Horizons - Filled with Hope

As the name implies, 55-ers are posts which contain 55 words or less. There are some more rules for 55-word fiction according to wikipedia which I am reproducing below; but I do not think it is necessary to judge each 55-er based on all of these rules.

A literary work will be considered 55 Fiction if it has:

1. Fifty-five words or less (A non-negotiable rule)

2. A setting,

3. One or more characters,

4. Some conflict, and

5. A resolution. (Not limited to moral of the story)

6. The title of the story is not part of the overall word count, but it still can’t exceed seven words.

I find 55-ers to be a pretty interesting way to express your opinion – you need to be concise but clear (something I don't consider myself to be very good at). It is amazing how much can be expressed in 55 words. Check out Shail's Nest, and IndianPundit for a dose of excellent 55-ers.

This is my first attempt at 55-er.

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His bike kissed her car's bumper. Both drivers were at fault.

Out she came screaming. He removed his helmet to say sorry. She slapped him hard, his genuine apologies drowning when palm met cheek.

“Maybe she's justified”, he thought. “Men often misbehave”.

“Maybe I can get away with this”, she thought. “After all I'm female”.

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This is not entirely fictional. I witnessed something similar in New Delhi over a decade back.

Finally, 4 years after I started blogging, I have won an award! I have won the Best Book Review at AvantGarde Bloggies Awards for my review of Bitter Chocolate. First and foremost a BIG thanks to Poonam and her team of judges and designers for organizing this award. If any of you out there think that running an online awards is a simple matter, you really need to read this post about the process that was followed – from nomination phase right up to the polls phase. Hats off to the team!

The next round of thanks goes out to those of you who voted for me since you are the ones who made me winner :)

Congratulations to all the winners and runners-up. But more importantly – congrats to all those who made the final shortlist. Remember – being shortlisted is in itself an achievement since your post would have undergone scrutiny from some of India's topmost bloggers. The polls were merely a measure of one's popularity/network than of the quality of the post itself.

Don't agree with that last sentence? Check the percentages of votes that each post polled in the Best Book Review category. You will see that 3 out of the 6 did not get any votes at all. I suppose this is either because the authors were unaware they had been nominated; or that they simply did not publicise it. I, on the other hand, put up the link on twitter, facebook, my blog, gtalk status requesting people to vote. Further, although I did persuade my readers to read the various entries before voting, I do not know how many actually did that. In fact, I am pretty sure there were several who voted for me without even reading my post!

Bottom-line: All the shortlisted posts were winners in their own rights. Congratulations to each and every one of those bloggers.

It goes without saying that this award spurs me to do better and to improve the quality of my blog. Let's hope that this motivation is translated into the real thing on the blog :)

What's it about?

“Its Not About The Bike” is the story of World Champion in cycling Lance Armstrong's fight against cancer – testicular cancer. To put things into perspective, Lance won the Tour de France – the crowning glory for any cyclist - after he had recovered from cancer; and he did it twice back-to-back. That's how inspiring his story is.

The Chronology

The book traces the life history of Lance Armstrong, his childhood in Texas being raised by a single mother, how he started riding the cycle and how he was a winner right from college days.

By the time he reached his early twenties, Lance was a world champion already. Just as his career was shaping up, cancer struck. Lance describes how he ignored some ominous signs and wrote them off as effects of intense cycling. In fact, he even rode the 1996 Olympics and did not return a good result. He did not know it at that time but he had competed in the Olympics with cancer in his body.

1996 was the year when Lance was told the three dreaded words “You have cancer”. So, here he was, at the turning point of his career, already a champion, starting to make money, beginning to train big time to conquer the Tour de France and at that opportune moment, he is diagnosed with cancer.

The Fight

The book then follows the story of how Lance fought the cancer – against all odds. His cancer was at a very advanced stage already. It had spread to his chest and even brain. He was given very low chances of survival. Lance describes the struggles that he went through – surgery, catheter, chemotherapy (which he says is worse than the disease itself). There were a lot many other challenges:

• When he was diagnosed with cancer, Lance was moving from one team to another – so he did not have insurance!

• He knew he would become sterile eventually (remember it was testicular cancer he suffered from), so he froze sperm with the hope that he would someday be still able to conceive a baby.

• One of his sponsors, Cofidis, pulled the rug from under him – essentially they gave up on him.

• There was no dearth of de motivation from all quarters.

