THE TIME IS OUT OF JOINT
Khaliqur Rahman
Marcellus, one of the Officers in Hamlet, says: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
This line keeps coming back to me much more frequently than ever before. I wonder if something is the right word in the present scenario and if it wouldn’t be more appropriate to replace Denmark by India. But why India? Why not the whole world?
I don’t think world politics has ever been more rotten than it is now. I see Hamlets all around saying: The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right.
The newspaper headings are more than enough to wrap your mind, body and soul in a wet blanket of total disgust and despair. Go to any page only to turn away from the stench. There are skunks everywhere.
Go to the news channels and you get sick, and sicker, and before you get the sickest, you choose to change the channel. Two or three well educated people and in top positions choose to speak and shout at the same time! The debate is about the Army General’s case in the Supreme Court. You switch to the next channel, thinking that things should never have come to such a pass.
Today, you don’t switch on the TV. Instead you decide to read newspapers. Look at the front page headlines in TOI of 21 February 2012: 50 pilots resign in a week, leave Kingfisher high & dry /Aligarh Muslim Univ’s library still bars women / FIR against Rahul over road show / City swelters at 35 degrees C in ‘winter’.
The Sports Page dampens the early morning spirit as Dhoni and Sehwag have turned into laundrymen, unskilled and unashamed dhobis washing the dirty linen in public through the media.
BCCI proclaims there is no rift. Reports say Sanjay Jagdale has spoken to the Manager to ask the players to start playing as a team. We didn’t know the Board has such powers, such magic that they say it to happen and it happens! Kun fa ya kun says the Board and it happens!!
Picking the Hobson’s choice, you again switch on the TV and go to the news hour debate. Arnab Goswami’s trying hard to stop Boria Majumdar and let Mihir Bose come in and speak.
Bedi says the Board must have hinted Dhoni and that is why he got the guts to introduce the famous rotation policy and then jibe at the seniors, forcing them thus to leave, all at the Board’s behest! That’s Bhishen Singh Bedi’s mind reading of the Board, proving in process thus that the Board has a mind!
Switching off the idiot box, I close my eyes. There are more things in heaven and earth…/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy… and God’s in His Heaven – All’s right with the world are the lines that try their best to soothe my disturbed mind.
In telling contrast, have a look at the straight forward positive approach of Cricket Australia and the right-mindedness of the selectors. They have dropped Ponting. Ponting has had to retire, at last, from One Day Cricket. Not only that, Michael Clarke acknowledges the fact that he had his share in dropping Ponting and concedes that personally it was a very tough decision to make, implying, therefore, that the team’s interest and, therefore, the board’s and the country’s interest forced him to suppress personal likes and dislikes and take that difficult decision.
The time is out of joint, all right, but blessed respite, that never was I born to set it right!
