What's in a name?

Everyone and their dogs all over the world are glued to their screens watching the Olympic games. I thought well, let's see how the Indian team is doing. A quick google search revealed the following news (don't worry, I will only copy the summary of the news flash not the entire stories to give you the idea, after all I have been told numerous times that I talk too much and that my posts are too lengthy, but bear with me please)

Olympics 2004, Athens :
-India'a Anjali Bhagwat and Deepali Deshpande Friday failed to make the final of the Olympic women's 50-metre 3 position final, finishing a poor 13th and 19th respectively.

-A last-minute goal by Michael Brennan of Australia Thursday virtually knocked India out of reckoning for a berth in the semi-finals of the Olympic hockey competition.

-A forgettable day for India -- on and off the field : Two positive dope tests and defeats in the hockey and tennis competitions made for what was possibly the worst day so far for India at these Olympic Games. Woman weightlifter Sanamacha Chanu failed a dope test after Pratima Kumari tested positive for testosterone, a top official of the Indian contingent said.

- India's Shikha Tandon Friday failed miserably in the Olympics 50-metre freestyle swimming event, finishing 40th among 73 competitors. 

-India's sailing duo of Malav Shroff and Sumeet Patel Friday were placed 19th with 143 net points after nine races in the mixed open double-handed dinghy-49er Olympic event at Agios Kosmas Olympic Sailing Centre.

-The Indian doubles pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi Thursday went down 2-6, 3-6 to unseeded Nicolas Kiefer and Rainer Schuttler of Germany in the semi-finals of the Olympic tennis tourney here.
-P.K. Paulose Thursday ended 27th in a field of 29 in the men's single sculls competition of the Olympic Games.

So this is the news on one hand, but on the other hand we see : Union Sports Minister Uma Bharti on Wednesday asked the Indian Olympic Association to bid for the 2012 Olympics and said the bid will have the full support of the government.

After reading these I was curious about the history. I mean in Atlanta and Sydney (which were recent enough to be remembered and not completely sink in the fog of my Alzheimer, the result was 1 measly bronze medal each time. Leander Paes hit the bronze in Atlanta for Tennis, while weightlifter Karnam Malleshwari raised the bronze in Sydney.

Hmmm, what about the times before. Thank google for their quick help I could see for myself at: http://www.olympic.it/english/country/id_IND the entire collection of all medals accumulated in the past 100 years all the way from 1900 till 2000. (for those who are sitting down so they don't faint in shock I am ecstatic and thrilled (that's sarcasm by the way!) to announce the total of lo and behold 16 medals in 100 years!)

Looking at those 16 medals, 50% were in Hockey. It is the only event in which India has won Gold Medals - 8 of them. Between 1928 - 1956 India won 6 consecutive gold medals in the Olympics. Hence it was dubbed the "Golden Era" (India played 24 matches, won all 24, scored 178 goals (at an average of 7.43 goals per match) and conceded only 7 goals. The two other gold medals for India (also in Hockey) came in the 1964 Tokyo and the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Right! Left too! So the situation looks uhmmm, not very encouraging despite the fact that India has sent its 'best-ever' contingent to the Athens Olympics and despite that study which the economists at PricewaterhouseCoopers came up with. It's almost like horoscopes and other prophecies, predicting that India could end up winning as many as 10 medals at Athens. Yeah! Anybody proficient in reading tealeaves or tarot cards? Then they could perhaps verify what PricewaterhouseCoopers' economists said about India having an outside chance of finishing on the podium in five events -- athletics, hockey, tennis, shooting and weightlifting. (for those who want to check it out more closely, they can find it here : http://us.rediff.com/sports/2004/aug/09india.htm)

So why can't Indians win medals in the Olympics? Is it the infrastructure? Is it the talent spotting technique? Or is it the parents who discourage sports in general? Or perhaps the athletes cannot have any livelihood due to no government or corporate sponsors? No provision of tax breaks for private sector for sponsoring sportsmen? Not just building the infrastructure but ensuring their sustainability? There must be some funds somewhere, which can put into Indian sports. I mean look at the beauty pageants. All these gorgeous Indian girls have won recently. The reason, not that the beauty rate has increased dramatically, but that they are putting so much more money and effort into it lately and they are also analysing the techniques of others from other nations. Maybe this could work for sports too?

