The 7-year itch

‘7 year itch’, a phrase now often extended to refer to an urge to move on from any situation, and not even limited sometimes to those of seven years' duration. The original seven-year itch, however, wasn't a condition that supposedly began after seven years, but one that supposedly lasted for seven years.

B Ramalinga Raju has been conspiring for the last seven years! For seven years, he fooled one and all. For seven years, Raju has been showing profits that inflated more his ego than his assets. Satyam remained the fourth largest Indian IT company. Raju’s 7-year itch urged him to move on from the situation that lasted seven years. He finally confessed to his crime. If you’ve ever played Scotland Yard, Raju finally, in an act of clemency, revealed his whereabouts to a failed chase. Hah, no guesses for who’s the winner. Reminds me of a popular nursery rhyme.

Humpty Dumpty climbed higher on the wall
And how he got there, no one just could recall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
And all the investor’s horses and all the stakeholder’s men
While trying to figure out, where all the money went
Are now trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again

The itch that bothered the world for a little over seven years, well eight to be precise, is finally over. George W Bush held a surprise farewell press conference this week. He will itch his last in the coming week.

For years, Bush entertained the world with an outstanding comic performance as the ‘President of the United States’, a comedy of errors. A tale Shakespeare would have loved to tell. George W. Bush was asked in a recent interview what had been his biggest mistake in office. America’s 43rd president said he couldn’t think of any and that he wished he had been given advance notice. In his final and 47th press conference as president, Bush cheerfully supplied a long list of mistakes. The mistakes we all know are not worth wasting precious web space on.

I am sad though. I will miss his talk. His actions. His words. Something like this, speaking at his farewell press meet.

“You remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here?” Bush asked. “People were saying, ‘How come they didn't see it? How come they didn't connect the dots?’ Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do. When people were hauled up in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, ‘How come you didn't know this, that or the other?’ And then we started putting, you know, policy in place, legal policy in place, to connect the dots. And all of a sudden people were saying, ‘How come you're connecting the dots?’”

:)