Of Red-Cards and Some Canoodles!

Of Red Cards and Some Canoodles!

And for another week-end, a few stray thoughts and a few general observations and a few points of view (some of it my own work and some as reported by media):

Like the biggest story this week has to be the way entire FIFA team was red-carded. VPs Richard Webb and Eugenio Figueredo and former VP Jack Warner along with a clutch of officials of associates and affiliates have received red-cards. Oh what a tangled Webb we weave when first we practise to deceive! The dollar figures being tossed about are really impressive and confirm that FIFA is indeed an MNC. The whole affair would perhaps make mafia bosses wonder if they were in the wrong business. Now that Chuck the Blazer has blazed a trail, there should be more skeletons tumbling out the closets. Little Jack Warner who was quietly relaxing in his corner in Trinidad & Tobago after demitting his FIFA office under a cloud, couldn’t  have guessed that his real nightmare is just about to begin, while Eugenio tries to figure out how pursuing one’s goals in life could land one in gaol. But to a lay person, it was surprising to see the blighter,who was perched right at the top, sap that very tree on which he was sitting and still get re-elected for the 5^th time.  The drama doesn’t end here. Watch this space as the game goes into penalty shoot-out. One only hopes that more past players like Michel Platini step up and put the house of the beautiful game in order. 

And while we were all busy watching the IPL drama unfold in India, England and New Zealand played out a most absorbing two-test series. A feisty Brendon McCallum and the team he is building  proved to be quite a handful for the Brits. It was a testimony to that fact that test matches could still be exciting to watch.  Ultimately a series drawn at 1-1 was the only fair outcome for the two well-matched adversaries, but it would have been great if the series had more matches. Maybe Pepsi should start sponsoring future England – NZ series. Yeh dil maange more!

Bruce Jenner, Olympic Decathlon Gold Medal winner at Montreal in 1976 and a World record holder in that event, decided he / she has had enough of being a male and changed over to a new avatar, Caitlyn. Reportedly there was an online petition asking she be stripped of her Gold, but thankfully good sense seems to have prevailed and she can now claim to be the only woman to have won the Gold at Olympics in a men’s event. (The other way, a man winning in women’s event, may have been achieved but is not likely to be confirmed for obvious reasons). One does not know if at 65, Ms Caitlyn Jenner wants to have a tilt at Gold in Women’s Olympic event, but if she does compete, we may have a record which will stand tall till the Mount Olympus itself finds a place on terrestrial maps. 

Speaking of Mounts, we saw a new mountain erupt on the Indian scene last week. Mount Maggi. Whether it is actually a mountain or just a molehill seen through a microscope, only time will be able to tell. For the time being, however, Nestle has to live with the red-card. Lead or any other harmful ingredients in any food product over the acceptable limits surely needs to be corrected. Organized food processing industry has to take the lead (no pun intended) in providing clean food products, and lack of controls in other inputs, fruits, vegetables, water or air cannot constitute a valid defence for the organized industry to disclaim its responsibility. In a bizarre twist in that can only be termed as “shooting the messenger”, the celebs who endorsed the product have been served a notice holding them responsible. One thing is certain, this has opened up a Pandora’s Box and you can expect many more products to come under the lens in near future.

My friend Guy Wise had this question : all of us have seen the sizzling  Madhu Sapre –Milind Soman ad for the Kamasutra male contraceptives, if it turns out that due to some malfunction, a couple were to conceive in spite of using the concerned product, who should be held responsible? We hear that both Madhu and Milind were trying to find out the modalities of applying for an anticipatory bail.

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

7^th June 2015