Passionate About India

The saga of shame of the Indian Commonwealth Games continues as more and more shameful skeletons tumble out of the cupboard. And it only makes my heart cringe. More so because I believe that sports is literally one of the key routes to a healthy nation. From child health to adult health – both physical and mental – sports has a great role to play, especially in today’s day and time where children are getting addicted to videogames and to the internet. To me, personally, the Commonwealth Games event – good or bad – was in reality a great opportunity for India to develop the Indian sports scene. Instead, we found it a great opportunity to plunder more and more money. And that’s what forces me to take a look at how the Chinese used the Olympics as a great leap forward and how they have over years made sports a way of life. Compared to the Indian games, the 2008 Beijing Olympics actually spoke volumes about China’s commitment to sports. Not only did China refurbish the entire host city to ...

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...

The Olympics has always been an event when people across the world keep aside their personal vendetta, forget for sometime the permutations of geopolitics, and gather to enjoy one of the greatest uniting factors of mankind, i.e. sports. Yet, this time, when the Olympics are being staged in China, people across the world are waiting more to see whether China can pull it through successfully, than for anything else. And probably never before in Olympic history has there been a ‘host versus the rest’ phenomenon as much as is clearly present this time. No prizes for guessing that if China doesn’t succeed in pulling it through, not too many people would be unhappy. In the last few years, since China was selected for hosting the 2008 Olympics, the country looked upon this event not as an opportunity to bridge the remaining gaps with the rest of the world, but as a perfect opportunity to flaunt ‘the China way’. And this attitude is evident – right from the construction of a larger than life a...