Indian Squad's Passion, Patriotism, Hope And Desperation In Tokyo Olympics 2021

This is not a dampener. This is a reality check. While passion, patriotism, hope and desperation jostled for space on the Indian air waves one week into the Tokyo Olympics 2020, the air was also hanging heavy with a rather familiar déjà vu feeling about the whole exercise being largely a case of much ado about nothing yet again.

Late on a humid Friday evening at the Olympics, world champion Sifan Hassan, representing the Netherlands, appeared to be out of contention and altogether disinterested as she started and remained at the back of the field for the first half of the 5000m women’s heat in the track and field events. But a very subtle gear shift almost went unnoticed past the 2500m mark as she slowly made her way up midfield before appearing resigned to settle for seventh place until the penultimate lap.

On the seventh and final lap though, while her Kenyan and Ethiopian counterparts held steady ground at the front, Hassan quietly made her pitch for first and the finish line in such sublime fashion that they could only look on shocked, disgusted and most importantly, exhausted, as she gracefully moved past them and then into a league of her own.

Hassan, it turned out, had quietly executed a very stealthy and rather deceptive plan, building steadily and sure footedly, slowly at first and then with consistency, pushing past when it was time. This was only the first heat as she is expected to take part across three events.

As exhilarating as it was to watch, it was not easy to shake off the lingering feeling that India were continuing to miss a beat.

After all, what happened to the P.T. Usha’s of the country? What has happened to the next great hope? Where is the build up, the foundation, the steadiness, the consistency and the core, and the bench strength? The ceiling barriers are yet to be broken, once and for all and comprehensively at that as far as India at the Olympics are concerned.

This is not a dampener. This is a reality check.

When USA lost one of the world’s greatest gymnasts in Simone Biles at the last minute in the all round team gymnastics event, they found a new champion in Suni Lee who claimed gold in the individual event to add to USA’s prowess as the fifth successive champion to take the gold at the Olympics. Great Britain were rewarded for staying with Tom Daley and his ten year Olympics history of medals finally yielding him a gold in the 10m platform men’s synchronized diving. Michael Phelps’s Olympics record is being challenged as is Mark Spritz’, unbelievably so, by Caeleb Dressler in the swimming events.

One could not help but cut back to the picture earlier in the morning as Hassan silently disappeared into the background as did Dutee from Indian minds.

At the fifth heat of the women’s 100m, a relatively diminutive woman lined up at the very end in lane 9. More exalted champions such as Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce took their place in the middle. The commentator on air did not even bother to go to the end of the field to introduce the athletes and Dutee Chand remained largely incognito, finishing a rather lacklustre seventh in an eight women race and much behind her national record time. Finishing 45 out of 54 participants reminded one of the shoddy affair that passed for sports events at many a school.

Still Chand was at the Olympics. Getting here was a Herculean effort and could not draw comparison. But that summed up India’s campaign in a nutshell.

Getting here is everything and then being here is automatically translated to medal hope in the minds of a billion. Never mind the mental challenge of watching athletes around the world show up with a larger support staff and a more rounded practice and facilities behind them. Hurdles are often overlooked in the public eye.

After all, while the likes of Anurag Thakur and Kiran Rijuju can sing laurels of our athletes when they make progress, it could be argued that like India’s lamentably bleak Olympics history, much of India’s untapped sporting talent continues to remain hidden.

It can also explain the almost monotonous voice in which the electronic media were already talking medal even as family members of P.V. Sindhu and Lovlina Borgohain encouraged cautious optimism. “Going for gold” screamed the headlines even though both women were still only into the semi finals in their respective disciplines of boxing and badminton respectively and had to still get past one more opponent to throw the final gauntlet for gold.

Once over the euphoria on a rather quiet, less newsworthy Friday where the farmers protest and the opposition took a backseat, the overwhelming feeling returned once more at the end of another epic day at the Tokyo Olympics that it was better to read the list of who had made the leap ahead rather than read out the long list of Indian athletes who didn’t.

Why are India’s medal hopefuls over hyped before the Olympics and then reduced to less than a handful midway through the two week celebration of sport only for India to be able to count on one hand the number of medals returning home? What is wrong with this picture?

