Ice bucket challenge!

When I first heard about this, me being me, thought it was a game played at the neighborhood whiskey club. The challenge that might decide the fastest finisher in an on the rocks contest!

After a couple of hours of research, I sometimes squirm at the abuse of this word research, a word that was reverently and sparingly used and associated with some serious cerebral indulgence by individuals and corporates in the past is nowadays associated with a 4 year old checking out stuff on google. That's another story for another day.

Coming back to the ice bucket challenge that is doing the rounds on the social networks, is actually an act to create awareness of a disease called ALS which in itself is a noble cause. The participants pour a bucket of ice water over their heads and challenge others to do the same by recording their act and uploading it on social networks.

During the last weeks I saw videos of celebrities from the Silicon Valley, the wannabe celebrities, getting-there-but-not- yet-there celebrities and a couple of good friends doing and daring others to drench themselves with a bucket of ice cold water in the 'harsh' summer weather conditions of the Northern Hemisphere. For me sitting in the Middle East where the current midday temperature is around 45 deg C, wished someone challenged someone to pour a bucket of ice cold water over me every afternoon for the next couple of months.

In fact watching a couple of them reminded me of a scene out of a majority of Indian movies of yesteryears. Don't see them too often in contemporary films, who knows they might just make a comeback. It goes like this, as soon as the girl elopes with the boy next door the father or the mother depending on who was not a partner in crime, would barge into the household and grab the nearest bucket of water and pour it over them thereby symbolically disowning their kin. The difference here is that the legacy is passed on.

This is a sure no do in a city like Madras where buckets are lined up in a serpentine fashion awaiting the arrival of the elusive Metro Water tanker. Can you dare someone in that queue to do it? All you can do is to challenge them to run behind the leaking water tanker and get drenched. 

Taking a cue from this I would like the corporates in India to challenge  each other as part of their CSR initiative in providing every employee with a bucket of water to keep their surroundings clean. The media houses could do their bit by daring Arnobs and the Barkhas during the news hour every night that will at-least cool matters down and could well end up prolonging their life spans.

The politicians on their part could think about national river integration with the Chief Ministers daring their counterparts from neighboring states to pour buckets of water from the rivers from each other's states. On the international relations front imagine the likes of Obama challenging Putin, Modi daring Nawaz and so on and so forth. Suddenly a bucket of water over your head would make the world a better place. Think about it in your shower today. En Seau d'eau sans frontiers...or in plane english a bucket of water without borders.

This was initiated for a truly noble cause and is well appreciated by the writer. The blog is written in a lighter vein only on the chosen act of expressing solidarity for this noble cause.