands endlessly, and keep a measured physical distance from one another. The hugs and kisses shrank to ‘cave levels’. And we invented a new form of cave living called ‘Lockdown’.

We then quickly got our outstanding brains to collaborate and challenged the SARS-CoV-2 induced COVID-19 pandemic with brilliant Vaccines in double quick time. Pfizer, Moderna, Sinopharm, Astra Zeneca-Covishield, Covaxin, Sputnik V, Johnson & Johnson… became household names. And suddenly, we all became Google Doctors: never knew being a Medical Doctor was so easy!

When we thought it was almost over, there appeared fresh kids on the block: Waves-we called them. The first outbreak became the first Wave, then the Second Wave…and now we are living in various stages of Waves. Some just cannot figure out which Wave, though!

Then came the Coronavirus Variants furiously mutating to hijack the next available Greek Alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and now the Delta Variant is the most famous of them all, while other Alphabets are struggling on the sidelines to get noticed. The latest is that the Lambda Variant, at the WHO ‘Variant of Interest’ level, is ‘coming soon’. I hope we don’t run out of Alphabets…and Vaccines.

Never mind the Greeks, and the pandemic, I would love to move on to dance with former US President Jimmy Carter, 96, and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, 93 who ringed in 75 years of rock-solid marriage. Is peanut farming, and all that came with it, the root of their enduring marriage? When Jimmy Carter left the Presidential White House in 1981, he was 56 years old and deep in debt. Forced to sell his Peanut Farm Business, Carter started writing books to generate income. He has published more than 30 books from a children’s book to reflections on his presidency. Maybe a Titanic Jim-Rose love-story is in the works.

There is support coming for Jimmy Carter’s writing:Zaila Avant-garde, a teenage basketball prodigy has become the first African American to win the US Scripps National Spelling Bee. The 14 years old from New Orleans, Louisiana, spelled her way to victory with the word ‘murraya’, a type of tropical tree. To get to that stage she had to spell out ‘querimonious’ (given to complaint) and ‘solidungulate’ (having a single undivided hoof on each foot, as in a Horse). The home-schooled girl said, “For spelling, I usually try to do about 13,000 words, and that usually takes about seven hours”. Despite practising for so many hours a day, she describes spelling as a side hobby. Zaila’s main focus is on becoming a basketball pro. I’m sure she can spell basketball!

Assassinations are back with a bang. Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise, who took office in 2017, was killed during an attack on his private residence early on Wednesday. The attackers, believed to be mercenaries, stormed Moise’s home at around midnight and fatally wounded him. The first lady, Martine Moise, was also shot and quickly evacuated to a hospital in Miami, USA, for treatment. Haitian Police have detained two suspects and killed four others-all foreigners-connected to the assassination. The country has been reeling from violence for weeks and the acting Prime Minister, Claude Joseph, declared a ‘state of siege’.

Haiti’s President of the Supreme Court would normally be next in line, but he recently died of Covid-19. The acting Prime Minister Joseph has to be approved by Haiti’s parliament for him to formally replace the slain President. But without recent elections, the Haitian Parliament is effectively defunct. Throughout his presidency, Moise had repeatedly failed to hold elections at local and national levels, leaving much of the country’s governing infrastructure empty. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. And natural disasters like the 2010 earthquake have only worsened the situation. An estimated 60% of Haiti’s eleven million citizens live below the poverty line.

In another assassination-an attempt-prominent Dutch Crime Reporter-Journalist, and TV Presenter, Peter R de Vries, 64, was shot up to five times in a Central Amsterdam street on Tuesday and is fighting for his life in Hospital. He is famous in the Netherlands for exposing notorious criminals and speaking on behalf of crime victims. The attack has sent shockwaves through Dutch society, which has for years watched De Vries on Television, handling-and solving-notable cases, including some of the most illustrious judicial errors in Dutch crime history.

Even before these assassinations, Hackers went on the prowl. And Russian-linked hackers, attacked software provider Kaseya, affecting thousands of businesses in at least 17 countries. They impacted everything from grocery stores to schools. It could be the biggest global ransomware attack ever recorded. The group, which goes by REvil, is known for hacking Brazil based, American meat processor JBS (Jose Batista Sobrinho) back in May- and bleeding the company of USD 11 million. Now, it’s demanding USD 70 million from Kaseya.

Meanwhile, faraway in Space, USA’s NASA, keep flying Ingenuity, which made its ninth successful flight on Mars on Monday, when it remained in the Martian air for about 166 seconds and flew as fast as 5 meters per second.

In another part of Space, nearer Earth, China started space-walking its Taikonauts, outside its work-in-progress Space Station.