Consider the déjà vu. There lies the answer.

Consider this for comparison.

A billion plus strong nation and 128 athletes represent India. Australia boasts a train of over 450 athletes at the Tokyo Olympics and only has a population that is about 25 million. Yet Australia are sitting pretty at no.6 behind the Russian Olympics Committee with nine gold medals to their name against the leader China who have now leaped over Japan with eighteen gold medals. Australia have 22 medals by the end of a hot and muggy night at the Olympics. India, still just the one.

Missing the top spot in the headlines were the archery duo of Deepika Kumari and Atanu Das who were holding their respective ground in the women’s individual archery event and men’s recursive individual archery, heading into the quarterfinals. While their efforts are commendable, they still represent a tiny fraction of India’s athletes who made it to the Olympics which is a great feat in itself but also, an even more miniscule percentage of the population, which is blasphemous to say the least.

Women’s hockey also provided some hope and as rightly pointed out, a semi final place is a great place to be in a ten year development. The emphasis has to be on development.

On a day when the likes of P.V. Sindhu were being hailed, there was an out-of-touch-with-reality moment when actor R. Madhavan posted this reply to a picture of the Tokyo Olympics silver medalist Mirabai Chanu having food on the floor of her humble home back in Manipur:

“Hey this cannot be true. I am at a complete loss of words.”

Why, Madhavan? First of all, it has to be pointed out, there is nothing wrong with having one’s lunch on the floor. To put things in context here though, he should know better the plight of Indian sportspersons given that he has played a coach to one in one of his movies.

It certainly puts playing for honour and pride of the country in perspective. That is a school of thought that has been given much lip service but not much credence in the wake of introduction of a sporting culture such as the Indian Premier League.

But it highlights not just the humble conditions from which these sportspersons come from but also, of the great demands on them, sometimes on their own two legs and on their meagre resources to get as far as they do. Showering laurels when medals are won is easy. In that sense, walking that opening ceremony in Tokyo was already a dream too high but achieved. But what about those who made it on their own merit and great hard work but didn’t get far, like Dutee?

Often this is not a rags-to-riches story for many of these sports persons who achieve elite Olympics medal levels. Promises made to them – not incentives but rewards after they hit the spotlight – are not kept. Homes are denied, jobs going a-begging, their talent, experience and wisdom untapped as the governments fail to use their success as a slipstream to build a steady stream of athletes inspired in the wake of their accomplishments.

Then four years later, it appears the names once again come out of the woodworks, the politicians bring out their patriotic Indian montages and the fans their tricolour and march alongside the sportspersons to unrealistic dreams and expectations.

The dismay is obvious.

The handful of aspiring shooters have had enough turmoil on the results board and back in the dressing room with enough ruffles over rifts between shooters and coaches. Manu Bhaker, who was expected to be the flag bearer in the end leading the medals tally, had a run in with her coach, Jaspal Rana, and thereafter with a rare malfunctioning pistol that hurt her chances in the 10m air pistol qualification event.

As news headlines kept screaming… “so-and-so crashes out,” “so-and-so crashes out”, and “so-and-so crashes out”, once again it highlighted the great disparity of how sports like cricket are given deliberate vantage point and therefore, focus, while it is hard even for seasoned journalists to extrapolate on the goings-on back in Tokyo simply because they have been fed and raised on a consumption of mainly one sport and also, then forced into specialized fields that earn their employers and themselves bread-and-butter. This is simply a fact of life, which some journalists have been candid and also, brave enough to admit openly.

One had to go deeper and read in order to learn why the nineteen year old Bhaker “crashed out” (visuals were not made available at the time). Not mentioned were her still impressive scores while she lost time while her pistol was being repaired as opposed to replaced with a spare because of the time it would take to make adjustments.

While the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) stated that India’s performance at the Tokyo Olympics was “inexplicable” and the sports authority talking about an overhaul, what is not easily forgiven is the repeated manner in which sportspersons find themselves in needless tangles, whether off the field like Mary Kom is in her final Olympics showdown, calling out the IOC over unfair judging, or the “usual suspects” (for want of a better term) of the likes of Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza calling foul of the AITA over selection muddles and confusion.

