DailyOh! Why Waqar Younis thinks ICC 'guys' are frustrated with lockdown, to (dis)honour killing in Punjab
The International Cricket Council is pondering over legalising ball tampering.
Hey,
Slowly and steadily, relaxations are trickling in to ease the lockdown amid hopes that the coronavirus wouldn’t consider it an invitation for itself to spread. Actually the virus can’t consider anything because viruses do not have the brains do to the thinking part. We do not mean to insult them by calling them stupid, but yes, they do not have brains. If they had a brain, they would have understood it doesn’t help them to make us sick. After all, they need our bodies to multiply. If they make us sick, we would keep hunting for a way to kill them till we find it. If we die, well, they lose our body. Not that this is a win-win situation for us, just that it is a lose-lose scenario for them.
But why should we waste time thinking about their well-being? Maybe because there is just so much time at hand. Many of us have figured out how to make constructive use of this time; many haven’t. According to former Pakistani pacer Waqar Younis, the International Cricket Council (ICC) ‘guys’ have become frustrated with the lockdown and are over-thinking. Younis arrived at the conclusion after the cricketing body, at a recent meeting, discussed allowing the use of artificial substances on the ball instead of saliva. That would mean making ball tampering legal. Now, bowlers use saliva and sweat on the ball as a matter of habit. Indian pacer Ashish Nehra has also said saliva is a must to add swing to pace and that substances like vaseline offer no solution.
In the times of corona, you know what this can lead to as the ball exchanges hands on the field and then also off it.
Talking of ball tampering and Waqar Younis, did you know that Waqar was the first player ever at the Test and International level to be suspended and fined for tampering the ball? This happened in 2000 during a Pakistan-South Africa match. Waqar was suspended for one match and fined 50 per cent of his match fee. Whether ICC pays heed to his opinion on the matter is for ICC to decide, but you must heed to the advice of doctors and health experts.
It will help you save your own life and the life of others around. As an added bonus, it can save you from becoming a Covidiot. Our Covidiot Of The Day is a man from Chennai who fled the hospital after testing positive for the novel coronavirus. Everywhere he goes, he will spread no love, no hate, no nothing, but the virus. That the virus has no brains is fine. But these people on the run with the virus - and no brains - are scarier than the virus because though corona can’t run to you, corona-infected people can.
It is important we stay at home and step out only well-guarded with our masks because we never know which person standing next to us could be a coronavirus carrier. That doesn’t mean we attach stigma to the disease. All we need to do is stay cautious. The world is cautious, but Argentina is most cautious.
The country has banned all commercial flight ticket sales till September 1. The worst fears are that nations will not fully open their borders or air spaces to each other even by September. But Argentina’s ban extends to air travel even within the country. The country has 3,892 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 192 deaths. Only time can judge whether Argentina is justified in imposing a flight ban for such a long time. You may say time is abstract, how will it judge? Okay we will judge over a period of time, maybe in September.
September is still four months away, but things can change pretty fast in Argentina. Remember the country changed five Presidents in just 10 days?
It all started on December 20, 2001, when President Fernando de la Rua resigned from the post after a prolonged economic crisis. The resignation came after widespread rioting and looting on the streets because of the economic crisis. Four successors followed till January 2, 2002. The last of the five, Eduardo Duhalde, held the post till May 2003. The lifting of the travel ban wouldn’t be as quick, but we do hope it will be sooner than September. That’s because there is little else we can do apart from sitting and hoping.
All this sitting and hoping business is however happening over endless rounds of snacking. An office coffee, or tea, or smoke break is just that – it has coffee, or tea, or smokes. Of course, there are in-person conversations too. But when you are at home and the snack box is within your reach, you munch it all up before meals and after meals and sometimes your snacks are your meals. Now, this has nothing to do with hunger. Sometimes it could be hunger, of course, but not always. The word for this eating without hunger is our Word Of The Day and it is: kuchisabishii. Kuchisabishii is eating when you are not hungry, but eating because your mouth is lonely.
Kuchisabishii is a Japanese word where ‘kuchi’ means mouth and ‘sabishii’ means lonely. And you thought only you are lonely amid the lockdown? Now don’t start pitying that lonely mouth and stuffing it with food and snacks because in that case, your stomach can start complaining of overcrowding. You know the stomach has no nice way of telling you about overcrowding. Kuchisabishii maybe the word of the day today, but the word for all days is balance.
While we sit at home thinking about when there will be a balance in our lives and they will return to normal, some people are doing the normal things that happen in a normal India – things like (dis)honour killing. Lockdown is just helping them hide the crime better.
The latest such case of dishonour killing has come from Punjab. A family in Hoshiarpur allegedly killed a 19-year-old and cremated the body in secrecy.
On April 22, the victim’s mother Balvinder Singh reached the local police station and filed a missing complaint for her daughter, while also naming a person she suspected was involved in her daughter’s disappearance. The family managed to find the woman on its own. She had reportedly eloped with a man named Aman Singh. With the intervention of the local panchayat, she was forced to return home. Trust these local panchayats to do all it takes to imperil women and their safety.
The family allegedly poisoned her, then strangulated her and later burnt the body.
Now, we all know that honour killings are a part of our society that we want to part with, but the National Crime Records Bureau's 2017 Crime in India report that was published after a year's delay left out the figures on honour killing because it found the data ‘unreliable’ and ‘vague’.
Studies say half of the world's honour killings happen in India and Pakistan. The absence of comprehensive data doesn’t convey the seriousness of the problem. If you do not know how big the problem is, why would you bother dealing with it? But if you leave a problem unattended, it doesn’t go away – it just grows in magnitude. That is what the ‘brainless’ coronavirus is telling us. We with ‘brains’ must take note.
So stay home and stay safe.
We will be back tomorrow.