Back on Earth, India’s Prime Minister decided that cooperation was lacking in the country and started a brand-new ministry called ‘Ministry of Cooperation’ primarily to kick-off the Cooperative sector, best exemplified by the ‘utterly, butterly, delicious’, taste of India, Amul kind. His Ministers called it visionary: on our part, we need to taste the results to decide. Having bought the butter, the PM went on to re-slice his Cabinet bringing-in fresh faces, rewarding performers with better ‘butter’ positions, and sacking those who slipped on the butter, through the past years. It was a massive shake-up, bold and beautiful, with old-on-old-heads, old-on-young heads, and brilliant degrees-graduate, masters, doctorates… making the grade. Stirred & shaken, India should do ‘butter-well’ in the upcoming days, weeks, months, and years.

Yesteryears ace Indian Actor, Dilip Kumar (born as Mohammed Yusuf Khan) – The ‘Tragedy King’ of Hindi Cinema- gave-up his last breath this Thursday at the ripe age of 98. He is best remembered for the epic roles in the dramatic Devdas (1955) and the historical Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Dilip Kumar is considered one of the greatest actors in the history of Hindi cinema, holding the Guinness World Record for winning the maximum number of awards by an Indian actor. In total, he acted in 65 films over a period of 50 years. With his low-key, naturalistic acting style, he excelled in a wide range of roles augmented by his good looks, deep voice, and superb accent.

Dilip Kumar was romantically linked with famous Indian actress, the Venus of Indian Cinema, Madhubala, for over seven years until they broke-up. Madhubala went on to marry playback singer and Actor Kishore Kumar until her death at age 36, when illness related to a congenital heart disease took her away too soon and broke many an Indian heart.

Dilip Kumar then fell deeply in love with Actress Saira Banu, who was 22 years younger than him, and married her in 1966. The couple did not have children. And lost what could have been a son, in the eight month of a pregnancy, in 1972. Dilip Kumar later married Hyderabad socialite Asma Sahiba, taking her as a second wife in 1981. That marriage ended in January 1983. But he always had Saira Banu with him… till the last.

Over the past weeks Dilip Kumar had been in and out of Hospitals, and he must have seen this coming. RIP Dilip Kumar.

Ball Games

The Sporting World was kicking-up to Open Stadiums without spectators or space-out ones. The Euro 2020 Football Tournament saw some real kicking around and Italy has reached the finals. England beat Denmark, also to reach the finals, which is their first major final in 55 years. It’s an Italy- England showdown on Sunday, 11 July 2021. Time to take sides and cheer your team.

The Wimbledon Tennis Tournament is coming to a close and Swiss Legend Roger Federer,39, got mauled by world No 18, the 24 years old Polish Hubert Hurkacz, who played fluent tennis to win 6-4, 7-6, 6-0 in the quarter-finals. Roger exited quickly and gracefully, waving to the crowd on his way out of the stage where he acted many a winning game – but not this time. Will we see him again at Wimbledon? Au revoir?

Later, Hurkacz was felled in the semi-finals by Italy’s Matteo Berretini who is the first to reach the Wimbledon Gentlemen’s Finals. Berretini plays Serbia’s Novak Djokovic who on Friday funnelled-out Canada’s Denis Shapovalov in the other semi-finals. Djokovic remains on course for a sixth Wimbledon Crown, and a 20th Grand Slam Title to go level with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

Coincidentally, it’s Italy’s ‘ball-run of the year’ reaching the finals of major Tournaments in Tennis and Football, both of which are being played on Sunday, 11 July 2021. It’s going to be a hard-working Sunday for many of us fans. What with our legs on a football and the hands on a tennis racquet (and the TV remote, and a glass of…).

While the great oldies battled the grass to try to whack that ball consistently over the net, without forgetting the drawn boundaries, 18 years old Emma Raducanu who entered the Tournament on a wildcard saw the tennis balls as big as footballs, in a dream run.

Ranked 336th in the world, and rated only the 10th best female player in the country, Raducanu became the youngest British woman to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon in more than 50 years, after beating the experienced, in-form Romanian Sorana Cirstea.

Emma Raducanu was born in Toronto and moved to the United Kingdom when she was two years old. Her parents are from Romania and China respectively. Two months ago, Raducanu was sitting her final A-levels, in economics and maths, at a grammar school in South London. She speaks Mandarin, but said in English, ‘I’m just trying to stay here as long as possible’.

The long was cut-short in the next match when Emma sadly lost the match to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic, when she was forced to retire after suffering from breathing problems, while trailing 6-4, 3-0.

Ajla Tomljaovic went on to lose to fellow Australian Ashleigh Barty in the quarter-finals, who keep her own breath to meet Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova in the Finals clash, happening this Saturday.