Why cant India win more medals? Why doesn't India shine at the Olympics? How come a country of one billion can't win a few Olympic medals? In over 100 years, India has won just three individual medals. None gold. This makes little sense to me and perhaps even to the world. No Indian has ever won an individual Olympics gold! Well that is in the Olympics, but it's much better in the Special Olympics, where in June 2003 for example, India walked away with 34 gold medals (yes in that ONE event!!) India ended their superb campaign in the Special Olympics, with a count of 110 medals including 34 gold, 36 silver and 40 bronze medals from 11 events - athletics, cycling, football, roller skating, badminton, table tennis, handball, volleyball, bocce, aquatics and basketball as the Times of India reported. So why is it that the Special Olympics yielded so many and the plain Olympics almost none? Gasps! Could it have anything to do with brains?

Most Indian parents, to the best of my knowledge, put more emphasis on excelling in academics to become successful in any future endeavours relating to career issues. Indians are encouraged and conditioned to work hard, and be very studios in school. Therefore most of the time in school is allocated towards studying to obtain that 90% plus average. In most school sports is still an extracurricular activity, not encouraged by overly academic focused parents or teachers, and is still not considered as a profession for life. Most Indians would rather spend any spare time watching Bollywood films than exercising or playing sports. Therefore, all that seems necessary is the same encouragement or emphasis or focus towards sports and you will definitely see how far they can go or in the worst of cases even just a proper balance between the two. Of course, one might happily claim that India is just not an athletic nation (thus very cunningly implying it is an intellectual one). Can anyone picture the slogan right after the return from Athens: "brain power not brawn!"

The so very uhmmm 'promising' study by PricewaterhouseCoopers said amongst other things: "Indian sports tends to be focused on events that are not included in the Olympics, such as cricket, which is not an Olympic sport, and may attract potential stars away from athletics and other Olympic events in India."

So another solution for this medal rarity would be perhaps introducing some new events into the Olympics. I will not suggest team events such as elephant racing or cow gazing or monkey counting, but how about long spit instead of long jump? I mean everyone knows about this habit of spitting paan anywhere and everywhere. Never mind that it is an absolutely filthy habit, no matter what excuses are used like what is said about paan being a stimulant, a digestive, anti-flatulent, anti-inflammatory, invigorating, anti-phlegmatic, a pain-reliever, eliminating foul smells, preventing secretion or bleeding and being an aphrodisiac too etc etc.  It's still pretty disgusting, but I am sure that the centuries of spitting have created an expertise which is unique. Gold Medal Potential, I tell you!

Or take moustache weight lifting as another example. I mean K. Subbarao earned himself a much sought after spot in the Guinness Book of World Records by lifting 77 pounds of empty gas cylinders with his moustache. Another Indian, K.R. Sain, holds the Guinness record for longest moustache. It spanned 11 feet 11 inches. See? See? There is a gargantuan potential there too. Have you ever looked at photos from say a festival or religious celebrations? At least 75% of the men sported moustaches and these were no ordinary moustaches. These were outstanding, distinguishing and distinctive ones. The kind that would set you apart (if 75% of the men around you didn't have one too!) But that's besides the point, it just shows that Indian men are experts at growing and sprucing their moustaches. Think about it! Given the chance, moustache growing could be put to good use, perhaps moustache weight lifting or moustache pulling or something and no additional artificial testosterone needed even!

How about introducing a language relay? Off the top of my head, Bombay has at least 28 daily newspapers in 5 different languages. (and there are papers in several more languages as well). I don't know one other country in the world where you'd find so many languages that it ends up being easier to speak English to understand somebody beyond a shadow of any miscommunication!

Or finally how about train balancing instead of balancing on the bar? I mean anybody who looks at trains, crammed with commuters, or even trains taking the devout believers to the pilgrimages can appreciate the expertise and enormous skill it takes to fit as many people into and on top of the carriages as would go.

Big heavy sigh, if only such events could be added to the next Olympics. It's too bad the International Olympic Committee can't be bribed.

