Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

Well it's not sad! For example they are players (Peter Biaksangzuala) who manage to kill themselves by making a somersault to celebrate their goal:

It hurts.

In a nutshell, just a year ago (October 21, 2013), Bollywood stars, retired cricket players and industrialists, for a reason that is unknown to me, decided to launch the Indian Football League (ISL or Indian Super League). With at the head of the project Mrs Ambani (wife of the industrialist head of Reliance Group, the richest man of India if not the world).

There are 8 teams and I have compiled below a few statistics and data (average age, number of foreign players, owners) and I also compared to the Ligue 1, the french Championship, to get an idea of what the numbers mean! Like that, before stupidly repeating that this is a competition of grandpas, I see that there are just 2 and a half year gap in the age difference average. But it is true that the guest stars are quite not young...

 Source: http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk

2 other articles I wrote on football in India: On feminine football (link); Indians and football (link)

... or how Indian males look at women...

I must say this video is quite close to reality...

It is an ad made to fuel the discussion around the attention, the looks, given to women in India (beyond the stories of verbal or sexual abuses). And for this to change, there is quite a bit of work, going back to the source of the palpable male sexual frustration etc. etc.

Though I am not a big fan (or rather I am a complete ignorant) of politics, a small note on the topic seems in order! A MAJOR change happened in India on Friday and that will probably have consequences for a lot of countries!!

I had written quite a bit about the Gandhi family, Nehru’s descendants, which has been ruling the country more or less continuously since 1947 (either by being prime ministers or head of the ruling party, the Congress); see their saga. Lately, the family tried to push forward the son, Rahul, known for his (very) looks, his half-Italian origin (yes, his mum, Sonia, is Italian and has been the Congress leader since 1998) and his inexperience in politics. But what looks man…

The Congress got a huge slap in the face in the elections of 2014 (when I say huge, I mean huge, first time their opponent gets to rule with a majority of seats). According to the media, the Indian people got tired of the corruption scandals that blew up in the past decade and felt like getting some change (almost 70 years of Gandhis, you may get tired to see their faces!).

So, the big winner is this guy, Narendra Modi, who is known as a Hindu nationalist (Muslims are trembling), an alleged terrorist (he has been till date forbidden visa to the US and UE – I guess that may change) and as a good businessman (based on the economic situation of his state, Gujarat). He also happens to rule a state where alcohol is banned, which is an inheritance of Gandhi (the Mahatma this time), and to have left his wife within 24 hours of marrying her.

God help us (them??)!!

What I can tell you right away is that after one year of craziness the rupee is finally behaving itself – a normal trend when elections happen. For the rest, let’s wait and see!!