Where is the next generation? And where is the accountability? Where is the quiet pacing from the back of the field to make track steadily and then to take the finish line?

To think India lacks talent is appalling given that despite this sudden euphoria that comes out of the closets every four years – from the government and sports aficionados alike – India, despite its vast wealth, has very little infrastructure to show why there is no great grassroot level at which India’s budding talent is given ground on which to train.

Budget reels every February rarely do the untapped and underprivileged talent in the country little justice, leaving sports on the backburner. Between politics, nepotism and corruption, even existing infrastructure is elusive to these athletes in their four year long training that demands endurance and commitment of an extraordinary nature. The Olympics highlights this fact amply.

It is not enough that somehow, Dutee Chand is India’s only athlete in the track and field with hope and even she finishes at the end of the tail. While India’s hopes now rest on Sindhu and Lovlina and on the archers to wipe out the dim spotlight over the coming weekend, something is wrong with this picture and has been for a very long time. #KhabarLive

#ShareTheLoad #MultiplyLove: An Alarm To Make The Society 'Wake Up' For #ShareChoresMultiplyLove

Ariel encourages men to #ShareTheLoad to make home an equal space 

so that women can have #ShareChoresMultiplyLove.

It's not a surprise that in India about 71% of women sleep less than their husbands due to household chores. In the pursuit to excel in her career and also bring the best for her family, a woman usually compromises on her time to sleep to be able to do everything. It is no surprise that women end up being overworked with an acute lack of proper sleep.

In the outside world where men and women play equal roles in their professional lives, ironically do not manifest the same equality at home. When a man and woman come together to make a home for themselves, often the mental onus to keep the household in place scouts down to the women. As a result, women tend to overstretch their days to finish off the errands before and after their day jobs #ShareChoresMultiplyLove that leave them sleep-deprived.

When men of the household do not share equal responsibility, it directly impacts something as basic as rest for women. Ariel with its latest initiative encourages men to come forward and #ShareTheLoad to transform the household into an equal space because equality comes not just by sharing lives but also by sharing responsibilities so that women can have justified with love and affection.

Over the years emerging as an enabler for change, Ariel has championed the discourse of gender equality at households with its multiple #ShareTheLoad initiatives. Year on year, in its persistent effort to avert the gender prejudices at home, Ariel with its conversations around gender discourses, has, by all means, turned into a solution based movement to bring about a change in society.

Fast forward to the year 2020, addressing the often overlooked subject of sleep equality, Ariel has once again brought us back to identify, address and take an assured action against gender inequality in the domestic space, this time by highlighting the reality of #ShareChoresMultiplyLove. With increasing conversations and a resolute persistence, the participation of men in domestic chores has gone up with time. Most men who are starting out on their journey of taking over responsibilities agree that doing the laundry is the simplest way to set a foot forward towards an equal tomorrow.

Ariel has always been at the forefront of championing equality through its #ShareTheLoad initiative that started in the year 2015 with a pressing question, "Is laundry only a woman's job?". Furthering the cause, the initiative also created a movement called, "Dads Share The Load" in 2016 and then questioning "Are we teaching our sons what we have been teaching the daughters" in 2018 before coming back with yet another powerful subject #EqualSleep this season in 2020.

Making the movement actionable this year around, Ariel is encouraging men to take a credible step towards change by being equally involved in household chores even if that means starting out with the easiest one- #ShareTheLaundry.

#innlive appreciates the initiative taken by Ariel for being a facilitator of change by sparking a conversation, propelling a movement and mobilizing men of the household to pull up their socks and take action towards gender equality at home.

‘I will #ShareTheLoad and help in household chores in association with Ariel India and BlogAdda‘ #innlive

How Akhila became Hadiya – and why her case has reached the Supreme Court?

A young woman adopted Islam, defying her Hindu family. The case has roiled Kerala.

