Cradle to the grave, a short journey indeed...

It not true what they say about the past-you can bury it, the past can leave a scar, deep enough to be visible through all your years. The past is what she’s been trying to grapple since that fateful day.
“I’ll see you all in the evening, after my exams, bye ”, Sandra heard her sister scream out these words before zipping off on her bike. “Awrite, good luck, bye” , she called out but her voice was muffled by the roaring engine. That was the last she saw her. The events that unfolded later during the days seemed to her as irrational and surreal as a dream, her sister wrapped in white, her body motionless and farely unscathed, her face a picture of placidity, the funeral pyre beside her and her shell-shocked family all around…
Our life hangs precariously, one moment you live a blissful existence, and the next moment you at the gates of the heavenly abodes. ‘Live every moment’, this is one of the most cliched phrases you get to hear but what I witnessed last weekend made me realise that you should indeed live every moment cos you never know if you’ll be around long enough to smell the evening bloom. I’ll not be able to fathom her grief, the condolences will not help in filling that deep void her sister left behind and life for her will not be the same, but these are the things that forms the crux of our miniscule existence. When I read about people who meet an untimely end I think to myself, it always happens to somebody else but we are also a ‘somebody’ to someone else. Drive carefully, death is lurking is every turn and every move you make.

Meliorating spectator fervour

My friends claim it to be the most dramatic climaxes to the Formula One season. The Brazilian grand Prix saw Kimi snatch away the championship from favourite Hamilton who eroded right from the start. I logged onto the g-talk today morning and saw a plethora of status msgs like “Go KIMI”, ”Kimi yeah, Dig it alonso”, ”Kult Kimi Konquers yet again” and pure simple plain ones like “Kimi!!” (some ppl even wrote that in a mix of upper n lower case). Its pretty obvious that a lotta of my friends follow F1, and to get along with them you have to learn how to talk F1. To me, these phrases may not have a lotta meat on them but an average 20 year something guy can use them to keep a conversation going for hours.Phew! So I was hooked last night watching the Brazilian Grand Prix trying to figure out the Driver Standing, Consturctor Standing, funda behind Compound tyres blah blah for the pure sweet simple reason;I could activley participate in the F1 discussions! So much for being ‘cool’ I say. As I saw the sleak, shiny, colorful machines go round and round with that annoying mosquito-buzz like sound I thought, they can turn this mundane boring sport into a truly exciting, dangerous and audience-grabbing one by adding some view-excitement. We could achieve this by diggin up deep pits(slightly bigger than the cars) at unmarked locations, so everytime the driver takes a turn he would have to swerve his machine to avoid fallin into the pit. This would result in a lot more collisions and ‘pit-falls’! woo! We could extend this concept by spilling some super slippery oil or grease, also at unmarked locations which would send the cars flying in different direction. Yeah baby now we talking Sports! They sure to rake in millions! Why do we have to stop this view-excitement concept to F1 alone, we could extend this to other sports also. Read on..
Golf
Yawnn! Few sports are as dull as professional golf.Any imbecile in his right state of mind wouldn’t spend precious time watching this but when a beehive is placed right above the flight of the ball, it demands a more flawless swing on the part of the golfer and boy! lets not even get to the exhilaration part of it. We could make it even more challenging by placin a deadly hornets nest right beside the hole, this simple handicap will attract even greater violence and tragedy loving fans will sure be screaming for more.

Sking
Come winter olympics and all you get to see is sking, sking and more sking. Currently all that the professional skiers do is lazily wind down the hill bending and turning and bumping. Simply chaining hungry lions and tigers and grizzly bears to each flag will demand more precision and greater challenge from the sportsmen. Woohoo!

Volleyball
A game that mainly consists of jumping, smashing and hitting some really fast balls that any sensible person cannot return back makes volleyball a big “So what?”, but placing some really sharp barbed wires above the net will turn a simple foul into something really foul. Sponsors bank accounts will turn green as the sand soaks in all that red!

Shooting
Concentration, silence and no movement, a game like this can put you to sleep inadvertently, but don’t loose heart brother we could spice it up with some bikini-clad babes doing the honour of holding the dart boards. We could also make the boards reboundable so if the arrow doesn’t pierce through the eye it would revert back towards the shooter. Viewers will sure pony up big bucks to watch it!

