Looking Back: Year 2021 in Review

#2021lookback #yearinreview #longpostalert

The idea for this article was triggered by quite a few instances of year-end banter among friends and family, all on the general theme of how quickly 2021 zipped by… which jarred with my own thoughts of how bizarre, momentous and drawn-out this 2nd year of COVID-19 actually was!

COVID-19 indeed was the obvious top-dog story this year, with the year bookended by COVID-19 issues, starting off with the promise of a pre-COVID-19 lifestyle with FDA ‘Emergency-Use-Authorization’ (not to be confused with FDA ‘Approval’) vaccination drives starting in January, getting to witness a semblance of that in the middle months, but ending with a weary reprise of rapid tests/PCRs, travel disruptions, lockdowns, stricter social distancing norms and a temporary spanner into return-to-the-office plans for most of us from a new 'Variant of Concern' Omicron (per WHO guidelines of naming variants of Concern and Interest after the Greek alphabets, this variant should have should have been called Nu or Xi but these were skipped for various reasons and thus did Omicron get an out-of-turn sequencing promotion).

Year 2021 however was also bookended by another important topic that will linger on for generations: The year started off with incredulous scenes of riots (insurrection?) at the US Capitol. The world watched in disbelief on 6th January as armed, angry Trump supporters - fueled by Trump’s false/discredited claims of US elections fraud – stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college win, ultimately resulting in 5 deaths and ~140 members of law enforcement injured. The outrage over Trump’s actions preceding the siege/riots and the slightly-over-3-hour delay in putting out a message – any message – to the rioters, aka his followers, ostensibly was significant enough for Trump to become the 1st US president to be impeached?twice (after an earlier impeachment move exactly a year ago in 2020 was ‘dead-on-arrival’ on the Senate floor; the latter one too making it to a deeply-polarized Senate that voted along party lines and predictably failed to secure enough votes to convict). The year ended with the news headlines again dominated by the same riots (insurrection?) topic, except this time it was about efforts by the then-actors to stymie the newly-formed bipartisan US House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack investigating the riots and its causes!

But back to COVID-19 and the most dominant 2021 variant of them all… Alpha and Beta variants occupied the airwaves briefly in the 1st quarter of the year, but nothing prepared the world for the havoc that was wrought by the (dare I say, Blockbuster?) Delta variant in the subsequent 3 quarters! The Delta variant was first reported/discovered in India earlier in late 2020 and therein hangs a story of misgovernance and mismanagement that surprisingly has not received as much airtime as it deserves. In January, COVID-19 fatality rates in India were among the lowest in the world, prompting Prime Minister Modi to declare victory over the pandemic at a WEF meeting in Davos that month. Then in early March, against a backdrop of one of the most restrictive and extended lockdowns in the world and only ~20K new infections per day, the country’s Health Minister - who was rightfully but all-too-belatedly sacked a few months later – likewise prematurely claimed ‘India is in the end-game of the pandemic; was the world’s pharmacy having already supplied ~550 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to 62 countries; and had no shortage of vaccines for its own population’. These triumphant claims fell flat within a few weeks when a self-inflicted tsunami of new infections swept the country. ‘Self-inflicted’ because, even as ominous signs of an impending disaster were emerging (India was recording ~200,000 new COVID-19 infections and ~1,000 deaths per day in end-March!), the Government eased restrictions and was in fact leading full-scale elections campaigns, complete with massive poll rallies and roadshows in several large states! The Prime Minister was even heard crowing about the ‘attendance of hundreds of thousands of people, so full of enthusiasm and passion’ at his rallies. Just as baffling was the decision to allow the Kumbh Mela (a 2-week long religious gathering of Hindu seers and millions of devotees along the banks of River Ganga) in early-April. Not surprisingly, India became the global epicenter of the pandemic for the next couple of months, with daily new cases rising to more than 400,000 per day and hospital/ICU beds, medicines, ambulances, ventilators and oxygen in severe short supply. The so-called 2nd wave of COVID-19 in the country was so brutal that in many places patients admitted to hospitals were dying due to lack of oxygen – local news channels and social media were swamped with disturbing images of desperate SOS calls, and of round-the-clock-functioning crematoriums/burial grounds with families having to go through the trauma of waiting for hours/days just to cremate/bury the loved ones they had lost. The year-long fears of COVID-19 swiftly spreading through a densely populated country of ~1.3 billion people had become sickeningly real with the arrival of the Delta variant. Unfortunately, in a globalized world, the adverse impacts of these reckless decisions were not confined to India only, and by that I do not mean just the spread of the Delta variant to other countries. The Indian Government quickly banned ALL exports of COVID-19 vaccines thereby temporarily derailing the World Health Organization’s ambitious global vaccine-sharing initiative, COVAX (intended to support the vaccine programs in several low and middle-income countries). Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by volume was the originally contracted supplier to COVAX but the export ban led to severe delays and a last-minute scramble to find replacement vaccine suppliers. The COVAX exports from the Serum Institute of India were finally restarted a full 8 months later in November! The way in which this 2nd year of the COVID-19 pandemic was handled was truly pathetic, criminal even - such a terrible loss (economic, growth and human lives!) that could have so easily been averted.

