Mera beta Badminton player banega

Image Credit: AIB

    AIB posted this picture on the internet after the Men's Singles Badminton QF at the Olympics, Rio, 2016 where Srikanth Kidambi lost the match to Lin Dan, who was in the race to defend his previous golds. I haven't watched a single game in the Rio Olympics before this, but after feeling disappointed on missing out PV Sindhu's match the previous day, I decided to go ahead and watch it, despite having no knowledge about the jargon of the game, or the rules on how it's played. All I had to do was to keep my eyes on the shuttle and the bat( lol) . And as AIB viewed it, I was quite enthralled by Superman playing in front of me. What impressed me the most, and made me want to respect this player so bad was his absolute calm, his demeanour, his skill and his entire body language on the court. What a hero.

Even though I haven't been watching the Olympics, I had been skimming through the news, had been quite disgusted by sardonic tweets about the lack of medals , and in general, got the picture about how we, as a nation, are quite adept at proving what bloody hypocrites we are.A lot has already been written and shared and tweeted about how the journey to be on the Olympics berth has been quite horrifying and an extremely painful, humiliating and de-moralizing journey for so many athletes who were participating in the Games. How cash prizes seem to make sense for when they are preparing rather than an announcement later( which I am not 100 % sure actually reaches the athletes). But let's maybe talk about life after the Olympics.

Cheering for our players has a very feel-good factor about it and it's something we folks never shy away from. It's the bit about how much we support them even when they lose( due to a million other reasons that the janta is not aware of) that bugs me. When the Indian Women's hockey team won the World Cup in 2015 and returned home, there was no tumultuous applause and a grinning crowd waiting to receive them. Sucks right?The lack of sensitivity and lack of pride is extremely discouraging. As a one-person system , since we cannot do the following right away- change the system, fire the sports minister, eradicate corruption in India, give the athletes the respect and resources that they deserve, stop poorly informed politicians and "writers" from dishing out expert advice like me, what we can effectively do is to maybe start being a better support system. Start by telling these real heroes that they make us so proud and motivate and inspire millions.

We are so caught up in trying to play catch up with lives that we endorse on social media and complain about how it is unfair that we have only measly 24 hours in a day. But these real heroes beat the hell out of 24 hours and dedicate themselves to their sport in a way that can only be inspiring. So there must be some way we can support them, without having to wait for the Big change to happen and for things to automatically fix themselves. I ain't talking about working in groups, but about whatever support and motivation we can give in small ways as an individual. Encourage a kid who wants to play one extra hour of tennis, reason out with parents if they don't think it's a right "career path" ; participate and take a keen interest in keeping local sports clubs active; try and motivate kids to watch sports other than cricket ; cheer the athletes so hard they can feel the endorphins bouncing off you. In whatever way you can think of, instead of depending on a failed institution.

For my part,I think I'll go and wait outside the Hyderabad Airport when PV Sindhu and Srikanth Kidambi get back and attempt to embarrass them with my fandom. Any takers?