Alternatively : What to do about shrubbery?
 
If you expected some political expos

Sometimes when we read a poem we go off somewhere else and travel on other paths than those the author intended for us. No don't worry, I am not going to do an attempt at poetry 101 or on how to interpret a poem, because a poem speaks differently to different people and even in another way to the same people at different times. Sometimes it even remains silent.

Well this particular poem keeps popping up into my life at regular intervals in the most uncanny way, and no it isn't Shakespeare. First time I saw it, I was still in school, during one of the long English literature classes, dealing with poems and their interpretation, the rhymes and measures and all that stuff. I liked it even then. (well not the interpretation part but the poem) And it has been coming back to haunt me ever since, as if some hidden power somewhere conspires to keep throwing it in my face.

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

So the poem was written about Ramses II, Pharaoh of ancient Egypt and one of the greatest Pharaohs known. Well not just judging by the amount of temples and all those colossal statues he had carved to his likeness and scattered all over the country from the north way down to the south at the borders with Sudan. Well he will be remembered, for being larger than life and also for many other things. He will be remembered because great people are and because he lived up to his greatness, even if now he is only a thin shrivelled up mummy lying in a display case in a museum.

But what I thought of was that most of these great people or even the great deeds of anyone, that are seemingly a pinnacle of greatness today, will only be a faded memory tomorrow, if even that. Time just flies and we just do not realise that for all our boasts and thoughts of self-importance that soon we too will be gone and nothing much will remain. (unless it's a blog of course).

It is a very sobering image, the colossal statue of a proud king, lying broken in the boundless desert, with only the testimony of a solitary traveller left to bring word of his existence centuries later. It makes one think about what unknown tales might lie behind such colossal ruins, and how did it happen that the great empires that raised them no longer exist? It evokes images of how over the centuries a sense of mystery has slowly gathered around such ruins, a sense that perhaps somewhere in their past, as with Ozymandias, there is an undiscovered and as yet unimaginable tale.

Shakespeare (just had to mention him) wrote of the "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns." His words might well be applied to the distant past. We can try to picture it in our mind's eye, but in truth it is utterly beyond our direct comprehension, hidden beyond a horizon no explorer can ever cross. Nobody invented a time machine yet and we can only try to learn about the past from silent stony walls or fragmented papyri and the like. All we can do is collect the few clues we find scattered about, a few stones here, a few written words there and put them together to marvel at the stories they reveal. Most ancient monuments have suffered similar fates over time. They have been toppled by earthquakes or quarried for stone. Many have been desecrated by human hands. Some have been reclaimed by the grasping fingers of the jungle, buried beneath the silt and mud of wandering rivers, or engulfed by desert sands. Yet many of them still endure, visible symbols of man's greatest successes against the inexorable, corroding powers of time and nature.

PS.: this post is to go back to the beginning and to close the circle and say goodbye to a 'friend'

Remember Pygmalion? His story became the basis for many a play and movie, perhaps the most famous one being "My Fair Lady". Pygmalion was a sculptor from Greek mythology, who carved a statue of his ideal woman, embodying every feminine grace and virtue according to his point of view and his personal taste.  Myth tells us that for months and months, he laboured with all his phenomenal talent and skill and also with a strange compulsion, almost obsession, rounding here, smoothing there, until he had fashioned the most exquisite figure ever conceived by man. So exquisite indeed was his creation, that he fell passionately in love with his statue, and could be seen kissing its marble lips, fingering its marble hands, dressing its flawless soulless body, as if caring for a real person. But very soon, and in spite of the statue's incomparable loveliness and beauty, he became desperately unhappy. The lifeless statue could not respond to his feelings. The cold stone could not return the warmth of his love and the fire of his desire. He had set out to shape his perfect dream woman, but had succeeded only in deepening his own frustration and despair.

But as it turns out in the legend, the goddess Venus took pity on poor frustrated Pygmalion and brought his statue to life for him. He and Galatea embraced and married with the goddess's blessing and lived happily ever after.

