Insensitive Premier League

Life is full of ironies and we are a bundle of contradictions. Consider these: school children pooled in resources to the extent of Rs 15 lakhs for the drought hit villages. And we have franchisees, iconic players, politicians hell bent on ‘show-must-go-on’ policy. So it is IPL all the way. Can there be a greater irony?

Equally ironical is the fact that it takes a disaster to occur to wake us up to reality. Till second successive monsoon failure, we were not even willing to admit there was drought. The question then is, should we have waited this long? Does it not bite our conscience that we turned a nelson eye to such grave situation of farmers?

Just picture the drought-hit areas and the IPL extravaganza. If this is not an irony of immeasurable proportion, one wonders what else is!

Wrinkled skin, creased forehead, eyes staring fixedly at ‘nothing’ – sight and the plight of such a human body have now become so common in those drought-hit places. And we have a gang of intellectuals, big businessmen, politicians playing the blame game even as the hapless people wait for a drop of water! What an outlandish irony?

No longer do we see tears in the eyes of the drought-hit farmers for they have ‘dried’ up. The sight of people walking miles to fetch a pail of water is gut wrenching. Yet we hear the war cry: why pick IPL alone? Get to the root of the problem. Will shifting a few matches solve their problem? Ask the government and the civic administration. What about golf courses being watered? Questions plenty. But no easy answers.

There is no doubt that we should address the root cause of the problem. But then if it takes eternity to get to the root cause, find solutions, implement and hope that they produce the desired results, the short term measure of shifting a few matches is definitely a better option. ‘In the long run, we would all be dead’, so said J M Keynes!

IPL - a hugely popular commercial extravaganza – is an irreversible phenomenon. Ever since its launch in 2008, it has grabbed the headlines, caught the imagination of the young and old alike, and has become an instant success with ever increasing fan-following and media coverage. It has proved to be a god-send for the fringe cricketers who otherwise would never have made it to the top in the traditional set up.

Mired in controversies, backed by business magnates and celebrities, IPL is a bundle of ironies with its ‘in-your-face’ show of money power.

While media makes a spectacle of tears running down the faces of players and the spectators every time a match is won or lost, the tears of drought-hit farmers go unnoticed. The contrast is hard to miss even to the most Insensitive Privileged Lot!

Beefcase & Briefcase

“Stop passing the buck. Rise above petty politics. See the bigger picture. Just do it”

Funny and Punny chatted along. Funny sought a ‘brief’ from Punny on a ‘case’.

Punny: The security needs to be ‘beefed’ up (having  hearing problem P mistook ‘brief’ for ‘beef’)

Funny: I asked for a ‘brief’ on the case. If it doesn’t ‘suit’ you, i’ll ‘boot’ you, mind it

P: Healthcare badly needs a ‘beef’ up

F: if you are not giving me the ‘brief’, you will come to grief

P:It’s so ‘Irani’cal – our education system. It needs to be ‘beefed’ up

F: You are barking up the wrong ‘beef’

P: Control your line, ‘beef’ up the border

F: Ok, let’s have a ‘brief’ on the ‘colored’ money

P:It’s the money, honey. When it comes to money, black or white – we are color-neutral!

F: you are finally coming to your senses

P: You are singing the same old ‘RaGa’ tune, ‘modi’fy it with bit of dy’NaMo’

F: So you are not coming out with any ‘brief’ on any of the cases

P: Let me put a lid on the ‘beef’ and bring in the ‘brief’case you seem to be obsessed with

F&P then summed up:’for every suitcase, there is a briefcase’. And now an add-on:a ‘beef’case

Even as the debate – noisy and nasty – continues to rage consuming the ‘prime time’ of the Funnys and Punnys and that of the aam admis leaving them ever so confused, the netas are busy as ever taking the nation for a ride. From ‘suitcase to briefcase to beefcase’, the netas turn ‘cow’ard and continue to ‘slaughter’ the people’s legitimate aspirations, making mince’meat’ of their – by now fast fading – hopes for ‘ache din’!

“Stop passing the buck. Rise above petty politics. See the bigger picture. Just do it”

Fair Deal

Funny: Vijay Mallya says he won’t get a fair trial in India

Punny: How unfair particularly when he had a ‘you-scratch-my-back-i-scratch-yours’ deal

F:the deal which ensured the ‘great escape’ to London, was it a fair deal?

P:Even as the hapless bankers  were pleading in the court for his detention and suspension of his passport, Mallya was laughing his way to airport

F:Leaving the bankers with egg on their face

P: And you call them professional bankers?

F: Na, more like a bunch of jokers, seriously

P: A consortium of Bankers with ‘blinkers-on forever’

F: Consider the sequence of events – Mallya, sans the battery of giggling beauties, in broad daylight, with a truckload of baggage, bidding an eternal goodbye to India and at about the same time bankers pleading with the court for his detention and revocation of passport!!

P: Comedy of errors or errors of comedy?

F: I reckon both

P: Are you suggesting a ‘wilful’ deal to turn a nelson eye to the ‘great escape’?

F: But bankers have labelled him ‘wilful defaulter’

P: Both are equally guilty – one for ‘wilful deal’, the other for ‘wilful default’

Even as the media, the public and the bankers fret-n-fume, rage-n-rant, all we can do for now is to watch him being interviewed by ‘financial times’ on his ‘financial mess’! What an irony? What a deal?

