Slumdog Millionaires

I am not at all certain where he is taking us but old Father Time surely appears to be a man in a hurry these days. For it seems that it was only last week that millions around the world were fretting about possible Y2K glitches in which all the computer systems would fail and technological Armageddon wrought upon us in biblical proportions. Just imagine what a barren existence awaited us in a world without Twitter, a world devoid of our 1,395 Facebook friends, and a world in which neither the I-phone nor the Blackberry was ever invented?! God forbid- we would actually have had to start meeting real people again, forging meaningful relationships and sometimes even writing a letter or two to some long, lost friend or relative. Some of you are left shuddering at those thoughts and we thank our lucky stars that those gloomy predictions didn’t come to pass.

In the words of the great singer, songwriter and entertainer J.R. Timberlake featuring T.I., the first decade of the new millennium is now ‘dead and gone’ and had you so much as blinked then you would have missed it all. The noughties came to be synonymous with big glamour and even bigger splendour, and with extravagance being all the rage, we marvelled at the 7-star luxury hotels in Dubai, the 8-course menus on offer at state banquets, the double-beds on double-decker airplanes, the wonders of high-definition television, luxury this and designer that. At times there really appeared to be more money floating about than sense. And so, armed with L’Oreal’s mantra ‘because you’re worth it’- and our credit cards- we collectively began spending ourselves into financial oblivion. True to folklore and commonsense however, the houses that we had built upon the sub-prime sand came crashing down around our heads. If this decade reinforced anything, it is that the poor and downtrodden matter not one iota to the worldwide aristocracy- be they from the slums of Mumbai, the sands of Darfur, or in a bad hurricane season even the suburbs of New Orleans. Yet the G20 group of world leaders would meet twice in 6 months after a few thousand lost their jobs in Wall Street. And further damage must surely have been done to the Ozone layer after the recently concluded climate change conference in Copenhagen, where a lot of hot air and little else was produced. You see, one of the summit’s main aims was to agree an assistance package to help the poorer and developing nations. What does it then say about humankind when we can continually put people on the moon, yet in 2010 an African child still cannot drink a glass of clean water and eat a hot meal?

The noughties were much defined by a conflict which pitted bearded madmen from the Middle East against clean-shaven madmen from neo-conservative America, with the rest of us caught up in the middle. And amid all the fingernail pulling and testicle slashing, amid all the high-tec gazetry of spy satellites and aerial drones, amid the legions of intelligence agents, special and conventional forces, and amid the myriad of lists and the dreaded axis of evil, a man can still simply hide a bomb in his pants and board an aircraft- even after his own father called to tell us that he was a terrorist. Responding to the incident, one counter-terrorism official straight-facedly remarked that, ‘we simply cannot underestimate the sophistication of the al-Qaeda network.’ And these are the very people entrusted with keeping us safe- God help us! The noughties also gave us the 2006 Tsunami, in which almost half a million people died, as well as the H5N1 and H1N1 viruses- bird flu and pig flu to you and me- and while they seem to have been relatively well contained thus far, their future potency should not be taken lightly.

The decade wasn’t all doom and gloom though, and more than anything else the noughties epitomised an era when the impossible became possible. We witnessed a lightning Bolt from the tiny Caribbean island of Jamaica striking twice in Beijing and then again in Berlin; his body pumped full of nothing but the best yam Trelawney had to offer. He and his fellow compatriots probably went home with as much gold as that rumoured to be in the renowned Fort Knox. In the pool, Michael Phelps accomplished feats not seen in the water since Moses parted the Red Sea coming out of Egypt, while in tennis Roger Federer made winning 15 grand slams look like child’s play. Not to be undone, the two black sisters who started playing tennis in Compton have continued to dominate the women’s game by beating all comers. On the golf course, many attempted to stare into the eye of the Tiger, only to be undone by his sheer ruthlessness and superiority. Unfortunately for the Tiger however, he began showing much more than his eye, and quickly lost his front bumper, rear windscreen and much more as a result. In 2006, my native Trinidad and Tobago became the smallest nation to have ever qualified for a FIFA World Cup, much to the delight of Jack Warner, his son and both their bankers.

And the Davids of this world are increasingly taking on the Goliaths away from the playing fields too. The son of a Kenyan farmer now sits atop the highest chair in a country where mere decades ago, black people weren’t even allowed to vote. India and Brazil have shaken off their former colonial cloaks and are fast emerging as world powers and challenging the status quo. 2010 will see the African continent host its first ever FIFA World Cup while South America follows suit in 2016, with its first ever Olympic Games. We are thus witnessing a worldwide revolution of sorts; one in which more and more people are refusing to let others dictate their destinies and are standing up in the face of extreme adversity to realise their dreams. Let this be us too!

Wishing you and yours a very happy and prosperous 2010 and beyond. Be good to yourselves and be good to others…

kito johnson