But in our closest relationships, we all behave like Pygmalion to some extent. Most people don't see the world as it is, but rather as they are or as they want it to be. Many of us are attracted at first to other people, quite different from ourselves. We seem to take immense pleasure in the contrast and differences at the start. But as we become more involved and more familiar and finally get to know the other better, almost like we do ourselves, we start to vie for control (sometimes even without feeling it or without doing it deliberately, just common human nature I guess) and we begin to see some of these differences as flaws or defects. Suddenly we are no longer satisfied with our loved ones as they are, but we set about to change them, to transform them into our conception of what they should be, make them do what we expect of them, push them around or even push them away. Who hasn't heard the phrase: "I need some space, some time to think." Slowly but surely we are no longer able to just appreciate our loved ones' distinctive ways of living or doing things, but we try to shape them according to our own values or even agendas.

Like Pygmalion, we take up the project of sculpting them little by little, rounding here, smoothing there, to suit ourselves. We snipe and criticise, brow-beat and bully, we sculpt with guilt and with praise, with sulking and with passion, with logic and with tears, just whatever methods come most natural to us. Not that we do this ceaselessly, nor always maliciously, but all too often, almost without thinking, we fall into this pattern of coercive behaviour. And like Pygmalion, we end up inevitably frustrated, since our well-intentioned efforts, to make over our partners, bring us little more than disappointment and conflict. Our loved ones do not and cannot just comply meekly with our interference in their lives. Even if they were to surrender to our pressure, they would have to destroy in themselves that which attracted us to them in the first place. Their individuality, their uniqueness, their distinct breath of life.

Our Pygmalion projects must fail. Either our loved ones fight back, and our relationships turn into battlegrounds; or they give in to us, and become as lifeless as Pygmalion's statue. In this paradoxical game, we are bound to lose. For we lose, even if we win.

Yes, in the legend, Pygmalion and his former statue, who became his woman, lived happily ever after. But only because a goddess interfered. The rest of us, mere mortals however, cannot rely on such miraculous intervention. Living in the real world, we are responsible for ourselves and for the success of our relationships. This means that we must find a way to abandon our Pygmalion projects before they even start, by learning, if we can, to honour our fundamental differences in personality, our unique strengths, our individual inputs. For only by respecting the right of our loved ones to be different from ourselves, to be perfect in their own way, can we begin to make the beauty of our own relationships come alive.

Before I embark on writing about love and control I would like to post a story written by someone else. Tomorrow I will go all preachy on you :P

The Puppet

Once upon a time there was a Master puppeteer. A ' Master' because he trained his puppets to know the steps of the dance even before he started up the music. Moving from village to village putting up a show, sometimes here and sometimes there, his fame grew. In time, when news of his show spread, villagers from all around came to watch the Master puppeteer make his puppets dance.

One day, while resting in an enchanted forest, he found a piece of wood.  There was something different about it. Intrigued by its shape and feel and colour, he decided to make a new puppet from it. The wood was raw and unseasoned and all who watched him struggling to fashion the puppet were doubtful whether it would ever dance as well as the seasoned, well-rehearsed ones; but the puppeteer had faith in his own expertise.

Gently bending and twisting his new puppet into shape, he was finally satisfied with it and smiled. The warmth of his smile thawed the sap in the raw wood, and its arms and legs went all awry, dancing a mad, mad dance.

The Master puppeteer was irritated and frowned. His icy glare froze the puppet back into shape, forcing the sap out of it's wide-open eyes. Each time this happened the sap grew less and less; and the distortions decreased since the Master almost never smiled at the puppet, although he was pleased for longer and longer periods. Finally he believed the sap had dried up since the puppet performed more perfectly than the other puppets. It's wooden face and expressionless, wide-open eyes were sapless, as is the case with any good puppet. Everyone was amazed at the transformation. The Master puppeteer was very pleased with his creation and smiled broadly. He had succeeded in making the perfect puppet!

His pleasure was so great, and his smile so warm, it squeezed out the last remnant of sap that lay hidden in the puppet's heart. The puppet danced riotously, wildly flinging out its arms to the sky, revelling in its Master's pleasure. The Master puppeteer was furious. Taking a sharp knife out of his bag he pushed the point into the puppets heart, squeezing out the last drop of sap.