A Fish For A King

 

Funny: Vijay Mallya has all the ‘time now’ to face ‘Financial Times’ in London

Punny: Of course, he neither had ‘time then’ nor the face for a face-off with ‘garrulous Goswami’

F: Timid questions with an equally timid and deadpan expression, FT’s interview looked more like a boring debate on an even more boring topic!

P: Which Mallya answered with a face as straight and a mind as crooked

F: in the interview, he had the temerity to claim he had no wrong

P: what if he ‘defaulted’ on remitting taxes collected to the government

F: It matters little that he ‘wilfully defaulted’ on paying salaries to his own ‘desi-employees’ leaving them ‘de-spirited’

P: While he was all caution when he ‘wilfully’ settled all the claims of all the overseas employees

F: Mallya claims there is ‘haste’ in process

P: He is right – what if it took 6-7-8 years to be ‘hasty’. Government authorities knew of non-remittance of taxes, PFs years ago.

F:You mean, there was a ‘deliberate deal’ to be slow to ‘hasten’ the process!

P: Are you suggesting a ‘wilful’ deal to turn a nelson eye to the ‘great escape’?

F: But bankers have labelled him ‘wilful defaulter’

P: Both are equally guilty – one for ‘wilful deal’, the other for ‘wilful default’

Even as the media, the public and the bankers fret-n-fume, rage-n-rant, all we can do for now is to watch him being interviewed by ‘financial times’ on his ‘financial mess’! What an irony? What a deal?

Deals Are Forever

 

Funny: Back then, there was a ‘new-clear-deal’

Punny: Oh, yes, that was when every Man, Mohan and Sing was singing ‘sing is king’

F: In an ‘august’ chill, an ‘august’ gathering sat in a ‘land’ facing ‘west’ and struck a deal

P: They had hopes of hopping around in the chopper

F: The deal had an ‘italian’ angle to it

P: Explain

F: A close look will tell you words written in ‘italics’ are always slanted \ at an angle

P: Call it an ‘italian’ angle

F: Or an ‘italian’ angel

P: Let’s be fair, it is an ‘italian angle’ with the grace of an ‘italian angel’!

F: For ‘Christ’s sake, don’t make a ‘hash’ of this deal in the ‘middle’ of all these ‘men’

P: Because, we are ‘So-nea’ to the deal

F: You mean ‘so near’

P: Ah!’med’iated for the deal, deserves a ‘pat’

F: It’s his SP

P: Now what is that?

F: Selling Point, sometimes unique

P: Add to it a good Track record

F: Let’s keep it short, SPT for Selling Point Trackrecord

P: You are good at acronym

F: Let us not be so acrimonious about this acronym called SPT lest we ‘court’ trouble

P: If it comes to that – ‘court’ trouble – it will take centuries, during which time we would all be ‘hopping’ around

F: But it is Italy, not India

P: You mean they could ‘kick’ us ‘back’

F: Yes, with all the ‘kicks’ that we got on our ‘back’

P: Then, let’s call off the deal

F: Deal or no deal, deal is a deal is a deal

P:For now it is a deal that there was never a deal and let every TV in New Delhi rage and rant about the deal, but the ‘buck won’t stop’

F: Whether it is an ‘italian-delight’ or a ‘desi-dealite’, it is ‘time-now’ to ‘pay-back!!

Silly Point – so thought BCCI

Silly Point – so thought BCCI

Funny: Back then in 1983, it was the minion India facing the mighty West Indies in Cricket World Cup final. No one gave India a chance.

Punny: Come 2016, it was the wiry Lodha wearing an innocent smile taking on the ‘pawar’full BCCI. Many thought BCCI would bulldoze Lodha

F: Silly of BCCI to have not seen the point

P: Now Supreme Court has literally and figuratively ‘swept’ away BCCI

F: 70+ score in Cricket and you look for century

P: Here, it is ‘obituary’!

F: They thought they could ‘swing’ the decision in their favor

P: What they didn’t reckon was it could be ‘reversed’

F: BCCI even tried to ‘spin’ a yarn quoting a comment allegedly by no less than ICC president labelling the Lodha Committe recommendations as ‘government interference’

P: SC read the ‘wrong-un’ well and countered it by ‘perjury and contempt of court’

F: It left BCCI running for ‘cover’ instead of ‘running between wickets’

P: Lodha ‘squared them up’ with sustained fiery attack

F: And left them ‘leaden footed’

P: Not knowing whether to go ‘forward’ or ‘backward’, ‘attack’ or ‘defend’, BCCI in the end ended up achieving neither

F: BCCI ‘overstepped’ trying every trick, going ‘over’ and ‘around’ the legalities

P: Ajay can no longer ‘shirk’e away from his responsibility

F: Ragged and dragged, Anurag’s ‘innings’ has been cut short abruptly

While, West Indies paid the price for complacency, BCCI is ‘clean bowled’ by its arrogance. Forced into ‘retirement’, its pride ‘hurt’, BCCI is licking the wounds. For now all it can do is cast a surreptitious ‘glance’ toward the ‘fine leg’ in the ‘gulley’ region! It was a ‘test’ that BCCI couldn’t survive and is reduced to ‘ashes’. Bruised and battered, banished beyond ‘boundary’, BCCI is at ‘sixes and sevens’ unable to figure out what hit them. Will it rise like phoenix from the ‘ashes’? Present tense, only future will tell!