DailyOh! Why Maradona at 53 felt he was going on 78, to the intensifying farmers' protest
The football legend’s daughter Giannina Maradona saw him dying before anyone else.
We want to begin today from where yesterday ended, bringing an end to the legendary life of Diego Maradona. A life known as much for its football as the flamboyance of the man who played it. Nobody has played it quite like Maradona to the exception of Pele, who wants to kick a ball together in the sky someday with Diego. That would be a match to watch but there will be no sighting from the grounds below the sky.
Maradona was 60 and led his team to a World Cup victory when he was 26.
Yet Maradona at 53 felt like he was going on 78. He once said, “I am 53 going on 78 because my life hasn’t been normal. I’ve lived 80 [years] with the life I’ve gone through.” You do by now know that he suffered a cardiac arrest last night and had undergone a brain clot surgery earlier in November. But what aged Maradona beyond his years was drug dependence.
The football legend began taking cocaine in the mid-1980s and was arrested in Buenos Aires with half a kg of cocaine. That amount of drug, even if taken slowly, can speed up the end of life.
Maradona’s daughter Giannina saw that speeding up process firsthand and in November 2019, exactly a year ago, wrote about it on her Instagram page. Giannina wrote: “He [Maradona] is not dying because his body has decided so, he is getting killed from the inside and does not realise it.”
And it ain’t like Maradona did not know. He did at times wonder out loud to friends what would he not have achieved had he not been addicted. That’s a tough one to answer since Maradona was addicted to drugs and alcohol.
For all that you want to know about the legend’s life, you can watch Asif Kapadia’s HBO documentary Diego Maradona.
Many say Maradona has left us to be united with the man he considered his second father. There is no telling if there are any unions up there or down somewhere, but Maradona has indeed died the same day Fidel Castro died, four years ago.
Three, meanwhile, have died in Tamil Nadu due to cyclone Nivar, while waterlogging has been reported from Puducherry. The cyclone came stronger than was predicted and that is because the sea-surface temperatures favoured its intensification. Cyclones love warm seas. Read this to know how that love develops.
With the cyclone having passed, life is getting back to normal in the coastal areas and services such as power and water are being resumed. Metro services in Delhi, however, will remain suspended till further notice. The service suspension has not come because of coronavirus but because of the farmers' march, which is currently at the Punjab-Haryana border.
Police at the Haryana border are using water cannons and tear gas to disperse the protesting farmers, who in turn, have dispersed police barricades, off the bridge and into the Ghaggar river.
#WATCH Farmers' protest continues at Shambhu border, near Ambala (Haryana) as police stop them from proceeding to Delhi pic.twitter.com/UtssadGKpU
— ANI (@ANI) November 26, 2020
Delhi Metro announced the service suspension with neighbouring states yesterday till 2 pm today but then extended it indefinitely seeing the situation intensify. The protests are happening in opposition to the three farm laws that the Centre passed in October.
Also protesting today are 10 central unions with crores of workers striking work. What are they protesting? A host of government policies. The unions are demanding cash transfer of Rs 7,500 per month to all non-income tax paying families along with 10 kg free ration per person per month to the needy. There are many other demands too that have struck at train and bus and bank services.
Ever wondered why a strike is called strike? Strike action, also called labour strike, or simply strike, is basically a work stoppage, caused by mass refusal of employees to work. So if you try to ‘deliver a blow’ to workflow alone, you can’t affect a strike. Unity is important to striking.
Strike, the Word Of The Day, comes from German word streichen, which means ‘to stroke’. The sense ‘deliver a blow’ comes from Middle English. That's also a word in the football lexicon; the 'strikes' that Maradona was known for, for example.
Lightning strikes as do looks, but the use of strike for work protest was first seen in 1768. This was when sailors, in support of demonstrations in London, ‘struck’ the topgallant sails of merchant ships. This crippled the ships. When workers strike, they deliver a blow to workflow. Some can do so by working as well, but you got to give it to them for at least trying.
To ensure no one can deliver a blow to essential services, state governments can invoke Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), which makes it punishable for people to strike. Mostly, the law is used only as a threat. When the governments and unions sit down on the negotiating table, the first demand that gets added to the list of demands is revocation of suspension of employees under ESMA. We are talking about ESMA because the UP government has invoked it to deal with those on strike.
To deal with Twitter, there is a Made-in-India Tooter. Ye Tooter, Tooter kya hai? Ye Tooter, Tooter? For one, it ain’t no scooter.
Tooter, we are told, is India’s answer to Twitter. Who asked the question? That is a question only Tooter can answer. But Tooter is very similar to Twitter, only Twitter’s bird has been replaced by a conch. That could be a deliberate move to ensure everyone knows that Tooter is an answer to Twitter and no other question. A meme fest is, however, underway on Twitter over Tooter.
But Twitter users in India are paying tributes to the victims of 26/11. As many as 164 people died in the attacks that left hundreds thousands injured. Ratan Tata, however, paid his tributes on Instagram with a photo of the rebuilt Taj Mahal Palace, which took 21 months for the restoration work to be completed. Do you know how much it cost? About Rs Rs 108 crore back then.
View this post on Instagram
The hotel could be restored but the lives that were lost couldn’t be. They can never be. If you want to see what comprised 26/11, you can watch – Hotel Mumbai, the movie and the web series State of Siege 26/11.
We will leave you thinking over which to watch and then go ahead watching it.
Be back tomorrow.
Stay safe.
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