IS BEIJING THE BEGINNING

people this ones from the archives. i wrote this way back in 2008 when India had one a gold medal at the beijing olympics. little has changed since then, so hope its a good read.

' India has finally won a gold at the olympics' said the pathetically underpaid and extremely disoriented bunch of DD sports commentators. Finally!!!! the country heaved a sigh. We had grabbed a gold at the games and the country was a buzz with pride. Even non sport connesiuers turned into shooting experts and lauded Abhinav Bindra's shooting techniques. For once no one joined the mudslinging or for that matter even cared that Dhoni and his millionare bunch of glamour boys were getting thrashed in Sri Lanka.

Every news channel repeatedly played Abhinav Bindra standing in pride with the JANA-GANA-MANA playing in the background and for once no one complained about this monotonous repetition. Abhinav a.k.a gold bindra must have never in his life met so many people or had so much media glare ever . News channels ran hours and hours of shows about his life and ran exclusive interviews. corporates and sports authorities had announced crores in cash rewards. His first words after this magnificient achievement were a bit of a dampener. He, in a very calm tone said that a country like ours should win many more medals and should achieve many more feats than just a one off gold. He also added that he has achieved this on his own efforts with little help from the authorities in INDIA. By saying this he had putforth the gruesome reality of the management of non chirkut sports in our country.

Thanks to the media the country was now shifting focus from cricket and turning to other sports. The authorities were being questioned for its management or rather the lack of it. Cynics still thought that this medal mania in the country would last for a week at its best and then fizzle out. Nothing would change. This was turning into reality as the indian challenge didn't hold fort in other sports.

But suddenly somewhere in the boxing rings of beijing, three men were on the brink of creating history. akhil, jitender and vijender kumar were landing strong punches and slowly getting themselves into the limelight. All three of them had reached the quarter finals of their competitions. The country now stood up and took notice of these young boys with very very humble backgrounds. Suddenly a small village in Haryana now became the place to be. Bhiwani was on the world map. Everyone now followed every move of these young boxers quite literally. people slowly began to think that we were no more just one medal wonders.vijender won us a bronze and akhil and jitender lost out in tough bouts. India had three medals including one from sushil kumar in wrestling and this was a first for us.

news channels ran shows after shows discussing these achievements and analysing the possible future of olympic sports in our country. As we celebrated, our competitor to be the next big developed nation CHINA was sending shockwaves through the sporting fraternity. every other medal was being bagged by them. some here wondered what was going right with a country that one its first medal in 1984. the answer was hidden in the austere authorities in china whose only goal is to succeed.

being a die hard optimist, i optimistically hope that these medals are a step in the right direction. we may not need the sports passion like an australia or the strict laws of china but facilities and federations who give respect to the spirit of sports. may be tomorrow we may have a small boy in a small town in our country saying that he wants to win an olympic medal for his country and his parents wont stop him from pursuing this dream. so is beijing the beginning? it may just be.

SARANGI : SAU ..(HUNDRED) RANG.. (HUES)

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and it truly does. When you see you see your country from 5 time zones away and wake up at a time when your country goes to sleep, you realize how much you miss your country. So, as I wake up to the rains outside my apartment which many say are like mumbai rains (and i say no way...) and sip on my cuppa coffee, reading the newspaper on my laptop. suddenly lightening strikes (not outside the house but in my brains) and i marvel at how an Indian newspaper website carries news which makes you proud and at the same time makes you wonder what the heck is happening, all in one page. 

A few days back a sudden urge of watching the world cup final rose in my otherwise empty mind and so with a rash of goosebumps I watched it all unfold again and cursed myself again for not being there in Mumbai on that night. more importantly I ran the YouTube video of Dhoni hitting the six and also his presentation interview at least four times. It for one gave me the idea for this blog and also made me think and marvel as to how he reflected the whole of India through his character. a small town guy makes it big, shows character, fights it out and yet stays confidently calm about himself. that's how we as a young nation think and work. we no more want to take crap from people, we want to think out of the box, take up unconventional professions, take that bit of risk which our fathers didn't take and yet at the same time remain simple at heart and have a sense of confidence that we as Indians can achieve anything we want( i dont mean this piece to be a eulogy of mr. dhoni but just use him as a point of reference). It reminds me of a boy my brother spoke about who studied at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences some years back.The guy came from a tribal village in Jharkhand, where his tribe still thought that if someone was down with malaria, it meant he was being engulfed by some evil spirit. the guy becoming a doctor didn't just remove the malaria myth but also inspired a whole tribe to come out and learn and grow.

Wading through this newspaper webpage i also discovered an article about 'sakshat', India's 35 dollar tablet PC. sakshat the adjective in sanskrit means (visible, within sight of). if the Indian think tank behind the development of this tablet have the same vision, it could work wonders in taking the nation to a new high. imagine a person in a village googling his way to the entire world, thereby encompassing the whole world in one's hands. a dampener to this beautiful project though is the apparent delay in its launching thereby creating doubts in ones mind, is this one more of those tall empty claims never to see the light of day? lets see, time will tell......

a yoga teacher and an activist fighting corruption using Gandhian means. I am no one to comment and wouldn't want to offend anyone but it seems rather hard to believe their conviction and resolve towards the cause. on the other hand we do have imprisoned politicians learning candle making in prison. have the people at the helm decided to clean the mess or playing to the galleries, makes me think....

some other classics include 'i can marry, have kids, drive a car but cant drink until Im 25', another rape in delhi.- do the aloo chaat and dahi bhalle shops add sexually arousing drugs in their roadside delicacies served to men or is it that we remove the z and z++ security from the politicians and hand it over to the ladies of the national capital.

the ones that cracked me up were, reportedly Sachin Tendulkar has bought a 1BHK flat in a suburb in Mumbai. this is not the fun part, the amusing part is that he has taken a loan to buy the flat- with the money he has, he can very well set up his own financial institution handing out loans. the really good one was how Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will either have twins or a baby girl who will be a superstar in the coming years, how she may have a C-section and that she should have a lot of milk during her pregnancy all this was said by not a gynecologist but by a numerologist.

i was watching coke studio India on MTV the other day and saw a beautiful rendition between musicians who don't understand each other's language but created magic with their music. a particular piece was a solo bit on a 'sarangi' which was truly divine. it did create hundred different colours of music and there i drew parallels with our nation. different hues blended together into beautiful rainbow...

P.S : if you people are wondering why i keep commenting about India. well it has been a very long cherished dream of mine to become a political commentator or a journalist. for once i even thought of giving civil services a crack and also bought books off the dusty by lanes of nai sadak- chandni chowk in old delhi. but may be lack of conviction, resolve and more desire towards technology led me to being a techie..... so here i am sharing a very personal secret with the world... so much to the social networking world...