Saturday, August 9, 2008

China scores a perfect 10. India 0.

China's 'Wow' moment stunned and surprised the world. Yes. We expected a Big Bang. But THIS big? The only thing that ruined our viewing pleasure was a Bore called Boria, whose annoying 'commentary' drove me up a wall. "See, see, see...." he kept repeating. Heck, man. That's exactly what we were doing. What else do people do in front of television screens? Shut their eyes?Agreed, the man is knowledgeable. He knew his stuff. But were we dying to know which star athlete he had run into 10 years ago? The spectacle unfolding in Beijing was breathtaking enough... we didn't need to be constantly told how stupendous the'Olympian' moment was... how history was being made, how 'the entire world' was holding its breath at that critical moment. Hyperbole? Man... this guy was hysterical as he ranted on and on, providing zero value addition to the visuals we could all see for ourselves without his juvenile prompting (" See, see, see those smiles.... see, see, see those happy faces").
Our pathetic contingent sauntered in like the athletes were taking a post-dinner stroll at India Gate. Lacklustre, unimpressive - and imagine such a dismal debut in our 'enemy's ' backyard?? How the Chinese must have gloated! Sania and Sunita were the worst offenders, clad in shabby attire. Did they think they were at a warm up session in Chennai? The excuse was they needed an 'assistant' to help them drape a saree!I felt ashamed and angry at the sight of this motley bunch. India is light years away from pulling off anything even remotely close to this feat. Thank God for the presence of Sonia Gandhi (why doesn't the otherwise elegant lady use an anti-perspirant to rid herself of those unsightly underarm sweat patches?)waving enthusiastically - nobody else bothered to give us a second glance. Compare the coup pulled off by the canny Swedes, whose athletes wore versions of the Chinese cheongsam and fanned themselves with traditional Chinese fans - but bearing Swedish colours! What a charming tribute to the host nation - and what a clever marketing trick!
I could go on and on. But let me save my wrath for the next post, which I shall devote to a disaster called Singh is King! Do they think the audience is a joker??
as

9 comments:

rainboy said...

Opening ceremony was just wow.
Such was the extravagance of what followed, the London 2012 Olympics Committee must be wondering how on earth they will top it in a modest stadium in Stratford.

First came a heart-stopping explosion of fireworks which turned the night sky crimson and coated the landmark Bird's Nest in a blaze of red.

Then came a thunderous tattoo, produced by exactly 2,008 perfectly synchronized drummers massed on the stadium floor.
his was just the beginning of an Olympics opening ceremony likely to be the most spectacular in history.

The figures alone are astounding.

At a cost of £25million, in front of 80 world leaders and a worldwide audience of four billion, China was determined to prove that it could stage the greatest show on earth and it did.
an extraordinary sight as the iconic five-ring Olympics logo rose from the floor of the vast stadium into the night sky.

After that it was almost impossible to be anything but overwhelmed.
maybe in next 100 years we would have the infrastructure to host olympic games.

and ya Thanks to God for the presence of Sonia Gandhi !

sanju ayyar said...

i think all of us are missing a point here. seriously. in the 4 years between the olympics, what do we do as a nation? watch cricket. what do our sporting authorities do? maybe, they too watch cricket. what percentage of our annual budget gets allocated to sport? what happens to that money? where are the facilities? where are the vilayati coaches? where are the parents who lament of our disastrous olympic record, but never send their kids to learn javelin throw? Or boxing? Or x-games? Or gymnastics? How many of us even know to swim? The answer to our olympic fate lies within ourselves. no, we arent losers, its just that we dont want to be winners, and we dont know how to be one. as for the attire, why doesn't a rohit bal or tarun tahiliani or wendell rodricks or ritu kumar or jj vallya volunteer to design some real cool stuff for our contingent? why doesnt hutch or reliance or tata sponsor track & field events and bring some money to the sport? why do our miss indias only talk of working for world peace and poverty and not of improving sport in the country? why do we prefer watching sachin tendulkar's super tons on star cricket for an umpteenth time while there is live stuff of our promising athletes being aired on DD sports? why don’t our music directors cut a theme song for our olympic contingent? why don’t we become the answers rather than becoming the questions? why cant we? why don’t we? why?

flygye12 said...

i missed the spectacle :(

but i can imagine boria getting hyper ha ha ha .... so they were showin it on times now hein? (btw arnab goswami also gets hyper on his news show but tht's another story hee hee hee)

i can't wait to read ur post on Singh is King...u seemed to be so upbeat about AK in ur last post so it must have been real disappointment if it was bad....be as vile as possible

ps: whats that 'as' at the end mean?

Kris Bass said...

You know, your entire post's content is overshadowed by the upcoming, lip-smacking whipping of bollywood's buns!

As a reply to Sanju, I tried watching DD sports. It's very funny. And I did watch it for a few minutes before one of the pole vaulted higher than no Indian ever had before. The funny thing was that, he was short of the horizontal bar, just fell vertically down and thankfully hit the cushion. For a moment, I thought I was watching 'World's Most Gory Videos' and I expect blood, boones and brain spewed across.

flygye12 said...

@KB: You know, your entire post's content is overshadowed by the upcoming, lip-smacking whipping of bollywood's buns!

where? she's written about the opening ceremony only...we're on a diff wavelength now a days i think :(

alx said...

nice cool observations
honestly it ws disgusting 2 c sania clad in a track suit....it jz showed lack f respect or d modern nothing in d world bothers me Indian women

btw i dint expect nethin better from d crew f WELCOME

Harish said...

hehheheh! Sania and dress sense.. are you kidding. i remember having seen her once in bombay. she looked like a banjaran. with due respect to all banjarans. (shahid likes ill dressed women, vidya maami aur sania aunty). yes, sonia is elegant, and in her own right sexy. sadly, she is also imported, even though she has an isi mark.

Marketing tricks are limited to flicks in India. (That too are getting cleashade). and Corporate India. (Wake up. Olympics have so many eye balls, get your brand ambassodders do a gig. You have missed an opportunity. dammmid )

Kris Bass said...

@ Fly: I was using hyperbole. I meant to say that despite she having talked about the Olympic opening ceremony, the prospect of Singh bashing (something I personally enjoyed in the couple of days after it's release) is more welcoming. Do you get it? ;)

Anonymous said...

M'am De',

Indeed East Is East.

5000 years of History and maintaining to speak in their own mother tongue on an International Platform like this is a great honour.

Wonder India will be ever able to decide which is the one language (read costume)to represent the World?

English !! Is that the cost of Democracy in a country with so many diverse cultures religion and languages read and written.

I will claim its an honour to promote more than 17 regional languages as much to read and write in their own mother tongue.

What a democracy MadamJee!!

Vinod Agarwal - Olympic Patriotism