Established more than 150 years ago, the Suez Canal is one of the world's most important trading routes through which currently ~50 ships per day and ~12% of total global trade traverses. Significant portions of the 120-mile-long man-made canal - that provides the shortest sea link between Asia and Europe - are single-lane, forcing ships to take turns transiting those segments. Navigating through this is a very complex and high-risk operation, so much so that the government of Egypt requires ships traversing the canal to be boarded by a specialist Egyptian 'Suez crew' who commandeer the ship, taking over from the regular crew and the captain. In late March, a 220,000 ton, ~0.25-mile-long container ship, Ever Given, ran aground in bad weather, blocking the canal on both sides. Over 300 vessels (including container ships, oil tankers, vehicle carriers, etc) at both ends of the canal were obstructed by Ever Given. The ensuing 6 days of rescue efforts (was originally projected to take much longer!) by specialist agencies from several countries - with a little help from high tides - and the uncertainty around the whole saga, captured the imagination of people worldwide and exposed the fragility (#chokepoint?) of the global supply chain, with tangible disruption and damage done to businesses across the globe already facing shortages due to the pandemic.

The latter half of 2021 witnessed several breakthroughs in the decades-long efforts of the world’s advanced economies to overhaul international tax laws and make it 'fit for the global digital age', the primary aim being to stop large multinational companies from seeking out tax havens and to force them to pay more of their income to governments. In June, finance leaders from the G-7 countries - as also the G-20 leaders a few weeks later - agreed to back a new 'global minimum tax rate' of at least 15% that companies would have to pay, regardless of where they locate their headquarters and/or booked their profits. Subsequently in October, a truly global deal to ensure big companies pay a minimum tax rate of 15% and make it harder for them to avoid taxation was agreed by 136 countries; another 4 are yet to sign on. The minimum tax and other provisions aim to put an end to decades of race-to-the-bottom tax competition between governments to attract foreign investment. The agreement would impose an additional tax burden on some of the largest multinational companies, potentially forcing technology giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google as well as other big global businesses to pay taxes to countries based on where their goods or services are sold, regardless of whether they have a physical presence in that nation. The new Global Minimum Tax rate would apply to overseas profits of multinational firms with EUR 750M in sales globally and is targeted to be in force starting year 2023. Initial estimates are that the minimum tax will generate $150 billion in additional global tax revenues annually, impacting several large global businesses in the coming years.

