Things can only get better...
It doesn't really get any better (or worse) than this. The recent insert in Outlook talks about the mock funeral of Sourav Ganguly organised by the Raj (?) Thackeray led BVS. They alleged that the 'Bengali Bhadrolok' denied the 'Little Master' Sachin Tendulkar a well deserved double hundred in the Multan Test (of the 'Jeet lo Dil' series). Bengalis vs Maharashtrians - deep national intrigue, deeper shades of conspiracy and deepest hues of schism. What a lark !! The original little master - Sunny Gavaskar and the incident and Eden (involving the only known example of Kapil Dev missing a test) is a case worth noting. And how come Ganguly is to blame ? He was not even the captain for the test !

Divisive politics has for long been the surplus of colonial rule in the country. Makes for good newsprint and jazzed up publicity. Each person is entitled to his opinion. Come to think of it, even Ricky Ponting was asked for his take on an issue that is limited to the Indian cricket team and India as a whole. Did anyone wonder when was the last time, Australian media asked for and blazed across comments from former or current Indian players ? But holding the funeral of a living person is disgraceful. People indulged in such violent and wanton acts during the last ICC World Cup in focussed media glare and were roundly lashed at. Holding a funeral is a ritual for the dead ! How would Raj feel if someone held the same for the Shiv Sena supremo right in front of his home ? Actions speak louder than words, it is time that parties matured and evolved to take recourse to 'democratic' measures to talk about issues that are relevant.

Speaking of relevance - take a look at AsianAge using a non Internet Explorer (IE) web browser. I used the Mozilla Firebird. Galling and appalling is it not ? When will web designers understand that W3C compliance is not a glamour tag, but something that goes deeper into usability of sites ? Strict IE compliance will slowly but surely rule out a number of visitors to the site - that is something that the AsianAge does not desire. Perhaps they could well do with putting in a Content Management System which would make the site more responsive, end-user oriented and dynamic while maintaining the refreshed nature of content. And mate get a site look that is browse-able through text browsers - a lot of us still use them to store content that do not lend themselves to storage otherwise.
- posted by sankarshan @ 4/09/2004 09:10:00 AM