Emma Raducanu has left us gasping for breath. Must have been a terrible time retiring hurt after getting this far. I hope she comes out stronger and ‘wilder’ in her next Tournament.

And, of course, I would love to see Roger Federer play again.

More stronger, breathing stories coming up in the weeks ahead.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-27

About: the world this week, 27th June to 3rd July 2021. A new branch pops-up in the tree of human origin; the Heat Dome of Canada; a brief fighting history of India; and other stories.

Everywhere

Origin of Mankind: Enter the Dragon Man

Planet Earth came in being about 4.5 billion years ago as an outcome of the Big-Bang-which itself happened over 13.5 billion years ago-when matter and energy that had formed, later coalesced into atoms and molecules. And the first living organisms on Earth appeared about 3.8 billion years ago.

At the moment, we know that the first humans-hominids-evolved from a genus called Australopithecus Africanus (Southern Ape of Africa) in Africa about 2.5 million years ago, originating from a common Ape ancestor. We modern humans, technically called Homo Sapiens, belong to the family of the Great Apes.

Aahuaaa uaaa uaaaaaaaa, Tarzan of the Apes, said it all along!

I was awfully good in Biology at school and here is a big chance to dig into my school-day basics and show it off: A Species consists of animals of a kind, which can mate with one another and give birth to fertile offspring, e.g., Lions are of the species Leo; Genus/Genera is a bunch of Species all of which evolved from one common Ancestor, e.g., Lions-Panthera Leo, Tigers-Panthera Tigris, are different species under the Genus Panthera; Genera, in turn, are grouped together into Families. E.g., the Family of cats consists of lions (and tigers) – Panthera, cheetahs – Acinonyx, and domestic cats – Felis. And members of a Family can trace their lineage to a single matriarch or patriarch. There you have it: Species-Genus-Family.

The first primitive humans moved ‘Out of Africa’ to settle in various parts of the world-in search of food and better living conditions-and thereafter, over millions of years, evolved into distinct species. It wasn’t one human species that evolved in a linear manner, rather there were several species of humans that co-existed at the same time. We’ve read about Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo Rudolfensis, Homo Ergaster, Homo Heidelbergensis, Home Erectus, Home Denisova, Homo Floresiensis, Home Soloensis, Homo Luzonensis, Homo Habilis, Homo Naledi, etc.

Keep in mind Homo is the genus, and Sapiens, Neanderthal, etc., is the species.

The truth is that certain species overlapped one another, like Homo Sapiens lived alongside Homo Neanderthals and Home Erectus. Maybe we interbred with them. Whatever, after about 13,000 years all other Human Species went into extinction leaving Homo Sapiens as the only surviving, dominant human species. Here we are, in all our two-legged, upright, brainy glory.

How do we know this? Some of our ancestors left autographs-that are well represented in the fossil records-but most of what we know about, say, Neanderthals and Denisovans comes from genetic information in our DNA. And Scientists all over the world have been digging into Planet Earth like crazy to piece together the complicated zig-saw puzzle of how we came into being the shape and size we are today.

Last week, Scientists confirmed that a more than a 140,000 years old skull found in Harbin, in North-Eastern China belongs to a new ancient species of humans called Homo Longi and have nicknamed it ‘Dragon Man’. It is estimated that the skull belonged to a man, who was about 50 years old when he died, and lived between 138,000 and 309,000 years ago.

The Harbin Skull was discovered in 1933 by a Chinese man, when a bridge was being built over the River Songhua in Harbin, China. At the time, that part of China was under Japanese occupation, and the man who found it took it home and stored it for safekeeping by burying it at the bottom of an abandoned well. After the war, the man returned to farming, during a cataclysmic time in Chinese history, and never re-excavated his treasure. The skull remained unknown to science for decades.

Then the third generation of the man’s family learnt about the secret discovery before his death and recovered the fossil from the well in 2018. The family donated the find to the Geoscience Museum of Hebei, GEO University, China, where Researchers have been studying it for the past three years.

This discovery is the latest addition to a human family tree that is rapidly growing and shifting due to new fossil finds and analysis of ancient DNA preserved in teeth, bones and cave dirt.

Meanwhile, on another dig, in Israel, an international group of archaeologists have discovered, in an excavation site in Nesher Ramla, Israel, what they claim, is a missing piece in the story of human evolution. They recovered a skull thought to represent a distinct human population, which lived in and around modern-day Israel from about 420,000 to 120,000 years ago. The analysis of the skull established that it wasn’t fully Homo Sapiens nor was it Neanderthal, which was the only other type of human thought to have been living in the region at that time.

