Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The Allegory of Tweekers

The flavors of the season are Tweekers and Tweeters. Tweety Pie and his sweat equity partner have beaten the retreat and the Tweeker’s King is getting into Danny Boyle’s subaltern public utility created with chocolate cream. But that’s happening in the sub-continental territory called Mahabharat. In the 50’s it used to be said what Bihar thinks today, India thinks tomorrow. In the next four decades it became: if India catches a cold, Bihar will sneeze tomorrow. But make no mistake, we are the resurgent ones, chosen to lead, destined never to be left behind for long.

Now, while all this Tweeking and Tweeting was going on and the sordid entertainment occupied all the space from the headlines to the sports page, something was happening in the state in higher academia which looked like a T20 weekday single header. The competing teams were the Tweedledum Gormint and TweedleDee Gorner and it had all to do with captaincy issues. No one was willing to try out the Buchanan - KKR formula of 2009 because somewhere, in spite of the 42 degrees, people remembered the disastrous effects of multiple captaincies. But you might argue that two heads are better than one and I may rebut too many cooks spoil the broth. These polemics get us nowhere. And so, the anti-Buchanan formula prevailed and one captain for each of the universities was appointed by the official authority that was ostensibly not authorized to make appointments without consultations with the board authorities, as stipulated by the rules of the game. And there was talk that one of these captains was in the league of Hansie Cronje. And he has been asked not to decide who is to bat and bowl. For the time being he can only decide on fielding positions. Which is a polite way of saying: find yourself another stadium to play another game.

The national Tweekers and Tweeters had hogged all the media space for a while which in a sense was a bit of a relief because it edged out the cross-border shuttle-cocking. But the state Tweekers and Tweeters are now in action and threaten to turn a bearable T20 into Test Cricket.

While all this happens, those involved with higher academia will occupy uncomfortable seats in the local stadium without the luxury of Kingfisher lounges and the cheerleaders.

4 comments:

  1. This is very unfortunate.Its this tussle for supremacy between the two centres of authority that is undermining the prestige of the universities.
    In these matches captains an't needed at all. The two umpires will lead the fight to the finish. Who'll be finished in this fight - the players, the game???

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  2. Already one game has been shifted because of threat perceptions. Does this explain the continuing academic diaspora?

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  3. Exactly.There the game has shifted and so have the players, here the players are being forced to shift, so that ultimately the game is abandoned.

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