With an e-mail threat hanging over the Pakistan cricket team, security arrangements at Eden Gardens in Kolkata, the stadium for the second Indo-Pak test match, were understandably tight. So, for a match starting at 9 am, fans were asked to pack themselves into the stands at 7 am. But first they were subjected to security check upon check, with people even being asked to take off their shoes and socks, lest the shoe soles turn out to be RDX instead of RMX action pumps or whatever the sneaker marketers last invented. In one corner, spectators were gobbling bananas like there?s no republic day?fruits, you see, were dangerous objects, and those who brought them along had to either eat them up right there and then, or simply throw them away. Maybe we need Reebok to run ads with cricketers devouring apples and glowering into the camera with, ?I am what I eat.?
Golden tool
As the density of corporate hospitals increases in urban India, somebody asked Apollo Hospitals? Suneeta Reddy, who chaired a healthcare panel at the India Economic Summit, why private players were staying away from rural areas, where nearly 70% of the country?s population lived when Eavesdropper last checked. Reddy promptly replied that a patient should be in the hospital within the first hour (also called ?the golden hour?) of a medical incident, and given the wide catchment areas needed for rural hospitals to be viable, that would be next to impossible for all except a few. Technical constraints, tsk tsk. Always a handy problem.
