Tag: India Vaccination

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, 2021-38

About: the world this week, 12 September to 18 September 2021, edging spacing, shape-shift evolution, US Open opens up to teenagers, India breaks vaccination records, and fashion blasts in New York.

Everywhere

Space

Flying to the edge of space is fast becoming a tourism habit. Virgin Group Boss, Richard Branson, started it and was quickly followed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. They rushed to the edge touched it and returned home within the space of a few hours. And on returning, Jeff Bezos even pulled out a Texan hat, grabbed a horse and raced away to the edge of the desert.

Now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was galvanised to do something better, and this Wednesday a SpaceX rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a first ever mission to the Earth’s Orbit, crewed entirely by four Tourists, none of who are professional astronauts. They include a 38 years old billionaire who self-funded the mission, a 29 years old childhood cancer survivor, a 51 years old geologist and community college teacher, and a 42 years old Lockheed Martin employee-who got a ticket through an online raffle.

The Tourists will spend the entire mission aboard the special Capsule that detached from the Falcon-9 launch rocket after reaching orbital speed and successfully manoeuvred into its designated orbit. They will remain in orbit for three days strapped to their seats in the Capsule, before returning to Earth in a splashdown ending, off the coast of Florida, this Saturday. The Capsule will circle around Earth once every 90 minutes travelling at more than 17,500 miles per hour during which time the passengers experience weightlessness and will be enthralled by panoramic views of the Earth. The crew will share a special zero-gravity-friendly toilet located near the top of the Capsule and sleep in their reclining seats. They will come back with lots of stories to tell.

While other tourist spots across the world struggle to get people over to soak in their sights, the Space Tourist spot is above them all.

Shape-Shift

We have tirelessly and endlessly talked about climate change: hurricanes, landslides, incessant rain and flash floods, melting icebergs, wildfires, heat waves, and the kind, which swept through and flooded the media in recent times. While mankind knowingly or unknowingly made disastrous changes-causing climate change- in the name of development and advancement of civilisation, other animals are quietly adapting: making internal adjustments, actually shaping up to things to come. Shape-Shift!

Animals have sensed the change, in their own mysterious ways, and are growing larger wings, beaks, or legs, or ears, as Planet Earth grows warmer and races towards becoming blazing hot. Looks like increasing their appendages is a cool way to cool off. For e.g., an Australian parrot species saw its beak size increase to between 4% and 10%, on average, since 1871.

Within a species, animals in warmer climates are growing larger appendages, such as wings and beaks, with the greater surface area enabling better body temperature control and regulation. At the same time, body sizes are tending to shrink, since smaller bodies hold on to lesser heat. I reckon they can teach us Mass and Heat Balance.

Now, will mankind in turn, grow longer noses, larger ears, or even tails and wings, to balance the climate change effects? We need to closely watch these spaces (and our ‘backs’ for any signs of tail growth).

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden warned of a Code Red moment on climate change during a tour of parts of the USA affected by extreme weather in recent times: New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana that were devastated by Hurricane Ida, to California which is dealing with raging wildfires.

India

This Friday was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 71st Birthday and India gave him a stupendous birthday present of having achieved over 25 million vaccination jabs in a single day – a world record – and reaching a total of over 791 million COVID-19 inoculation shots till date. That’s more than the combined population of 78 countries, in just one day, Wow! The Prime Minister said he was humbled beyond measure…and his hair keeps growing. Happy Birthday to a very hard working Prime Minister. I wish he had a birthday haircut! Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder!

US Open Tennis

Last Saturday, eighteen years old Emma Raducanu, of Britain, won her first-ever Grand Slam US Open Tennis Title beating nineteen years old Leylah Fernandez, of Canada, without dropping a single set in the entire tournament. And in the process served many aces to set new world records. She won in straight sets of 6-4, 6-3, with some amazing, unbelievable shots, fearlessly dominating from inside the baseline. And sealed the match with a serve ace!

Emma, ranked 150 in the World, started the Tournament as a Qualifier and ended up receiving the trophy from the hands of Tennis Legend Billie Jean King. Another British tennis great, Virginia Wade, looking as beautiful as she was in her playing days, watched and cheered from the stands.

Let me take a quick detour to the phenomenal Virginia Wade who won the Women’s Singles, US Open in 1968, the Australian Open in 1972, and the Wimbledon in 1977 – in Wimbledon’s 100th Anniversary year. She was the No.1 British Player for over a decade, in her time. She had also won four Grand Slam Tennis Doubles Championships. She retired from Tennis in 1986 and has worked as a commentator on BBC and various news networks in the USA. The now 76 years old Virginia Wade has ‘remained single’ throughout her life keeping her personal life absolutely personal and secret. And has never been seriously linked or seen with another person in her entire career. That’s a singular achievement.

