Cup of convenience

Yes, we are football fans. It doesn’t matter that our country has never ranked among the top-100 in world football. It doesn’t matter that once beating Japan and Korea was not much of a task for our footballers and today those sides are playing World Cup while we cannot even dare to dream about reaching that stage. Nobody can deny that we can rise above ourselves and support other countries in the World Cup forgetting all differences (but we can never forget that Hindus and Muslims are different, Brahmins are a class apart). We can not only forget all differences for the World Cup, we can forget everything else. Our forgetfulness for this one month every four years serves criminal politicians well.
Following are two crimes we have read about in newspapers, heard about on TV and have forgotten quickly to drink World Cup to the lees:

COPS SAW OFF WARREN WITH SALUTES: PILOT
RASHEED KIDWAI
Bhopal: Warren Anderson made his escape from Indian law in a hail of salutes from senior Bhopal police officers and fell into a peaceful slumber during his 90-minute flight to Delhi on a state aircraft.
One of the two pilots, Captain D.C. Sondhi, told The Telegraph the police officers repeatedly offered to carry the American’s hand luggage as they escorted him to the plane at Bhopal airport.
“Memories of that scene still make me angry,” said Sondhi, 72. “Here was a man responsible for the death of thousands, and our government officials were saluting him!”
He added: “The buzz among bureaucrats was that US President Ronald Reagan had spoken to someone important in India to get Anderson out quickly.”
The Union Carbide chief was arrested at Bhopal airport when he arrived four days after the 1984 gas leak that killed at least 15,000, but was let off within hours after an unidentified top government leader in Delhi made a call to chief minister Arjun Singh.
During his six-hour stay in Bhopal, Anderson, who wore a mask, appeared casual and showed “signs of arrogance”, said Moti Singh, who was then Bhopal district collector. But the American piped down when he was told he was being released.
“At first he wasn’t even willing to leave Bhopal, he wanted to see the affected area. I told him, ‘You are not welcome, you have to leave Bhopal’. I also told him there was a risk to his life and in no case could he be allowed to go to the affected areas,” Singh said.
Captain Sondhi, then director of aviation in Bhopal, received the call from Arjun Singh’s office at 2.30pm.
“I was asked to get the state government plane, a B-200 Super King, ready. Soon, city superintendent Swaraj Puri arrived with Anderson,” Sondhi said.
“Anderson was carrying a garment box (containing a business suit) and a briefcase. I remember police officers repeatedly requesting him to let them carry these pieces of luggage. Anderson said, ‘No, no, I will carry them myself.’ When the plane was about to take off, the officers saluted him and wished him good luck.”
The other pilot, Captain Syed Hasan Ali, remembers Anderson dozing off mid-flight. “He was calm but in a hurry to reach Delhi,” said Ali, whose father had become ill after the gas leak.
“My relatives lived in the Jahangirabad locality, a short distance from the Carbide factory, so none of them was grievously affected. My father died shortly after, and I am still not sure whether it was because of the gas or just his age.”
“For me, he was like any other passenger. I was doing a job and the thought that he was leaving, never to return, did not occur to me. In any case, what could I have done?”
Ali said that when Anderson got off at Delhi’s Palam airport, he made it a point to thank the crew. “He shook our hands and waved at some officials who appeared to be from the US embassy. Then, suddenly, he was gone.”
Yet, earlier in the morning, the state government had appeared serious about cracking down on Carbide and Anderson.
Collector Singh recalled: “I was summoned by Arjun Singh to his residence at 8am. He told me Anderson would be arriving in Bhopal shortly and that airport officials had been told not to let his plane land till I (Moti Singh) had arrived there.”
By the time Singh reached the airport the plane had landed but its door had not been opened. Inside, Anderson was waiting with Union Carbide India chairman Keshub Mahindra and managing director Vijay Gokhale.
Singh said all three were arrested as soon as they got off the plane and taken to Carbide’s Shyamala Hills guesthouse. The police filed a case of culpable homicide against them.
“But at 2pm, chief secretary Brahm Swaroop called me and superintendent Puri to his office. He told us a plane was waiting for Anderson and asked us to complete the formalities to ensure he could fly to Delhi as soon as possible,” Singh said.
“We quickly arranged for a Carbide employee to secure his bail against a surety of Rs 25,000.”
Singh said he was struck by Anderson’s knowledge about the plant and the sequence of events following the leak. “He told me that when the gas leaked there was no wind, so the gas went up initially; but around midnight, a southerly wind started blowing and spread the gas around.”
The Telegraph (June 9)

CBI UNEARTHS HUGE SCAM IN RAILWAY RECRUITMENT
Rahul Tripathi
New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday unearthed multi-crore scam related to recruitment in railways, exposing a major hole in what was touted as a failsafe scheme for appointments by the country’s largest employer.
Those who have been nabbed include the son of S M Sharma, chairman of the Railway Recruitment Board, Mumbai, who used the huge funds acquired by leaking exam papers to buy a Mitsubishi Pajero. The other accused are A K Jagannathan, former assistant divisional rail manager, and his son Srujan.
Railway Recruitment Boards — in all 20 — are responsible for recruiting around 50,000 employees for jobs, including drivers, guards and assistant station masters having a direct bearing for the safety of passengers. RRB SCAM Candidates paid Rs 3.5L for rly job.
The Times of India (June 19)
R.I.P consciousness.

Why I am what I am

When I was falling in and out of love, I did not know that I’ll be able to laugh off those relationships a few years later. If some of my friends suggested so, I would become very angry. Little did I realise that I had actually fallen in love with my loneliness, my failure to woo any girl. I was the quintessential Devdas, whose problem is not that nobody loves him. The problem is he loves being forlorn, rejected.

Whoever wrote the script of my life, loved me more than Sarat Chandra loved his hero. My Devdas days got over just before I was about to drown my sorrow in alcohol. I do not believe in angels, but I think human beings imagined there were angels because they found there were some among themselves whose virtues were unusual. That way, the woman I found was an angel.

The start of our affair was too true to believe. Since childhood, we had lived close enough to cross ways everyday, but never did. Then when we finally found each other, we were 1000 miles apart. But for the intelligent box that has almost thrown the idiot box out of fashion, we would never have met. I was most reluctant to join any social networking site when it was in vogue among my friends. But at last, peer pressure got to me, thankfully. I became ‘Orkuchute’, as I would call everybody who joined Orkut before me. Then came the 7th December 2007.

The most important dates to me are as follows: 7th November, 1917; 14th July 1789; 25th Boishakh 1268; 15th August 1947 and 7th December 2007. Sounds funny? I am serious. What I am today is because of all these dates. My philosophy of life is because of the Russian Revolution and the French Revolution, my expressions have flowed from Rabindranath Tagore, my freedom of speech is because my country is free, and I am not an alcoholic because of the lady I met on Orkut on 7th December. She blew away my despair, first unconsciously and later consciously. A few years later, she decided it was not enough, she should be by my side for the rest of our lives.

This piece is a tribute to that angel as I embark on a new journey. A journey to make my opinions on everything public.