Instead, the skull to which this person belonged, falls right in the middle: a unique population of Homo never before recognised by science.This human community is believed to have traded both their culture and genes with nearby Homo Sapiens groups for thousands of years.

The mysterious Nesher Ramla Homo may even represent our most recent common ancestor with Neanderthals. Its mix of traits supports genetic evidence that early gene flow between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals occurred between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago. In other words, that interbreeding between the different Homo populations was more common than previously thought.

We need to keep up the digging, until we learn more about ourselves. And watch that DNA!

A Building Collapse in the USA raises Dust

Last week, a section of a 12-storey Condominium, Champlain Towers, collapsed in Surfside, a town near Miami, Florida, USA, leaving at least twenty people dead. So far, over thirty-seven people have been rescued and about 145 are still missing. Rescue crews continued to search for survivors amid fire and smoke.

The disaster, which destroyed 55 of the 136 apartments, may turn out to be the deadliest building collapse in America in 20 years. Champlain Towers opened its doors in 1981.

There seems to be no evidence of foul play that led to the collapse. Maybe the building wasn’t built exactly to code? Or, perhaps to keep running costs down critical maintenance and upkeep was thrown into the sea?

The cause of the collapse is still unknown. Some experts believe a column or concrete slab gave way below the pool deck, taking the rest of the building down with it. In 2018, an engineering report found ‘major structural damages’ to the building. And urged the building managers to fix the ‘abundant cracking’ found in columns, beams, and walls of the parking garage below the pool deck. Some reported damage was likely due to corrosion from consistent water leaks and years of salty air along the coastline.

Nowhere is Safe: The Heat Dome

Over the past week Canada has been heated-up by an unprecedented heatwave that has melted all previous temperature records.

On this week’s Tuesday, Canada recorded its highest ever temperature for a third straight day of 49.5 Centigrade (C) in Lytton, British Columbia. And temperatures in Canada had never crossed 45C.

The heat is believed to have been a contributing factor in the deaths of sixty-nine people in the Vancouver suburbs of Burnaby and Surrey. Most were elderly or had underlying health conditions.

I have a friend, a criminal lawyer, from Tiruchirapalli, Tamilnadu, India, who flew to Vancouver to legally visit his daughter- spread the warmth-just before India’s second wave of the pandemic. And he says Vancouver has outdone and murdered the heat in Tiruchi – known for its boiler temperatures.

One explanation is that the heatwave was caused by two pressure systems, the first coming from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, and the second from James Bay and Hudson Bay in Canada. The Pacific North-West got caught in a region where a series of feedbacks set up these very hot temperatures with very little cloud cover and very warm temperatures at night. And these types of extreme hot weather events are being exacerbated by global warming. Warming is too mild a term, I would use heating, to put the temperature in perspective.

The heatwave is being described as a ‘Heat Dome’ (no relation of Israel’s Iron Dome). The term refers to the idea that this type of warmth extends high into the atmosphere and isn’t just a thin layer, and that it can have an impact on pressure and wind patterns. The Heat Dome showing-up acting in the Pacific North-West has served to essentially shut off the flow of cool marine air off the Pacific into the land area.

How unusual is the Heat Dome? Similar events did not happen that often and take place every one to three decades.

Clever Climate Scientists have got into a Research Dome of their own and declared, ‘Nowhere is safe’.

India Outclasses the USA

The World leader in COVID-19 Vaccination doses done is China with over 1.24 billion doses in the year of celebrating 100 years of the Communist Party. The next spot was held by the United States of America, until India overtook it this week with over 340 million doses administered.

All over the world, more than 3.1 billion doses have been administered across 180 countries at rate rate of about 41.9 million doses a day.

Continuing the dig into our history, some Researches have found that there was a kind of devastating coronavirus around while we still living in the caves!

Teeth, Heads… and some Muscle.

In other news not related to the COVID-19 pandemic: China’s President Xi Jinping said China will ‘Bash the Heads’ of anyone who tries to bully or influence China, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, said Russia will ‘Knock Out the Teeth’ of anyone who tries to attack Russia.

Better start wearing Helmets, all the time – with that mask tightly tucked inside, courtesy China.

Meanwhile, India too showed some muscle-has been growing it in recent times. When the European Union (EU) Countries unfairly and unjustly refused to accept fully vaccinated- by Covishield and Covaxin- Indians into their countries, India returned the favour and said if you don’t accept our Vaccination Certificates we’ll place anybody from the EU on the mandatory quarantine period, irrespective of any EU Vaccination Certificates, when they enter India. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Last heard, the EU was backing-out and approvals were coming in quickly.