But in spite of all this, Lance fought – he fought and survived the cancer. His key allies in the fight were:

• Knowledge – as soon as Lance was diagnosed, he started reading up on the topic and armed himself with as much knowledge as possible. He took second and third opinions from doctors

• His mother's unflinching devotion.

• Friends and family's support.

• Doctors, nurses and medicinal science.

• Above all – spirit.

Each and every one of these factors played a crucial role in Lance's recovery and the absence of even one of these might have spelled doom.

What Next?

But surviving cancer was only the first part of the story. After recovery came yet another struggle – what to do with the rest of his life? When Lance had been sick, he had just wanted to live – even if it meant he'd never had to mount a bicycle again in his life. During the “survivorship” phase, he had all but given up on cycling. To add to it, he had to undergo tests every month for one year to ensure that cancer had not reared its ugly head again.

He was a mental wreck. He was to understand later that this is called “survivorship” and it is an extremely difficult phase to go through. He had put everything he had into fighting the disease and surviving and now that he had done it – he was spent. There was a hollow sensation and he didn't know what to do with the rest of his life.

As if putting the pieces of his life together was not difficult enough, Lance had to deal with de-motivating comments from lot of people too.

The Return

But Lance returned. He mounted the bike and when he did – he was a changed man. Before his disease, he had been a rash young man who dint think much about strategy. He used to just mount the bike and use brute force to win.

Now he was a more calculating, team-player and after a few months of riding, he know he had it in him to become a professional again. He met with tremendous de-motivation, some people just dismissed him. But he fought this battle too.

In 1999, against every possible odd, Lance won Tour de France. By now, he had married and he and his wife had also initiated the process of IVF. They wanted to have a baby.

Even this victory was not free of sour grapes. The French media accused Lance of drug abuse. Lance had to prove is innocence too. Further, many people dismissed his victory as a fluke.

And then Lance won the Tour de France again in 2000. That shut is detractors up.

The Take-Away

“It's Not About the Bike” is as inspiring as a real life story can ever get. Lance maintains that cancer changed him – his life. He says cancer made him a better person and changed his perspective of life. However, I think this holds for any disease, or acute adversity that a person faces. Determination, awareness, will to fight and human spirit are indispensable to overcome any major problem in life.

I rate “It's Not About The Bike” at 4.5 stars out of 5 and I think it is a must-read for what it teaches you about life.

I'm a little late in posting about this – a village labourer from Andhra Pradesh, Narasimha Rao, has secured the 453^rd rank in the IIT Entrance exams. Watch this video to know more (original youtube link here)

This is yet another instance of students from the Indian hinterland beating all odds to prove themselves in one of the toughest technical exams ever. Last year, I had written about a college which made IITians out of cattle-grazers. And now this.

Goes to show two things:

One: How much talent and determination rural India bundles.

Two: How important it is to encourage such people and revamp the education system such that mindless “coaching” and “tuition” culture makes way for more sensible and practical approaches.

The video says that Narasimha's battle is only half-won. He still needs money to even travel to the counseling, and needs to supplement the family income.

All I can hope for is that such talent doesn't go waste and that Narasimha makes it to IIT and proceeds to serve the country in his chosen field. We all need such examples of hope and inspiration every now and then to prove what difference determination can make.

Pramod Muthalik and Kannada litterateur M Chidananda Murthy have opposed the recent SC verdict on pre-marital sex. Their contention is, and I quote this from the article in ToI:

“It can happen only in foreign countries, where almost 33% of 13-year-old girls get pregnant because of such liberal laws. If the same is allowed here, we would face similar consequences,”

Err, gentlemen, I have two innocuous questions for you:

1. Have either of you ever hear of the term “age of consent” and do you understand how it relates to the matter at hand?

2. Do you have even the remotest idea how many teenage pregnancies there are in India and what role child marriages play in this statistic?

Looking forward to some enlightenment from your esteemed selves.

The polls for the AvantGarde Bloggies awards are LIVE. My entry is for the “Best Book Review” category. You can vote for me here (entry number 6). Voting started yesterday and runs till Sunday 28^th March. Please vote for me if you liked my entry.

Also, don't miss this chance to uncover some really wonderful blogs from the Indian blogosphere. Whether you are interested in thought-provoking blogs, or satirical ones, movie reviews, parenting, cookery, travelogues – there's all this and more at the awards. There are some 2 dozen categories and the short-listed entries are the six best posts under each of those categories. So do vote in the other categories too.

All the best to all the bloggers who have been short-listed and a BIG thanks to Poonam at Visceral Observations and her team (judges, designers … ) for organizing this. Looking forward to next week for the results.