The puppet twitched a few times, then shrivelled up and died. Although a Master at his trade, the puppeteer had not realized that it was the sap, that had made the puppet so perfect, giving it that extra flexibility that the other puppets lacked and that had given him so much pleasure. Disgustedly throwing the dead puppet on the wayside, he went on to the next performance in a distant village.

The villagers were already gathered when he got there. They watched with hushed breath as he set up his stage. The puppets were soon ready and the show began. Each puppet obeying his every command, every slight movement of his  long fingers until at last, amidst a burst of applause, the show was  over.  The villagers were impressed, but the Master knew none of his puppets had performed as perfectly as the puppet he had destroyed. They did not have the same effusive spontaneity of movement, the same joy of dancing to his command, and he was dissatisfied.

This went on for days and days, until one day he passed by the place where the discarded puppet lay motionless, covered by the dust. Picking it up, he smiled nostalgically, remembering its antics while it lived.  The warmth of his smile revived the long dead puppet. Moving slowly at first, then throwing up its arms to the sky, it danced for the pleasure of its Master.

The Master puppeteer threw back his head and roared with laughter at its awkward movements, and put the puppet in his pocket. This puppet he would keep for his own pleasure, it was the only one that danced for him alone.

Written by Zeejah

A hypothetical sequence of events in which meltdown at an out-of-control nuclear reactor could cause the molten core to go deeply through the earth.

I didn't know blogs had the propensity to cause a china syndrome!

When I started my blog it was because I wanted a space where I could write anything that came to my mind, as well as try my hand at genres different from what I usually wrote. I wanted to be creative and at the same time get some feedback as to how it would be received. I never for one second thought that this would end up being a competition of sorts and would wake up the green monsters of jealousy and bring the yellow monsters of envy out of hiding.

When I am kissed by the muse, to write about anything at all, from footnotes, over editors, to eyes, mullahs as salesmen or even nebulizers, I just start writing without having any numbers in mind, about prospective hits, or positions in a list or even being popular or being resented.

I know that sometimes I have some weird and whacky (apologies to Aran for using her blog name here, but I thought it very fitting) ideas, but I never thought that they would start some sort of diplomatic incident in the blog community. 

I thought that blogs were supposedly created to provide a medium for people to express whatever thy felt like expressing, be it good, bad, personal, impersonal, intellectually stimulating, smile inducing, thought provoking, entertaining, plain boring or downright ugly. I also thought that they were supposed to be fun. Fun to keep up, fun to read, fun to comment on and fun to learn from at times. I didn't think that they were yet another reason to find a way to create some problems or bad feelings, feelings of inadequacy, of resentment, of envy, or whatever else. Life has enough problems as it is, without them extending into some virtual notebook holding a collection of posts about anything at all.

Maybe I should just stop writing altogether or go back to writing for personal consumption only and not put anything up for scrutiny of the public eye, since it seems to be antagonising.

My deepest apologies for whoever feels offended. That was not the purpose at all.

A quote by Jos

You probably guessed by now that I am very particular about air. No, I am not one of those environmentalists who will rave and rant about air-pollution or saving the rain-forest because of the trees and their effect on the atmosphere and I am hopefully also not an air-head.

I am just particular about air, because I am a long time sufferer of asthma. I would like to write about it, because it is sort of a suffocating stifling thing. The pun here was not intended, but so many people take the little things in life for granted, like walking, talking, running, dancing, even breaking out in a fit of laughter or of rage. But sadly many a time all these things are a luxury when you are fighting for breath. You tend to wish and dream about being able to do them all, specially when you are happy and laughing and that laughter results in you breaking out in a torrent of coughs and you start fighting for air yet again. The phrase

I was with a friend and we wanted to go quickly to pick up something from a shop and it was hot and humid and crowded. I couldn

So I was reading the news in the morning like I usually do and then one news item hit me.

Excuse me a moment while I go grab a veil to write in a mullah-acceptable-way from behind or rather from under a burqa. Ok, now I am back and of course I am looking like a bad imitation of a Halloween ghost and having a bit of trouble breathing from under this contraption, that makes me feel like suffocating and wishing I could have one of those punkah wallahs. But for more effect I just had to subject myself to this sacrifice to get in the mood to write about those clerics in Kashmir who have condemned a pop song. Shakes my head, whatever next?

