At the send-off ceremony for the Indian contingent at the Beijing Olympics, ace rifle shooter Manavjeet Singh Sandhu said that it was stupid to ask an Indian athlete how many medals he or she will win. It made sense and so did his body language or the unspoken words. He did mention the uncanny Indian affinity towards one particular sport but did not name the sport.
Our attitude towards our Olympians is funny and completely devoid of logic, let alone passion. We don’t want our kids to be sportsmen unless it’s cricket and the kid has shown extraordinary talent at a very early age, we don’t bother reading or watching non-cricket news and thus, the write-ups or the programmes on these sports are few, almost never easily visible and more often than not, written or produced with utmost callousness with scant regard for the authenticity of the information.
We prefer saas-bahu serials or the innumerable talent hunt competitions on television over the Olympics. We don’t know the names of the athletes who represent India in the Games. We almost invariably crack a joke (not realizing that the joke is on us!) when we get to know that India will have representation in judo or yachting.
We do feel happy and proud when Karnam Maleshwari wins a bronze or Rajyavardhan Rathore wins a silver medal, but it does not bother us if they fail to win anything at all. Most of us unlike the Indian Premier League (IPL), do not keep a track of the day-to-day proceedings of the ‘Greatest show on earth’ and when we are informed of our yet another dismal performance in the Olympics, our first reaction is to express astonishment at the fact that the Games are over and then to agree that there never was a chance and it was pointless to feel bad about the results.
It is so unfair to the athletes who have tried hard all their lives to make us proud. We have relegated them to the ranks of other objects of ridicule.
It is quite funny to attend these ceremonies where journalists of all size and shape behave far more important than the athletes. The representatives of the most obscure channels decide who should be interviewed and who could be given a miss and decide the language in which the interview is to be conducted by the appearance of the athlete.
This is not a blame game, me and my colleague Shreyas Sharma, two individuals genuinely interested in sports and not cricket alone, spoke to the members of the boxing team, never sure of who were we speaking to, Jitender or Vijender.
How does it feel to represent India in the Olympics? I doubt the answer could ever be found. In other words, I doubt I will ever be happy with the answers that our athletes will come up with. I believe, it is a complicated issue to grow up playing a sport, earning a berth for the Olympics and yet reaching there with no burden of expectations. But the frustration of Sandhu and others is understandable and in spite of the assurances of the thick-skinned, shameless administrators, little or nothing will change in the near future.
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