Winning is all!

So Barack Obama won the US presidential election. It was sort-of-expected. Ever since his speech at the Denver Convention Center, I have been on his side, like so many other people all over the world. And it is not only about him being 'different', not pure white, multicultural, so many qualities that make him such a contrast to George W Bush. It is because he is young, dynamic, ambitious and with a genuine (or seemingly so) desire to make thing happen, to change, as his campaign kept stressing. At some level, I wonder, how does it matter to us, to me, as the average urban Indian who is more interested in getting on with my life and making ends meet happily enough to have some indulgences in the middle. But, since I pride myself on being globally aware and involved, I guess it does indeed matter.

What would be my wish list for the new President of the United States? Start with international relations, on a very broad scale. Get out of other people's wars. Stop fighting in Iraq. Make sure that in finding Osama bin Laden and stopping the way on terror all over the world, more young people do not have to die. Get all those traumatised soldiers out of the Middle East, out of Congo, out of Afghanistan, out of death's way. And, even though your own interests may be at stake, let various countries whose pie you have your fingers in, fight their own battles. Maybe that is a naive point of view, but it makes sense if you consider the number of young people who are dying in wars they do not understand and have no real involvement in, except that they have signed up to defend their country and its interests, no matter where they have to go and how, if ever, they come back.

Yes, there is also the money thing. The global economy is in a bit of a mess, mainly because of the way that American and the Americans have been trying to handle their lives. Take loans, be unable to repay them and go on with that vicious cycle until the world economy as a whole is dangerously close to folding up on itself. Make people all over the world who have no idea what is happening except that they cannot afford the lives they have led all this while and that they will need to do something, anything, everything, to save themselves and their loved ones from having to beg on the streets for pennies that can barely be spent by those they are begging from.

There is much that Obama will have to deal with urgently, never mind the new decor of his new home or the menu that could include dal and okra. If he manages to at least come up with some kind of plan to handle his current plateful of problems, it will be far more than those who went before him (and still do, as Bush reaches the end of his tenure) have been able to do. Never mind solving problems, Obama will need to fully understand them first. And I, like so many others like me here in India, wish him all the very best, with a little extra Indian magic added for more luck, in doing just that. Welcome to the real and very stressful world of heading the world's most powerful democracy, Barack Obama. I certainly do not envy your new job!