Thursday, October 14, 2010

Commonwealth Gone.....

I think it was the cynicism and scepticism that the media bred like mosquito eggs and released into the main stream. And we took it in.

Sure there were problems with the Games. The corruption, the conspiracies, the half finished flyovers, the pot holes in new ones, the apparent incompetence, yellow lanes and traffic woes - everything seemed wrong about the Games. The media left everyone asking, "Why the hell did our people even agree to do them here??" And we were happy in our little world of indignance and criticism.

But they did it man! They pulled it off just fine. No one died. No bombs. No terrorist attacks. Only games, and of course a lot of sex on the sly, but yeah, no one died.

And as I stood on my terrace, watching the fireworks rise above the stadium which was so so close and yet so far from me, something inside me woke up. I woke up to the realisation that an event of this magnitude just took place in Delhi, and may never happen again in my lifetime, and I wasn't a part of it. I didn't bother to be a part of it. Yeah so I scrambled for tickets for the closing ceremony and wanted to watch at least one match, but I didn't put in any effort. I let the media mislead me.

And in that moment when fireworks rose in the helicoptered sky, I wished so much to be inside that stadium, to have been part of something so important in my city. Then Aashruti said, "You know, we've become so self-involved in our lives and work, that we let this pass."

That's when I woke up.

3 comments:

Babska said...

hmmm...

i was thinking the same. from a greater distance of course.

just for a while.

Usman said...

your writing is very insightful ragini

Gayatri Mahadevan said...

beautifully put down what every delhiite must have been feeling, ragini. yes, it made me proud. and sigh, i was thankful to my kids that i couldn't blame it on the cynicism for my not being there.