Back to Emma, some of the history making and records breaking stunts Emma Raducanu achieved goes likes this: First Qualifier in the open era to win a Grand Slam; First British female winner in the US Open since Virginia Wade waded to the podium in 1968; youngest women’s Grand Slam winner since Maria Sharapova’s Wimbledon win in 2002; youngest Briton to win a Grand Slam Title; First woman to win the US Open without dropping a set since Serena Williams did it 2014… The young are bouncing back with a vengeance and the old are still trying to serve with resilience.

Serbian Novak Djokovic, 34, the No. 1-ranked men’s player in the world was on the verge of making history to break a tie with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, who also have 20 major titles, for the most in men’s tennis history. And also the first man to win all four majors: the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open, in the same year. But, Russian Daniil Medvedev, 25, spoiled Djokovic’s party by defeating him in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, to win his first Grand Slam US Open Title. That’s as straight as it can be!

Recall that Medvedev went through two Grand Slam final defeats before this win, and somehow it seemed that this was his to take. Failure strengthens the arms and legs, and pain needs a winning outlet. Medvedev received the trophy from another Tennis great, Stan Smith (I remember Stan Smith’s Tennis Classes during ‘my’ playing days).

Please Yourself

The Met Gala

This week we saw celebrities of the world carefully strutting about in the weirdest and wildest possible, eye-catching costumes at the Met Gala Event in New York City, USA. And expanded the dimensions of Planet Earth, with imagination running riot. Well, what’s the Met Gala about?

The Met Gala, formally called the Costume Institute Gala is an annual fundraising event for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s, Costume Institute, in New York City. The event raises money for the Institute – one of the biggest fundraising nights of its kind in the City- which is the only one of the Met’s curatorial departments that has to fund itself. It also marks the opening of the Institute’s annual fashion exhibit.

Each year’s event celebrates the theme of that year’s Costume Institute Exhibition, which in turn sets the tone for the formal dress of the night. Guests are expected to choose their fashion to match the theme of the exhibit. This year’s theme was, ‘explore American Independence’.

Let’s get underneath the Gala story:

The Met Gala was established in 1948 by fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, and the first Gala started as a midnight dinner with entry tickets. Based upon the legacy left by former Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland, who was a special consultant to the Costume Institute, since 1973 the Met Gala has become well known as a luxurious, blockbuster event, ‘the jewel in New York City’s social crown’ and regarded among the most prominent and most exclusive social events in the world. Attendance is by invitation only. From 1948 to 1971, the event was held at venues including the Waldorf-Astoria, Central Park, and the Rainbow Room, and includes a cocktail hour and a formal dinner.

The Met Gala is also fashion industry’s equivalent of the Oscars, and brings fashion designers, supermodels, and Hollywood stars together to show-off the best of their bodies, awe-inspiring ideas, and the clothes adorning them.

I saw the true colours of our origins, identifying ourselves with the animal and plant kingdom in which we are the intelligent rulers, with colourful brains. We also reached out to a possible upcoming world of machines.

I saw a fully head-to-toe covering black outfit, which would put a bat to shame and give the Taliban a run for their guns; a feathered bird dress, which dare not fly; a horse, racing on a chest with its tail in hand; flowers creeping all over the body, one even had a white-yellow flower springing-up from a milky breast; iron-clad body armour; and even the back of ‘Tax the Rich’ – bright red on white, among other stunning costumes. And nearly all were worn by cats walking down the ramp. If some wore the barest minimum, others made up in kind, with miles of clothing. And it was a dazzling melange of colours in a potpourri of fashion.

I saw through Kendall Jenner’s sheer gown, embellished with glittering rhinestones inspired by Actress Audrey Hepburn’s, My Fair Lady, Givenchy dress. Her sister Kim Kardashian was the one who arrive in the all-black, making the Taliban heads turn. I liked co-host, singer and songwriter Bille Eilish’s peach gown, sweeping the carpets. Other celebrities who were decked-up to captivate the audience are supermodel Gigi Hadid, Actress Jennifer Lopez, Singer Alicia Keys, Singer Rihanna… I disliked singer Olivia Rodrigo’s skin-tight lace dress. And thought brand new US Open Winner, Emma Raducanu did justice to Tennis in her printed monochrome Chanel outfit with a pearl belt detail at the waist.

We held all of this in our minds? I’m sure the animals and plants that have been left out would demand representation.