In the past few decades, China has successfully transformed itself into a giant global economy and has shown new swagger in its dealings with the world. But China had an unusually tough 2021 and much-more-than-usual bad press globally - shooting down requests of third-party COVID data/source investigations; year-long rumors of the ~$300 billion debt of Chinese construction major Evergrande and then the expected default of the firm in December with the as-yet-unquantified fallout this will have on thousands of ancillary businesses and investors; the ever-ongoing trade war with US; tensions across the Taiwan Straits; super-stringent COVID-19 lockdowns in several cities and state-sponsored suppression of statistics of infections & deaths; digital scrubbing of misbehaving celebrities such as Zhao Wei; the WTA getting involved in questions surrounding tennis star Peng Shuai’s temporary disappearance after she went public with sexual abuse allegations against a former Vice-Premier of China; the US, UK and a number of other countries pledging a diplomatic boycott of 2022's Winter Olympics in Beijing; a severe power crunch brought on by coal shortages forcing power cuts and factory shutdowns; regular run-ins with neighbor countries India/Australia/Japan; etc. A decade and half ago, the aforementioned neighbor countries had joined hands with US and formed the so-called QUAD as an informal, ongoing discussion grouping among senior officials about naval cooperation, but the 2021 witnessed this group morph into a top-level ‘strategic cooperation’ on tech, the global economy, security and the pandemic - in fact, leaders of QUAD nations held their first-ever, face-to-face meeting at the White House in September (this was after an earlier virtual summit in March). No statement from the QUAD makes any mention of China but worries about China are at the heart of QUAD - each of the 4 member democracies has had serious run-ins with China on trade or territorial claims or both! China of course objects to the QUAD and sees it as yet another attempt to derail its rise as a global power, just as it detests the explicit China-targeted $7.1 billion proviso set aside in the US National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA, that President Biden signed into law in December. The NDAA also includes a 'congressional support statement for Taiwan’s defense' as well as a ban on the Department of Defense procuring products produced with forced labor from China’s Xinjiang region. All this is in addition to the unimaginatively-named-but-historic AUKUS security pact that the countries of AU, UK and US announced in September, in what is seen as an effort to counter China's forays in the South China Sea. The pact covers exchange of AI and other advanced technologies, allowing for e.g. Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, using technology provided by the US. China was incensed enough to condemn the agreement as 'extremely irresponsible' and that it 'seriously undermines regional peace and stability and intensifies the arms race'. Not that any of these has managed to deter China in any meaningful way – throughout the year it continued to intensify its military pressure on Taiwan and most US military think-tanks are convinced China is fully prepared for a full-fledged invasion of Taiwan (executing its stated plan to use 'non-peaceful means’ against Taiwan if makes any attempt to ‘secede’ from China – the proverbial ‘red-line’ crossing). In case this is not clear to the reader yet, there indeed is a Cold War 2.0 situation developing, except this time it is China - not Russia - facing off with the US and with smaller countries yet again challenged as they navigate competing geopolitical/trade/supply chain/tech interests of the 2 major economies of the modern world. In December, the EU unveiled details of its $340 billion obvious-but-undeclared alternative to China's One Belt One Road, OBOR, initiative - an investment program the bloc claims will create 'links, not dependencies', a not-too-delicate nod to the known criticisms of China’s OBOR. Dubbed Global Gateway, the stated aim of the EU program is to help underpin the global recovery by mobilizing investments in digital, clean energy, transport networks, as well as boosting health, education and research systems across the world.

Almost exactly 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, the American-led military campaign of Afghanistan came to an embarrassing end, and almost everyone was shell-shocked by Taliban’s lightning-fast military capture of power in the country's capital Kabul within days/hours(!) of the departure of the US troops in mid-August. The world was haunted by devastating images from Kabul airport of locals running onto the tarmac with family and belongings in tow, attempting to stop the departing US military airplanes from leaving without them and some of them even hanging onto the wings of the planes in a desperate to flee but ultimately falling to their deaths. Afghanistan yet again lived up to its sobriquet of 'Graveyard of Empires' with the country now exactly back to where it was before the war started - disintegrating rapidly and pregnant with the possibility of becoming a hotbed of terrorist groups again, with signs already of the Pakistan-backed Taliban Era 2.0 promising to be exactly as retrograde as it was in pre-9/11 years!

If 2020 was the year of cancellations of almost all major sporting events, the year 2021 was when sports finally swung back to some semblance of normalcy, or at least what can pass off as normalcy in the midst of a still-active pandemic. In 2021, Japan hosted the Summer Olympics Tokyo2020 after an unprecedented hiatus compelled by the 1st year of the pandemic - the year-long delay also set up the shortest time gap in history (6 months!) between the Summer and Winter Olympic Games scheduled for Feb '22. The Olympics (sporting a historic addition of the word 'Together' to their official motto, now 'Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together') were staged in empty stadiums, were incredibly well managed and passed off without any major incident.