It is called Devi Krupa – the blessings of the goddess. But inside the modest single-storeyed house in TV Puram village in Kerala’s Kottayam district, a young woman has been confined against her wishes, on the orders of Kerala High Court. Outside the house, six policemen stand guard round-the-clock.

Oppressive personal laws aren’t the only thing standing between Muslim women and happy lives

The nation cannot swoop in to save the Muslim woman while Muslim communities are simultaneously being brought to their knees.

I am glad it is over. I refer to talaq-e-bidat, the practice of Muslim men uttering talaq, talaq, talaq in a single setting to instantly divorce their wives, which rightfully belonged in a trash can, but also to the television nation’s delirious excitement at having “saved Muslim women”.

Everyone Knows Test Cricket Is Dying But Few Will Step Forward To Save It

The ICC mooted the idea of a World Test Championship in 2008. Nine years later, we’re still discussing how to save the oldest format of the game.

Robert Southey was meditating on the futility of war; he could just as well have been musing on the “Test” series just completed between India and Sri Lanka, and the one now under way between the West Indies and England.

In A Historic Verdict, Supreme Court Strikes Down Triple Talaq

For many women in India, the Supreme Court stood on the right side of history today after it struck down the practice of instant divorce called triple talaq, practiced by Sunni Muslims in the country.

In a 3-2 judgment, Justices Kurian Joseph, RF Nariman and UU Lalit struck down the practice of instant divorce, describing it as "illegal and sinful" and ruling that it violates the right to equality enshrined in the Indian constitution.

India’s Pioneering Women Qazis Ask Muslim Men: Have You Read The Quran?

Newly trained women Islamic clerics, or Qazis, have started work in towns across India, offering an invaluable support system to Muslim women, and inviting opposition from orthodox circles.

Iqra's world fell apart in six months.

In her telling, it began, as it often does, with marriage. The 23-year-old's marriage to Ali was an exchange programme of sorts. Ali was her cousin, son of her khaala, her mother's sister. In turn, Iqra's brother married the same khaala's daughter. Her khaala also became her mother-in-law. Such marriage between first cousins is commonplace among Muslims in South Asia.

India’s Doctors Weigh In: People In Pain Need More Morphine, Not Medical Marijuana

Women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi suggested legalising marijuana for medical purposes at a meeting of a group of ministers examining the draft cabinet note on the National Policy for Drug Demand Reduction earlier this last week. However, several doctors working in palliative care say that they would rather see the government ensure a better supply of opioid drugs, the medical use of which is already permitted.

Political Love Fest: We Pledge To 'Protect' Women On Rakhi, But Forget To Treat Them As Equal Citizens

Misogyny remains misogyny even if you tie a rakhi on it. A woman ties "Rakhi" onto the wrists of a man sitting inside a passenger bus during Raksha Bandhan celebrations in Kolkata.

I don't know about brothers and sisters, but for politicians, Rakhi seems to have become the festival of binding ties. Politicians are very busy this Rakhi, tying themselves into knots.

A Tale Of Modern Slavery Has Horrified America, But In India It's A Familiar Story

It's the story of Eudocia Tomas Pulido, or Lola, the family nanny who was given as a "gift" to Alex Tizon's mother in the Philippines, who followed the family to the United States, and raised Alex and his siblings. She was not paid. She was not allowed to go back to visit her family. She was abused by Tizon's parents and, in the end, when she was finally "free", she had nowhere to go.

Analysis: Why The Farmers' Protests Could Be The Beginning Of A Turning Point For The BJP?

The ongoing farmers' protests in several states across India's geographical diversity is the first major non-sectarian mass movement confronting the Narendra Modi government. Unless handled adroitly, the stir has the potential to throw up a major challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi's political dominance.

Classic Denial, Victim Blaming By Cops And Politicians After Biker Jagruti Hogale Dies Dodging A Pothole

Jagruti Viraj Hogale, a well-known woman biker, was on her way to a weekend getaway with her friends to Jawhar — known for its waterfalls — when she swerved to allegedly avoid a pothole, was thrown off her bike, and crushed to death under the rear wheels of a truck on the Jawhar-Dahanu highway in Maharashtra. For the 34-year-old biker's grieving family, the main culprit is in plain sight.

