Extreme Living in the Noughties

A trilogy of Life, Cricket and Everything Else as lived through the Noughties - A decade non-review.

So here's 'Life'

I don't know about you, but it was an overwhelmingly eventful decade for me. 10 years that started with a bust, then led to emergence of giant new economies, and finally culminated with bankruptcies of some of the finer institutions that we have built. Years that were symptomatic of the rise and fall of Dubai; a decade that saw WTC being obliterated, our cities viciously bombed and two countries being blitzed to hell; that began with the Ultimate Redneck in charge and ended with a suave and articulate black man leading the free world. It was that kind of a decade.

These were also years when my country matured a little more and learnt how to move on. India got a shiny new wallet, and bought and sold land and shares. It decided to adopt the Congress and an Italian lady, mingled with nuclear scientists and Oxford economists and got thrown state dinners by the afore-mentioned articulate gentleman. It learned how to live with short-skirts and homosexuals, and with its daughters working late or riding in cars with boys. We loosened up a little, and only wanted more ice in our drinks. That and some telly-time full of soaps, breaking news and Sehwag. All of course, when we were not talking on the 'mobile', or wondering what wonders this internet could possiby not behold.

It has been joyous and frustrating, efficient and heart-wrenching living the noughties. It's a complex bundle of contradictions thrown at you like a grenade. The world is a dangerous place these days - terror attacks, global flus, climate change and all that, and yet it is dynamic enough for a financial crisis that almost bought us to our knees, to blow over in 2 years or some. If there are covert terror networks and military strife in some parts, scores of first-generation billionaires are creating employment and cities like Shanghai are developing in others. You always seem to be a step away from both -the rainbow and doomsday.

This decade did not have answers to problems of AIDS, water management, Kashmir and Woody Allen. Instead it threw new problems in the form of melting ice, food crunch, chinese goods and Rakhee Sawant.

For what it's worth, I'd say the noughties were time well spent. Personally, these were good years. I grew up and feared not to dream as big as my country did. I earned my chances, and have managed to not make a total mess of them. As India looks out to the world, so do I - and both look forward to marking our place on the map. Watch this space.