2007 - The Year in Retrospect

As 2007 draws to a close, I thought of spotlighting some incidents happening across the world which I thought were Highs and Lows of the year. These are incidents that touched me in more ways than one in my continual education on the ways of life. Here goes…..


THE HIGHS

Special Olympics at Shanghai: “The Children of a Lesser God” - people with all kinds of physical disabilities and IQ lesser than 70, participated in an Olympics like Games. Even a small footage of the event would melt the hardest person of steel, so touching is it to see the unadulterated joy of these disabled people. Moments such as these make you view life in an entirely different perspective, telling us healthy ones how lucky we are to live life normally and well. It is also a victory of the indomitable spirit of human beings to live life amidst all possible adversity.

Iraq crowned champions of the Asian Cup Soccer Championship: Against all odds, Iraq’s victory was stuff of fairytales. A team assembled disjointedly by Shias, Sunnis and Kurds under a Brazilian coach who was just 2 months in the job stunned the whole world by capping a dream win. No one, not even the die hard Iraqi gave them a whiff of victory but the team defeated firm favourites Australia, Saudi Arabia et al to win the championship. For sportspersons of a country ravaged by war, who often do not return and seek sports asylum when they manage to leave the Iraqi shores for an international sports event, this was monumental.

Dadagiri of the Royal Bengal Tiger: “Attitude determines Altitude” is NOT a Platitude. This is something that I strongly believe in. It is that human trait that overrides talent, ability, aptitude and everything else. It is all about mind games that makes a person strong in life and override all obstacles. Sourav Ganguly epitomised it better than anyone that I can think of in the last year. Dumped, chided, jested on, written off (wrongly or otherwise), there was nothing worse that an individual can countenance in his profession sphere and it surely rubs off slowly in one’s personal life too. It can completely break brittle people but then people like Sourav epitomise mental strength through their attitude. Twice dropped from the team in a long international career spanning 15 years and running, he showed that when the chips are truly down, you need attitude, determination, spunk and self belief to prove all your critics wrong and take back the position that you rightly deserve in your sphere of life.

Narendra Modi is also lucky third time: Amidst the Congress party’s political gaffe of positioning him as the “Maut ka Saudagar”, Modi turned out to be the “Vote ka Saudagar” when he was elected the CM of Gujarat for the 3rd time in succession, possibly exorcising and burying the ghosts of Godhra eternally. Well that is something that billions of Indians will get to know over time, but right now for the much maligned (and much adored at the same time) Modi, it is crowning glory.

The Song remains the Same: Led Zeppelin, one if not THE most celebrated and worshipped acts of rock music history made a glorious comeback on the 10th of December at the O2 arena in London. The 3 surviving members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones teamed with the son of late drummer John “Bonzo” Bonham, Jason to recreate magic and take audiences back in time. It was a phenomenal musical success leading to speculation that the band might stage a world tour shortly. Whether that happens in reality is something that music enthusiasts can only hope and cross fingers on, but the song will always remain the same as far as Led Zepp goes even if it’s been a Long and Lonely time without them.

Pablo Fajardo: The lawyer whose passion for his native Ecuador was borne by his historic lawsuit against Chevron Texaco’s toxic legacy in the Northern Ecuadorian region of the Amazon rainforest was recently awarded as a CNN Hero. The lawsuit for this case has turned into the largest environmental class action lawsuit in history not only for Pablo’s lifelong effort to force one of the world's largest oil corporations to pay more than $6 billion to clean up toxic waste in the Amazon rain forest but also like Alfred Gore his unflinching pursuit for something that was noble and came from his heart. That he only became a lawyer in 2004, after first working as a manual laborer in the oil fields of his hometown of Lago Agrio, while completing a correspondence law degree only adds mystic to his wonderful journey. Ecuador has amazing natural entities like the Rain forest, the Andes and the Galápagos islands and these are all feared to go extinct reeling under the dual effects of toxic waste and global warming.

Green Revolutionary Al Gore: A few months back, I had written in my column that Al Gore was out to green the world with a vengeance and even if it had political undertones, it was an effort truly superhuman in nature. With the malaise of global warming looming large on the world and human race if you will, it is the drive and zeal of such people that will restore sanity on us humans who ourselves are the progeny of all sorts of reasons the world is heating up (pun intended). That the Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on him vindicates his genuine passion for the cause. Al Gore shared the noble with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose Indian top honcho, Rajendra K. Pachauri, said that science had won out over skepticism. In a fantastic 2007, besides the Noble, Gore also won an Oscar, an Emmy and championed the Live Earth movement, again a series of worldwide concerts held on 7 July 2007 that initiated a three-year campaign to combat climate change.

