Most of us might have been aware of the Niketa Mehta abortion case. For the unknown here is a small snippet, Niketa Mehta and Harshad are a couple from Mumbai, Niketa got pregnant after her marriage and after 4 months discovered that the child in her womb was not in a healthy condition, the doctors had advised her that the child when born could have some disabilities and heart related issues. The couple feared that the child when born would go thru a lot of hardships and when they realized this they thought of aborting the child. But as per Indian Law a medical termination of pregnancy (abortion thru medical means) should be done within 20 weeks of getting pregnant. But Niketa was already the carrying the child for 22 weeks and hence they moved to the Mumbai High Court to get the courts order to allow abortion in their case. The court immediately sought the advice of medical fraternity, though divided in their opinion the medical fraternity believed that there was a high chance for the baby to have disabilities after it is born but never the less, the child might be lucky and may not have such issues as well. Since there was at least a glimmer of hope that the new born could live without any major disability the verdict of the court was that Niketa should not abort her child.
Once the court verdict was out there was a huge debate on this , some of the opinions which were flying across in the media (mostly in the visual media) were
a) Niketa as the mother of the unborn baby and as the carrier of the baby has all the rights to decide whether she can abort the baby or not , no body even her husband nor the government can force her to have or not have this baby.
b) The number of weeks to allow abortion should be raised from 20 weeks to something like 25 weeks, since the rule pertaining to 20 weeks was an old one and because of the advancement in the medical field in the last two decades it is considered that it is safe to carry out abortions even by the 25th week.
c) A silent group mostly of the disabled and the physically challenged people though were of the opinion that the child had the right to leave in this world and therefore Niketa should not be allowed to abort.
Until today I was a strong supporter of (a) above , but only till I read the following article in the Hindu. From now on I support only C .
Here is the link Alive to the joys of life which change me.
Most of us are not disabled at least in the physical sense , but as one writer put it across "you can become a disable any time .. on the road ..in your home .. any where , so If you have the right to live in this world then, then so does Niketa's child" .
PS: Niketa subsequently had a miscarriage.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Olympics - Memories of my Athletic days
Its been a few days since I wanted to write something on this Olympics, even Abhinav's gold medal could not bring me out of my lazy self to write a blog. So what made me to write this blog was a Boxing match (54Kg category) which was fought btw Akhil Kumar of India and the current world champion Sergey. Now I had already seen Akhil in the previous bout where he humbled Ali of France. Akhil has an unique style, he does not have a protective stance, he always has a open stance i.e. he always exposes his face. On seeing that bout only I realized that Akhil would go places in the Olympics and I kind of believe that we are going to get the second gold medal in this Beijing Olympics courtesy Akhil. But Akhil knows the sport more than me so this is what he says "In Boxing all you need is one good punch and that could end your match". I do hope that this one good punch is always delivered by Akhil and not the other way around.
Olympics, the first olympics I remember watching is the Seoul 1988 Olympics as an 8 year old and some memories of it are still fresh in my mind, thanks to Florence Griffith-Joyner . She was awesome as she won the 100 and 200m. Unfortunately she is no more.
Believe it or not I was an Athlete at School level that translates as a good athlete in my School but not more than that. But that was a good feeling what so ever, I remember the first proper race which I ran was the 200m in my 5th std and I came first courtesy my class mate by name Narayanan who decided to participate in Long Jump rather than 200m. Actually it was me who made a tactical decision requesting him to participate in the Long Jump so that I can participate in the 200m. Wondering what for ?? We both belonged to the same House the "Green House" and a House can be represented by two persons in one event but a Person can participate in only one event. Now everyone knew that the two best runners in the School (5th std) were Narayanan and myself. But he was also good in Long Jump whereas I was good only in running. So we sat together and decided that for the goodness of our house "green house" we would participate in different events the natural choice being that Naryanana would go for Long Jump and me for the more glamorous 200m. We both won our respective events and it helped our House to win the over-all championships that year. FYI mine was only a primary school and so it had only grades till 5th. I think my political brain with a little bit of game theory started evolving from here.
The most cherished memory which I have of my Athletic life was in my X std. I belonged to the Tagore house and I fell in the "Seniors" category. The school divided its Athletes into four categories namely sub-juniors, juniors, seniors and super-seniors (from grade 6 till grade 12).
Now this was my fifth year in that school (I joined their for my 6th grader). I won the 400m , Javelin and came second in the 100 and 200m. I also was also a part of the winning 4x100m relay team in the Senior category. Now actually even though I was a "Senior" category athlete I still ran the 4x100m relay for the "Super-seniors" as well and we won the silver medal in that as well. i.e totally I won 6 medals that year (4 individual and 2 team events). Not surprisingly I won the individual championship in my category (Senior). This created a lot of fame for me in the School. I should not forgot to mention about the most interesting race I ran ever, it was the 100m in which I came second (till this date I believe that I could have easily come first in that race if not for a bad track). Here again just like my 5th std the two fastest runners happen to be in the same house. One was myself and the other was Muthuraman. Now the whole school knew that we two were the fastest runners at school, some even believed that we could have easily won over the super-seniors that year (that's one of the reasons why both of us ran the 4x100m relay for the super-seniors section as well !!). But the million dollar question was among the two of us who was the fastest. We were all set for the final of the 100m, unfortunately I got track # 1 among 8 runners, it was unfortunate bcos there were 8 runners but there was only 6 tracks on the 100m track, so the #1 and the #8 guy would have to run on the outside of the tracks on either side of the main tracks. The race began and I had a good start, till 75 m I was leading though only a little in front of Muthuraman, but suddenly btw 75-90 m, the track condition was totally bad, the soil was so hard that my spikes did not go thru them properly, which created a little bit of imbalance in me which resulted in Muthuraman sneaking the lead from me and winning the race, I was a close second. But what I remember and cherish still in my mind was not that I came second in a race which I should have come first, but something which immediately happened after the race which I guess will remain in my memory for a long time. Immediately after the race myself and Muthuraman congratulated each other and we walked with our arms resting on each others shoulders for the next two minutes or so. The reason we belonged to the same house "Tagore" and we knew that Tagore house till that year had never won the overall Championship Title. And we coming 1st and 2nd in these races would definitely help to change that this year. And what we dreamt happened that year, our House Tagore won the Overall championship that year by garnering 116 points and a whopping 48 points was contributed from the "Seniors" category mainly bcos of myself and Muthuraman. We loved that day. I guess I got the spirit of Team and Team play mainly bcos of this particular year.
