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Do you remember those twelve tasks we read as children and in particular Hercules' (Heracles) Fifth Labor, the one involved in cleaning the filthy Augean stables in a single day? It is indeed gratifying to note that both Hercule Poirot and Asterix found it worthy to emulate twelve tasks in their own special ways. It was a humanly impossible task to clean accumulated filth in a day. Instead of employing a shovel and a basket, our childhood hero diverted two rivers through the stable yard and got the job done without getting dirty. I wonder what he will do if he were given an assignment to clean the present day filth accumulated in the form of corruption related to forthcoming Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

One corporate brags: Impossible is Nothing. For us in India corruption is nothing. Also, nothing is nothing! It is part and parcel of our daily existence and we draw our sustenance only through the media of corruption. But for the British Queen who made a big fuss, we would have ignored CWG corruption since we are all familiar with countless Olympic size corruptions. Queen being a Queen, has the prerogative of getting furious over allegations of corruption involving Commonwealth Games. How can a common man afford to get furious? Even a Prime Minister can not get furious. Couple of days back our beloved Prime Minister went on to inspect CWG venues and was spell bound at the beauty of stadia and paid accolades to them. Alas I am no Keats; otherwise I would have penned few poems.

Hercules needed two rivers to clean the stables. We have only one River Yamuna near the CWG venues stinking of corruption, not to mention the NCR. With only one River flowing by, he can do precious little. We are running short of time. The best that can still be done under the circumstances is to hold CWG as per the original schedule by stepping on the pedal, change gears and speed up the processes and focus only on CWG i.e., Corruption Without any Games.

Indian Common Man – 2010 and Vote of Thanks

The media miserably failed in driving the importance of once in a lifetime mega event which took place in the city of Hyderabad (Deccan) during this month of August 2010. Common men knew virtually nothing about it. This is an indication of the poverty of our media (which comprises of few hundred TV channels and some dozens of daily newspapers) and their lopsided priorities. For our Fourth Estate and its visual equivalent, covering an event means publishing the photo of the dignitary formally inaugurating the event but not the event itself! Neither the prizewinners nor their life time work seems to matter, let alone other distinguished speakers.

Nearly six months back yours truly offered a National news paper and another City based one, to send out on weekly basis, brief notes on the works of young mathematicians world over (with an admittedly intended bias towards those of Indian origin) primarily to reach out the young readers and make a feeble attempt to influence them to pursue the path of mathematics. Our media felt such coverage is totally unwarranted and did not respond!

In one of the earlier blog posts, Tarantula wished Anand a score of 38-2-0 or better and it is indeed gratifying to note that Anand scored 39-1-0.

We all need to express our gratitude to TRS activists for having resumed their activities only on the day after the formal conclusion of the event.

We need to express our gratitude to Kapil Sibal et. al. for adding some life and spice to the lack luster news coverage by way of asking a four time world champion to prove his national identity which was not apparent to Indian bureaucracy! G. K. Chesterton wrote in an essay “…will call a spade a spade; but only when it is a grave-digger's spade” which is true of most of us on most occasions but not when it comes to Prof. Rajat Tandon. Can someone clarify whether our HRD Ministry recognizes a PhD from Yale? I sincerely hope Sibal does not start digging. On the otherwise insipid cake presented by the media, Sibal's is definitely a tasty icing.