The Formula 1 Super Lotto

Just when you thought that the FIA was done exercising its gray cells over the rules for this season, they have come up with something really uncalled for. The Sunday qualifying is off and there will be single lap qualifying on Saturday. Who knows how much more excitying this will make F1, but what it will certainly do is turn grid positions into a lottery. Not only will the drivers have no margin for error, the weather can play a far bigger role. Imagine that case where the Minardis and Jordans have posted qualifying times on a dry track and its starts raining within the hour and you have the Raikkonnens and Alonsos at the back of the pack! I am all for a interesting twist in the tail but not of the mocking kind.

For your eyes only...

There's yet another controversy over an upcoming hindi movie, this time over Naina. Some opthalmologists are worried that the astounding success that the movie is going to achieve will discourage people from eye-donation. Hmm.. so in that case the real estate industry should have been on the streets after Bhoot and Vaastushastra. After all, not many people would buy ghost infested dwellings, right? I wonder where these guys were when Nirupa Roy got her eyesight back courtesy two jyotis in Amar Akbar Anthony? Had that phenomenon caught cult-following, these guys would have been out of business :) Chill it guys, its just a movie after all (pretty disappointing as well, I presume. I am about to watch it tommorrow with minimal, infact negative expectations). I am beginning to imagine a little handshaking between the filllumwalas and the protestors as a sad attempt to catch some free publicity to carry the film through the week.

(Sub)Way to go...

The ICC's Cricket Committee has put forth numerous recommendations to make the format of the ODI game more "interesting". One of those is that of "soccer-style substitutions".

The CC also recommended the introduction of soccer-style substitutes for international cricket wherein a player could be replaced at any stage of a match but would then be ruled out for the remainder of the match. Both the substitute and the substituted player would receive a cap and the replacement could happen at any stage of the match, including during a batting innings.

That's great news for Sourav Ganguly... he doesn't need to undergo that merciless torture of having to go out to bat and make runs! He can sit calmly in the dressing room and send out a sub. Nice.

'Hit' them hard

Saw an interesting juxtaposition of movie ads in the weekend listings - that innocuous and inane movie called Kya Kool Hai Hum is being exalted as the "biggest hit of the summer" after claiming to have survived a "smashing second week". Now, I wonder how much of this promotion is apporoved by the distributors, but if a breezy two weeks is the criteria for a "hit" the film industry should hang their head in shame. But that's not the interesting part. Right next to it was an ad celebrating the 500th (!) week of that fantastic, timeless masterpiece - Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. Now that's what I call a hit. People responsible for garbage like Kaal, K2H2 (borrowing from the other stink master, K3G) also deserve a hit, albeit of a different kind.

I see the darkness spreading

Well, you don’t have to be an Oracle to foresee Maharashtra’s powerless future. Yesterday’s Sakal carried the state government’s full page ‘message’ intended for the forsaken population of Maharashtra reeling under daily power cuts. It’s more of an attempt of throwing their hands up rather than saying we are sorry for the mess that we, the 6 year old administration along with a couple of them before us, have put you people into. Given the context, pictures of the CM, Home Minister and the Power/Energy Minister at the top of the page look like those of the culprits of the situation rather than celebrated leaders. Of course, there are the regular promises of long term solutions for the current power crisis, but when it comes to immediate solutions (which there are hardly any), they include such vague measures as “taking strong action against illegal users” (when was the last time that happened?), “efficient usage of current generation capacity” (by an organization that shamelessly reports 30% transmission losses) and the most brazen – public awareness about electricity usage (a way of saying, if you want electricity, don’t use it – well, maybe only a little). Also, one of the greatest election campaign farce of recent times - “free electricity to farmers” is about to come to an oh-so-expected end.

During all this, Mumbai city gets uninterrupted power. (In the given circumstances, shutting down a bunch of hoardings in the evenings feels like observing a minute’s silence, and then getting on with your work). Interestingly, the reason they cite for Mumbai not facing a single power cut is that Mumbai is fed by two private power generators – Tata and Reliance. Infact, these two together have surplus power. Is this an innuendo toward the final solution of power reforms? Vainly debated over the years, entry of private companies into the power sector is essential and inevitable. The telecommunication boom that we are witnessing today should be an example worth looking up to. The MSEB, helped by years of political interference has managed to turn into an unaccountable, sluggish monolithic behemoth that now finds itself in an abyss that it simply cannot get out of on its own. Gradually opening up the power sector and relieving the MSEB of some of its ‘load’ would have been planning wisdom. Now, it’s more of a compulsion. Ironically, the only quickly available power source is Enron, which we fought so hard to set up and then fought some more to shut it down. Which is why Gaurav smells a fish. The people of this erstwhile prosperous state deserve better than this. They deserve accountability and efficiency, even if it comes at a price, but until that happens there’s hardly any light at the end of this dark tunnel.