Everything the Stranger Saw

Right at the Western edge of the University of Missouri campus, Greektown erupted in celebrations shortly before midnight on May 1. The celebrations started less than an hour after U.S. President Barack Obama had issued a statement confirming that a U.S. security team had killed Al Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, in the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan.

People cheered, shouted slogans, and sang the national anthem - some of them patriotically clad in the U.S. national flag. There were similar celebrations outside the White House in Washington, D.C., as well as in the Times Square in New York. At the site of the 9/11 attacks in lower Manhattan, crowds gathered near the memorial to celebrate and shout "NYC! USA!" at the top of their lungs. However, I had not anticipated such fervor in Columbia, Missouri.



Emotions were running high, no doubt.

I don't know how personally these cheering crowds were attached to the war on terrorism. Perhaps some of them, if not all, knew someone or the other in the U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan currently. Perhaps, they or someone they knew had lost a dear one in the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11. Nonetheless, their celebrations were symbolic. They were cheering a victory in their country's long and expensive war that they could all claim as their own. I wasn't there actually so I couldn't interview anyone to get a definitive reaction. However, it is my assumption that most of them really didn't know about the actual on-ground conditions in war-torn Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Almost ten years after the siege on Afghanistan began, the deadly drone attacks and the suicide bomb blasts are only a problem faced by people living in that part of the world, not so much by U.S. residents. The celebrating hordes, for example, might not be aware of a bomb explosion in a Pakistani city that took four lives just a few hours after news of Osama's death broke, in what could be an immediate reaction to Osama's killing.

I was reorganizing my photo albums on my laptop, yesterday, when I came across this photo I had taken in St. Louis last year.



It was Thanksgiving Day, and I landed at St. Louis Airport from Las Vegas in the morning. The bus that was going to take me back to Columbia, Mo., was supposed to leave in the afternoon from Downtown, St. Louis. So, I decided to take the Metrolink to the city center and hang out there till my departure time.

But, the weather gods had other plans.

As soon as I left the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, it started to pour down heavily. The temperature dropped to 20 F, and every time the train stopped at a station, the doors opened to fill the compartment with a chilling wind. After a ride of around thirty minutes through some really interestingly decrepit places, I got off at the Arch-Laclede's Station. The rain was too heavy at that time, and like I said before, I was on my way back from Vegas, so I only had a light jacket on. It was literally freezing. But, the idiot that I am, I decided to brave the elements and walk in the rain to look around for a coffee shop. Much to my dismay, everything was closed. Everything.

And then it dawned upon me. It was Thanksgiving Day. A national holiday! What in the world was I thinking before?

So, drenched from head to toe, I returned back to the covered safe haven of the Arch-Laclede's Metrolink station, which is situated on the lower deck of the nineteenth-century Eads bridge. The historical bridge that crosses the St. Louis riverfront (of the Mississippi) to the East and connects Missouri to Illinois. There, I waited for fifteen minutes or so for the next train back to the airport. It was during this wait that I took the photo. I just felt it was a really nice frame. The Gateway Arch stands to the South of the station and can be seen through its many old brick arches.

The wet concrete floor of the Gateway Arch parking lot in the photo, the forlorn autumn trees and the grey, cloudy sky in the background are all vivid reminders of that cold, wet and foggy St. Louis morning and everything else that went terribly wrong afterward.

Yes, the day went from bad to worse when three hours later I rode the train from the Airport again, this time to the Union Station. It started to snow on the way. In severe snowfall, I walked six blocks from the train station to where the bus was stationed on Market Street. Later, just after ten minutes into hitting the road, the windshield vipers of the bus gave way. The driver refused to take a risk and returned back to the stop. After his attempts to fix the electronic system of the bus failed, he asked the company to send a new bus. It took five more hours for that new bus to arrive. All in all, it was a day to forget, but this photo just brings everything back. Perhaps in a good way, since I survived the onslaught of that day's weather to reminisce about the frigid experience from the warm confines of my apartment.

OK. Let's get this thing running again.
Charge to 200. Clear!

*Zap!*

When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay finally managed to reach the top of the Mount Everest, they found a cow sitting there before them. Hillary couldn't believe his eyes and thought that maybe he was hallucinating after the gruelling climb. But, when the cow walked up to them and, after inspecting Hillary from head to toe, winked at Norgay who replied with a pat on its forehead, Hillary could not come to terms with this reality and almost choked on his "wtf" and could've literally been both the first man living and dead, on top of the Mount Everest. The cow stared at him for a while, then made a sarcastic face and uttered a mocking "moo". Norgay, who was classically trained in Cow, turned to Hillary and translated: "Sir, she's saying 'Suck on my udders, bitch!'"

Well, Hillary and Norgay might deny this encounter but I'm pretty sure it happened this way... Ok, ok! I wish!

Because everytime I've gone hiking or trekking along the northern regions of Pakistan, I have found them cows at the weirdest of heights. You know hiking is not easy for a fat, slouchy git like me and then, there are those slopes that you die climbing, sweating in your undies and all, and when you finally reach to the top, two things happen:

1. You see another even-more-steep incline straight ahead
2. You see cows.

Now, the first part can be forgiven because Mother Nature didn't create those steep mountains expecting overweight tourists to come one day, bouncing gleefully with their fancy cameras going tik tik tik everywhere, and exclaim "oh my gaawwwd, it's so bootyfulll" and then kill themselves while climbing the slopes that initially looked like a 'piece of cake' to their delusional selves. But what about the second part?

C.O.W.S.



