alice's peephole

The report on how each medal won by UK cost 5.5 million pounds is doing the rounds on the internet. Of course our newspapers pick up Abhinav Bindra’s tweet about it and set off to write their own theories about it. Reporting and writing from ignorance seem to have become so inherent in Indian press that I no longer let myself be angered by the things I read. I let it go when ‘insightful reports’ surfaced discussing BCCI’s release about the huge economic impact that the IPL creates. Not a single article did I come across, that even mentioned the flaws on this method, that is regarded by economists the world over as unreliable. If only investing (pouring money) into a few athletes and finding a few numbers to describe the success of a single league was enough to paint an accurate picture of the sports scene in India. But just this once, I'm not letting it go without adding my own 2 bit opinions on the subject. A few months ago I started wondering about why the Indian hockey tea...

Continuing on the theme from my last post on fitting in – takes me back to school – to the source of that feeling of being an outsider. My parents had always said to me, “No one can demand your respect, they have to earn it”. And that applied for everyone, from elders to teachers. Now this is shocking and the exact anti-thesis of good Indian upbringing, but I heard it often enough at home, and I believed in it. The problem wasn’t the believing, it was the execution and the repercussions. I remember the first ever incident I faced in school, when the disillusionment of a perfect kindergarten experience shattered before my (back-then) innocent eyes. After my first day in Grade 1, I came home cribbing to my dad that the desk I was assigned in class was unsteady. It shook when I wrote, effectively making an already difficult task for a 5 year old almost impossible. My dad suggested that I tell the teacher about it, like any normal parent might do. Unfortunately, I still remember ...