{"id":408,"date":"2016-05-29T04:39:04","date_gmt":"2016-05-29T04:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=408"},"modified":"2016-05-29T04:39:04","modified_gmt":"2016-05-29T04:39:04","slug":"the-game-that-will-get-us-gold-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=408","title":{"rendered":"The Game That Will Get Us Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span>s we close this Olympic season with the familiar chorus of \u201coh, that was close\u201d, we can take heart from the fact that we have only one more Olympics to endure with this refrain. Come 2024, when India makes a bid to host the games, we are likely to open a whole new chapter of \u201cOlympic fails\u201d, such as hosting swimming events in floodwater, and introducing a 100metre obstacle race with crater-sized potholes. When this happens, we are likely to make such colossal asses of ourselves that not winning\u00a0enough medals despite being a billion-strong country will be the least of our problems.\n\nBut before all that happens, Bharat will protest the bid. Bharat will blame India and India will blame Bharat. Bharat will pose questions like: When so many people are dying of hunger, shouldn\u2019t we focus on feeding them and not constructing a games village that will later be used for political rallies and\u00a0dharnas? Then a political party will name a stadium after its leader. And when a new political party comes into power, it will rename the stadium after its leader. Social commentators will blame political hubris and compare hosting the Olympics to hosting a wedding in Delhi, where everyone\u00a0is served\u00a0liquid gold with their vodka, but after the hangover has passed, nobody will remember what the fuss was about. Political commentators will call out \u201cWestern influence\u201d, and compare the Olympics to McDonald\u2019s and Pizza Hut. Arnab\u00a0Goswami\u00a0will get a week\u2019s worth of fodder for his heavy metal show, during which everyone will pass the parcel.\n\nWe\u2019re really good at this game of passing the parcel, making sure we aren\u2019t caught with the parcel when the music stops. We\u00a0are hardwired\u00a0to play this blame game when a big scam breaks out in the country or a small\u00a0politician\u00a0is caught\u00a0watching porn in Parliament. When asked, the politician will say he thought it was a video about a flood in his constituency and quickly blame another politician for showing it to him. A committee will\u00a0proceed\u00a0to lock itself up in a room and watch the video for a whole week to\u00a0determine\u00a0whether it\u00a0was indeed\u00a0porn.\n<\/p>

The ruling party blames the\u00a0previous\u00a0party. The previous party blames the opposition. Everyone blames the population.<\/blockquote>\nWe play this game so often and in so many spheres of our lives that our genetic code for generations to come\u00a0will be written\u00a0with it at the centre. Just like the\u00a0Tarahumara<\/a>, a race of Native Americans who have run so hard to survive through the generations that every newborn pops out with a pair of\u00a0Nikes, all ready to run.\n\nWe\u2019re ready to pass the parcel at any given point in time. On your way to work, you will see a previously freshly tarred road sporting a freshly dug up look. So you try to find out who\u2019s to blame and zero in on a worker. The worker will tell you that new cables have\u00a0to be\u00a0laid out, and that permission\u00a0had been granted\u00a0only a couple of days earlier. So go ask the cable guys. When the question\u00a0is posed\u00a0to the cable guys, they bark in defence about how permission\u00a0was delayed\u00a0because approval from the local\u00a0corporator\u00a0was late. So you ask the corporator\u2019s office and someone there tells you that the request never came on time. So you go back to the cable guys. They say the request\u00a0was sent\u00a0by post, and that they have proof. So you ask the post office. They tell you that the\u00a0postman\u00a0had been attacked by stray dogs a couple of weeks ago and ended up dropping a bag so he could run for his life. The letter, they say, may have been in the bag.\n\nAt\u00a0the mention of\u00a0barking dogs, you give up and blame the ruling party for the state of the country. The ruling party blames the\u00a0previous\u00a0party. The previous party blames the opposition. Everyone blames the population. The populace blames the censor board for showing them sex scenes and\u00a0Pahlaj\u00a0Nihalani\u00a0decides he\u2019ll censor every bloody thing. This, we hope, will one day prevent all infrastructural issues, from roads being dug up twice to bridges collapsing.\n\nHockey really\u00a0shouldn\u2019t<\/a>\u00a0be considered the national game of the country. Neither should cricket. \u201cPassing the Parcel\u201d should\u00a0be\u00a0accorded\u00a0official sanction with immediate effect, and introduced as an official Olympic game,\u00a0thus making us a nation of winners. No more will we have to excel at sports we were clearly not made to excel at. No more will we have to listen to stories about abysmal infrastructure and training. Finally, we will able to justify having a goodwill ambassador in the form of Salman Khan, who passed a pretty huge parcel the last time he stepped out of his SUV.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If India hosts the 2024 Olympics, \u201cPassing the Parcel\u201d should be made an official game. Then we can justify having an ambassador like Salman Khan, and truly be a nation of winners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Game That Will Get Us Gold<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If India hosts the 2024 Olympics, \u201cPassing the Parcel\u201d should be made an official game. 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