More fashionable stories to sing in the coming weeks. Stay dressed with World Inthavaaram.

WORLD INTHAVAARAM, 2021-36

About: the world this week, 29 August to 4 September 2021, end of a US war, India medals the Paralympics, which in turn lessons us about keeping time, India sprints in a marathon vaccination-drive, and a famous Pop Music group is on the comeback, Mamma Mia!

Everywhere

The United States (US) seriously kept a commitment of withdrawing its armed forces from Afghanistan and did it one day ahead of the scheduled 31 August 2021. It was an inevitable good decision, though it would have been better if the ending was, ‘and they lived happily ever after’ kind. On the contrary it was unimaginable chaos up to the last flight out of the country. And the US did its best – they have fought so many of the World’s wars and deserve our support. And now they do not wish to bring about change in another country through military action – twice bitten forever shy!

The World needs to move on, and away from war: instead, spend the money, the effort, and the brains on education, healthcare, and the kind. Arm people with weapons of knowledge and missiles of clear thinking. Maybe we should be able to say a ‘Farewell to Arms’, one day?

Meanwhile, resistance to the Taliban is alive, kicking, and roaring in the Panjshir Valley, the last region holding-out, which is not under Taliban rule, in Afghanistan. News of attempts at a negotiated settlement; of the internet being cut-down; of the Resistance Forces repealing attacks by the Taliban- which has the place surrounded, are doing the rounds.

We need to watch that Valley of Resistance. I believe that are some tough people – maybe lions- out there.

The US based Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world. And a Pew Survey conducted before the Taliban took over said that nearly 99% of Afghans favoured Islamic Sharia Law being enforced in Afghanistan. Need we say more?

If only Pew could predict Hurricanes – based on the ruffle and tremble in people’s voices? Whatever, Ida, a Category-4 Hurricane, found its way through America and smashed the State of Louisiana, wrecking havoc, rendering thousands homeless, and those who kept their homes, lived in darkness without power. The rising water levels also brought to the surface, Alligators from the deep, who easily found their footing – roads to walk (and swim)- competing with human folk. A 71 years old man was attacked and killed by an Alligator while he was walking in the flood waters. Next up for Louisiana is the scorching heat, in the days to come.

In another deluge, in flash flooding caused by remnants of Hurricane Ida, parts of New York were submerged in water and as many as 40 people were swallowed by the ‘alligator waters’. New Yorkers termed it a ‘Historic’ Weather Event. Record rainfall, which prompted an unprecedented rain and flood emergency warning in New York City, turned streets into rivers and caused subway services to be shut down. Perhaps we should keep Noah’s Ark on standby, at all times – talk to the spanking new Governor of New York. New brooms sweep well, they say. Can she sweep-off water? For a start she said, “I don’t ever want again to see Niagara Falls rushing down the stairs of one of the New York City subways.”

Otherwise, the cycle keeps cycling. I’m tired of saying Climate Change.

Paralympic Games, Tokyo

While Hurricanes and tornadoes are swirling and wandering around wealthier nations, it’s raining medals for India at the Paralympic Games.

India’s Bhavina Patel started the drizzle by winning a Silver in the Singles Class-4 Table-Tennis Tournament, playing from her wheelchair. And suddenly India struck a gold seam. Sumit Antil – wearing an artificial leg – threw 68.55 meters to win the Javelin Gold Medal, while Avani Lekhara, with her spinal chord injury – paralysed from waist down -showed real spine in consistently hitting the target in the 10m Air Rifle competition to score 249.6 and win Gold. She is the first Indian Woman to do so in this event. Later, she went on to add another medal – a bronze in the 50m Rifle 3 Position Event becoming the first Indian Woman (again) to win two medals in the Paralympics. Records are shot outside the arena too!

Then the Indian medal tally jumped high when defending champion Mariappan Thangavel, hopped on his artificial leg to clear 1.86m to win the High Jump Silver (Gold was 1.88m) and polio affected Sharad Kumar followed behind to take the Bronze with a 1.83m jump.

Nishad Kumar won the Silver in another High Jump event, clearing 2.06m, for those with a unilateral upper limb impairment. Devendra Jhajharia won a Silver Medal, in men’s javelin category for those with arm deficiency, with a 64.35m (metre) throw, while Sundar Singh Gurjar picked up Bronze with a 64.01m travel of his javelin. Paralytic limb affected Yogesh Kathuniya won himself a Silver Medal in the men’s discus with a throw of 44.38m. Polio affected Singhraj Adhana grabbed the Bronze in the men’s 10m Air Pistol Shooting with points of 216.8. On Friday, Harvinder Singh, who lives with a limb deficiency, won India’s first ever Archery medal, clinching Bronze.