Please Yourself

While the Tiruchi Lawyer friend of mine was getting baked in Canada, a Doctor friend, in very much cooler Attur, India, handed me a book to read, Tamil Historical Novel, ‘Vanthargal… Vendrarkal’ (They came… they conquered) written by Tamil Journalist and Writer Madhan. After a hesitant start I became fascinated with the early History of India beginning from the time of Mohammad of Ghazni, in the years after CE (Common Era) 1000. I’ve just started attacking the book, but here are some learnings.

India had natural borders at its head, with the mighty Himalayas lording over the North and the then always-in-spate River Indus in the West drawing a neat meandering line. Peninsular India had the great Oceans watching over it in the South, while the River Brahamaputra guarded the East.

Despite being endowed with such natural boundary walls the great civilisation that was India crumbled under the brutal, ceaseless onslaught of invaders such as, The Afghans, The Turks, The Persians, The Mongols, The Mughals…who came either to pillage its wealth or establish their Kingdoms.

Invaders found chinks in India’s natural armour, which they exploited to the bone – time and again. They ‘walked-into’ India multiple times through the Khyber pass and the Gomal Pass, which Indian Kings did not bother to join-together to seal off. Or maybe build a Fort-Gate to block entry.

Despite India having fantastic warriors, brilliant individual fighters, superhuman heroes, backed-up by a great thriving civilisation, it failed to stop the ceaseless invasions only because India failed to stay united and collaborate in unison against an invading army. In the few times they joined together they made pulp of the invaders, but then these instances were rare and absolutely short-lived. And the Kings would go back to their old ways of ‘showing -off, pleasure warfare’ and infighting.

To give an example, if only the great King Prithviraj Chauhan had joined hands with his father-in-law King Jayachandra and both supported each other, the History of India would have been completely different.

Prithviraj cleverly and bravely stole King Jayachandran’s daughter, Samyuktha, from under his very eyes creating that life-long famous rivalry between them (King Jayachandran drowned himself in humiliation and seethed with revenge until the end) Could the King have got a better Braveheart than Prithviraj for his Princess daughter?

When it was most needed, the father-in-law, King Jayachandran, never offered his ample resources and army to his son-in-law. And Prithviraj never asked.

Mohammad Ghori who invaded India, after Mohammad of Ghazni, used this division and bitter rivalry to his advantage to win a second time, after being throughly whacked in the first battle by Prithviraj, who had magically weaved together the many small Indian Kingdoms to join the fight. While Prithviraj was ‘kind enough’ to allow Mohammad Ghori to escape – and return with a bigger army, Mohammad Ghori had Prithviraj promptly beheaded when he defeated and captured him.

Indian Rulers and Kings fought with mind-boggling bravery, but under the guise of ‘war dharma’ and ‘large-heartedness’ they often let-off captured invaders easily. They considered battles as a show-post of individual bravery and a pastime, limiting themselves to self-protection and self-preservation. While India’s troops were often divided by caste divisions, the invaders were united by religion.

Another reason is Indian Kings failed to raise and breed high-stock horses for battles, instead depending on Arabian Horses, in addition to their own. The Afghan horses were superb riding beasts and were no match to those used by Indian Kings.

Riding to the present, just look around, and you can see the mirror of the past – people endlessly fighting each other, wallowing in petty rivalries: so many examples in our daily lives -within families, within Governments; State versus the Centre, North versus South, Aryan versus Dravidian… Remember where we came from?

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

More brave stories coming up in the weeks ahead. Stay together, collaborate, agree to agree, or agree to disagree, but stay united working to a common purpose of improving the lives of Homo Sapiens, on Earth and beyond.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-26

About: the world this week, 20th June to 26th June 2021. Hardline Iran, Apple Daily in Hong Kong, Space, Cricket, Outbreaks, and Britney Spears.

Everywhere

Iran

Ebrahim Raisi, 60, a conservative hardline Judiciary Chief won Iran’s Presidential Election by a landslide, sweeping-up nearly 62% of the 28.9 million votes.

Raisi, a protege of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sailed to victory in a poll that saw all of his serious rivals barred in the run-up to the race. Many reform-minded Iranians refused to take part in an Election widely seen as a foregone conclusion. Overall voter turnout was about 49%, the lowest since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Flash-back: before that Islamic scoop-up year, Iran was ruled by the Shah of Iran, of the Pahlavi Dynasty, who tried to westernise and modernise the country, but had to flee to live in exile – leaving behind everything – at the end of the Iranian Revolution. That saw the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, from exile, and hardcore Islam.

Raisi has a brutal human rights record and is accused of being responsible for the mass execution – called Death Commissions – of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Amnesty International is still looking to investigate and nail him for crimes against humanity.

