I vividly remember how I started off the first decade of the second millennium…By watching Titanic on Star Movies. Although the ship hit an iceberg and sunk, my voyage continued and reached 2010.
Looking back at the decade gone by, we can say terrorism won, guns down! This decade took terrorism to a new level altogether. It all started when two metallic birds crashed into the twin towers of New York killing almost three thousand and instilled fear in the lives of millions. The attack on the Parliament, the London bomb blasts, the Mumbai attacks etc, made terrorism more seasonal than monsoons in our country. Suicide bombers killing dozens and crippling hundreds in the terror infested countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan no longer make headline news.
Along with the cold blooded human acts, we also suffered from nature’s wrath. Leaving aside the tsunami in 04, the earthquakes in Gujarat, the floods in Thailand and the forest fires in Australia, we also got to hear about a hurricane called ‘Katrina!’ It even managed to snow in Dubai!!
This decade brought people closer than ever before. Cell phones from went the phase of being a luxury product to a comfort good and then an absolute necessity. We made Google a verb and networking sites helped finding the long lost friend.
While there was faster technology, faster cars and faster humans (Usain Bolt ran 100mts in a whopping 9.58 seconds!), this recommended pace does not apply to Global Warming. If we do not go into an overdrive on underdriving etc., we will have left our carbon footprints in the sands of desertification before this decade is done and dusted!!!
This decade also saw the boomers making millions and then the fabled incomes dried down and dementors and vampires chased us as we went into two years of brutal recession. This will also be remembered as the decade where homosexuality came out of the closet, live-in relationships were no longer taboo and surrogate mothers became a reality while reality shows redefined the term ‘reality.’
In the sports arena, the Americans and the Europeans dominated the Olympics. But we will remember it as the decade where we lifted bronze in Sydney, shot silver at Athens and converted it into gold at Beijing. While we were creating so much hype and hoopla about winning a few medals, Michael Phelps swam his way to eight golds shattering every record in the book. The noughties, as the decade is being called, also witnessed Asia hosting a football World Cup for the first time, Lance Armstrong battling cancer to winning the Tour de France for seven consecutive years, Roger Federer winning fifteen Grand Slam titles and the birth of fast food like cricket!!!!
With all that, I set sail for the next phase of my voyage and as they would say in France, “Bon Voyage!”
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