In total India bagged 13 medals (Gold-2, Silver-6, Bronze -5) as at the time of publishing this Post.

Never mind the handicaps, the Paralympic Games set an example on the importance of keeping time. I am a stickler of time, always arriving well-ahead of an important event, or a meeting, or making my World Inthavaaram post every saturday morning, but many never bother to keep time…a few minutes is not all right. Malaysian shot putter Muhammad Ziyad Zolkefli, along with two other competitors arrived three minutes late for the Shot Put event. And was allowed to compete as they might have a logical reason for being late, which was being examined by the Tournament Referee. Meanwhile, Muhammad Ziyad Zolkefli ‘putted damn well’, and went on to win the Gold Medal. But, by then the Referee came back, after studying the evidence, and concluded that ‘there was no justifiable reason for the athletes failure to show up to the event in time’. This resulted in Zolkefli being stripped of the medal and given to the person who won Silver. Rules are rules – they must be followed as the gold standard. Tardiness can be costly.

COVID-19 Vaccination

India is going strong: after jabbing more than 10 million arms last week, it repeated the feat this week. Who said India cannot do it? Media news company, CNN, said so: that India doing 600 million doses by August 2021 is an ‘incredibly ambitious undertaking’ with its ‘poor rural healthcare infrastructure and inadequate healthcare system that is already buckling under tremendous pressure from the coronavirus’. India did over 654 million does by 31 August 2021. Hope someone in CNN is reading…and listening. It’s time the world looks at India with eyes wide open. The ‘Snake Charmer only’ days are over – everything India does these days is charming.

Please Yourself

The Return of ABBA

During the Wonder Years of my school days, in the late 1960’s and 1970’s my English music voyage began with the Beatles, Bee Gees, Boney M, Osibisa…and yes, ABBA. Songs that still sing in the mind are: Mama Mia, Dancing Queen, Tragedy, Knowing Me Knowing You, Name of the Game, Take a Chance on Me, Fernando, Waterloo…

The Swedish Pop Music group – Benny Anderson, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and Bjorn Ulvaeus are reuniting for a new album called ‘Voyage’, their first in 40 years. The Album will be released on 5 November 2021 and includes a Christmas song. Two tracks from Voyage, ‘I Still Have Faith in You and ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’, are already out in the air. Their 1992 greatest hits collection, Abba Gold, is the longest running album in the United Kingdom’s album charts. In July, it became the first to surpass 1000 weeks in that position, and is currently sitting at No. 14.

They have also announced a new concert experience in London, also called Voyage, beginning in May 2022. ABBA says, “London is the best city to be in when it comes to entertainment, theatre, musicals…We have always felt that the Brits see us as their own”.

ABBA was formed in the 1970’s with the first letters of the names of the group’s members, and went on to become one of the most successful pop bands ever, reaching the height of fame in the mid 1970’s. Their song catalogue is also one of the most brilliant in all Pop Music.

Knowing ‘A’ and knowing ‘B’, the letters started looking and singing to each other and they became married couples with each of the A’s taking a B. I recall most of the promotions had the B’s reversed, facing the A’s. Sadly, both couples consciously uncoupled in 1981 and it was a tragedy that by 1983 the Group fizzled out – wonder which Winner took it all! They cut their final Album in 1981. Then in the year 2016 they briefly go together to perform one song to celebrate 50 years of songwriting partnership, ‘The Way Old Friends Do’.

I still have faith in ABBA and will certainly not shut them down…not yet!

Sharks

My respect for sharks grew teeth ever since I read the Elle McNicoll’s superb book, ‘A Kind of Spark’ where the central character Addie is awfully fond of sharks and swallows a ton of books on sharks-finds them more fascinating than ‘dull’ Dolphins. These are some interesting facts about sharks that I hunted down:

‘Sharks are older than trees and have been around for a very long time. They have existed for more than 450 million years, while the earliest tree lived about 350 million years ago. Sharks are also one of the few animals to have survived four of the five mass extinctions – they outlived the Dinosaurs. There are over 1000 species of sharks with new ones being discovered every year.

And you may be surprised, sharks do not have bones- they are made up of a flexible cartilage skeleton. Shark teeth are constantly replaced throughout their life – springing up in about 10 days or several months. Typically, a shark looses about 30,000 teeth during its lifetime, and grows them back!

More teeth to grow about sharks; stories of music and comebacks will be sung in the coming weeks. Listen and swim with the World Inthavaaram!

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.