On winning, Raisi said, ‘I am proud of being a defender of human rights and of people’s security and comfort, as a Prosecutor, wherever I was’. The good, the bad, and the ugly say the same thing.

Ebrahim Raisi steps into the role of President of Iran in August 2021, taking over from the incumbent President, Hassan Rouhani, who assumed office on 3 August 2013. He, in turn, succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served 8 years in office from 2005 to 2013. Rouhani won re-election in the 2017 presidential election.

In another story on Iran, it failed, yet again, to get its homemade satellite launched into orbit, in a fourth unsuccessful attempt. The launch, conducted on 12th June, comes more than one year after the country’s previous attempt to put a satellite into orbit. In April of last year, Iran launched the NOUR-1 military satellite into orbit after previous failed attempts to launch similar satellites. The United States of America (USA), tracking the Satellite says it is uncontrolled and not operational. Guess, it’s just a ‘hard’ object out there is Space.

No More ‘an Apple a Day’

Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy newspaper was founded by Jimmy Lai, 73, in 1995, with the first edition being rolled-out on 20th June of that year.

In 1994 Lai was audacious enough to call Chinese President Li Peng the ‘son of a turtle egg’ in a weekly magazine that he launched before the daily. This was perhaps the sign of things to come: the strident tone of critical reporting on China.

Jimmy Lai fled China as a child with nothing in his pockets and went on to make it big in Hong Kong, growing into a business magnate, a media-tycoon, and a multi-millionaire.

When the Great Chinese Famine gripped mainland China in 1960, Lai smuggled himself out of the Southern Mainland province of Guangdong and into Hong Kong in the bottom of a fishing boat. He arrived in the city at the age of 12 and dirt poor.

Lai took up odd jobs at a textile factory and lived in the slum neighbourhood of Sham Shui Po, one of Hong Kong’s most impoverished districts – still is.

Within two decades, Lai learned English, worked his way up the factory floor, rising to the position of salesman. He then decided to start his own clothing retail line. On a trip to New York, USA, during fabric sampling season, he bought a pizza. Written on the napkin was the name Giordano. That became the name of his wildly successful, casual men’s clothing chain, which made Lai his first fortune.

Lai then channeled his wealth into starting a publishing company called ‘Next Digital’ with Apple Daily as its flagship Daily Newspaper. It started off as a successful local tabloid, best known for its sensationalist articles and bold catchy headlines. But over the past 26 years, it evolved into one of the city’s loudest pro-democracy voices – one of few that dared to challenge China. Apple Daily went on to become a runaway commercial success.

When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the city was guaranteed its own legal system and certain democratic freedoms until the year 2047, when it will most likely return, in total, to China.

In July 2019 Jimmy Lai met the then Vice President of the USA, Mike Pence, and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, in Washington to discuss the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy over a contentious Extradition Bill that had sparked mass protests. This act was viewed by China as a threat to its national security and interference in the affairs of Hong Kong. It used words such as ‘national scum and Hong Kong sinners’ on Lai’s meeting. The Extradition Bill was later scrapped.

Last year, on 20th June, China introduced a new National Security Law in Hong Kong in response to massive pro-democracy protests that swept through the city, without public consultation or city legislative involvement.

The law essentially reduced Hong Kong’s judicial autonomy and made it easier to punish demonstrators and activists. It criminalises secession, subversion, and collusion with foreign forces with the maximum sentence of life in prison.

Since the law was enacted in June 2020, more than 100 people have been arrested under its provisions. And millions have flooded Hong Kong’s highways in marches against Beijing’s perceived encroachment on the original, treasured, Hong Kong freedoms.

Using the draconian new law, Hong Kong police arrested Jimmy Lai, and others in a city-wide operation. Hundreds of police raided Lai’s Next Digital headquarters, where his flagship Apple Daily is produced and published.

In a well configured sequence of arrest-release on bail-arrest on another charge… Lai was charged on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces and endangering national security, partly from having sought sanctions against Hong Kong, among other charges, and finally jailed for 14 months for taking part in ‘unauthorised assemblies’ during protests in August 2019.

Since the law took effect, Apple Daily has been crippled ‘bite by bite’. With Jimmy Lai already in jail, five of the newspaper’s top editors and executives were accused of the same crime, apparently for using articles to call for sanctions against Hong Kong by foreign countries, and thrown into jail.

Hundreds of police officers twice raided the publication’s newsroom, most recently seizing computers and materials-an alarming development for journalists and their sources in an increasingly sensitive environment. Several Apple Daily journalists had already quit before this month, saying the rewards of their work no longer outweighed the risk of imprisonment.

Even as official pressure piled on the newspaper, public support surged. Last Friday, after the arrest of its top editors, Apple Daily printed 500,000 copies, which sold out.

