The WTF quote of the day comes from Pavan K Varma (no relative of mine):
Marriage is an institution which is there to stay in any society. India needs to stand by the values. There is something called sanskar (values) and it is still alive in India though it may have been lost in the metropolises. All gods, at least in Hindu mythology, have consorts.
So if you’re stuck in a bad marriage, hang in there for the sake of your sanskar. If your gods adjusted, so must you.
Earlier, some blasphemy committed by me: We Should Celebrate Rising Divorce Rates.
(Link via email from Arun John.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 13 August, 2008 in
India |
WTF
"Don’t look now,” Rohit Brijnath wrote more than a year ago, “but this 24-year-old who looks like a cover boy for an accountancy magazine, who pursues a sport where stillness is a virtue and muscles can get in the way, whose rare moment of recognition came from, get this, a Thai airlines purser (’Hey, you’re the shooter’), is possibly India’s best chance of a medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.”
Brijnath was talking of Abhinav Bindra, and boy, did he get it right. Read the full piece; this bit sent a chill up my spine:
In 2004, at the Athens Games, he got his heart torn out. He broke the Olympic record in qualifying, but shot so poorly in the eight-man final it astonished him. Later, a coach goes back to the range, to position No.3 where Bindra shot from, and finds the floor wobbly, finds it being fixed for the next final. Too late.
Bindra calls Athens “tragic” and says, honestly, painfully, “Athens bothered me for a long time”. He breathes. “But that’s life, everything’s not fair always.” Now, he insists, Athens is forgotten. At the world championships last year, he found himself, ominously, again at position No.3. Athens came flooding back, but he wore the pressure and won.
But perhaps Athens will finally be interred in Beijing.
So there you go.
In related news, the Times of India quotes AS Bindra, Abhinav’s dad, as relating the following anecdote about when Abhinav was five years old:
He kept a water balloon on our maid’s head and began shooting, knowing little that a slight mistake could have proved fatal. But his aim was so perfect that I couldn’t think about anything else but make him a pro.
I wonder what the maid felt when the boy who once shot at her ascended the podium. Relief all over again?
(ToI link via email from Subhash Kalbarga. Many other readers have asked me to comment on the rewards being bestowed on Bindra with taxpayers’ money. This old post covers my feelings on the subject, I guess.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 12 August, 2008 in
India |
News |
Sport |
WTF
Note to Shailaja Bajpai: They don’t just call it “O-lump-ics”, they also call it “A-limp-ics.” What to do: English is an Indian language now. No?
Posted by Amit Varma on 12 August, 2008 in
Journalism |
Media |
Small thoughts
This is a terrific story.
And here’s Stanley Fish’s analysis of Van Doren’s piece, in which he talks of Wordsworth crossing the Alps without even knowing it, as did Van Doren, and, perhaps, as do we all.
Posted by Amit Varma on 12 August, 2008 in
Miscellaneous
I love this headline:
Monkeys ransack police officer’s office.
I think it is now appropriate for the government to set up a Ministry for Monkey Business. Bureaucrats must be appointed whose sole job is to issue licenses to monkeys, without which they shall not be allowed to ransack offices or bite tourists. It is an immediate need, and as fitting a use of the taxes I pay as, well, any other.
Posted by Amit Varma on 11 August, 2008 in
India |
News |
WTF
Earlier today NDTV 24x7 asked MS Gill, India’s sports minister, for his reaction to Abhinav Bindra’s gold medal. He said:
I congratulate myself and every other Indian.
I’m not sure what I contributed to Bindra’s fine achievement, but if the minister congratulates me, I must have done something. Yippee. If Bindra melts the medal one day, do you think I can ask for a share?
Earlier…
Posted by Amit Varma on 11 August, 2008 in
India |
Sport |
WTF
It seems that Jesus played cricket.
What a pity that PN Oak is dead. Such fun would have come.
(Link via email from Abhinav.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 10 August, 2008 in
News |
Sport |
WTF
This is priceless:
Four students from a school in Garhshankar town in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district have gone “missing” in the United States during their educational trip to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The teacher who accompanied them did not return either, but sent an e-mail saying that she had got married.
I wish the men and women who make India’s economic policies would ask themselves what it would take to make India a similar land of opportunity.
Posted by Amit Varma on 10 August, 2008 in
Economics |
India |
News
