Post-Gold

Prices of Gold have been falling for last one week. And there is a number of ladies in my home and family who are planning to buy some Gold and wishing it falls down more.

I think it will. As Abhinav Bindra will be bringing some extra Gold home while coming back from Beijing. Though I wish and hope there will be more Golden moments in Beijing for India, history doesn't allow me to expect a lot, and considering we have not fell down in terms of overall performance in Olympics for past 12 years, ever since Paes won us a Bronze in 1996 olympics, fighting Andre Agassi in the semis, one gold is where we should have landed after Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore's silver last Olympics.

Fast forward to 2008. Abhinav Bindra wins a gold in 10 meter air rifle. Of course 95% of Indians will be learning the name of shooting events for the first time, it being a conservative estimate.

First of all, my hearty congratulations to Bindra. Anything said here is not meant to dishonor the national hero by any means.

Now, let us see what happens when Abhinav Bindra wins the Gold. As soon as we know Abhinav wins, there is a usual race among news channels to capture the nearest. Some reach his home to find his parents dealing with neighbors living at the other end of town whereas some try to reach him on phone before the national anthem in the Beijing's Olympic stadium could finish, rest trying to make up their stories with relations and coaches.

But the interesting part starts when it seems that entire contry except Srinagar where a curfew was imposed, was celebrating Abhinav's victory on roads with Dhols and fireworks. Not just in Chandigarh and Dehradun, people were found celebrating even in Meerut which had no specific relation to the national hero dancing with the national flag of India, though it was held upside down. Surely the men in front of camera cannot be framed guilty as they are too happy being on television but the channel showing the national flag upside down could have given it a thought while showing the clip repeatedly.

Television was also showing news of lacs of rupees being announced for the shooter by state governements that are trying to swim out of their debts of crores, as it was a great chance to prove our commitment to sports and sportsmen. But of these, the second most interesting was BCCI giving Rs 25 lac to Bindra, as if it were ADC, and number one was Bihar government's announcement to build a Bindra stadium. I wish that's not a cricket ground.

And among all this, there was a bunch that enjoyed the moment of Abhinav's victory as their own. It was the Indian cricket team, who lost another test and the series to Sri Lanka but as Abhinav won, there was almost no coverage on the match loss, whereas it would have been an experts' day on news channels who would lament the loss of our cricket team.

In the end, I also feel that some leading towns of India may see the rise of small shooting ranges where you could 'Learn shooting in 15 days' or something like that. And in my views which might be considered pessimistic, there will hardly be anything positive for Indian sports resulting from this because we will still be seeing the rates of gold day after tomorrow and mom will be sending me to my study so that I become a computer engineer and then I will be able to buy lot of gold.

But whatever the result, Abhinav has proved that we CAN do it. So if there are a few moms who try, we can WIN some more gold in future.

PS: ADC stands for access deficit charge that was paid to (a losing) BSNL till some time ago by leading companies like Airtel and Hutch as only BSNL operated in remote areas.