Tag: Cricket

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-End

About: the world this week, 26 December 2021 to 1 January 2022, the end of 2021 -what it did to us and the beginning of a brand new year, 2022 – new stories to tell.

Everywhere

America

The Ghislaine Maxwell -Jeffrey Epstein story occupied the best spots and was massaged well in the news of the world. In one of the most high-profile convictions of a woman for enabling a sex trafficking ring, Ghislaine Maxwell, the 60 years old daughter of disgraced British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, was found guilty of grooming and trafficking girls for pedophile sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to savour. Epstein, killed himself in 2019 while in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges himself.

The pair enticed girls as young as 14 to engage in ‘so-called massages’, in which sex abuse came to be taught as ‘casual and normal’, with vulnerable victims showered with money and gifts. One kind of Sex Education?

The conviction was a major victory for the more than 100 accusers who fought for over a decade to have Epstein and his co-conspirators face criminal charges.

Ghislaine probably came to this level of ‘moral corruption’ due to a dysfunctional childhood, physical and verbal abuse by her father, who in 1991 vanished from the deck of his private Yacht, Lady Ghislaine (named after her), off the Canary Islands. His body was later found floating in the sea. Soon it came out that Robert Maxwell had raided the Mirror Group’s Pension Fund of GBP 440 million as part of a scheme to artificially inflate the company’s share price at the expense of his employees. Robert Maxwell had risen from extreme poverty in a Czechoslovak Jewish settlement and most of his family was murdered in the Holocaust. He went on to become a British Army war hero, then an academic publishing magnate, a Labour Member of Parliament, and eventually owner of the Daily Mirror, one of the United Kingdom’s biggest-selling newspapers.

Ghislaine Maxwell could face about 65 years in jail and the sentence is yet to be pronounced.

Cricket

Australia and England are playing for the Ashes Cup in Australia, and this week the land of cricketing great Don Bradman bowled a new hero. Test debutant Scott Boland starred his name in the record books becoming an instant hero in Australian cricket with an astonishing six-wicket haul that wrapped up the Ashes on day three of the third test in Melbourne this week. Plucked from obscurity when called up by selectors on Christmas Eve, the 32 years old Victoria paceman finished with outrageous innings figures of 6 wickets for 7 seven runs in 4 overs, sending his home crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground into a joyous tizzy.

Along the way he matched the 19-ball record for the fastest five-wicket haul in tests shared by England’s Stuart Broad at the 2015 Ashes, and Australia’s Ernie Toshack in 1947.

Boland is only the second indigenous Australian to play Test Match Cricket after Jason Gillespie. Boland grew up unaware of his Indigenous heritage, which includes links to the Gulidjan people, an Aboriginal tribe from the western part of his home state of Victoria.

Australia now take an unassailable lead in the five match series, that spills over to the new year 2022.

India in Precaution Mode

While the World went ‘oo-la-la’ over booster shots of the COVID19 Vaccine, India calmly announced a measured plan to tackle the new variant. For the first time since the pandemic, vaccinations for children is set to begin and those in the age between 15 & 18 will get their first shot from 3rd January 2022 onwards. Healthcare and frontline workers will get a ‘precautionary dose’ beginning from the 10th January 2022, and those over 60 years with co-morbidities can roll up their sleeves also from the 10th January.

I like that new variant term, ‘precautionary dose’ that ‘boosts’ your immunity, and there’s no Greek in it.

The End of The Year – The Year that Was

Over the past year 2021, we have been overwhelmed by a quick spreading, hydra headed pandemic that refuses to die down. And we still do not know how it all began – the origins-in China. We spent the year challenging the Greek Alphabet, to the very end, on finding names to name.

We have been flooded with a deluge of water from never-ending rains and a hurricane of storms, and cooked-on another extreme-by fires flaring up in one country after another. The smoke was hard to miss. Climate change was written all over the land, the seas, and the sky. We even tried to find a way to hold the Tempest with a Hamlet’ian ‘to do or not to do’ in a summit in Glasgow and tried to declare things are being controlled-though the action was missing. Blah, blah, blah?

We were struck by the chaotic exit of the United States and allied countries from Afghanistan leaving it to the gun-wearing, long beard-wallahs to just walk-in and take-over the country. Conquering never looked so easy. And the Taliban kept the girls out of school and from an uplifting education. They promised a better version of themselves, but the old stripes were unmistakable and hard to change.

The last remains of dissent in Russia was locked-out, locked down -and maybe knocked off -with opposition politician Alexei Navalny sent to a penal colony prison, when he dared to return home after recovering from a ’state of poisoning’. Russia’s appetite for coercion was on full display with a troop build-up near Ukraine, complemented by a sophisticated disinformation campaign that questioned Ukraine’s very right to exist.

