Cat's Paw, Maracana, St. Vincent & Whatever...

Oops! I lost track of the date.
After a long and arduous struggle I've finally gotten over my Bharat Mata fetish. So this time I'll crib about Japan. Let me make it clear that it doesn't have anything to do with my going back to India next month. Still, you never know. There might be some nationalist fanatic waiting to headbutt me at the airport. So, it has to be about Japan now.

Japan, like many other countries in the world, is a vassal of the U.S. Nothing wrong with that. Even we're in the process of becoming Uncle Sam's lackey. The uniqueness of Japan's situation is the amount of money they spent on maintaining this relationship. Recently, after reading a report on American forces in Japan I made a quick mental calculation (I'm good at that) and came to the conclusion that one American soldier equals 9,000 mallus.

Let me elaborate on how I reached that figure. The U.S. and Japan are planning to relocate about 8,000 marines stationed in Japan to Guam. The estimated cost is about $10 billion. This amount is more than double the annual budget of Kerala (about Rs.200 billion) and considering that there are 30 million mallus around, the amount spent per marine can cover approximately 9,000 mallus for a year. Not bad eh! The interesting thing about all this is that Japan is being forced to spend 6 billion for this relocation. In normal society such an act is called a "protection racket", or goonda pirivu in Malayalam. Here they call it special friendship. Japanese politicians are very shrewd. They're selling this to the Japanese public as if Japan has got a super-duper deal on offer. This is how they did it. Initially America asks Japan to pay protection money to the tune of 75 to 80% of the total. Then there are some negotiations and the Japanese Minister comes out and beams proudly on TV that he bargained it down to 60%. The Japanese public (public = gullible) bought it. Kind of...There were some doubters.

And that leads to my new conspiracy theory. How do you convince these sceptics? Enter North Korea, the proverbial cat's paw. Kim Jong-il and his mentally ill relatives fire a few missiles on to the Japan Sea. Voila! All of Japan is united in asking for missile defence systems, more protection, etc. from the U.S. Worked out nice. I have a feeling that this guy and his country are being propped up just to get Japan to pay up for the upkeep of American forces and to buy their weaponry. North Korea is portrayed as a dangerous country with a crazy leader. It's just an impoverished country with a loony leader and with missiles that in most cases will crash into the Sea of Japan. Just like us - missiles and rockets crashing into Bay of Bengal. Japan should be grateful that there is no religion involved. I don't think Kim Jong-il will get any recruits to go on suicide missions to Tokyo with promises of gruel three times a day and shows by dancing girls.

Can't conclude without talking about the World Cup, can I? Brazil played like England and deserved to be booted out. Argentina played decently but didn't make it. And the biggest news is the headbutt. I like it. It was a nice piece of action by Zidane. It also reminded me of something an English teacher told me eons ago in Trivandrum. The only person you can abuse with absolute certainty other than the person himself (you dog! (only men for now)) is his mother (you son of a bitch!). You'll have to take the mother's word on who the dad is and the siblings could be half-siblings. There's a certain degree of uncertainty involved. Even with DNA testing and all, it's still a difficult thing to pinpoint. Sometimes a whole village would have to be tested if the mother doesn't come out with a name. So, Materazzi tweaked Zidane's chest and abused his mother. Zidane headbutted him. Good stuff. What I'm looking for in the World Cup is entertainment and though the football was boring we had things like these and the theatrics of the players to fall back on. Look at how Materazzi fell down. It was as if a train hit him. That was the sad part. It would have been more fun if he got up and kicked Zidane in the nuts. Zannen, or too bad, as they say in Japanese. Well, football is over now and my body clock is getting back to normal.

By the way, have you heard of St. Vincent and the Grenadines? It's one of those dot-on-the-globe Caribbean islands with a population of a little more than a lakh. The whole country can come to Maracana stadium in Brazil and still fill up only half the seats. In fact, it is about the same as the town where I now live (Kitami). Well, so what? There are smaller countries around. My interest in St.V & the G stems from its football pedigree. It is ranked 129th in the FIFA football ranking. India is 130. What does the munshis that run Indian football have to say about it?