Sarita Devi and Mary Kom - Hail Woman Power!

The recent developments at the Asian Games have been quite remarkable. On one hand, there is Mary Kom, who bagged the gold medal, her first in Asian Games and a first one for our country also, and on the other hand is Sarita Devi, who gave up her bronze medal in protest against the unfair judgement meted out to her.

Mary Kom has had a tumultuous journey from a rebellious teenager to a boxing champion, commanding respect for her achievements. Boxing is a manly sport  and for a woman to survive and triumph in this sport is truly amazing, especially in a country like India, where women have to deal with too many odds in order to get their due. In fact, had it not been for the glamorous Ms Priyanka Chopra, most of us would have been blissfully unaware of her even now!

And what makes her victory more joyous is that Kom's gold medal has come during the Navratri festival, when the Goddess Durga is worshipped all over India. This festival is marked by worshipping the female form as the supreme being. Durga is 'shakti', the power of a woman. And Mary Kom has only added to it- kudos to her!

However, it is Sarita Devi whom I want to applaud. She is another talented boxer from Manipur. She was handed an unfair judgement and even lost her appeal against the decision. During the award ceremony, she was crying bitterly as she looked at the bronze medal, but finally, and very courageously, she handed it to her opponent who got the silver medal. On being returned the medal by her opponent, she stunned officials by leaving the medal on the podium and walking away.

It is very unfortunate that Indian officials have not done anything worth mention to help the lady. Though Sarita Devi faces disciplinary charges for her conduct, what she did was very brave. She later said that if she would have not done so, she would have never been able to focus on her career anymore. She is also ready to face the consequences for what she did.The right judgement would have given her a chance to fight for Gold, and here she was, left with a bronze medal, due to a biased judgement.

Both Mary Kom and Sarita Devi are true winners. Both have boxed and punched their way to success. And medal or no medal, there is no difference between the two- both are women, both are mothers, both are boxers and both are winners- only, one of them had to return a medal to prove herself. 

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Not Just A Pretty Face!

We all remember how we laughed till it hurt when Alia Bhatt said that Prithviraj Chauhan was the President of India some time ago on Koffee with Karan. Although Varun Dhawan, her co-star from Student of the Year, also gave a wrong answer to the same question, he was forgiven (whatever the reasons!). Since then, Alia Bhatt has been the butt of countless jokes and memes making fun of her intellectual prowess, or the lack of it.

But the pretty young lady has not only taken it all her stride, but also gone ahead and paid us back in our own coin! You should know; if you have seen the video called Genius of the Year- it is the latest video to go viral. It shows Alia Bhatt training at (very aptly named) ‘Dumb Belle Mental Gym’ and transforming into a genius, after which she appears on the show again and answers the most complex questions easily. In fact, she knows a lot more that the host Karan Johar himself and has some advice for him as well!

Now all the Alia haters can give their Alia-is-so-dumb jokes a decent burial and acknowledge that this young woman is not just a pretty face; she has brains and even the courage to take all the unkind stuff written and posted about her on social networking sites sportingly. In fact, this video is ample proof of her coolness quotient.

And of course, Karan Johar, Parineeti Chopra and Arjun Kapoor also deserve a round of applause for their part in the video.

P.S.

However, Alia is not the first one to do a spoof on herself- Alok Nath, whose ‘sanskari babuji’ image earned him a lot of jokes, was also part of such a video. It showed him wearing some real cool hip-hop style clothes and crooning ‘yo baby yo honey do you know who’s the bauji?’, which was really hilarious!

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The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge -- Is It Really Serving The Purpose?

The Ice Bucket Challenge that has gone viral for the past few days needs no introduction – with actors, musicians, TV celebs, sportsmen, politicians and businessmen as well as common folks posting videos of them getting doused in ice cold water, we all probably know about it now.

But do we all really know what it is about? Very few of the people going under bucketfuls of chilled water have mentioned that all of it is for a cause and for charity. They just seem to be having fun and challenging their friends to do the same. And common people waste no time in aping them.

And some of us those who know that the ice bucket ritual is for ALS, do we really know what ALS is? It is a neurodegenerative disease which affects a person’s nerve cells situated in the brain as well as spinal cord. This disease impairs the motor neurons’ ability to send impulses to muscles, which in turn leads to the muscles becoming immobile. Finally, it causes loss of movement, speech, swallowing and sometimes even breathing, and the affected person dies of it.

As of now, there is no cure or even treatment which can reverse or halt ALS. There are people who have been living with for years while some have had a quicker degeneration and have died. There are many clinical trials under progress to help people suffering from ALS and the Ice Bucket Challenge began with the aim of raising awareness about the disease and encouraging people to donate money to organizations helping ALS patients and carrying out research for treatment of ALS.

However, people posting videos on social networking sites seem to be having a lot of fun with the Ice Bucket Challenge, which has also been slammed as wastage of water by many critics. And they are not wrong, either- In a country like ours, where clean drinking water is not available to many people, it is definitely a waste. Maybe people can just go ahead and donate money to some organization working for ALS patients instead. 

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