By next year I faded away bcos of a back injury, I did not win the 100,200m. I won the javelin and the 400m. The very next year I won only the javelin. And after that I was into College where we did not have a thing called Sports or the Sports day. But I am proud of two facts, (a) I never lost a 400m race which I ran(I guess I won all three times I participated) and (b) I never lost in Javelin (3 consecutive years).
Coming back to the Olympics this year, I am predicting a few things .. a) that Bolt would win the 100m with a new world record (tomorrow this time, it will be known). b) Akhil Kumar would win India one more gold. c) Liu Xiang would come third in the 110 m hurdles .
Olympics, the first olympics I remember watching is the Seoul 1988 Olympics as an 8 year old and some memories of it are still fresh in my mind, thanks to Florence Griffith-Joyner . She was awesome as she won the 100 and 200m. Unfortunately she is no more.
Believe it or not I was an Athlete at School level that translates as a good athlete in my School but not more than that. But that was a good feeling what so ever, I remember the first proper race which I ran was the 200m in my 5th std and I came first courtesy my class mate by name Narayanan who decided to participate in Long Jump rather than 200m. Actually it was me who made a tactical decision requesting him to participate in the Long Jump so that I can participate in the 200m. Wondering what for ?? We both belonged to the same House the "Green House" and a House can be represented by two persons in one event but a Person can participate in only one event. Now everyone knew that the two best runners in the School (5th std) were Narayanan and myself. But he was also good in Long Jump whereas I was good only in running. So we sat together and decided that for the goodness of our house "green house" we would participate in different events the natural choice being that Naryanana would go for Long Jump and me for the more glamorous 200m. We both won our respective events and it helped our House to win the over-all championships that year. FYI mine was only a primary school and so it had only grades till 5th. I think my political brain with a little bit of game theory started evolving from here.
The most cherished memory which I have of my Athletic life was in my X std. I belonged to the Tagore house and I fell in the "Seniors" category. The school divided its Athletes into four categories namely sub-juniors, juniors, seniors and super-seniors (from grade 6 till grade 12).
Now this was my fifth year in that school (I joined their for my 6th grader). I won the 400m , Javelin and came second in the 100 and 200m. I also was also a part of the winning 4x100m relay team in the Senior category. Now actually even though I was a "Senior" category athlete I still ran the 4x100m relay for the "Super-seniors" as well and we won the silver medal in that as well. i.e totally I won 6 medals that year (4 individual and 2 team events). Not surprisingly I won the individual championship in my category (Senior). This created a lot of fame for me in the School. I should not forgot to mention about the most interesting race I ran ever, it was the 100m in which I came second (till this date I believe that I could have easily come first in that race if not for a bad track). Here again just like my 5th std the two fastest runners happen to be in the same house. One was myself and the other was Muthuraman. Now the whole school knew that we two were the fastest runners at school, some even believed that we could have easily won over the super-seniors that year (that's one of the reasons why both of us ran the 4x100m relay for the super-seniors section as well !!). But the million dollar question was among the two of us who was the fastest. We were all set for the final of the 100m, unfortunately I got track # 1 among 8 runners, it was unfortunate bcos there were 8 runners but there was only 6 tracks on the 100m track, so the #1 and the #8 guy would have to run on the outside of the tracks on either side of the main tracks. The race began and I had a good start, till 75 m I was leading though only a little in front of Muthuraman, but suddenly btw 75-90 m, the track condition was totally bad, the soil was so hard that my spikes did not go thru them properly, which created a little bit of imbalance in me which resulted in Muthuraman sneaking the lead from me and winning the race, I was a close second. But what I remember and cherish still in my mind was not that I came second in a race which I should have come first, but something which immediately happened after the race which I guess will remain in my memory for a long time. Immediately after the race myself and Muthuraman congratulated each other and we walked with our arms resting on each others shoulders for the next two minutes or so. The reason we belonged to the same house "Tagore" and we knew that Tagore house till that year had never won the overall Championship Title. And we coming 1st and 2nd in these races would definitely help to change that this year. And what we dreamt happened that year, our House Tagore won the Overall championship that year by garnering 116 points and a whopping 48 points was contributed from the "Seniors" category mainly bcos of myself and Muthuraman. We loved that day. I guess I got the spirit of Team and Team play mainly bcos of this particular year.
By next year I faded away bcos of a back injury, I did not win the 100,200m. I won the javelin and the 400m. The very next year I won only the javelin. And after that I was into College where we did not have a thing called Sports or the Sports day. But I am proud of two facts, (a) I never lost a 400m race which I ran(I guess I won all three times I participated) and (b) I never lost in Javelin (3 consecutive years).
Coming back to the Olympics this year, I am predicting a few things .. a) that Bolt would win the 100m with a new world record (tomorrow this time, it will be known). b) Akhil Kumar would win India one more gold. c) Liu Xiang would come third in the 110 m hurdles .
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