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17 September 2005
The Summer of '05
In the summer of '05, England beat Australia 2-1 to win the Ashes after 19 years of jaded pouting and what-ifs before the series and merciless excoriation afterwards. It took a consistently superhuman performance from Flintoff, a rare, lethal all-empowered bowling attack that knew how to work the old ball as well as how to intimidate and finally a fantastic run of luck with the tosses. Scarcely before and hardly ever again are we likely to see a series of such excellence, verve, guts and edge. I admit to have been slightly skeptical at first when Vaughan claimed that he had a team that could beat the Aussies, sanguine when Australia lost four matches on the trot before the series commenced, realistic after the first test when their way convincingly, intrigued after England's tingling two-run Edgbaston test win, floored following Ponting's innings leading to the draw, and before you knew it I was rooting for the new underdogs but only mildly so. By then, not just England but the entire sport of cricket willed an Ashes reclamation as was witnessed in flaunting tabloid front-page splashes, condescendingly hush-whispery broadsheets and even sports columns across the pond such as the Wall Street Journal's Daily Fix. Of course, even before the noises have died down Simon Jones has already clamoured to crown England the reigning test team but it would serve him well to keep caution and discretion still in his company and would be advised to learn from the example of Ganguly whose pompous claims of supremacy following the drawing of the series Down Under ring hollow in light of India's entangled performances. All this of course makes England's tour of India highly anticipated.In the summer of '05, the United States suffered possibly its largest natural disaster. While the initial estimates of tens of thousands of lives lost is thankfully now embarrassingly overstretched, the hurricane that hit New Orleans could still potentially bring about a social upheaval as big as the ones following the Gold Rush and the Depression in the country's past. With nearly 200,000 homes lost to putrefying, E. coli-filled stagnant water, 400,000 children left with no schools to attend and upwards of $200 billion in damage and necessary reconstruction expenses -- all wrought by two days of nature's ferocity and weeks of tragic mismanagement -- Hurricane Katrina will define and dominate the political and economic landscape in the United States for some time to come. At the expense of poorly paraphrasing a quote I shall say that hell hath no fury like a woman's name scorned.
In the summer of '05, two significant moments dawned that will define the cultural, economic and political scope of our time. Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement and George Bush announced John Roberts as a candidate to fill her seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. But with the passing of William Rehnquist, Mr Bush shifted Mr Roberts' nomination over to be the Chief Justice of the United States while preparing for another nomination to fill Ms O'Connor's seat. The import of this historic milestone is immediately conceived of by looking at the near-endless coverage the country's news media is devoting even in the midst of a terrible domestic tragedy and ongoing violence in Iraq. It also provides for a tantalising opportunity for a layperson such as me to follow this intriguing and elaborate procedure some call the nomination process which begins with hearings in front of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee where the nominee is required to present his person, his judicial philosophy and any convictions while at the same time refrain from jeopardising his chances by opinionating more than necessary. Once the committee is satisfied, or at least less dissatisfied, with the candidate before them it votes him onto the full Senate body where, barring the curious manoeuvre of filibustering, his candidature is decided on by a simple up-down vote.
In the summer of '05, I shunted north-by-northwest into new quarters from the sheltered domicile of Caltech housing. We now have a large Hispanic Man Tuesday, no fortnightly spickspan cleaning services, a small sidetable with a defunct lamp acquired from the streets, a dining table acquired a day before it was to be sent to charity, a walloped beanbag and nakedness otherwise. Yet, the light comes in from meshed sliding rectangles to make this my new home the warmest of all.
In the summer of '05, I reluctantly travelled many thousands of miles into an unknown country and returned with a familiar language, a village full of family, two blisters in my hands from the trenchwork and cement-mixing that refuse to scrape off and seventeen people who I am sure will for the rest of my life be included as a sidenote in the occasional happy thought that strikes me.
In the summer of '05, in the company of Tofu the goldfish, in the mellow warmth of afternoon light, in the midst of new friends and newer freedom and despite them all I arrived at an elusive MileStone. It took two years of unsteadiness and malaise, a westward trajectory, two years of Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 1 and a $30-registered copy of WinEdt to get there. This was the summer of '05.
