India and the Olympics

About last week my mom visited my Masi in Delhi, meanwhile I and my father had to stay back at home. One fine evening, my father was home early from office and said that we were invited over for dinner to Sinha Uncle’s home. Now normally a middle class boy has too many Sinha(s) and Sharma(s) in his mental note that, every time he hears those title, he goes ‘ This time which one!’ . Nevertheless they all are the approximately same to me. So, I didn’t care to ask.

Fortunately his home is ‘not-so-far’ from ours and I have been to ‘this’ Sinha uncle’s home a couple of times earlier too. Generally when I visit to ‘these uncles’, the time period gets divided in two halves. One when I pass time swapping my phone or adoring little kids and I ignore the inane conversation my father is having. The other half (the one in which I clamber), when I am asked “ Aur aj kal kya kar rhe ho beta? Koi form bhare ho kya?”  Now for a marine engineer, the courses he has to do, hardly go down his senses. So, imagine how erratic would it be convincing others!

This time, I, keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t have to revisit that obnoxious episode again.

Now, as one enters uncle’s home, these thoughts are momentarily side-lined after having glimpse of the beautiful garden area in his house on the left side of the gate. Freshly mown grass and patches of gravel stones making a beautiful pattern in the garden area. Adding to it on the boundary lines, 2 rows of plantations of flowers which looked lovely and as usual most of them I couldn’t recognise. I guess they were like ‘appreciate and move on’.

In the centre of the green grass blanket, were 2 chairs and a designer table giving it a ‘one customer only coffee shop’ look. My father and Sinha Uncle were the lucky customers of that ‘royal’ coffee shop. I went inside the house noticing, adorable 4 year old ‘Vibha’ staring at the TV as her favourite song was being played. I squeezed her cheeks and tickled her a bit but she was rather mesmerized by ‘Jacqueline Fernandez’. In the distant room I overheard aunty struggling with 11 year old’s projects. Went inside, bid a Namaste to aunty and hi-fi to Abhay. Aunty felt relieved to notice me and immediately handed over her load of project to me and rushed to kitchen for the preparations for the evening.

In a while she invited us for some snacks in the living room. I thought of swapping channels to get the Olympic updates. I noticed that ‘Dipa Karmakar’s’ story was being telecasted on the news channel. I held on a bit as I was joined by Aunty and Abhay too. After a while we noticed Vibha trying to copy the steps as she saw on the TV. She took her tiny hands up above her head and trying to jump, seemed immensely cute of her.

‘Look Ma, she wants to be a gymnast’, popped Abhay in between with a giggle on his face.

I asked Vibha, if she wanted to be like the girl in the TV, and she responded with a ‘4 teeth cute smile’ and a tiny nod.

And within minutes, Mrs. Sinha went into her deep thoughts with a constant glaze at the Television set.

‘No, no. Not a chance. See how much turns she is taking in air…..Way too risky’, she said as if popped out of a weird dream.

‘It takes years of practice, and everybody goes through training for all this. Not that all of a sudden one has to do it. I feel we can give it a try for her’, I interrupted her thoughts.

‘Then also, I don’t find it right. Don’t we have any other sport’, said aunty.

I could see that she is already way down to the Olympic galleria in her thoughts.

‘She can participate in swimming’, again Abhay shot another idea as if he was sitting with a list of games her sister will participate in future.

‘What! That is even weirder. At least in gymnastics, one is on ground, not under water. My daughter is not going in any of such game’, said an even more sacred Mrs. Sinha.

‘A bit of that game is in air too!’ I gabbled. Abhay was enjoying the horrific look on his mother’s face.

‘Maybe, we can try for races, you know. They are good, ‘on ground’, teased Abhay.

‘What type of game are these! Girls running around all over with short bum-chums’, mumbled Aunty, this time with a frownier face.

The sport selection criteria and their logics almost made me laugh. However, I controlled my emotions.

‘Maybe we can try for Table Tennis or Badminton’, I suggested.

‘Yes, that would be good’, said finally relaxed Aunty, as if she was about to say ‘Go beta, collect your medal. This game is certified safe.’ Maybe it was the 70s films which depicted them as safe and sane sport.

‘Did we get any medals today?’ asked Mr. Sinha as he and my father entered the room and the Olympic news was still being aired.

‘Dad, can we get Badminton or Gymnast classes for Vibha?’ Abhay asked innocently.

‘What! What is going on here? Don’t you have your project to complete? Go study’ growled Mr. Sinha angrily and as if all of a sudden his mood swung from bright sunny day to dark clouds, and that too within a matter of few seconds.

'All they need is one reason to skip their studies, sometimes dance lessons and now.. its gymnastics', chukled Mr. Sinha. And they again went into loops in their office talks.

Abhay with despondency rushed back to his room, aunty disappeared in the kitchen and the ‘idiot box’ was turned off leaving little Vibha nothing to stare on.

That was the moment I realised that in our country, it’s not our interest which acts as the governing factor but our parent’s. May be bitter, but still parents find that the cologne of success lies with academics only. Every 4 years we stick to the tele-sets, we expect that our country to be on top of every list in medal tally, better than rest all others. But how much do we promote it on an initial level? How much do we prioritise academics over sports?