It's like the omnipresent cows are there to rub it in for all of us out of shape, unhealthy, dairy-loving fatsos. They graze on the grass and then shit on it and they do it everywhere! It's a simple programming routine, really. Graze, shit, repeat.




Now, annoying as they might be, they are extremely useful for the domestic industry. Apart from the dairy products, the cow patties are burnt to power cooking stoves, so that's some indigenous energy production right there for you. No kidding. I might rant againt them but the cows don't give a shit (even though they do excrete copiously).

"Moo-yah!" they must look at us and say.

It's 3:17 am here... oh well, time doesn't matter! It's June the 10th and there is just one day left before the FIFA World Cup 2010 begins, maybe more, but I'm not in the mood for doing the maths right now. The fact that I had completely forgotten about it, is bothering me. I only remembered now because one of my seniors from university, who is a mad-cap football lover, has been piling up all those crazy fanboy status updates on his facebook recently and they have become so frantic now that they couldn't escape my notice. Reading his proclamations about his favourite team has made me kinda nostalgic about the team I've supported ever since the first world cup I remember watching and it has made me a little sad too, because I don't have a friggin' clue as to what has been going on with this particular team in the build-up to the tournament.


It started in the summer of '94. The World Cup was being played in the United States so we were getting late night transmission on national TV in Pakistan. Football was new to me at that time and in a nation still basking in the glory of the '92 cricket truimph, I watched these tiny creatures running frantically on the old grainy screen of the Russian television set with avid amazement. I have always had a sleeping problem and the World Cup was the best available cure for the lazy summer vacations of a seven year old.

Now, many would remember FIFA '94 as the end of Maradona's playing career



or the end of Escobar's living career





but I would, forever, remember it for the not so tall footballer with an athlete's body and a firm jaw who gave me both my first real joy and heartbreak of football. Oh, and who can forget the hairstyle!

For three matches, the fans prayed for him, urged him, begged him, made fists and fingers at him but he didn't budge. His tally of goals, a simple zero. A void as lifeless as a barren womb. But he remained stolid, not a frown could be seen on that wide forehead. He was supposed to be their shining star, their salvatore. The team scrapped their way through and they looked away from him, knowing full well that they'd require him in the most crucial of times but not knowing that the fate of the entire tournament rested on his rigid shoulders.

And then, when the Eagles had put them in to a corner and time was running short, he couldn't bear anymore. This was his moment and no one could take it away from him:



and:



The Divine Ponytail had arrived!

and from then on, there was no looking back.

Spain had no answer to his coolness



and Bulgaria, who had been surprisingly good uptil then, tried their best but in vain



But you see, it's not over till it's over! Twelve years before Zizou lost his head on another Italian's chest, one man had stood in the heat of the battle, his veins injected with painkillers, and looked at the goal. He had carried them that far. He took his run and



It was his tournament, and no one could have taken it away from him... except himself!

And at that moment, I realized that if you ever wanted to tell someone what true happiness was, you could just show them a footballer's reaction after he had scored a goal and if you ever wanted to show someone utter agony... well, just show them one who had missed a penalty.

Roberto Baggio stood alone on that ground, a mere human, his hamstring pain replaced by one far greater, the pain of defeat. He stood alone in that stadium of 90,000 as the samba boys danced all around him. For a long time, no one came to console him maybe because not even his team-mates could've felt the same agony as he was experiencing. Maybe there is no way to console someone who had just mis-kicked a World Cup away. I could taste the disappointment on the tip of my tongue right out of my television screen as Romerio and Bebeto cried with tears of joy. It was bitter and from that day on, I have always associated a miss as the natural outcome of a penalty kick to help me get rid of that bitterness.

I imagined myself in his place and in his shoes, my first thought was about committing suicide. Could one live with oneself after this? That was the response of a spectator. For players, it is extremely important that they consider defeat as a part and parcel of the game and Baggio returned to play some fine football. The curse of penalties continued for Italy, and it had to take true love's first head-butt to remove that, but not for Baggio. He even made a bloody commercial for Johnny Walker about it



That's my man!

I don't watch football too critically and my allegiance to football clubs and teams is purely emotional so I wouldn't harp about Italy's style of play, their defensive outlook and their tactical acumen. My support had already flown to Rome long before I could reason about football's strategies. Last year, while I was being interviewed by an HR official of a private firm for a job I had applied for, she asked me who my favourite football team was? and I said, "Italy."
"Because they won the World Cup?" She asked and I could only laugh and say, "No! because of Baggio."

There have been many impressive names in Italian football since then but I cannot discuss them at length here. The present team, however, seems quite lackluster on paper. Del Piero, Totti and Inzaghi are gone from the last Cup. So are Nesta and Materazzi. Cassano's been left out! I really don't like Iaquinta. He just can't score. Quagliarella must deliver. Slim chances of getting past the quarterfinals (the first round even) especially if they come to face Spain! So, let's see what happens as the Azzurri fight to defend their title.

Meanwhile, Five Rupees has done some great posts leading to the World Cup. Do check them out and I'll leave you with Shakira! Arrivederci!



PS: DO NOT IGNORE 2:38 !!!

It's on days like these that I feel ashamed at my being human, that I feel it's not worth living this life anymore.

I cannot say it better than it has been written here and here.

We are all murderers! We are all complicit in yesterday's events!

For people, who slept well last night and are of the opinion that those who are upset by this atrocity are wrong in being extra-sensitive about this issue, I'd say: "Come and see the blood on the streets"

Oh, and yesterday was also the day Pakistan went nuclear twelve years ago. Call it karma but days like these are never good for humanity!