The well-received, postponed-from-2020 Euro2020 tournament was hosted in June with a 'slightly romantic’ touch - 11 member countries each providing venues for the tournament. For the final match, close to 70,000 spectators turned up at the Wembley Stadium to watch the home country team clash against Italy. Italy won their 2nd European Championship ever, beating first-time finalists England in a 3-2 penalty shoot-out. A fantastic tournament unfortunately was marred by a final match that ended in incidents of violence both before and after the game, crowd disorder, online racial abuse of some of England's players after their loss, and - of course - COVID-19 exposure! Around the same time as Euro2020, England successfully staged another championship open to spectators - Wimbledon 2021, following the cancellation of the 2020 edition of the tournament because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Elsewhere in South America, the 2020 Copa America football/soccer tournament that had been postponed due to COVID-19 issues surfaced a year later as 2021 Copa America. After late removals of Columbia and Argentina as host nations, Brazil was confirmed as the host of the tournament. Brazil ended up in the final too, losing however 0-1 to Argentina.

The 14th edition of the Indian Premier League (a professional - and very lucrative! - Twenty20 cricket league established by the Cricket Board of India) had a very unusual, pandemic-hit tournament fit for the record books. The league matches started in India in early March, got suspended indefinitely halfway through the scheduled number of matches (because of a rise in COVID-19 cases among teams; note that this was at the time when the 2nd wave/Delta variant was ripping through India!), and continued later in September and October in the United Arab Emirates, UAE, with packed stadiums - the final being held on 15th October. A very unusual 8-month-long tournament completed in 2 phases, with a 4-month break forced by the pandemic!

The UAE was also the venue for more sporting excitement a couple of months later when, at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, Max Verstappen (Red Bull) managed to - controversially - pip Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) at the last minute to claim the Formula One (F1) crown for the year. It would be fair to say that Lewis Hamilton v/s Max Verstappen 2021 could be scripted into a Hollywood movie without the need for any cinematic liberties/embellishments - and what a spectacular, nail-biting, movie-worthy climax in the last few seconds of the end of the F1 season! Both drivers headed into the season-ending Abu Dhabi grand-prix level on points, where the advantage was with Hamilton as he appeared to be cruising to victory, easily holding Verstappen at bay in the closing laps (prompting the rival Red Bull boss, Christian Horner, to admit on live TV that his team needed a miracle with the gap at 11 seconds with 10 laps remaining at the time). Part 1 of the miracle duly arrived a few minutes later when the Williams driver, Nicholas Latifi, lost control of his car and crashed in the 53rd lap, triggering a ‘safety car’ to be deployed with five laps of the race remaining. Verstappen pitted and changed to a fresh set of soft tires, while Hamilton chose not to pit. Part 2 of the miracle played out when under-fire race director Michael Masi changed his mind and allowed lapped cars to pass the safety car (he had earlier opted to keep in place the five lapped cars between the leader and Verstappen) - meaning Verstappen sitting on the wheel of Hamilton at the restart, had a clear run at Hamilton in the final lap on the much faster/softer tires, easily streaking over the finish line to his first F1 world championship win!

One of the beneficial side-effects of the pandemic has been the increased adoption of Tech/Digital. However, several incidents in 2021 also brought into sharp focus our overreliance on such products, the dangers we face when things go south and our complete lack of understanding of how complex the digital universe and its underlying components really are. Exhibit A is an outage in June that brought down major portions of the Internet (yes, you heard that right!) for almost an hour - the problem stemmed from an issue at a single source - content delivery network (CDN) provider, Fastly, that provides services to the likes of Amazon, Reddit, Pinterest, Spotify, NYT, CNN, and scores of other sites, all of which could not be accessed during that period! Then, in October, the social network Facebook and its subsidiaries (Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc) became unavailable for ~6-7 hours. Given the massive collective user base of these platforms, the global impact was huge, as was also the ripple effect with users of Gmail, TikTok, and Snapchat also experiencing slowdowns (due to Google Public DNS server being impacted), and slowdowns on rival social media/messaging apps such as Twitter, Signal and Telegram (likely due to the sudden rush of users desperately switching to alternative platforms).