Over the year, we saw new leaders take over: in the USA it was Joe Biden from Donald Trump, in Israel Naftali Bennett from Benjamin Netanyahu, and in Germany Olaf Scholz from Angela Merkel, among others. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson cruised along in the United Kingdom and made one more baby during the year, while Vladimir Putin forged himself in iron and Xi Jinping built himself into a China Wall. He tried crossing the Himalayan Wall and ran into India’s 56 inch-chest Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now both sides are watching their boundaries…and their chests of armoury.

In Myanmar, winning the Nobel Peace Prize wasn’t enough to keep its civilian Leader Aung San Sui Kyi in democratic power, and was shot out by a military junta sending the prize winner peacefully to count bars in jail. The Burma teak is being tested like never before.

In Japan, a Princess married a commoner giving up her royal titles to cherish her love, and left the land of the Rising Sun to rise elsewhere. In France, Josephine Baker a professional entertainer famous for the banana belt skirt dance and a World War -II spy was inducted in the Pantheon in Paris – the highest honour in France. And she became the first black superwoman in this region.

In Space, USA’s NASA flew a helicopter called Ingenuity on Mars in a first of its kind in another Planet, after successfully landing its Perseverance Rover on Mars. And thrillingly repeated the helicopter flying feat many times over.

2021 was the year when the full and far-reaching impact of social media, its misappropriation and how or whether it could be tamed, was actually felt. Facebook learn it the hard way and tried damage control by ‘meta’morphosing itself in to a new name.

India won the Miss Universe Title after 21 long years and suddenly India, despite its multiple contradictions, showed its beauty spots, again. India’s Prime Minster (PM) withdraw a path-breaking New Farm Laws threesome after almost a year of incessant meaningless agitation by opponents to change. He stepped back, acknowledging failure to convincingly explain the ‘shooting’ benefits to old-habits rooted farmers. During the year India’s PM has gone about execution and implementation in a quiet, tireless, fast-paced manner, and the results are showing in all States he has touched. He would easily be My Person of the Year.

India’s first ever Chief of Defence Staff was martyred in an unbelievable peace-time Helicopter crash, taking with him some of the finest Officers of the country. India was shocked beyond tears and a Nation rose in unison to pay a deserving tribute. I expect the reasons of the crash to be found during 2022.

In the Tokyo Olympics 2020 held in Japan after a pandemic delayed and modified start in 2021, India did surprisingly well, the best in over four decades, which brought cheers to a billion hearts. India won 7 medals, 1 Gold, 2 Silver, and 4 Bronze: its richest ever haul and finest performance of all time. Notable was in Hockey, where India got its stick work together and was back to winning ways after a 41 year medal drought: they won a bronze medal.

In the Paralympic Games that followed, India did even better with 19 medals (5 Gold, 8 Silver, and 6 Bronze)and – the highest in its history.

It is ‘No time to die’ sang Billie Eilish in the James Bond movie of the year, and ABBA make a comeback, while Britney Spears got her freedom back after years of a strangulating conservatorship. Oops, we hope to see her sing one more time. Olivia Rodrigo climbed the music charts with a new ‘Driving Licence’, while Yohani & Satheeshan’s, ‘Manike Mahge Highe’ and Pawan Ch & Mangli’s, ‘Saranga Dariya’ stole my heart.

Space became closer to Earth as people began flying to the edge of Space and back in double quick time. A Virgin start was followed by Amazon and then SpaceX.

While all this was happening, America continued to kill itself in the numerous gun-shooting incidents sprayed through the year.

2021 appears to have been a year of warnings, about our relationships with technology, the planet, and those who govern us, whether elected or self-appointed.

Somehow, we thought that the year 2021 will be better than the year 2020. Well, almost. But I’m hoping 2022 will be ‘the bridge over troubled waters’ enabling us to cross over to doing all the great things we wanted to do over the past two years. We are wiser and like the spider endlessly building its web despite severe ‘tearing’ setbacks, we move on to building stronger. We need to keep at it.

I came across this Donella Meadows – a Systems Thinker – quote while reading Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, “Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behaviour on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That’s what makes the world interesting, that’s what makes it beautiful, and that’s what makes it work”.

We have arrived here riding on the shoulders of our forefathers – from the hunter-gatherer mode to today’s variegated lifestyles. We need to grow the bone and muscle in our frames and shoulders for future generations, to climb upon. Let’s be mindful and collaborate with one another to uplift mankind and life on Earth. 2022 may not be any easier and could bring with it all kinds of struggles, old and new, and we need to be ready – with our minds – to handle it. That’s the superpower all of us have!

Happy New Year 2022.

More delightful ‘week stories’ coming up in the year ahead. Live with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-44

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

Everywhere

Fabindia: A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

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

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

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

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

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

Facebook: Let’s Book Another Name?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Japan: A Princess Loves, Marries, and Leaves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sports: Clash of Religions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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