7 days after injury. Its almost ok. My only problem now is a bit of pain over the eye and orbit. There is only a little bit of swelling over my upper eyelid and the colour is nice. I like the little bit of colour under my eye. A dash of flair ...ehh!!!

Thats a close up of day4 post-injury eye. Lokks much better.

This is my gory eye, now much easier to view. This is day 4 post-injury. Eye is less swollen, and the now noticeable feature is the lovely colouring of the eye. Purple with just the beginning of a hint of black. Many questions were asked. People's impressions of me are much varied. It ranges from "fighting is not good for you" to "I can't ever imagine you getting a black eye"!

Dennis Bergkamp retires

Its the end of an era! Dennis Bergkamp retires from Arsenal. He has had such an amazing record its amazing. I remember Bergkamp as this master of the football. He was so much like Henry is now for Arsenal,a talisman, a one-touch wonder with speed and vision.

The reason why he stands out in my memory is thanks to Rupert Murdoch. He began broadcasting Premiership football in India and I remember following names like Bergkamp, Beckham, Davids, Overmars. The great players of my generation. When I was growing up these were the players we emulated in our football matches!!

Anyway, Bergkamp always captured my imagination. Just his passing, his channels, he could cut a defence in two in a second. I loved Arsenal only because of him. Anyway, I cant feel the same of the club without Bergkamp.

The end of an era!! Goodbye and Goodluck.

HATE!

This is why the government tried blocking these websites.
Click on this to read about the Hindutva hate brigade.

Knee-jerk reaction by bloggers

The Little One and I discussed the blogblock at length. BBC has now covered the story about Govt banning certain blogs in India.

I think we were both in agreement that surely the bloggers' reaction was irrational and unjust. If you read through some of these posts from different blogs, it almost seems like the Govt brought all the bloggers into jail. Some of these blogs, Ultrabrown , Sepia Mutiny,Desi Pundit
and the new forum against the bloggers on Wikipedia try to act as information points but also rage at the GoI for taking this step.

I sympathise with their rant against the incompetency of the ISP's and the general ineptitude of our cyber police. Outlook ran this article and Indian Express this one detailing the websites banned and the disorder and confusion in trying to do this. It rightly identifies that the Govt had planned only to ban certain websites and blogs which they believed either incited communal hatred or were used by terrorists to communicate. The article then records the miscommunication within the government and its bodies in detailing and carrying out this order. To most rational, level-minded people this is a clear case of beureaucratic mismanagment not a case of dictatorial repression as everyone seems to suggest.

I feel aggrieved that a community as educated and important cant see the logic in the governments action. Here we have a community of bloggers moaning about the lack of government response to the attack, and when the government decides to do something sensible to prevent the possible communal repercussions of this attack, they criticise and file petitions to demand their freedom of speech.

Guys, lets have perspective. I really wish the terrorists did communicate by blogs and orchestrate their next attack through a website just to shut up this stupid response by bloggers.
The worse problem is that there is such righteous outrage at the incident that not too many people are willing to stand up and criticise the blogging community for their over-reaction.

To end, if the GoI is so incompetent then surely the bloggers are bright enough to find a way to blog and get around the problem. Email people, phone calls...The WORLD did turn without the Internet!!!

I look like Rajnikanth!! God..what have I done!!! Why didn't I get anything more trendy? I didn;t see these glasses properly until I took these photos. Now I cringe, at my own black eye and the montrosity trying to hide it.