Of course every new year’s eve presents a moment to reflect the life you are living and how you want to live it from there.This new year’s eve has been a different experience. Maybe it is because I've had an ordinary 2010. But of course I'm not here to bore you to death with the travails of my boring year gone by. One important lesson I've learnt is that a lot of us spend a lot of time complaining about everything which prevents us from enjoying what we are blessed with.I for one remember 2010 as the year i got pissed off with a lot of people.I got lost in an unending routine in work that i got fed up of the drab life i was living.I somehow let small situations,petty people and quirks of fate upset my incredible balance in life i had earlier enjoyed.2009 was the best year of my life largely because i concentrated on all the positive aspects of my life and all good things came to me.New friends,new life and whole new view to life.But 2010 was a total anti-thesis to 2009.Many misunderstandings,a few fights,uncomfortable realisations, changing equations with people and life’s not that hunky-dory anymore.Of course people would say the good comes with the bad and 2010 can’t be all that awful.It certainly wasn’t.it was just that i spent so much of my year getting pissed with things i couldn’t see all the good things that was happening to me throughout the year.Probably looking back after a few years i might have had one of my most productive years.But that's the way our priorities line up when we spend a lot of our time being angry. My point is if we dwell on negativity our life will be an unsatisfactory one.we need to remove all the unpleasant experiences from our lives and take only positive constructive lessons from it.So now i have to take the constructive lesson out of this experience too.Of course i hope 2011 will bring me better joy since i resolve to remedy this malady.The real compass of our lives is our own desires.They show us the direction our life should take.So you are happy only if you choose to be happy!!!
That apart,though 2010 has been a largely uneventful year for me.The earth hasn’t stopped revolving nor have people stopped living their life and rocking their worlds and ours.My foremost remembrance of 2010 is the year that Sachin Tendulkar,a man born to just play cricket resurrected himself to the top echelons of the game.Of course after 14,000+ runs and 17,000+ runs in test and ODI’s respectively he was already a legend before this year.But his double against SA in an ODI and his 50 centuries mark that he achieved stamped his class as the best batsman the game has even seen.And to top it all he had the best year of his professional career in 2010.i have always admired people like Sachin and Dravid the way they play the game for the love of it and nothing else in this world concerns them except their game.i guess that’s why I'm their fan rather than all the records they have broken.They are true gentlemen in every sense of the word.
India has reached the No. 1 in the test cricket rankings.I’m absolutely proud of that fact but something doesn’t seem right.I’m not saying they don’t deserve the ranking but to win the coming world cup with a bowling attack like the present one seems difficult for me.But i guess this is our best fast bowling attack that has ever been and Zaheer is the man to look out to.Hope the other fast bowlers and Bhajji give him enough support.Moreover I have incredible faith in the little man Tendulkar that he’ll give us the world cup before he retires.
Spain won its first world cup and anyone seeing them play had no doubt who would win.They looked the best team and played like one till the end barring the forgettable first game of the tournament.I was supporting Argentina too since my favourite player Messi was in in it but was disappointed to see him playing alone with 6 defenders attacking him and yet he managed to show his magic.He certainly deserved better teammates.Maradona erred terribly by not taking Riquelmé and Cambiasso.By 2014 i hope Messi will lead a much better team.
One of my favourite sports which i have never played but always watched with wonder…Tennis.People like Agassi,Ivanisevic,Pat Rafter and now Roger Federer have kept me amazed by this game.Of course Kournikova ,Sharpova ,Ivanovic and the likes have kept it interesting :-)…one of my biggest sporting heroes has been Roger Federer.I have always found inspiration in the grace of his game! he’s had an ordinary year in 2010 and he now seems a shadow of the greatness that enveloped him earlier.but he’s a man who could find sanity in the kind of incredible success he enjoyed.I never saw,heard or read about him misbehaving,showing his airs or any of the now common among sports celebs-sex scandals right through his career.Never before did success sit so well on a human being.It is for this that i shall remain his greatest fan! But his game is immortal because even his shadow is reaching semi-finals and finals of every tournament he plays.That's testimony to his amazing game.And I’ve got this inner belief…kind of a hunch that he’s not done yet and he’ll come back to win more grand slams before saying goodbye!
Closer home our CWG games was saved from disgrace by some last minute adjustment for which we Indians are famed for.we actually pulled it off!!! And we also won more than a 100 medals.Kudos to all the athletes who made our country proud.They continued the good show in the Asian games(59 medals,14gold)) but of course they were paled in comparison to China(199 Gold) and Korea who dominated the field.A country of a billion people is sure to have better talent than that.Again I'm not belittling the efforts and achievements of our sporting heroes but the medal tally shows our country’s collective apathy towards sports.These sportsmen need better facilities,funds and sponsors to fuel our sporting growth.I hope that the CWG and Asian games foretell a better future for all budding sportspersons.
Politically,the central government run by the UPA which is lead by the Congress probably had their worst year in their history…scams after scams.tainted politician after tainted politician.They need to show something concrete to hold their own from here on in.The huge 20,000 crore CWG mess was messy enough and coming in its heels the 1.76lakh crore 2G spectrum sale scam resulting in the resigning of A Raja.Coalition politics,ulterior motives or vested interests? Can somebody please explain because sometime in the future if these people don't answer our questions we shall not vote for them.We may even vote for the saffron that we don't particularly like but we certainly don’t like liars and people who take our votes for granted.
These are the few highlights of the year gone by that i felt i had something to say.There may be many more important events that begs a lot of importance but i certainly have nothing substantial to contribute to it.So here i am again bringing my long story to an end!
3rd January,2010 Raghuraj S. Hegde