With a never-ending saga of the might of the State, hanging like the proverbial sword of Damocles upon it, Apple Daily announced on Wednesday that it is folding-up and would publish its final copy this Thursday. And due to an untenable environment in which its journalists have been arrested and millions of dollars in assets have been frozen. Its digital platform will cease operations on the same day.

In the end, an Apple a day could not keep China away!

Cricket

The World Test Championship is a cricket league competition started by the International Cricket Council (ICC), on 1 August 2019, as a premier test tournament. This was in-keeping with a goal of having one ‘Pinnacle Tournament’ for each of the three forms of the game of cricket: Test Cricket, One-Day Matches, and the Twenty-Twenty format That’s quite a spinning range of cricket, from the quick one-liners to the long dialogues.

The first ICC World Test Championship began with the 2019 Ashes series and culminated this week with New Zealand winning the inaugural World Championship Test. That makes them the best in Test Cricket, on the day. Congratulations New Zealand.

New Zealand who were the first to qualify for the finals defeated India in the match played from 18 to 23 June 2021 at the Rose Bowl, Southampton, England. The opening and the fourth day was washed-out by rain and the match went into the reserve day. India, captained by Virat Kohli, came into the match with balls of talent but it was New Zealand’s run day, led from the front by its Captain, Kane Williamson. In the end, very good just wasn’t good for India, though India still remains a great test side. Maybe the weather did not pace itself well? Whatever, New Zealand deserved the win.

The second ICC World Test Championship is scheduled to start from August 2021 and will run till 2023.

Space

NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, is having a rocking time on the Red Planet, with Big Brother Rover, Perseverance, watching closely.

Ingenuity has now flown eight times, travelling further than NASA hoped it would be possible. Originally designed to fly only five times, Ingenuity has exceeded all expectations and has become bolder. Could it become a spoilt-kid, overtime? The early flights by Ingenuity began and ended at the same place, called the Wright Brothers Field. Now it is soaring from one new airfield to another.

Need to dig out more names to name more airfields? Perhaps, that’s NASA’s newest challenge.

An Outbreak Bites the Dust

In a fabulous achievement, the Ebola Outbreak that broke-out in the African country of Guinea in the middle of February this year was declared over on 19 June 2021. It was the first time the disease resurfaced, in Guinea, since the deadly outbreak in West Africa that ended in 2016.

Guinea had declared the outbreak on 14 February 2021 after three cases were detected in the same region where the 2014–2016 outbreak first emerged before spreading into neighbouring Liberia, Sierra Leone, and beyond.

A total of sixteen confirmed and seven probable cases were reported in the outbreak in which eleven patients survived and twelve lives were lost. Shortly after the infections were detected, a swift response was mounted, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), digging deep into the expertise gained in fighting recent outbreaks both in Guinea and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Genome sequencing found that the virus behind Guinea’s just-ended outbreak was similar to that identified in the 2014–2016 outbreak.

WHO helped ship around 24,000 Ebola vaccine doses and supported the vaccination drive. More than one hundred WHO experts were on the ground coordinating key aspects of the response such as infection prevention and control, disease surveillance, testing, vaccination, and treatment using new drugs.

There are two approved Vaccines for Ebola, a single-dose one made by Merck, and the two-dose Vaccine made by Janssen.

Congratulations Team Ebola. This is a sign that we are getting better, faster, smarter in fighting Ebola. We hope innovations, lessons learnt, and the expertise gained are published soon, for the world to get ahead in fighting such disease outbreaks.

The Great Vaccination Sprint

Jabbing India’s 1.39 billion population against the effects of COVID-19 is a staggering, Himalayan task and the Government of India showed serious intent- packed a huge punch, getting off the starting blocks at blazing speed, on the first day of its newly charged-up, free Adult (above age 18 years) Vaccination Drive. In a world record, 8.616 million doses were administered on 21 June 2021, Monday, across the various States of India. That is almost equivalent to the population of Naftali Bennett’s Israel, or twice the population of Jacintha Arden’s New Zealand – all in a single day.

The follow through wasn’t bad with over 5.4 million on Day-2 and 6.4 million on Day-3.

India is now only behind the USA in vaccinations done with over 305 million does given compared to the USA’s 321 million.

With the current pace of vaccination at about 42.6 million per day and looking at between 70% and 85% vaccinated for herd immunity it would take another year to achieve a high level of global immunity. Until then, stick to the basics of COVID-19 appropriate behaviour.

Please Yourself

Overprotected: Till The World Ends?

First, the script: something about conservatorship – also known as a guardianship – happens when a judge (in California, United States) appoints a responsible person or organization-called the Conservator-to care for another adult-called the Conservatee-who cannot care for herself or manage her own finances. Now, over to the soundtrack, and the music.

