Politics continued to be the national obsession with new players, like Baba Gandhi throwing himself into the fray with much energy if little success; and old players like Mayawati coming to power for the first time in the country’s largest state on her own strength, and L.K. Advani positioning himself firmly as his party’s candidate in the race for 7, Race Course. Meanwhile, the present denizen of No 7, Race Course Road, saw his carefully crafted Indo-US n-deal sat upon by the Marxists. But it wasn’t a great year for the Left either. Nandigram continued to haunt them throughout the year as indeed the Lajja of its shabby treatment of Taslima Nasreen. But then it was that kind of year, when nobody and nothing could emerge completely unscathed from the hot breath of times marked by Global Warming, a phenomenon that was officially acknowledged by the world and the IPCC. So how large then was your carbon footprint this year?

Memory was big in 2007. We commemorated 1857 and revived the ghosts of Bahadur Shah Zafar and Mangal Pandey. We also marked with due official festivity 60 years of India’s Independence, and SMS-ed furiously to get the Taj Mahal acknowledged as a Wonder of the World, going on to take Incredible India right into the somewhat indifferent core of Big Apple.

It was a year that saw pet food subsidised in the national budget (Congress ka haath aam kutte ke saath ). Nokia batteries overheated while Computerda just froze it. And Shilpa Shetty got the Goody treatment in Celebrity Big Brother and lived famously ever after. It was a year that was big on Indian billionaires who staged a surge of their own, and wedding extravaganzas, whether it was the hurly-burly of the Elizabeth Hurley-Arun Nayyar union or the tinsely-tele tale of the Ash-Abhi marry-thon. After the Billion Blues of the World Cup thrashing, we had our Chak De India moment with the Dhoni team’s Twenty20 pyrotechnics. Team India left the Chappell — and Rahul Dravid — behind, and re-discovered a semi-retired Kumble, even as a victorious hockey team continue to ask, why does cricket get all the attention? It’s all about, money, honey. Ask the BCCI.

... contd.