And the most vicious one for last: In the 2nd week of December, while many of us were readying holiday plans (or just stressing over impending Omicron-precipitated disruptions), a huge number of senior tech/engineering minds at large firms across the globe were huddled in extended chats and calls, putting their heads together to figure out plans to remediate a looming disaster brought on by a vulnerability in an obscure-but-very-widely-used error-logging server-software component called Log4j. It really was a race against time - within a couple of days of the vulnerability being officially reported, almost half of all corporate networks globally have been actively probed by hackers, with over 60 variants of the exploit having been produced within 24 hours! The Log4j software is used for recording all activities (including errors and routine system operations) that go on under the hood in a wide range of computer systems, and communicates diagnostic messages about them to system administrators and users. It’s an open-source software provided by the Apache Software Foundation. The actual exploit/vulnerability - referred to as Log4Shell - is very simple to execute and is estimated to affect hundreds of millions of devices (from large cloud/corporate servers down to Smart TVs and CCTV security cameras). Log4Shell works by abusing a feature in Log4j that allows users to specify ‘custom code’ for formatting a log message. Unfortunately, this kind of code can be used for more than just formatting log messages - Log4j allows third-party servers to submit software code that can perform all kinds of actions on the targeted computer. This opens the door for nefarious activities such as stealing sensitive information, taking control of the targeted system and slipping malicious content to other users communicating with the affected server, etc. And given that Log4j is embedded is almost all modern software systems, we have the makings of a true cyber-pandemic right there! Unfortunately, since Log4j is a such a ubiquitous, basic-building-block component of modern software and is embedded in various ways in software end-products, there is no easy, one-size-fits-all solution to ‘patching’ it. The good news is that most large companies already have remediation taskforces set up to address the problem – the bad news is that this problem is not going away anytime soon! [See: https://theconversation.com/what-is-log4j-a-cybersecurity-expert-explains-the-latest-internet-vulnerability-how-bad-it-is-and-whats-at-stake-173896]

The deadly consequences of Climate Change became clearer this year, as record-shattering heat waves, floods, typhoons, hurricanes and wildfires impacted normal lives and killed thousands across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. From unusually high (~120°F) temperatures in towns across the Pacific Coast of the US and Canada and Siberia to devastating torrential rains and flooding in US, China (killing 300 people) and Europe (killing ~240 people and causing ~$43 billion of damage from daily rainfall totals that were more than an average month of rainfall in affected regions) to a crippling winter storm in Central US (putting Texas in a deep freeze with ~4 million people without power for days), year 2021 witnessed climate extremes of the kind long predicted by scientists. Western US also bore the brunt of several megafires scorching millions of acres of land. An entire town in British Columbia, Lytton, was destroyed by a wildfire fueled by the same extreme heat wave. Haiti got struck by magnitude 7.2 earthquake, officially the deadliest global natural disaster of 2021 with ~2,250 deaths (the 2021 disaster was 11 years after the previous earthquake in Haiti that had killed more than 150,000). In February, a massive chunk of glacier broke off high in the Himalayan mountains, triggering a flash flood that hurtled down a remote Indian Himalayan valley, sweeping away homes, a hydro plant and around 200 people (8 years ago a similar flash flood in the same area had killed 6,000 people). Almost all inhabited regions on Earth have experienced climate changes not seen in hundreds of years! In late August, category-4 Hurricane Ida destroyed homes, uprooted trees and cut off power to more than 1 million households in Mississippi and Louisiana. Hurricane Ida's remnants however triggered flash flood emergencies in the Northeast, breaking the single-hour rainfall record in Central Park, New York City, with basement apartments flooded in many parts of the city. By the time Ida was done, ~95 people were dead across several states and financial losses were estimated to be ~$65 billion. Extreme drought in the US Southwest, has forced the federal government in August to declare a water shortage and triggered mandatory water consumption cuts for states in the region beginning 2022.

Admittedly not every extreme weather event is caused by - or can automatically be linked to - 'climate change', but experts say the fingerprints of global warming can be found on most of the recent events. For e.g., Hurricane Ida checked all the boxes of how climate change is making hurricanes more dangerous, according to scientists: they are producing more rainfall, moving more slowly once they make landfall and generating larger storm surges. For most people, recent disasters have transformed human-caused climate change from a theoretical, far-off risk to an undeniable reality. What is becoming increasingly clear is that major hurricane occurrences (categories 3-5) have increased drastically in recent decades, and this cannot be explained by natural seasonal variability alone.

But amid these dark signs, there were also indications that momentum was building on Climate Action and there definitely were small wins on that front throughout the year. Within hours of being sworn in, President Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the Paris Agreement, which former President Donald Trump pulled the US out of while in office. Then in November, world leaders gathered in Glasgow for an UN-brokered climate change summit known as COP26. And after ~2 weeks of negotiations on how to limit global warming, ~200 countries signed the Glasgow Climate Pact, which included the first-ever formal acknowledgment of the role fossil fuels have played in perpetuating the climate crisis. Countries agreed to phase down the use of coal (phasing it out being a lofty, distant target). However, as in past climate summits, the issue of funding for the loss and damage caused by climate-related events remained deadlocked and saw major disagreements between the Developing and Developed/Wealthy nations.

