The flags and banners are down at the London Olympic venue and the athletes are back home - some joyous others sad. Phelps swam and Bolt shot into our hearts with records that won’t be broken in a jiffy. Even though Gold eluded us, we are high on the achievements by our Olympians this year- which is a rather huge achievement when compared with India’s medal drought earlier. Mary Kom and Sushil Kumar raised the Gold hopes of more than a billion people but alas. But there’s hope yet because both are aiming for the yellow metal at Rio. As they say, if you dream big, you win big!
We salute the humble beginnings of Jogeshwar Dutt and Sushil Kumar – both of farmers stock who are down to earth, really. Dutt is the son of a bus driver and he reached the world stage and grabbed a medal for India while Sushil’s mother woke up at 3 am daily to milk cows but made her son an Olympian twice over! She’s confident her home-made ‘makhan’ and his hard work will get him the Gold in 2016.
There’s a lesson for urban mothers who don’t hesitate to buy multinational brands of Complan and Oreos that produce obesity rather than healthy ‘phelwans’. Bravo Saina Nehwal, our last-girl-standing in badminton! The common chorus was ‘Saina v/s China’ and it gave one goose bumps watching the Chinese badminton players in yellow, rooting for their own.
But Saina’s grit reached her to the podium of glory. All her sacrifices of disregarding girlie stuff like hair straightening, shampoo, nail polish, texting, but doggedly sweating it out with her racket and shuttle, helped to hold the nimble Chinese at bay, single-handedly. We sure need more gritty ladies to join Saina in the battle against the Chinese in the next world event.
Lightweight, Mary Kom became a star overnight – this mother of twins is not only a 5-time World Boxing champion but she also boxed the daylights out of her opponent in London for the Bronze. She cried and apologised for not getting the Gold for India and the nation cried too because she seems so full of fire in her belly.
At long last our government rewarded the medal winners handsomely. And,why not? If goodies are distributed for votes, why not for winning medals, huh? But, our Corporates are silent- there’s not a signal reward from their side.
