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.