The world knows Britney Spears as the iconic pop-star, the Princess of Pop, of the 1990s and 2000s. ‘Baby one more time’, ‘Oops… I did it again’, are songs that climbed high on the Music Charts and still reverberate in the air-many times over. More than 20 years later, her debut album (Baby one more time) still remains the best-selling album by a teenage solo artist, at age 16.

At the start of her career, at age 18, Britney Spears famously claimed she was a virgin and was ‘saving herself’ for marriage-waiting for that special someone. But then, it turns out that she was ‘Not That Innocent’ as she wanted us to believe. And kept going with, Baby One More Time…

Over time, her stage outfits became skimpier, her performances racier, her behaviour crazier, and her album sales touched newer heights. She was also linked to singer Justin Timberlake at that time.

In the year 2004, after a fun-filled New Year’s Eve week in Sin City-Las Vegas, Nevada-where she partied hard through the night with childhood friend Jason Alexander, Spears shocked the world by saying, ‘I do’, in Vegas’s, A Little White Wedding Chapel (has a Drive-Thru tunnel of vows) at 5am, the next day, on Sunday 3rd January. Dressed in a baseball hat and ripped jeans Britney married Jason Alexander. ‘They weren’t dressed in wedding attire, but it was very romantic and there was a feeling of love between them. They appeared to be extremely happy. They were laughing, but crying too, during the ceremony. I thought it was a marriage that would last forever’, said the Chapel Owner.

It wasn’t to be, and on the contrary worked out be a Quickie, as 55 hours later, Britney Spears had the marriage annulled. And went out dancing afterwards.

Then, Oops, she did it again! After meeting each other on the dance floor at a Hollywood club, Spears and Kevin Federline announced their engagement in July 2004. The singer famously popped the question to Federline on her private plane. Spears then walked down the aisle, this time in a proper wedding dress, in a proper ceremony.

Two kids, one reality show, and three years later the couple called it quits.

In the middle of 2000s, she had multiple public mental health struggles that media outlets and the paparazzi harped on, from shaving her head to hitting a photographer’s car with an umbrella. And in 2008, she was twice admitted for psychiatric care under an apparent mental health crisis.

During the same year, Britney was put under a Conservatorship largely due to her father, Jamie Spears, who petitioned for a temporary one, that was eventually made permanent, becoming both her personal and financial Conservator. He gained control of much of her life, and had the power to take actions like restricting Britney’s visitors, filing restraining orders on her behalf, negotiating business deals, and overseeing her medical decisions. Britney has being paying a considerable amount from her nearly USD 60 million fortune in legal and Conservator fees, with a significant amount going to her dad for his role as a Conservator.

In response, fans have launched a Free Britney movement, expressing concerns over the singer’s well-being. On her part, Spears was awfully troubled by the conservatorship, for years, but she chose to stay silent about it, in public.

That changed this week when she spoke-up, taking the mike this week and in a testimony to the judge: that her conservatorship is abusive; has prevented her from getting married and having a third child, and that she’s being barred from removing her IUD; that she’s been forced to work against her will; that she’s required to live with the people she works with, without privacy; and she compared her situation ‘to sex trafficking.’

Britney Spears,39, said a lot of things, in that testimony, but most importantly, she’s said that she doesn’t believe anyone will listen. Will she be unshackled from the Conservatorship? The Court’s decision is awaited.

That’s heart-wrenching. Once you establish a person is crazy, everything she says is crazy because she is crazy?

Ooh la la. Have a great week ahead. Enjoy your freedom. Sing your songs.

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!

Everywhere

India

Afghanistan: enter the Taliban

Please Yourself

Everywhere

Irreversible

More Greek

Curtains on The Tokyo Olympics 2020

New York and America

India’s Parliament

Everywhere

New York

Israel Strikes Again

Blazing Turkey

The Tokyo Olympics 2020

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Olympics, Tokyo 2020

Please Yourself

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A ‘Deluge of Floods’

Snooping

Amazon adds Space

The Olympics

Please Yourself

Everywhere

The Netherlands

America Quits Af’gone’istan

Cuba

Space Edge

Football and Tennis

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Cocktail

Ball Games

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Origin of Mankind: Enter the Dragon Man

A Building Collapse in the USA raises Dust

Nowhere is Safe: The Heat Dome

India Outclasses the USA

Teeth, Heads… and some Muscle.

Please Yourself

Everywhere

Iran

No More ‘an Apple a Day’

Cricket

Space

An Outbreak Bites the Dust

The Great Vaccination Sprint

Please Yourself

Overprotected: Till The World Ends?

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