Wednesday 22 / January / 2025
A Spanish guy of Indian origin born, brought up and living happily in Madrid wakes up from his afternoon nap just in time to watch the badminton final between Pusarla Venkata Sindhu and Carolina Marin, checks out his twitter account in between and is amused by the response from Indians around the world.
A lady living in Delhi is on Facebook as Sindhu goes down fighting and thanks the girl from Hyderabad for bringing the whole of India together to watch a sport other than cricket.
In Trinidad, Ravichandran Ashwin watches the final and tweets “silver is such a worthy metal” even as Kapil Dev declares that a silver is worth 1,000 golds and suggests we name a storm after Sindhu.
What does this sudden, amazing deluge of Indian emotion in support of a sport other than cricket really mean?
An outpouring of frustration that a country with 1.33 billion people could win just two medals, which is actually four short of the six it had won in London and two short of the tally in Beijing? Maybe.
A Fleeting moment of delight that looked impossible until it really happened after nearly two weeks of boring, barren performances amid uninspiring tales about how a selfie-mad minister and his rude, arrogant entourage forced the Rio Olympic organisers to issue a warning that the minister, none other than federal sports Minister Vijay Goel, would be stripped of his accreditation and privileges? Maybe.
A sense of triumph over haughty, bossy celebrities such as Shobha De who followed her ‘Rio jao, selfie lo, khaali haath wapas aao” sort of black humour with the “PV Sindhu Silver Princess?” insensitivity soon after Sindhu dumped her Japanese rival in the semifinal to mint a sure silver into a possible gold in the final? Maybe.
A new sense of purpose born out of the shameful Olympic data that put the total number of medals won by India in the entire Olympic history at just about what a single man, Michael Phelps, has gathered all by himself, which stands at 28. Maybe.
A ray of light amid uninspiring tales of desperate measures, such as Dipa Karmakar’s attempts at doing the Produnova, or the death vault, which in theory is about catapulting high in the air and flipping twice before landing on your feet (and not on your butt or back that could break your spine into two), and which evoked chilling responses such as "I’m not trying to die” from US gymnast Simone Biles? Maybe.
Unity in diversity amid despicable reports on abominable mindsets reflected in the “PV Sindhu caste?” google searches and the colonial consciousness that saw a millions-big rise in the number of searches owing to a failure, deliberate or otherwise, to analyse data which, done properly, would have put the actual figures at just a few hundreds? Maybe.
Even when we agree that the kind of frustration and disgust felt and expressed by Indians living within the country and outside after Dipa did the somersaults in the air, landed on her feet safely, but failed to win a medal, Sakshi Malik grabbed vital points at the dying seconds of the bout to claim the bronze medal and Sindhu fought, but failed, all the way to turn the silver into gold was similar to that dark, gloomy feeling when the Indian cricket team crashed out of the 2015 ODI World Cup or the 2016 T20 Championship finals — and despite the possibility of the possibilities of the sort listed earlier standing a fair chance of turning out to be true — the simple, undeniable, unchangeable, truth about India remains lovely as ever.
There’s nothing like cricket for the Indians, for now and for quite some time to come.
The writer is a freelance contributor based in India. All the views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not reflect those of Times of Oman