Basketball
Ok lets not touch this game cos its excting enough. What with all the rebounds, cheerleaders, 7foot tall dunkers and cuttie-pie Tony!

Distanced from reality

“… its not only the war that’s disturbing, our freedom is curbed in that flea ridden place”, my uncle retorted when I asked him how his stay in Bangladesh had been. He had a far away look in his eyes when he thought back on his 6yrs tenure there. The stories he told shook me up, the two leading candidates contesting the election have criminal records to boast, and they are both ladies, the army has taken over from the government, the whole country is engulfed in a political turmoil, with fourtneen different heads of government and alteast four military coups. Woo! I sat spelbound listening to all this, the army has banned all private TV stations and the national media is under censorship, shucks!so much for freedom. A couple of days back Bharghav had written this blog, which gave us an insight into the terrible times we live in. India is sure trampling on troubled waters with nobody to steer us clear of all the hullabaloo happening around. For starters we have the whole nation fighting over the existence or non-existence of a blessed bridge, then we have the media and ahmm junta fighting over whether jail is the place to be for a guy who gave the world the term gandhigiri. Sheesh, our nation is a story of how far from reality we have truly come. We need to open our eyes wider, open it wider to take in the situation happening around us. So as a nation are we really screwed up? I don’t think so.

Nestled between the two mighty oceans we have a country which was once called ‘pearl of the indian ocean’, the pearl is tarnished beyond repair. After years of peace, Sri Lanka has again plunged into a conflict between the government and the Tamil tigers popularly known as the LTTE. Peace remains plagued in this war torn country which has witnessed ceasefire followed by killing without impunity and an economy which is still coming to terms with the upheaval.

Thousand of inocent monks in their orange robes were mercilessly shot to death. I watched with sympathy the horrors unraveling on the streets on Burma these last few weeks. When Aung Kyi (she is so breathtakingly beautiful!) won the last election there was much joy, but it was short lived cos the military took over entirely- the govt has been invisible since then. Half the population is in some kinda forced labour and reports say AIDS is ravishing the country ferociously. Denying human rights, killing, and using rape as a war against minorities is wht Burma/Myanmar fights everyday thanks to the military regime.

This place boasts of eight of the world’s ten highest peaks but at the apex of it all is a constitutional monarchy that is very close to becoming a Maoist state. The aristocratic king has lost all his power as head of state and army thanks to Maoist rebels and new political leaders who want to completely overthrow the monarchy.If the Maoist seize power then the kiling, kidnapping, torturnin and bombing happening now will look pale in comparison.God forbid something like this happens !

China is one of the worlds oldest civilization but its economic progress the last couple of years is almost scary! This rapid urbanization has resulted in over 50million farmers(yeah u read the figures right,no wonder they are the most populous in the world!) loosing their farmlands. We might be sharing their problems of population and corruption but here we atleast have the freedom of gathering up a group of like minded ppl and walking down the streets hurling abuses at the government !

This country is a piece of cake. Musharaff said “lets have a general election and elect our leader”, sure enough an election was held and a general was elected! Military dictatorship statred 10 yrs back, parlimant was disbanded, constitution was suspended and the country plunged into a monetary debt from which it has still not recovered. An ex-prime minister who was ousted in a coup detat and a woman ex-prime minister who is contesting the election have both been in exile. What pakistan needs is an end of the military regime for it to gain ground from the bombing and killings that has plagued it for over a decade.

We are not so screwed afterall. Am I happy? Oh hell yes!

lets put this on hold

I have been wanting to blog something for the past three weeks, futile attempts at finding a interesting topic and laziness coupled with procrastination resulted in my blog gathering heavy cobwebs. Last week i was in conversation with a friend who happens to be real sloth like me. He said "Ann, even procrastinators are useful citizens who can be effective, admired and appreciated", passing this as a otiose dialogue i continued sipping my coffee. That conversation introduced me to the concept of Structured Procrastination, its pretty neat. I went to google and typed in the topic and blessed lord i was shocked to see 740,000 hits. Lots of sloths in this world i must say. If you are another corpse who struggles with duties , have hope brother, for in this fast paced world there is space for you and me !

If u have put on hold the simple task of tying Structured Procrastination on google, heck here it is ! Maja Madu.