Passionate About India

The year when India is going to host both the Commonwealth Games as well as the World Cup Hockey championships couldn’t have started in a more unfortunate way. The first is of course the fracas revolving around the strike of the Indian hockey players and their refusal to play till the time their arrears were paid. While the governing body known as Hockey India was quick to literally term the players unpatriotic and accuse them of putting money before the essence of playing for India, what was appalling was not only the fact that the arrears (running into lakhs) of the said hockey players had not been paid for a long duration, but also that Hockey India actually offered a pittance of Rs 25,000 for each player in lieu of the arrears. And this too was offered to them only with the condition that either the striking players accepted it or left the conditioning camp within 48 hours. Needless to say, the authorities were perhaps thinking that it would be easy for them to lure junior players ...

The winning of the gold medal by Abhinav Bindra in the Beijing Olympics, 2008, is indeed a matter of great pride for not just the sports loving people of this country but also for every Indian. It is special to me for three key reasons: firstly, the triumph of this young man with a childish innocence has literally brought India out of the notional apartheid and a sort of Below Poverty Line (BPL) status it had had for long in the global sporting arena. His win assumes a larger than life status, considering the fact that never ever in the 112 years of Olympics’ history has any Indian athlete won an individual gold medal; the last gold medal we had earned was in the team event of hockey, and that too 28 years ago! The other reason that makes Abhinav’s feat so special to me is that after watching the India contingent walking past during the inaugural ceremony, I was so filled with shame that I had almost given it a zero chance of anything close to even a single gold – something that’s so h...