Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Importance of being an idiot

Praful Bidwai, the noted pinko-commie, pseudosecular member of the intelligentsia (I am probably repeating myself), has a column out at rediff.com titled "The Importance Of Sania Mirza". Apparently Sania Mirza is a "...modern, liberal, educated, well-informed Muslim who has an open mind and cosmopolitan outlook" besides being a woman, the types of whom "The Hindu nationalist as well as the middle class pseudo-liberal is deeply uncomfortable with...". His thesis is that a Muslim woman has become an icon and will cause discomfort to conservatives as she does not conform to their stereotype of a Muslim woman.

In a rather surprising turn of events, he goes on to rather effectively destroy his own arguements by producing a list of Muslim sports and movie figures who have also made a mark on their field like the Khans in movies, Azhar, Pathan, Zaheer etc in cricket. Now tell me Karl, these people promote items that the poor probably can't buy and middle class gobbles up (not that there is anything wrong with that, though your communist sentiments might not be too impressed) but the middle class pseudo liberal is supposed to be uncomfortable with them. If that were true, why would the middle class continue to patronise the products they promote?. He then lists Muslims who have made it in other fields too - even more evidence to counter his own claims of middle class discomfort with successful Muslims.

Bidwai has an agenda to force through to his readers - middle class bad, BJP and its sympathisers bad, Muslims good, (pseudo) secularists very good. Too bad he had to take a moment that made many Indians fell proud and make it fit his agenda, falling way short along the way.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Sania mania officially begins!

Sania Mirza has won the Hyderabad Open, becoming the first Indian woman to win a WTA tour title. It is a small tournament but Sania was playing in only her fifth WTA tournament and she is eighteen years young, meaning she has to start somewhere. It must have been awesome to win a tournament in her hometown (I believe Hyderabad is her hometown) with her friends and relatives in the crowd. I only hope skeptics and naysayers giver her time to savour this victory. There has been plenty of coverage of Sania after her third-round showing at the Aussie open, which ended with a defeat to Serena which was not completely a rollover, but this tournament victory kind of justifies the coverage from the media. And before I forgot, Sania has one more WTA singles tournament victory than
someone some of us know and love and pray to every day!