The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Thursday, 12 June 2014

GOA MLAS JUNKET TO FIFA WORLD CUP: FRUGAL! SINCERE!

Goa wants to promote football in the state. These ministers will see what are the infrastructure is required, how crowd is controlled. Government considers this as an investment.”
Manohar Parrikar, Chief Minister, Goa

Great! Bingo!

After all, our dear beloved, frugal-styled IIT educated engineer-turned-politician, is an Indian politicians.

So, today, he took on the ‘irrelevant’ opposition bravely and came out strongly in the support of his government’s trip (tour/study tour/junket/business tour – whatever you want to term it) to the FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Junket sounds good and is in vogue, so let’s use junket here.

Well done, Mr. Chief Minister of the state where Football has been declared the state game.

The eminent members of the group are a good mix to draw the maximum mileage out of the junket so as to ‘convert/modify’ the Football culture into a Brazilian extravaganza pepped up with a Brazilian version of the Rio Carnival.


The six members of the group include Goa’s Sports Minister, Fisheries Minister and Power Minister and three other members of the legislative assembly. The group composition has been formulated after much deliberation keeping in mind the intended outcomes.

The Fisheries Minister has been tasked to suggest fish types and other sea-foods to be included in the dietary regime of Goa soccer players to make them stronger and agile in order to make them globally competitive.

The Power Minister would come with a report on how to infuse more power into the playing style of Goa soccer players on the line of the Brazilian football culture, something that runs in every Brazilian’s vein.

Both of them would work in consultation with the Goa Sports Minister.

The other three members have been tasked to assess the cultural aspects like the craze for Football in Brazil’s popular culture and the associated liberating song and dance events.  

Whom the report will finally be addressed was doubtful until now, but given his strong support today, the chief minister is going to the chief examiner of the report.

What a grand plan and in just Rs. 89 Lakh! Frugal! Sincere!

What a vision for a country that consistently ranks among the lowest in the FIFA ranking (146, the latest one) – a country that, going by its present state of affairs of Football, cannot, for decades, even think of qualifying for the main draw of the FIFA World Cup!

From the abyss to the Zenith – only a visionary can dare to scale directly from the low of Indian Football to the high of FIFA World Cup – and Indian Football has found that visionary in the Goa chief minister.

The task of the highly qualified members of the group who have been rightly given preference over sports professionals and administrative members of Goa’s sports fraternity is demanding we need to accept as they have just a week or so (10 days probably) to carry out visits, collect data, watching soccer in action, analysing the crowd management (as the CM says), analysing the Brazilian Football culture and ‘observing and assessing’ the associated cultural aspects.

Gosh!!

What is heartening and encouraging is that an ‘alleged’ past failure on this line did not deter the chief minister. According to a report in the Times of India (June 12, 2014), a 2012 junket to England, with four members of Brazil group, sent to study the FIM World Motocross Championship to “explore the possibility of introducing motocross in Goa in a big way and also explore the possibility of hosting international motocross events in Goa in the future” (as the report says), has failed to produce any ‘tangible’ outcome with the state even losing the contract of hosting one round of FIM Motocross World Championship (as the report says).

But what a fighting spirit! The criticism didn’t discourage him. Mr. Chief Minister is back. And he would have certainly incorporated the elements from the learning into planning this one, as the available details (so far) tell us.

Bravo! Mr. Chief Minister! Keep it up! 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com