Drawing the line

It is a fact of life that it is never easy to draw the line when it comes to a myriad of things.  Even if there is a thick line between contentment and greed, it is amusing to find that certain individuals find ways to be on the wrong side of the line.  Now, what's the wrong side?

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has thrown open a can of worms bringing to the forefront the involvement of politicians, financiers, famous personalities, and almost every biggie directly or indirectly.  The final entity of the IPL happens to be the sportsperson himself, when he actually should have been the primary, speaks a lot about the way the tournament is designed.  I, personally, have nothing against the IPL.  It is a dream tournament for every cricket fan, who longs to see stars from various countries share the same dressing room in this city based format.  It is an English Premiere League like concept, where the best of footballers from all parts of the world represent a city.  Event management is under rated, but undoubtedly, one of the toughest jobs, and when you are putting mega bucks to an event like IPL, controversies are bound to surface.

When the one man army of the IPL, Lalit Modi, questioned the veracity of the Kochi Investors, and that too, openly on a social networking platform like Twitter, it was bound to escalate into a major brouhaha.  And, when it involves the controversial Shashi Tharoor, who has thrown himself into a spot of bother as many times as Sachin Tendulkar has hit a century, it is only obvious that Twitter is the favored medium of communication.  Tharoor, no stranger to Twitter himself, finally met his match from an equally hot headed gentleman in Lalit Modi.  Why did Tharoor, a central minister, get involved in the IPL if he has nothing to gain monetarily out of the whole exercise?  Does Lalit Modi have an hidden agenda? I am sure Modi is not an amateur when it comes to money matters, and though admiration is not the right word, one cannot but admire his guts to see him take on a central minister single handed.  That just shows his growing clout in India.  By the way, this is not about who is right or wrong, for every possible detail will be brought to the limelight by the hungry hounds in the media.  We are talking about the money involved here.  There is no doubt that Tharoor and Lalit Modi have made more than enough money for the next few generations.  What are you going to do with truck loads of money? Off load it to the future generations? For what? Definitely, it is not wrong to amass wealth.  But, what beats me is why amass so much that you can't even keep track of it, and yet, nobody is appeased at the end of the day.  My friend told me that it is not about the money, but it is just about the sense of achievement that it brings.  I wonder why that shouldn't be treated independently.  Whether Sachin Tendulkar is a billionaire or not is a different argument, but he will always be remembered as a brilliant sportsperson, and not for the amount of wealth he has accumulated.  Personally, if a person has accumulated enough for the rest of his life, the additional wealth in no way is going to alter his life style.  It doesn't matter if you have $70m or $700m.  It is all the more amusing when you see things like the fodder scam running into thousands of crores of embezzlement.  Absolutely puzzling! 

Finally, I think Congress should realize that Tharoor has spent enough time on Twitter.  Tharoor simply does not know where to draw the line, and it is high time the Congress draws the line for him.  As for Modi, he has transformed from a layman to a showman, and this time, it looks like he is going to get his wings clipped.  Just wondering if something like this hits journalism.  No guessing as to who the protagonists would be!