A Collage of Champions.

 It was cusp of 1988- 89. A 12-year-old girl was making her way through the asphalt jungle of a miniature township of the metropolitan suburb of Mumbai. She was hurrying to the ‘posterwala’ around the corner. He had promised her to get the not much in demand poster of an Indian athlete. It was only a week ago when she had sprinted for 100 meters and had missed the numero uno position by a whisker. Her lean body and slick runner mark decreased the wind resistance. She sprinted like an arrow shot from an overstretched bow yet she couldn’t feel the ribbon on her chest.  She was inconsolable.

 ‘I never wanted to be an Olympian. All I wanted was to keep breaking my own record. I never competed to defeat anyone.’ these were the words of P. T Usha, the Indian field athletic legend when she had missed the Olympic bronze by mere nanosecond in 1984 Los Angeles.

These verses reverberated in her mind as she walked home with drooping shoulders that day; and since then she wanted the poster of this Golden girl. She had paper cuttings from the newspaper but she knew that a wall length colored poster would look good in her bedroom. She passed by an Irani cafe now, where the jukebox played the freshly brewed songs of ‘Qayamat se Qayamat tak.’ Next to it was a shanty of the ‘posterwala’. It hosted array of paper bound celebrities ready to be stuck on the walls of admirers and aspirants. Unfortunately, she had to return empty handed.

Today, 30 years later this girl is trapped in Monday mundane; making lunch boxes for her kids, running behind the corporate success, and bragging about the exotic vacations. The innocent pride and passion for the sport has long gone and the void has been filled up to the brim, by self-absorbance. Today she doesn’t even know the concurrent counterparts of P. T. Usha.

Sadly, the glamour has out- paced the achievements. Many people know about Mary Kom because Priyanka Chopra played that role. People have rekindled affection about Milkha Singh because Farhan Akhtar played the part. I guess many would have heard about the hockey wizard Major Dhyanchand after seeing the Shaharuk Khan movie ‘Chhak De India.’ It would amaze you that in the first half of the previous century Indians played Hockey with grandma’s stick and hailed supremacy. The cult Nazi Fuhrer was in awe of this man to the point where he was asked to join German forces at a much bigger rank and pay. The bare footed but firmly rooted Dhyanchand had said no while still on German soil.

Where have all these stories gone? Like Amir Sohail- Venkatesh Prasad spat of world cup 1996; why these and many other stories and achievements are not on the tip of our tongues. Where they not archived or where they not propagated? Whether it was loss of interest among the commoners or lack of integrity among the media moguls?

I guess it all started when the press institutions became entrepreneur-ships run by business minded. The crowd has a gold fish memory. Like piranhas they hog on anything and everything without much of a thought. All you have to do is put forward a sassy show, numb their thinking nerves and extort emotional catharsis from them; pretty much like the magicians do. The choreographed news focusing on certain sects more; then let these sects be empty shadows of dwarf achievements. It is like you create a need and then sell your product.

The show stoppers of news channels encash the mentality of the masses very well. The constant illusion of insecurity mints profit. The parched audiences come back for more and more. The news makers feel elated to act like the creators. Creators of success, glamour, fame and also the creators of misfortune, ill fate and conspiracy for the few unfortunate. They exercise a singular power to decide between right and wrong and often it is twisted to the likes of their political masters and TRPs.

Otherwise liberal media becomes stingy and mediocre when something uncomfortable to their likes rises and gains momentum.  It nonchalantly ignores the goodness and continue the puffery of the same old nepotism. To amuse and entertain they debate which itself is an utter mockery. The print media is no behind. All the goodness is vanquished to the latter pages, in the small font and the negatives are high lightened. The goons and their managed mischiefs see the light of the first page right next to the advertisements of flamboyant products. The illegitimacy and one sidedness continue.

As a matter of fact, every matter has an anti- matter and, hence it doesn’t matter if the blame is shared. Remember, the butchers cut because people eat. We choose to ignore languidly and allow them to shove information into our throats. We only make a shallow attempt to cherish the starlets. We forget their names and achievements partly because of lack of hammering from the digital portal and partly because of our half blood attitude. We get floaters in our eyes while watching kaleidoscope of the world. We run behind the glitter but not behind the gold. We have abated to the miserable recognition of many sport personalities. Their stardom and glitz we simply fail to accept. We reduce these superstars to mere fossils of deprivation. We deny them appreciation and appreciation is encouragement.

The juggernauts like Dutee Chand and Hima Das win unnoticed. Neeraj Chopra pierces the earth with his Javelin to win gold, but who knows. Shuttle queens like Saina Nehwal and P. V. Sindhu are famous but who cares about the para- badminton champ Parul Parmar. When Mirabai Chanu lifted 4 times her weight, her golden efforts were put to dust. The eyeless girl Kanchanmala Pande swam to medley in style and yet we remain blindfolded and unsighted. Manpreet Singh and Rani Rampal, that’s correct who? The hockey counterparts of Virat Kohli and Mitali Raj never get to savior the glam. Sakshi Mallik and Sushil Kumar grappling to success, Sarita Devi, Dingko Singh the pugilists, Deepika Kumari, Jayant Talukdar and Dola Banerjee whose arrows cut through the air and hit the bull’s eye and Gagan Narang and Jitu Rai who do the same with artillery pieces. The list is exhaustive. You dig a bit and unearth so much.

The brunt of this unfair tilt is multifaceted. It is felt by defences, doctors, small scale philanthropists, law enforcers, scientists, socialists and right upto the simple average citizens. The irony is that we still continue the monotone and keep on snoozing the alarm. When are we going to break the mould and be the shooting stars, that’s the question?