March 2006

A ‘Raj’ is Born

Raj ThackerayIt was the most expected moment of 2006 when Raj Thackeray, the young turk announced the formation of a new political party the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) yesterday at a grand rally in Shivaji Park, Dadar. The flag of the party was unveiled much earlier – that of green, saffron and blue stripes and what most believe depicts the 3 communal fronts of Muslims, Hindus and the Dalits. The message was loud and clear. He’s taken a great leap by breaking away from his uncle’s agenda of appeasing the hindus and fighting for hindutva by embracing the 3 together.

I admire Raj more for his cartooning calibre than his political. He’s a commercial artist like I am from the JJ School of Art. I was once a spectator at his art exhibition in the year 2000 called ‘Chehere Mohere’ (marathi) where he had shown his prowess with the pencil. The 38 year old has got charisma no doubt and he’s one of the few maharashtrian mass leaders which the Sena would have liked to stay behind. The MNS according to Raj will fight for the ‘sons of the soil’ and will practice the politics of development. The party promised to stay away from vote bank politics and instead be a modern, secular party.

I am happy for one reason that Mumbai has now got a leader and party of its own. Atleast we have a hope of something substantial happening in developing this island into a world class city. I hope Raj does not disappoint me.

Flash Accessibility Workshop

Macromedia Flash 8 PackThis was yet another attempt on my part to get familiar with Accessibility. The term means a lot but to me it refers to usability of computer systems by people with disabilities or age related limitations. I was notified about this seminar which looked at Macromedia (formerly) Flash as a delivery tool and how one can make it accessible – Designing Accessible eLEarning Applications with Flash. The title was intriguing because I never thought one could make it accessible the way HTML/xHTML behaves and hence I decided to participate.

Continue reading…

South Africa clinch a Historic Match

Exactly a decade ago, during the 1996 cricket world cup, Sri Lanka scored a massive 398 against Kenya in a one day international (ODI) game at their home ground. That score was challenged so many times but never broken and most recently by New Zealand who scored 397 against Zimbabwe. The record was finally crumbled today first by the Aussies who scored a massive 434-4 in their 50 overs and then the South Africans got the better of them by scoring 438-9 chasing and clinching the series.

I always look forward to watching these 2 countries play cricket since the result cannot be predicted so easily. The ranking apart I think they are the best teams in world cricket today. It was Ponting’s day first who scored his highest ODI score of 164 off just 105 balls hitting 9 sixes and one thought that the Aussies always rose to big occasions like this one. At this point the South Africans looked like they had given up already and I never thought they would give a fight back. It was a daunting task to score 435 off just 300 deliveries and we all know the bowling attack of the Aussies.

There are a few parallels which I want to draw from this match particularly with relation to India. This was the same Wanderers (Johannesburg) ground where we played our 2003 world cup finals against Australia. If you recall, the Aussies batted first and made a mockery of us. The bowling attack of Srinath-Khan-Nehra seemed overtly aggressive and gave away too many runs. Srinath in particular was hammered and came back with the most expensive figures for any bowler in a world cup match. In the end the score of 359-4 seemed too much and we lost that game. We lived up to our reputation of losing the BIG matches. This is the same ground and almost the same team playing under captain Ricky Ponting and Smith’s South Africans have blown their heads off. THAT to me is the difference between a good team and a world class team. When the bets are drawn on who wins the 2007 world cup edition, I will put my money on South Africa. As for this new record – they took 10 years to break the old one and this one will take ages to break.

» Teams with Highest ODI scores