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Thursday, August 05, 2010
Commonwealth Games, a Future Comaneci in a Local Train
She was miniscule, a slip of a girl (who would slip through a 9-a.m.-crowd without causing a ruffle), agile thin, and scrawny. She came into the crowded compartment and charmed us into squeezing our bundles of flesh and bones into narrow crevices for her act. Her brother beat up a rising and falling tempo on his two-sided drum made of some synthetic material (not leather, actually) and she began to contort herself. She bent into a reverse "U" shape I had been trying since ages to perfect, only that I would break a few vertebrae if I tried. Then she drew herself through a small ring, the whole sliver-like length of her. Then she does a cartwheel standing and then turning a full 360 degrees in the air. A gymnast, a gymnast, I said to myself, she could be India's answer to Nadia Comaneci, only she has no godfathers.
With the continuous pack of lies being unreeled in the Commonwealth Games (If you don't know what's up the game organizers bought treadmills for 25 lakhs which were actually worth 4 lakhs, that is six times the cost. If it happened in Beijing or Timbuctoo the man would have been sacked right away. But see him, the chairman-vairman, he doesn't even show a grimace. Hey guy who are you fooling?) fiasco and the hockey chief's shameless demanding of sexual favours I wonder if India will ever be a sporting nation.
Ah well, the girl then went around with an aluminum vessel for a collection. Many paid. Even I dropped a Rs 5 coin. That's my contribution to a future Comaneci.
sad indeed. so many comanecis lost in the daily grind.
ReplyDeletecan i ask this: where was the wonderful media last year while all the CWG scams were going on? they were waiting for the last minute before they launched their expose of the corruption because if the guilty had been punished and the problems solved immediately, how would their TRP ratings go up? the mess we all are in will help the news channels rake in the moolah even as our national pride is soiled and crushed! see, the rajdeep sardesais and the barkha dutts, the karan thapars of this world rely heavily on chaos and mayhem to earn their daily bread. every where else, the media works with the country to make sure the latter does not fall flat on its face. there may have been glitches during the sydney and the beijing olympics, but the nation came together to make the event a success. now ministers are saying that the olympic comittee were foolish enough to give india a chance to host the CWG, given their history of corruption and lack of national pride! so casually has this minister damned the entire nation by proclaiming that "vast sums of money invite sticky fingers", he has tarred all of us with the same brush because of the greedy actions of a few. these are the same people who will take credit if the women's hockey team wins medals, but will ignore their plight. our women's national hockey team members live in abject squalor and lead lives of great deprivation. such a shame.
imagine, 3500 crores would have been better used to improve our roads and hospitals, cancelled all the farmer loans and fed the hungry. come to delhi, fellow indians, and weep.