A selection of Personalities in the news in 2021:

In January, Joe Biden took oath as the President of the USA, with Kamala Devi Harris (daughter of an African-American father and Indian-American mother) as the first-ever female Vice-President of the USA.

In March, many tuned in as Prince Harry and a then-pregnant Meghan Markle (officially still the Duke and Duchess of Sussex but having renounced their official Royal Family duties a year earlier) sat with Oprah Winfrey for what everyone anticipated (hoped?) would be a bombshell interview. The interview aired in the US and the UK, with the couple sharing their side of the story about life in the Royal Family. While there were enough juicy bits to keep world media and the hoi-polloi sated - such as the couple's relationships with other royals, racism and how their mental health suffered - the timing of the broadcast had come during a particularly tumultuous period for the Royal Family. The family patriarch, Harry's grandfather and the Queen's husband, Prince Philip was in the hospital at the time and unfortunately died shortly thereafter in April. The excitement of viewing the interview done with, those interested in the British Royal Family are looking forward to a possible reunion of the extended family to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee in 2022. There is also the niggling Jeffrey Epstein-linked sexual abuse case of the Queen's 2nd son, Prince Andrew's unfolding in a Manhattan courthouse, and also Prince Harry's (tell-all?) memoir expected late 2022!

Mental Health got much-needed focus and airtime this year with a couple of high-profile incidents. In May, Naomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam champion, announced her pledge to skip post-match press conferences at French Open 2021 to protect her mental health, and when that did not go well with all the 4 Grand Slam organizers, she gracefully announced her withdrawal from the French Open indicating that she was going to 'take some time away from the court'. Osaka had earlier admitted to having suffered long bouts of depression since the US Open a few years ago in 2018 and having had a really hard time coping with that. In a similar vein, at the Olympics in September, the decision of the world’s greatest gymnast, Simone Biles, to pull out of the women's team final - and later also the individual all-around competition - garnered much praise for Biles having prioritized her mental and physical health. Biles later spoke about her decision, saying she was physically shaking before the Olympic team gymnastics final and that she withdrew after realizing that she was not in the right frame mentally.

For as long as some of us can remember, Russia has been ruled by Vladimir Putin (21 years to be exact!). In April, the 68-year-old Putin signed laws that could keep him in office until year 2036 (i.e. he has allowed himself 2 more 6-year terms after the current term ends in 2024). So much to do (annex Ukraine?), so little time/terms! Trump, who has 'joked' several times about being 'President for life', sure must be envious of how easily Putin seems to be able to finagle this.

Christian Dannemann Eriksen, Danish Football (er, Soccer) Player of the Year a record 5 times in the past. In one of the opening matches at Euro2020 in June, Eriksen collapsed on the pitch after suffering a cardiac arrest; he was given CPR/defibrillation on the field (streamed live, to the distress of many!) and was later successfully fitted with an ‘Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator’, to the collective relief of millions across the globe. While this was reminder of the fragility of life, it also was a reaffirmation of sporting camaraderie, collective prayers and of another display of the marvelous advances that Science has made in recent decades. Meanwhile, initial attempts by Christian in the later part of the year to return to active professional play were unsuccessful but there’s yet hope that he will play in the coming years!

In June, comedian Bill Cosby, once known as ‘America’s Dad’ was freed from prison - his sex conviction overturned by Pennsylvania’s highest court, ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby (though there is no evidence that agreement was ever put in writing). Bill had served ~3 years of a 3-to-10-year sentence for drugging and sexually violating a female acquaintance (several other women had come forward to accuse him of the same predatory behavior). He was the 1st celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era (Good), but he’s now free on a procedural technicality (Bad)!

Nearly 14 years after a Los Angeles court deemed the pop sensation Britney Spears unable to care for herself - in light of her very public mental health struggles and possible substance abuse - stripping the singer of control of nearly every aspect of her life, in July another LA judge ruled to end the 'Conservatorship' (a complex legal arrangement typically reserved for those who are old, ill or infirm) that the pop star said had long traumatized and exploited her. In what seems surreal in this day and age (whoever could have guessed this could happen to a 40-year-old global icon?), the conservatorship setup entered into professional contracts on behalf of the pop star, vetted her friends/visitors/boyfriends, dictated her travel, forced her to take medications (including birth control!) and logged her every purchase!