Yes, it is a matter of misfortune and shame that our governmental infrastructure is not able to provide the best facility to the sports-person emerging. But we too are supressing them, that too at budding level. And then we expect that someone of 125 crore countrymen, would make us proud.

I guess, it is time when we must have to change our mentality, our thoughts to promote sports as equally as academics. Maybe, now it is time indeed, when we need to emerge out of the 'pre-and-post 10 days era of the Olymipc season'. Time to support more than 'likes & shares' of social media, at every level to our sports persons, so that they can proudly project sports as a career option, not merely part-time amusement. Then we might expect plethora of medals and champions from our proud contingent.

  

Foreigner in own country

‘Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.’

                                                                                      -Anonymous.

My father has a transferable job and out of it, I get a chance of visiting

quite some places. Recently one of such places was Tumkur. Located in

the state of Karnataka, it is around 2 hrs drive from the city of

Bengaluru.

Truly said, the more we visit, more we come to know about the diversity

of the places in all aspects; culture, people and physical vividness.

Gradually we start adapting to the surroundings, the climate, the people

and add to it the accent of people. But adapting is no piece of cake and

peculiarly when it comes to language.

Reminds me of an incident, where every morning I went to milk parlour.

An old man sits there in his kingdom of packed milk bags. His homecum-

shop has a 4 feet boundary wall and a gate, which he generally

keeps shut, and he does his business from a 15cm X 10 cm box holed out

in his wall. Here comes the worst part for me; he neither knows English

nor Hindi.

Day 1: I asked him to get me 1 litre milk, the blue packet. The moment I

finished, the look on his face gave me a clear perception that my

language was from some other planet. Immediately I pointed him the

packet I wanted and he returned to me with it. I handed him the

hundred rupee note and then began the mayhem. He launched series of

‘Kannada’ arrows. Might be he was asking for change or some other

things if I wished to buy but it was totally out of my syllabus. And while I

was bombarded, I tried looking for help from any other customer nearby.

In return they gave me a, ‘Yes, you deserve this for not knowing

Kannnada’, look. In my defence, I tried convincing him that I don’t know

your language. God! He spoke like continuously for literally a minute.

And I, from freshly woke up went back to exhausted. I guess he also

realized that he had failed in being ‘Kannada Guru’, returned back with

left-over money and some candies.

I decided that I am not going without any shield in the battle field the

next day. I went to Google Translate. Learnt a few basic ‘Kannnada’ lines

which would be needed for my face off tomorrow. Now that was suicidal.

I said, “Ondu litar halu, nili pyaket” (yes, it is easy to learn simple

words). And what followed was a wave of his dialect going out of my

simple domain. I realised my blunder. This time his minute long speech

had phases, the optimistic phase where he thought I am getting what he

is saying, the frustrated phase where he knew his speaking is no more

good and the last one, the retarded phase when he left with “he is a damn

retard” look on his face.

For the coming day I had a policy; you see me as dumb, I will be dumb

for you and deaf as well. I took the exact change required, pointed him

the packets and handed over money. He spoke sometimes but of course

those words were of no meaning to me. So, me kicking off with another

language, I guess we weren’t synced. Apart from him, the other shops

were generally English/ Hindi friendly, luckily.

In ‘Tumkur’, what makes you fall in love with is the weather. The

wonderful breeze in evenings and slight cold at night, enough to pull

your blankets out. And add to it is the untimely drizzle of rain. Once

returning from a med shop I was stuck in such a down-pour. And when it

rains in our country, you will eventually find a ‘chai-shop’ in the vicinity.

I took shelter in one of the chains of ‘chaiwala Inc.’. Now chai stall is

such a magical place, where you can’t estimate the exact number of

people which can be accommodated. And find any chai stall across the

country, all the people will discuss is politics. I could make out the

intermittent BJPs, CONGRESSs and DMKs used in their conversations.

Amidst their aggressive conversation, I kept mum on one side. Probably

they grew suspicious, and one of them again asked me something which

to their disappointment I didn’t understand. I told them that I have no

idea of ‘Kannada’ and I am new to this place. And after that it was like

they left the territory of politics and I became the prime focus, the guy

from the other side of the same country.

Now, while in Tumkur, all the people will at once will recommend you to

first visit the ‘Siddaganga Mutt’. I said yes, I have already visited there.

So, then they began explaining about the history of that place. Then

someone started from the other side of the bench, that the Mutt has its

origins in 14th century. When Sree Haradanahalli Gosala Siddeshwara

handed over his headship of Mutt to next successor and with his 101

followers, went to hills for meditation. After a long time to quench the

thirst of one of his disciple, he hit one of the rocks and a stream of water

came out of it. The holy water was named ‘Sidda-ganga’. This water is

believed to have healing powers. Then I realised that now a days while

visiting places, we have restricted ourselves to selfies and pics only.

Then they latched to other places which I must consider visiting. The

Lakshmi Narshimha Swamy Temple, the local markets and some of the

local dishes, which were too volatile to skip my memory. But the best

part was the enthusiasm with which they were trying to explain me. It

kind of felt the same way we try to elaborate about the little part of India

we know about, to foreigners. Despite not being fluent in Hindi, they

tried to add up whatever they had to explain to me. I felt kind of thankful

for the effort they put in. Then I realised how vivid is our culture and

how small part of this vividity do we occupy.

“Travel makes you modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the

world.’’ 

                                                                                        - Gustav Flaubert