Ricardo Kaka: The baby face is not a baby anymore. He has quite deservedly taken the mantle of the best player in the world from the likes of the Ronaldinhos, Ronaldos and Messis. The ballplayer and scorer rolled into one has lit up a dismal season for Milan by spurring them to the UEFA Champions League and the World Club championship victories. While at it he continuously professed his love for God and proudly flaunted that he was a virgin when he got married sweetheart Caroline at the age of 23.

Sexual Equity: The All England Club announced equal prize money for both the men and women’s winners at the 2007 Wimbledon ending a long period of cries for the WTA on the matter. Thus men’s champ Fedex and the women’s champ Venus pocketed equal cheques of a whopping 700,000 British Pounds. Significantly, it so figured, that half of Britain’s millionaires were female. Did someone say “women’s lib”?

Sunita Williams: The PIO who is a United States Naval officer and a NASA astronaut was the 2nd woman of Indian heritage after Kalpana Chawla to be selected by NASA for a space mission. She holds three records for female space travellers: longest spaceflight (195 days), number of space walks (4), and total time spent on spacewalks (29 hrs 17 min). She became the first person to run a marathon in orbit, when she ran the Boston Marathon from the space station on April 16, 2007. Interestingly Williams' sister, Dina Pandya ran the marathon on Earth, and Sunita received updates on their progress from Mission Control. Not only did she complete Chawla’s unfinished dream but became a huge inspiration and a role model for women all Indian women.



MAN OF THE YEAR: Without a shadow of doubt, Alfred Gore was my man of the year for his passionate drive to rid the earth of global warming and making it greener and a better place for the generations to come.

WOMAN OF THE YEAR: Sunita Williams was my woman of the year for not only creating world records for female astronauts but showing India and the supposed 3rd world that all it takes is inspiration, doggedness and spunk to reach the summit.



THE LOWS

Terrorism & its many architects: The term that runs shivers down the spine of mankind, Terrorism unfortunately simply cannot be curbed. Whether in the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Europe or US, terrorism continues to show its ugly head and the head is getting uglier and bigger every passing year. And while absolute world peace and total terror eradication is an utopia and can possibly never be achieved, due to ulterior motives of powers to be not to mention the abuse of religion as a critical factor for such terrorism, it is high time that sanity prevailed across global leaders & community crusaders so that this evil can be mitigated and millions of harmless civilians do not lose their lives in war savaged terrains, not to mention dynamic leaders like Benazir Bhutto.

The Taming of the Shrewd: It pains me to term Marion Jones such, for I was one of the billions fascinated by her grace and talent on the sporting field, but like many others, I feel that implicating her albeit belatedly, for using drugs to cheat in sport, is justice of sorts and in a funny sort of way can help her become clean in the larger perspective of becoming a better individual in life.

Formula1 Espionage: If the 2007 F1 season was the best in recent years, it was not only due the scintillating win of Kimi Raikkonen in the very last circuit at Interlagos, Brazil but also due to the “Spygate”. Team Mclaren Mercedes was fined a whopping 100 million USD for an espionage imbroglio when they spied on technical information from rivals Ferrari. Later on Renault were also charged with the same offence, but strangely and luckily escaped any fine, monetary or otherwise.

The Holy Trinity that was immortalized: Luciano Pavarotti, Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni all died natural deaths to leave the world of art bereft of their irrefutable genius.

Pavarotti, the Italian tenor in opera music, who crossed into popular music and became one of the most beloved vocal performers, died from cancer in September at his hometown in Modena. Popular stardom came amongst others at the 1990 World Cup in Italy. The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin saw him performing for the last time. Pavarotti sang Nessun dorma, with the crowd as its Chorus, and got a thunderous standing ovation. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work benefiting refugees, the Red Cross and other causes.

Bergman was a Swedish film, stage, and opera director recognized as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of modern cinema. Some of his works like The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, Fanny and Alexander, Persona, Summer Interlude are some of the genius’ masterpieces which have not only stood the test of time but shows the man in an entirely different light – arcane, abstruse and iconoclastic. His death is a huge loss to world cinema.

Michelangelo Antonioni was an Italian modernist film director whose films are widely considered as some of the most influential in film aesthetics. His films mostly Italian are aesthetically complex - critically stimulating though elusive in meaning. They are ambiguous works that pose difficult questions and resist simple conclusions. Classical narrative causalities are dissolved in favour of expressive abstraction. He also made 3 English films, one of which Zabriskie Point (1970), was Antonioni's first set in America. It was not successful even though its soundtrack incorporated popular artists such as Pink Floyd (who wrote new music specifically for the film), the Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones. It depicted the counterculture movement, but was heavily criticized for the blank performances of its stars, neither of whom had acted before.