In August, in a tearful press conference held at the Camp Nou (FC Barcelona's stadium), Lionel Messi confirmed he would be leaving the club that he had been associated with for his career till date, ending weeks of on/off speculation of a new contract being signed between him and the club, and leaving millions of FC Barcelona fans worldwide in tears. In a same-same-but-different context, that same month Manchester United announced they had reached an agreement with Juventus to re-sign Cristiano Ronaldo - a homecoming of sorts after a 12-year gap!

When she won the US Open in September, Emma Raducanu became the first qualifier - Male or Female - in the Open Era to reach a major final and win a major title. An achievement made even more impressive considering that she was playing in only the 2nd Grand Slam tournament of her career! Voted 'BBC Sports Personality of the Year' in December.

Alec Baldwin was again in the news this year and this time too for not-so-great reasons. During a rehearsal for the movie 'Rust', he was practicing removing a revolver (which he was assured held no ‘live’ bullets) from its holster and aiming toward the camera when it discharged, killing the cinematographer and injuring the movie’s director. The Rust crew (especially the Assistant Director, who allegedly has prior record of reckless handling of firearms on film shoots) appears to have violated multiple basic firearm safety protocols, according to Hollywood veterans, including the directive that a performer is never supposed to aim a weapon at another person.

Elon Musk was TIME magazine’s person of the year 2021. While the honor is arguably well-deserved for Elon Musk and did provoke the expected reactions on both the Pro v/s Against lobby, TIME was likely seeking to provoke even more heated/polarized discussion when naming Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar to its list of ‘100 most influential people of 2021’, tagging him as a ‘moderate current within the Taliban’(?!!). In what was a super-eventful year for Musk, he almost doubled his net worth in 2021, ending the year at ~$270 billion, making him the world's richest person in 2021 that too by a significant margin (#2 Jeff Bozos was at ~$192 billion on 31st Dec). Musk and Bezos (along with Richard Branson) are part of the 'billionaire space race’. Branson jetted off first, aboard by a spaceship operated by his space tourism company 'Virgin Galactic', followed by Bezos a week later, aboard a rocket operated by his struggling space company 'Blue Origin'. Though Musk himself has not flown into space yet, his space company 'SpaceX' is the most successful yet among the three, launching the world’s first all-civilian crew into orbit in September that circled the planet for 3 days (with a crew that included another billionaire, Jared Isaacson).

Vishal Garg (CEO, Better.com) who devised what he thought was an efficient, WFH-lifestyle-engendered way to fire a large number (~900 people i.e. 15%) of his company’s workforce - over a Zoom call! ‘If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off!’. Unfortunately for him, one of the participants recorded the whole thing and promptly published it online. The resulting global outrage on: (1) the Method and (2) the pre-Christmas holiday Timing of the act, prompted the guy to quickly take temporary leave of absence from the day-to-day functioning of his firm.

Epilogue:

Last weekend, I started writing this piece in an attempt to document major events of 2021 and quickly realized the futility of trying to cram an entire year’s worth of detail into a single post. Topics kept popping up (with friends and family recommending even more inclusions!) and I ultimately gave up trying to summarize/include them all. Interesting 2021 topics such as some background on fastest vaccine ever developed in medical history, the super successful vaccination campaigns across several parts of the world resulting in billions of doses administered in 2021, booming US housing market, IC chip shortages and the resulting shortages in new car inventory - with used cars pricier than new ones in some instances, democracy at the crossroads in several countries, record high prices of oil and essentials, school shootings in the US, renewed discussions on critical race theory, challenges to the current abortion laws in the US, Myanmar coup d’etat, etc – I guess these will have to wait for another day/another post!

Wishing a very Happy New Year to you and your loved ones!

Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘It will be happier’… - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sources:

• Social Media (FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, Reddit, Twitter and good ol’ SMS)
• News websites (CNN, FOX, MSN, WSJ, Yahoo and, of course, Wikipedia and Google)
• Friends, colleagues and family

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Disclaimer:

This post was prepared by me in my personal capacity; all views/thoughts/opinions expressed herein are solely my own - no one else's!