football...

I do not understand football on television.
There. I’ve said it.

Don’t get me wrong, I quite like the game. Very entertaining. Especially the part where you holler obscenities at the opposite team, stomp your feet, pick up the ball and slam it into the other guy’s solar plexus. It is a great outlet for pent up anger too. Where else would twenty-two grown up men get to kick each other in the shins and get off calling it sport?
If you’d rather run around the kiddies’ park trying to kick a ball into the nearest hedge growth and in the process slam into a dozen people you could easily have avoided had you been a snitch more coordinated, go ahead. If you find ‘heading’ a projectile between two beams till you get a contre-coup injury gratifying, fine by me.
The smell of fresh air and armpits.
Aah! Nothing could be better!

But what purpose does football on T.V. serve! And why, pray, must I be made to sit through it?!
Believe me when I say I’ve sat through more than my fair share of football matches trying to comprehend the ‘active’ in offside. My guy said he loved football, F1, Metallica and me. I never quite got around to asking him the order. Possibly because of a vague feeling that he, like Jenny, would say ‘alphabetical’ which would land me at the end of the list.
He’d be glued to the telly for days at a stretch during the FIFA matches. Not only for the game but also all the reviews, dissections and highlights of the days play... Gawd!! Highlights are for when you’ve missed the game, not for memorizing it! (This from a person who would invariably start to fidget within the first hour of a movie). The guy would go into spasms of ecstasy each time ‘his team’ scored a goal and would set to work demolishing his nails during the penalty kick even if we were watching a re-telecast…
Yes, I indulged him by watching most matches, for apart from the fact that he ate, slept and dreamt football, 16, as I look back now, was an age I did do quite a few things more because they were the norm than because of any particular liking for them.

Sania mania ?

The day’s Pune Times advises Sania Mirza she’d be better off firing her salvo’s on-court.
Gawd! Let the gal be, already!
As if it wasn’t ridiculous enough to have half the Indian populace debate the merits of playing in a burkha! She’s playing tennis, for heavens’. And frankly, I applaud her for putting the clerics in their place with her comment that as long as she was winning it was no one else’s business whether her skirt measured 6” or 6’. You go girl!

But, to get to the issue, is there any such thing as freedom of speech in democratic India?
Yeah, sure. If you are insignificant enough. Only, don’t expect to be heard, that’s all. But if you happen to be someone whose views can be heard and if by some unlikely twist of fate you happen to be so naïve as to speak out about what you believe in… then God help you.
Take the precedent of Khushboo. The venerated Tamil actress now faces 20 criminal cases accusing her with ‘insulting’ the Tamil community. All for having expressed her views on safe sex. Actor-director Suhasini Manirathnam had to put forth a formal apology for coming to Khushboo’s defense on being issued a show-cause notice.

What is it about a celebrity speaking out that makes our hackles rise so...
I mean… what?? Is your pristine, prudence-purity beti suddenly going to streak across the street and shag the first lout she lays eyes on just because “Sania Mirza says so”? And, for the record, all the kid did say was:

"So there are two issues here, safe sex and sex before marriage. You don't want me to tell you that you have to have safe sex, whether it is before or after marriage. Everyone must know what he or she is doing."

Is it so very difficult to comprehend? She isn’t campaigning for people to have wild sex on the streets. All she is saying is that just in case wild sex on the streets is on your itinerary, a condom wouldn’t kill. Duh.

“She should restrict her liberal views to herself” said A. Ikram, the Ulema of the Darul Uloom, Centre for Islamic Studies.
VHP leader Acharya Dharmendra had a different point of view:
“I am an ardent fan of Sania. But she is trying to destroy the institutions like marriage and other social institutions by saying certain things which are beyond imagination,”
Beyond imagination…? All I can say is that I’m really sorry for you dude.
The sorry part about all this is that Sania knuckled under and had to deny all her earlier statements advocating safe sex. “I would like to clearly say on record that I could not possibly justify premarital sex, as it is a very big sin in Islam and one which I believe will not be forgiven by Allah,” Mirza said Friday. I for one think she ought to have stood up for the issue.

This is a bit out of context, but you’ve just got to hear what Acharya Dharmendra has to say about RSS leader K. Sudarshan’s suggestion that Hindus should have at least three children:
“When we cannot control the population of the minorities, to maintain the balance between the minority and the majority, Hindu women should be prepared for more labour pains”.
“If we cannot check the population of minorities through good efforts, we should increase our (Hindu) population.”

If these are the sort of people that are protecting our culture, no wonder we all consider it out utmost moral duty to lynch the genuine people who dare to speak out. It’s a slander-fest, dudes and dames, so let’s all pitch in, huh? And if you join ABVP now you get a totally FREE, larger than life and twice as natural poster of Ms. Mirza along with a book of matches and a bottle of kerosene. Prerequisite: An IQ score of not more than 69 and talent at mixing cocktails... the Molotov kind.

(As to why I’m reading the rag, my final exams start next month, so, obviously I’ve developed a sudden interest in, well, everything other than my patho textbook.)