My review of the book Bitter Chocolate by Pinki Virani has been shortlisted for the “Best Book Review” category of the AvantGarde Bloggies Awards 2009. This is an annual award organized by Poonam Sharma who maintains the blog Visceral Observations. There are several categories for the awards, and six posts have been shortlisted in each category from hundreds of nominations.

The winners will be decided by polls which will run for a week starting Monday, 22^nd March. Watch this space for updates on the poll announcement.

I'm obviously thrilled that my post made it to the final short-list since this is the first time any of my posts has been short-listed for anything. But my real gain from this contest is the number of outstanding blogs that I discovered while browsing through the nominations. Of course the who's who of Indian blogosphere feature prominently among the final nominations; but there are scores of not-so-well-known bloggers who've made it as well. Reading through some of these lesser-known blogs; only one question plays through my mind: How come these bloggers do not get the reach and visibility that they well and truly deserve?

Kudos to Poonam and team for bringing so many excellent bloggers into the limelight. And stay tuned for Monday's poll.

The Education sector in India is poised for a reform, with a new bill allowing foreign universities to set up campus in India likely to be passed in Parliament soon. There are two features of the bill which have the potential to turn the result into a huge success or a huge failure:

1. The foreign varsities will be free from the ambit of quota. So, one is hoping that admissions to these colleges will be purely merit-based. I only hope that Govt comes clean on this promise and doesn't end up dragging it into the quota net.

2. These foreign varsities will be free to decide on the fees and admission process. This might be a cause for worry. I figure the universities will need to be competitive as far as fees are concerned in order to attract students; but I cannot convince myself that the colleges will not fix exorbitant fees (or that even if they do, people will not flock to these colleges).

There is a third provision in the proposed bill; which is aimed at preventing the repatriation of the profits made from Indian campuses outside the country.

We'll have to wait and watch if Indian students and the foreign universities can turn this into a mutually beneficial situation; or if it disintegrates into yet another money-making, out-of-reach-for-even-middle-class education” industry”. Time will tell.

As per this news article, The Government of India is set to amend Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code by replacing the term “rape” with “sexual assault”. This is a welcome move for several reasons.

One: as the article mentions, it makes the law gender-neutral. The law will now recognize crimes against women, men and children. There is no mention about sexual minorities and trans-genders in the article though.

Two: As a consequence of point One, the law aims to protect homosexuals against sexual crimes too.

Three: The current law only carries significant punishment for “rape”, as in penetration – other forms of sexual assault are not treated as seriously. The proposed amendment will, hopefully, recognize non-penetrative sexual offences as equally criminal.

The Government and Judiciary have been taking positive steps as far as prevention of sexual crimes goes, and this particular one is almost a reform. Let's hope that such measures help in stemming the sexual offences. More importantly, let's hope that the Govt doesn't stop here and goes on to introduce more measures; particularly in the area of prevention of, and dealing with, child sexual abuse.

“St. Valentine gave us a message: Spread love by doing what you can to relieve people around you of their pain. And that is why we are planning to celebrate Valentine's day at Kidwai Memorial Cancer Hospital”. That's what the President of YuvaBenguluru, Kiran G told me last month when I had met him at DeenaSeva Sangha school, where I teach as part of TeachIndia; and which has been adopted by YuvaBengaluru.

Now, when he put it that way, there was no way I'd miss this opportunity to interact with ,and spread love and hope to, patients. And that's exactly what I did this Valentine's day.

Kids from the DeenaSeva Sangha school put up a cultural song and dance show for the patients. You won't believe how talented these kids are. Then, there was a gift distribution event – Kannada film star Ramya did the honours. It's always good to see stars supporting such causes (although it inevitably attracts the media and the “unruly” media behaviour). Along with fruit and soft toys, child patients were also presented with Valentine's Day greeting cards crafted by the kids of DeenaSeva Sangha school; and also a lamp with paintings by the kids again.

I saw several kids at the institute with shaved heads. I assume they have some form and some degree of cancer. Some were as young as 3 years I guess. But, no amount of cancer could take away their childhood spirit from them. They were playing, bursting balloons, giggling, sulking – you name it. Makes me wonder – is their innocence their best ally in fighting the disease? How many adults take their sufferings as well “in their stride” as kids do?

Anyway, participating in today's event made me “feel good” - but it is just a start. What remains to be seen is to what extent I continue to make some noticeable difference in society this year (as I have committed to at the beginning of the year). Looking forward to a year with meaningful contributions.