On being born a millionaire & batting like one!

I have vague recollection of a joke I read a long while back about how wonderful it would be to live life backward - being born with a lot of money and to be fussed over by a bunch of your children, grandchildren, nurses & such-like. To be given a gold watch on your first day in office, to grow more energetic as you go through life, be able to play sports better, get better in bed (& be complimented for it, more often!!), to pursue money less & less, in favor of other pleasures, be able to eat far more chocolates & ice-cream & chips as you get along, and to be forgiven more often for all kinds of misdemeanors in increasing frequency. And I remember thinking then, "Yeah, I could get used to that kind of life!"

I watched a brilliant movie called "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" yesterday, and it's forced a re-think of that fantasy! The short story by F Scott Fitzgerald, from which this movie is apparently adapted was a farcical comedy (Benjamin would have been born 5'8" tall; I shudder to think of the woman who had to push that size out!!!) whereas Eric Roth here (same chap who wrote Forrest Gump, another fantastic movie) has turned it into a brooding forlorn tribute to relationships.

Indeed, in the context of the few truly beatiful relationships I treasure in my life, I hate to think how they would have turned out if I were aging in reverse to these fantastic people who have helped me grow & who I've seen growing with me. In hindsight, it's those tender, joyful, sad, bitter, sweet & quiet moments that define my life and I'd hate to have them ruined by a reversed life, even in exchange for increased material & carnal joy (ref first paragraph of this post). Do I think I would have enjoyed being confined to a wheelchair instead of learning to play cricket with the kids in my neighbourhood? Would I have liked watching from a car / rickshaw while my friends raced each other downhill on their bicycles? Would it have been more fun to watch from inside the hostel while my friends scaled the wall to get back in after sneaking out for some late night fun? I could come up with a hundred such questions with just one answer. Heck, no!

I know I am mixing up the two contexts, but what I am trying to say is that the broader point that the movie made is not lost on me - namely that while it's common-place to talk of one's relationships being based on emotional bonds & matters of the mind or heart, one seldom realizes the physiological context of these relationships. For me, one scene summed it up - where Benjamin tells Daisy even before Caroline's turned one year old, "We need to find a new father for her.....you can't be raising the both of us!" The unsaid sub-text of the conversation, I am sure, was "You can't be raising the both of us, even while you get older!"

Time, ultimately, is the third omni-present partner in every relationship between two people!

In the context of a separate chain of emails I was engaged in, in the aftermath of reasonably widespread cheering for Slumdog's Oscar wins, I am tempted to re-iterate that Benjamin Button was, by far, the more worthy movie & was helmed by the more worthy director. But, surely, this is not the first travesty of justice that the Academy Awards committees have perpetrated. Witness Crash winning Best Picture in a year that featured Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Good Night & Good Luck. Witness Shakespeare in Love winning in a year that featured Saving Private Ryan and Life is Beautiful. Oh, well!
________________________

A word for our Some Slog Millionaires touring NZ these days - I think they are captained by one of the most level-headed yet aggressive men I have known of. One just wishes they would pay a little more attention to the pertinent points he made (in his trademark style, crisp & devoid of melodrama of any kind) after the first T20 match. One such gem, "...even if you go after the bowlers for [the whole of] 20 overs, you don't score more than 220-230. So you have to figure out whether you're happy with the score of 180 or 190 or whether you look for those extra 25 runs, which you might not actually need, and instead end up getting 160-odd." What a man!

The messiah is leading us to a golden age (part I)

Ladies & gentlemen, it gives me immense pleasure to inform you (in case you've been busy with something interesting, presumably!) that no news channels or wires will, henceforth, be speculating about the nationalization of Citigroup, Vikram Pandit's home and his underwear. For crying it out loud, it was already done; and they just made it official yesterday evening. And with that, the glorious business of America (Which was business) has now officially become government business!

I, for one, am more than just plain happy to be rid of making fine distinctions between bouts of verbal gymnastics / semantic contortions / what-have-you, in relation to nationalization. Nonetheless, the chain of events over the last 3 months since Obama's anointment as the new messiah for change-we-can-believe-in, still leaves me very worried. And I suspect at least every seventh person in the world (I am reliably informed that five-sevenths of the world doesn't understand American politics and/or business, and one-seventh is too stoned to care!) would know why.

For starters, consider this about the Obama rescue plan: it plans to rescue indebted Americans from hyper-leverage by offering them more debt! How does that sound to the lay person on the street? It would have been bad enough if this was all there was to the whole sorry business. Now, those banks that had conveniently hidden away their exposures to "Special Investment Vehicles" & "Off-Balance Sheet Liabilities" are about to be rescued by becoming the government's SIVs & OBLs. Give me a break, guys!

I wonder if the world would have been a better place if the American govt had just told the world that they were about to fund construction of houses for every single citizen, and just have distributed them for free, in proportion to family size & income. At least, the whole sorry business about buying toys (with suspected carcinogenic effects) from China & clothes (that bleed colors) from India, on the basis of some imagined home equity, wouldn't have been needed.

Maybe, the US Congress is just sticking its tongue out to the erstwhile USSR & to China....See, we're eventually going to turn socialist / communist, after having convinced you poor sods that free markets were the way to go!! Oh & Mr Brown, we're speaking on your behalf as well. Thank you all very much for being such an appreciative audience. The show's over now; would you pls donate a few gold bricks on your way out?

The second part of the rescue plan hinges on a seriously unhinged stimulus. A stimulus which, among other things, plans to "Make Work Pay". What?? Seriously, WHAT?!?!? Doesn't it already pay? Shovel-ready projects, you say! Anyone with a shovel could get ready with a project...who knows, Ms Palin might just change her mind about the Bridge to Nowhere, and presto, you have another shovel-ready project! I could spend ages discussing the merits of transportation projects relative to investments in power grids & water supply, with regard to employment creation & their stand-alone contribution to GDP growth. I could also spend ages discussing the relative merits of toll-financed projects vis-a-vis tax-financed projects (which appears to be the clear intention of the messiah's regime, down the line!!). I suspect it would suffice to say that the current inclination is to evaluate the feasibility of an infrastructure project on a stand-alone basis, instead of an evaluation within the framework of a holistic plan. Disheartening stuff, really!

And this coming from the man who clearly had a better grasp of economic issues, when evaluated prior to the Nov elections. Now, then, what would Mr McCain have done? OMG, let's not even venture there!

p.s :- You ask why one-seventh of the world & not one-fifth? Oh, well...the thing is, 98.674% of statistics are made up on the spot!