Why It’s Unfair To Ban Commercial Surrogacy?

Altruistic surrogacy alone will deprive many would-be parents of options. Earlier last month, a couple in our family successfully got custody of their newborn through surrogacy. Filled with emotional highs and lows, the past nine months left the parents-to-be disillusioned about the prevailing surrogacy practices. 

Following a successful embryo transfer, the surrogate, after receiving a hefty advance payment, went underground despite the formal facilitation of the process by a reputed gynaecologist. She appeared only a month after delivery to hand over the parents' prized possession. The blessed parents swiftly forgot their misery as soon as all the paperwork was completed and they received their little bundle of joy in their hands. After all, their dream of having their biological child had finally come true.

Diplomacy in the Age of Social Media

Public diplomacy is a buzz word that has been around for decades, but today it is well ensconced with a significant other – social media.

Diplomacy is a fine art, heir to centuries of epochal deal making, system building, peacemaking and conflict avoidance and resolution – it is, in many ways, a profession for the ages. In the minds of men and women at large, however, it is also seen as a profession conducted in rarefied environs, in dizzying ivory-towered heights, away from the hurly-burly of earthling life. In India, I have often faced the perennial question,

'The Future Of Family Planning Now Goes Digital'

One of India’s most vocal advocates for youth rights to sexual health, Franklin Paul, has been introducing digital technologies to the rural youth.

Online shopping may have its pros and cons, but when it comes to buying products that have an invisible morality tag, it’s the safest possible option, believes Franklin Paul.

One of India’s most vocal advocates for youth rights to sexual health, education and products, Paul has spent over two years studying and introducing digital technologies to India’s rural youths.

The Neuroscience Of A 'Lynching'

The science of hate can help us realise who the real criminal is. Is it the lynchers alone? Should the instigators bear more blame? And should an apathetic government be held complicit?

In an event of traumatic accidents such as a car crash, injury to joints, bones and soft tissues can be accompanied by injury to nerves that mediate sensations such as touch, pain and temperature in the skin.

Jail Tourism: Pay Rs 500 To Spend Day in Prison In Telangana

Tourists can now spend a night in a colonial-era jail by paying only Rs 500 under the Telangana government's new 'Feel the Jail' scheme.

Under its new program, tourists can rent a cell in the 220-year-old Sangareddy jail and experience how life was for an inmate in colonial times. Those who opt for the "Feel the Jail" scheme will be provided a uniform, a steel mug, basic bedding and a bar of soap. To keep the experience authentic even the food served during the stay will be similar to what used to be served to prison inmates. 

At An All-Women Petrol Pump In Hyderabad, Ex-Cons Get To Kick-Start A New Life

‘They’ve served a prison sentence already – real reformation begins once they’re outside.’

Once he was done refilling the fuel tank of his two-wheeler, a customer at the newly opened gas station in Chanchalguda, Hyderabad, demanded a bill. The problem was, he wanted to be billed for an inflated amount, so he could claim greater travel expenses from his employer.

The Journey of the Hijab – From the Afghan Burqa to Fashion Magazines

How did this versatile piece of fabric get so controversial?

July 12 is National Hijab Day in Iran, a celebration that has been met by defiant protests by women driving headscarfless in their cars.

At the same time, the American glossy Allure has featured, for the first time, a hijab-wearing model on its cover. The Somali stunner Hamali Aden demonstrates just how beautiful and fashion-forward Islamic style can be.

Book Review: How a journalist’s journey to being a secular Muslim in India began at home and in school

Seema Mustafa reveals her first encounters with the need for secularism.

It was the History period for Class IV in the Convent of Jesus and Mary in New Delhi. The topic was the history of Islam. Not a particularly interested student at the best of times, I was delighted to find that I knew something that perhaps others did not and so jumped up to narrate a story about Abraham – except that I had confused him for Prophet Mohammad.

So, according to my version, Mohammad was against idol worship, and spent a great deal of time trying to convince idol worshippers to stop the practice. One day when the elders all left for work, he cut off the limbs of the idols and left an axe near the largest idol.