In India's chaotic democracy there are many politicians who amass huge wealth starting from a humble beginning. Power is intoxicating and when you still do shady deals you keep it discreet. People who get caught are either plain stupid or novices.

So enter Shashi Tharoor a greenhorn in politics. He had a very successful stint working in the UN for 3 decades and at the fag end of his career was unlucky when contesting for the post of UN Secretary General. He comes back to India, contests the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket, wins the election and is nominated as the Minister of State for External Affairs. All this is very well known. Today when he submitted his resignation over the IPL scandal it was quite a painful end to a checkered career.

Personally to me, Shashi Tharoor was a very eloquent speaker and I had read quite a few of his articles. He did seem to know the pulse of the nation, connected to the youth with his tweets and was a popular rallying point for the media. No Indian politician (except a few like Rahul, Sachin Pilot) are known for their good looks. Shashi Tharoor in that aspect was a cut above the rest. Now when someone who just entered politics and gets to be a minister in his first outing that surely raises many eyebrows among the seasoned politicians. We Indians have this crab mentality and cannot digest the fact that someone is doing so well. The immediate instinct is to pull them down. Was Shashi Tharoor a victim of that?

There are Mayawatis and Amar Singhs and so many other corrupt politicians but they know how to play the game of power and money very well. Maybe Shashi can take a leaf out of their book. The country will surely miss his experience and its also a letdown for millions of his admirers. Public memory is short and who knows we might have him back at the helm in the not so distant future :)

Now coming back to my personal life, the week gone by especially the weekend was really exciting.
For the first time, I watched a soccer match and also played a game of tennis. Both were activities I wanted to do since a long time. Playing tennis was very exhausting which made me wonder how do the top tennis players manage? It definitely requires loads of stamina and physical endurance. I look forward to the next weekend with anticipation :)

(Image courtesy: http://specialnewsonline.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/shashi-tharoor1.jpg)

Most of us(Indians) love to watch movies. Be it Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada etc. We also speak the same language. The audience who are reading this article are computer literate, would have gone to a english medium school/college and if working would have chosen English as their medium of communication. Now its entirely a different situation altogether when hindi gets mixed with english making it hinglish and the same applies to other languages.

When I was in school, Hindi was one of my primary subjects. We had a ruled notebook where we would write down the hindi alphabets. Writing the "AA" or "EE" in Hindi was painful but good fun. Recently I was watching a movie, in that movie a person writes a letter in Hindi. For a moment, I felt like a kid at school who was going through the hindi lessons. My Hindi class was always fun and the credit goes to our teacher. All of us were afraid to sit on the front bench because the moment our hindi teacher would open her mouth spit would start flying like a missile and hit its target which in this case were us, the hapless students. Apart from that, she was a good hindi teacher.

So coming back to the point, I feel that we are losing touch with our languages. With all the emphasis being placed on English be it written or verbal, languages like hindi, even though widely spoken are losing their prominence. English is important to survive in today's cut throat competitive world but for the future generations languages like hindi, telugu etc might seem like a relic from the past. Even we though we speak the languages (with a smattering of English) we rarely write in our native language. Personally even though I can speak hindi, writing is a different genre altogether. I can't muster the courage to write a few lines. Each language has its own beauty and our native languages stand as a testimony to that. I wish there was some tool in this blog which would have allowed me to write a few words in Hindi :)

I am going to talk about another movie "Right Yaa Wrong". I watched it on DVD today. Honestly, I must admit I was impressed by the movie. It's a whodunit thriller. The audience knows the suspect but the manner in which the suspect builds up his defence is an interesting watch. The real hero of this movie is the Story/Script. We all are aware that the story/script is a casualty in many hindi movies (thankfully the trend seems to be changing). Right Yaa Wrong is one such movie which definitely proves us wrong :) Sunny Deol (a very restrained performance) as ACP Ajay who is confined to a wheel chair after injuring himself on duty, Irrfan Khan (excellent as usual) who is his colleague and best buddy, Isha Koppikar as the adulterous wife and Konkona Sen Sharma who plays the Devil's advocate play their parts well. Even the minor characters are taken care of to build a taut and gripping storyline. It also helps that the writer of this movie is also the director. This movie was never hyped during its release and may have been a box office turkey but personally I give it a thumbs up.
(Image courtesy: www.indif.com/.../hindi_Swar_chart.aspx)
(Image courtesy: www.chakpak.com/photo/right-ya-wrong/262702)

We all get caught up in the daily grind called Work and life becomes monotonous. So sometimes a good dose of humour is essential. What better way than April Fool's day.

I was very happy today. The reason being I managed to find atleast 6-7 scapegoats who took my bait and won the crown for April Fool's day. It was really cool. Genuinely Funny moments has become a rare commodity now-a-days but with this experiment of mine I am sure there is still hope :)

(Image courtesy: http://www.southcom.com.au/~seymour/aprilfool/jester.gif)