BECAUSE WE ARE LIKE THAT ONLY...
Some
‘Olympic categories’ in which Indians could go for gold
DID YOU know that the oldest person
to ever win an Olympics medal was a 73year-old British graphic artist called
John Copley? And that he won the silver medal for etching in the 1948 London
Olympics? Yes, that’s right. Etching. That was an Olympic category back in the
day, along with literature, architecture, music and town planning. (I can just
about imagine the Doordarshan commentary as these contests got under way.)
BOLLYWOOD MODE Thanks to dance shows
on TV like JhalakDikhhlaJaa and DanceIndiaDance the jhatka-matka school of
modern dancing has taken root in our hearts – and our feet – as well
I don’t know about you, but this bit
of Olympic trivia left me longing for a simpler world in which people weren’t
so hung up on sporting talent – at which we are, quite frankly, completely
rubbish – but had time to appreciate the finer things of life. Like... er...
etching.
Now, I’m not sure that any of us
would do very well in the town-planning department (just drive around any
modern Indian city if you don’t believe me) but there are some areas in which
our teams would be an absolute shoo-in for the gold. So, maybe sometime in the
distant future, when all those ghastly memories of the Delhi Commonwealth Games
have faded and India is hosting the Olympics, we could smuggle in some of these
non-sporting categories so that our boys and girls can, at long last, improve
on our medals tally.
Here are just a few ideas, off the
top of my head. Feel free to add to the list, and we’ll petition the Indian
Olympic Association in good time.
1 WHINING
I’m not dead set on ‘Whining’, you
understand. You could call it ‘Outraging’ or even the more boring
‘Complaining’. But no matter how it is titled, I’m pretty sure we would make a
clean sweep of this category every four years. After all, this doesn’t require
uniforms, special training equipment or large stadiums to practise in. We can
all hone our talents in front of the television set, on social media, at
office, while shopping. Hell, we could even put in a couple of hours of practice
while commuting back and forth from work. And God knows, we’ve been doing just
that for years and years. So, let’s not let all that good work go to waste.
Let’s at least get a medal or two for our plaints.
2 MUSICAL CHOREOGRAPHY
Nobody does the choreographed
musical number better than Bollywood. And thanks to all those dance shows on TV
like Jhalak dikhhla jaa and Danceindiadance (or whatever else they’re called
this season), the jhatka-matka school of modern dancing has taken root in our
hearts – and our feet – as well. Rare is the Indian who can sit still when
Hindi music begins to blare. So let’s give those pelvic thrusts an Olympic
category of their own. And see India shine and shimmy and go for gold.
3 DRIVING RECKLESSLY
By that I don’t mean driving fast on
Formula One tracks (because, yes, we are pretty rubbish at that too) but
driving recklessly: Taking turns without using the indicator; fender-bending
with panache; braking suddenly, changing lanes with abandon, and never ever
taking your finger off the car-horn. I’m just thinking aloud here but maybe all
of these could be sub-categories in this competition. And I’m quite sure the
Indians would make a clean sweep of all of them.
4 EATING DEEP-FRIED SNACKS
We have a pan-national advantage in
this sport, with every region in India having its own deep-fried specialities.
If the Bengalis have their luchis and the Punjabis their paranthas, the UP
bhaiyas have their kachoris and chaats. The Tamilians and Kannadigas have their
medu vadas, the Maharashtrians their chaklis, the Malayalis their banana chips.
I could go on but I’d then have to take a break to have a deepfried snack of my
own. Maybe I should do that – get in some early practice on the off-chance that
I make it to the final squad. It may be my only hope of ever winning a gong.
5 SEXUAL HARASSMENT
You know we’d be brilliant in this
category, don’t you? Come on, admit it. All those decades of practice at
whistling at the ladies as they walk down the road, groping them when they
travel in public transport, harassing them at the workplace, molesting them
when they have the temerity to go out at night, raping them when they ‘ask’ for
it, all of it would pay off finally. Score!
Then, of course, there are the minor
categories, like haggling for a good price, making tall promises that we know
that we can never keep, and that old Indian chestnut, ‘jugaad’, which we are so
inordinately proud of. And let’s not forget ‘late-coming’ as well.
The only problem with the last
though, is that given our attitude to time-keeping, the competition will
probably not start until the next Olympic Games roll around. And then, they’ll
be held in some stupidly-sporty nation like Australia or Germany, and it will
all be over for us and our Olympic hopes.
Seema Goswami HTBR120805
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