DailyOh! Congress loses Ahmed Patel, to the ad splash on Team India jersey
On Wednesday morning, Congress lost its Man Friday, Ahmed Patel, who helped the party through the way, Sunday to Monday, since the 1970s. For years, Patel remained the gatekeeper to the party high command. Having won the Bharuch seat in Gujarat in 1977, a time when Indira Gandhi lost her own seat in Raebareli, Patel went on to become the party treasurer in 2018, a post that became sensitive in the party after power tussle between Sonia Gandhi and Sitaram Kesri.
Patel was 71 and his death due to post-Covid complications came just two days after the death of another party veteran Tarun Gogoi again due to post-Covid complications. You can learn many things from the lives of the two veterans. The one thing you can learn from the deaths is to not take the coronavirus lightly. The vaccine is on its way but we do not know how long before it can make its way to us. Hospitals are undesirable places to be in, and this is the worst time to land in one, so let the mask stand in the way of the virus.
Talking of hospitals, former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi has alleged former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav is answering phone calls. What’s wrong with that? If Sushil Modi is to be believed, Lalu is making calls to BJP MLAs offering them ministerial berths if they switch sides from BJP to RJD. The bigger wrong is that Lalu is allegedly running the show from a Ranchi hospital where he has been camping since being jailed in the chara ghotala.
Modi says he called on the number from which the purported calls were made and it was Lalu who answered the call.
Modi has shared an audio clip of one such purported conversation. Thumbs up to the audio quality. Just play. There is no need for a replay.
But netizens have given a thumbs down to Team India’s new jersey for the limited-over matches between India and Australia that starts this Friday. It all started after Shikhar Dhawan posted a selfie donning the jersey. People’s problem is too many advertisements on the jersey that leaves no space for anything else. Well, ads on clothes won’t occupy space on the ground, which will be occupied by players, so they are unlikely to have an impact on the game.
If someone can make some money, let them make money. If someone can make lots of money, let them make lots of money. You may not get anything out of it. But then you have to give nothing to it either.
The cricket jersey, however, has had a history of its own. Until the 1970s, all games were played mostly in whites. Even names of players were not mentioned on the jersey. It was in 1980s that shades of blue started being worn by Team India. When names got scribbled on the jersey, the happiest were score keepers.
But the country that introduced colours to cricket is Team Australia, which our Men in Blue will be taking on from November 27 to January 19. Australians credit the colouring process to Kerry Packer, a media tycoon. On November 28, 1978, during the World Series Cricket between West Indies and Australia, cricketers for the first time dressed in coloured jerseys. Kerry Packer had organised the series for his television network, Nine Network. This is when the first day-night cricket match was played. White is not a colour for nights, you see. So, Australian players dressed up in gold costumes, while the West Indians wore coral pink jerseys.
In the 1992 World Cup, all teams played wearing coloured jerseys.
All sorts of colours are now worn by cricketers. Team India prefers its blue, which it mixes with other colours on occasions.
But what is a jersey? Jersey, our Word Of The Day, was basically the largest island among the Channel Islands, which are a group of British dependency islands in the English Channel, off the coast of France.
Jersey, the island, was famous for its knitting trade and the name jersey applied to many forms of knitted fabric. The jersey cow breed also hails from Jersey, the island.
From Jersey, let's take you to Britain, where the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has opened up about the grief of losing a child to miscarriage. In a piece 'The Losses We Share', Markle has gone on to talk about the grief and the healing process she shared with Prince Harry.
Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, meanwhile, are sharing the experience of heavy rains ahead of cyclone Nivar making landfall. The landfall is expected around midnight tonight.
Punjab, meanwhile, has announced a night curfew from 10 pm to 5 am from December 1. All hotels, restaurants and wedding venues will close at 9.30 pm, starting December 1. Till when will the curfew stay in place? A decision on that will be taken after a review on December 15.
Too many people getting infected at the same time may spell trouble for too few doctors that the country has and who are anyway working under a lot of stress.
The Bombay High Court, in fact, had to come to the rescue of a doctor whose wife filed a FIR against him for taking too much stress during the pandemic. The stress, she alleged, caused strain on the marriage. The court ironed out the stress by quashing the FIR. It said the two have patched up.
Don’t cause stress in someone’s marriage. That is already stressful business.
If you are stressed, take to cooking. If cooking gives you added stress, lock yourself out of the kitchen and Swiggy it. US Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, however, loves her time in the kitchen and the time on social media sharing what she made in the kitchen. Tomorrow being Thanksgiving, Harris has shared photos of Cornbread Dressing along with the recipe. She has also patented the dish calling it Kamala's Cornbread Dressing before Donald Trump could have called it Trump's Dressing-down. Thanks, to Harris for sharing the recipe because, you see, just like the dish, she could have kept the recipe too to herself. You can pick up the phone to call and share the recipe with your friends and family.
If you are dialling a mobile number from a landline and the ‘lady in between’ asks you to check the number you have dialled, ‘zero’ is your key. Calling a mobile from landline may soon require you to prefix ‘0’ to the number. This has being done to create sufficient space for telecom services.
Guard your space when in the company of others because your life depends on social distancing these days.
Stay safe.
We will be back tomorrow.
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