Nature hits again: Over 3,000 people were believed to have died and many thousands injured after Cyclone Cider hits Bangladesh in November. It demolished everything near the seashore affecting thousands of houses, buildings, structures, trees and whatever was standing. Almost reminiscent of the Asian Tsunami that hid South Asia in late 2004, the cyclone left thousands of people with nothing in hand. No house, no food, no clothes and nothing at all. Nature is venting its ire on human kind like never before and we hope for better times in the years to come.

Mockery in the Beautiful Game: David Beckham, one of the sporting icons of our times has long traded his soccer boots for endorsements and moolah. Dropped by both club and country, a half fit Becks made a lucrative contract of 250 million USD in the guise of evangelising soccer in the US of A. He hardly played a game or three and could not further his new club, LA Galaxy to the next rounds in the MLS. On the other hand, artist extraordinaire, Juan Roman Riquelme, deemed by many as the best player on the planet, does not find a soccer club as he is deemed to centric to the game for his club Villareal who recently loaned him to Boca Juniors. Ironically, one of the best national teams, Argentina cannot think of a building a team without him and models their soccer strategy around Juan. Strange are the ways of the world.

Nandigram & Singur: CPM messed up big time in these 2 separate incidents as hundreds of acres of farmland they wanted to acquire under the guise of industrialisation, backfired on them like never before. Not only were innocent lives massacred, total chaos reigned, as the ruling party often had their feet in their mouths with conflicting statements issued. Political parties like the Trinamool tried to leverage the scenario to their benefit but all it could muster was some “bandhs” that threw the state into total disarray. They did not show any genuine inclination to sort out their misgivings through discussions with the State Government. Overall it was a terrible black spot on the state already reeling under pressure from all quarters on the issue of corporate investments.

Bob Woolmer: The original laptop coach was “killed” / died in mysterious circumstances in Jamaica during the cricket World Cup. This was the night after Pakistan, a cricketing powerhouse were dumped out of the WC by minnows Ireland in a shock encounter. Woolmer’s autopsy, which had to be done twice, was mired in utter confusion and conspiracy theorists were having a field day. The most plausible explanation was that Bob had got abreast of the betting syndicate which was huge in the sub-continent running into billions of dollars and was about to publish it in his forthcoming book. With Pakistan so meekly bowing out, it was reasoned that many Paki stars had thrown away the game for money and this had supposedly enraged Bob. Though his team-mates including the vitriolic Shoaib Akhtar, with whom Bob had had an open spat, all sided by his passion for the game and love & betterment of Pakistan cricket, the case has not been proven yet and the guilty are yet to be booked. Whatever the case may be, though, this surely was one of the darkest days of cricket and world sport at large.

Taslima Nasreen: The controversial authoress was attacked by fundamentalists in Hyderabad. WB Govt perforce asked Taslima to leave Kolkata after Muslim fanatics protested her presence in the state leading to chaos and clashes in Kolkata. Ironically, as it to project a new façade, Narendra Modi offered her asylum in Gujrat.

The Unholy Trinity: Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are a trio who rake up airtime for all the wrong reasons. While it is lewd videos, knickerless postures or bingeing sprees, these celebrities who are spending jail time today were ironically once lauded for special talent like singing or acting. It goes to show that success, if it goes to the head and not nurtured well, can make devils out of normal and even good people.


VILLAIN OF THE YEAR: Marion Jones for deceitfully charting a path for fame and glory and then finally falling flat on her face in shame when exposed 6 long years after she shot into stardom.

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For me, the year 2007 was special too and can be termed as the “Year of Travel”. I travelled to seven different countries and haunted exotic locales from Monte Carlo to Venice. Professionally, it was a great year of success and personally I made many friends both nationally and internationally, some as eclectic as budding artists from the Lee Strasberg Film Institute in New York to co-workers in Greece.

I played serious soccer after many years and that too in the home of the world champions. It has now become a part of my weekly routine as I “ply trades” with other soccer enthusiasts (Italians, Spanish, Latinos alike) in the green turf of Italy and self-actualise a personal passion. Being fondly dubbed by my soccer mates as the first Indian to score a goal in Italy was the icing on that delicious cake.

I also met a wonderful person who showed me life and love in an entirely different hue. Unfortunately, the person “passed away” but hopefully will come back to me in another form and shape in future. But C (as I would fondly call the person) made a large part of 2007 very special to me, filling me with hope, unbridled joy and positive energy. Thanks C for being with me even if for a short period in my life.

My mother got a new lease of life and legs as she had a successful total knee replacement surgery and will now able to walk painlessly and normally again after many years. Medical science does not cease to amaze me, the way medicine and technology are leveraged to restore normalcy in people.

Incidents like these and many others will egg me on positively for a better and more successful 2008, I believe. Hope it is a great year for all of you too and may you realise all your ambitions and dreams and even some fantasies. Cheers and Good Luck!!!