Left! Forget for a moment (if you please) that the song is by two (yes, sorry about that, but anyway) Pakistani singers (even they do sing and get into trouble!). So just try to forget about all the other problems about Kashmir, Indian-Pakistani rivalry, the partition, decade long hate etc and try to focus on these mullahs for a few minutes (or at least as long as it takes you to read this post, if you can force yourself to finish it that is).

So what are these mullahs on about? What pissed them off? For crying out loud, it can

All posts on this blog, (except where otherwise noted), are personally written by me and mostly represent MY opinion, but I do try to give "credit" where I know whom to give credit (or grief for that matter) to. It is not my intention to infringe upon anyone's ego, copyright, or violate any laws, merely to present a part of my whacko ideas here for others to "enjoy" or to get aggravated into thinking. If anyone feels personally attacked or seems to recognize him or herself in any of my posts then they should think again. While all attempts are made to insure the correctness (or at least correctness with some imaginative license) of information (gossip and hearsay are automatically excluded) under my control and to correct any errors brought to my attention, no representation or guarantee can be made as to the correctness or "suitability" of that information.

It's not my intention to do anything that could land me in jail or cause anyone to dislike me even more than they already do, or make it necessary to move the blog to moderated or censored status or even delete it and go into hiding or seek amnesty with the help of some UN resolution or other. However, if you are an important or "big" person (or an English teacher) and you see something here that might make you want to hit me or even sue me, just let me know and I'll correct it immediately - that's far easier (and cheaper) then taking proceedings against me over the ocean, half a dozen frontiers and through the jungle of international rights.

I'm open to suggestions, comments, and of course "praise" for my posts, as well as anything else that you'd like to share apart from name-calling and bashing and lame pick-up lines. So if you have a problem with anything on this blog (which is not MY fault as I will always be innocent and deny everything), then I advise that you to ignore it or leave it and go somewhere more politically correct and more to your liking. And I don

I won

D

Many of us take the little things for granted just because they are there. We don

The concept of the yoyo, a small insignificant something on the end of a string that is thrown and then pulled back for pleasure, is so common in so many ancient cultures that it is difficult to determine its origin. It is believed, however, to have originated in China, thousands of years ago. Regardless where it originated from, the toy with a big kick for all ages and with a constant break-out of fads has endured. The graph of the yoyo's history would mimic the path of the toy itself, finding peaks and lows many times over the course of the last century.

The word yoyo is a Tagalog word, the native language of the Philippines, and means 'come back.' So even the word itself means coming back, which evokes going away in the first place, possibly in circles. (vicious ones?)

Our minds with their thoughts and our feelings are a bit like that too, constantly moving back and forth, sometimes fluctuating, sometimes within circles, remaining in one, pulling from the other or getting stuck or hung up, dwelling...

No wonder we feel like a yoyo sometimes or as if we were on a roller coaster. Feeling constant shifts, pulls, and entanglements. Not just our minds I am afraid. Sometimes we become a yoyo ourselves, one day up and one day down, allowing someone or something to pull our string, hurl us downwards, yank us up again.

Guess the yoyo craze that is going around has hit me too. No! I am not a masochist by nature but to finally cut the string is such a huge move or is it?

next to myself
you are my biggest challenge

passions? many
desires? deep
unsettling
unnerving
unconventional

you used to see
not only with your eyes
but from within

you loved me
hated me
remembered me
reminded me

you're here
you're gone
you're back
again
vicious circle

emotions encouraged
again
ones I forgot I had
not all good
not all bad
but all endurable

what's in store for us?
not what I thought
maybe not what I wanted
I trust it'll be exactly what you need

connected by lifetimes
many disjointed
by superficial perceptions
by commanding obstructions
nevertheless
you can't leave me
I can't leave you
 
physically or not
you are always here
rooted inside of me
deep
safe
where no one else can see
or understand
the depths of our connection

love has been paused
redefined
restored
only to be paused
and restored again
and again
and again

is it time to stop the struggle
and accept the moment?