Should be all about the Olympics

The Olympic rings displayed near the National Stadium in Tokyo. Pic/AFP

Who's the first Indian to win an individual Olympics medal?" This was a question in one of those non-multiple-choice, objective-type entrance tests I once took. The answer is Norman Gilbert Pritchard (NGP) - two medals in athletics, representing (British) India, at the 1900 Paris Olympics.

While I knew this answer, I did not write it. Assuming that given the poor quality of my examiners - they were from a second-rate news channel, scouting for sasta campus recruits - they might not know the answer themselves!

I settled for KD Jadhav (KDJ), wrestling bronze, 1952 Helsinki Olympics - hoping still they don't think that the more recent, Leander Paes bronze at 1996 Atlanta, was the first of its kind. Although it had indeed come after 44 years!

I'm obviously talking about a world of desi entrance tests, before Google, and after Manorama Yearbook, or Competition Success Review! Which basically tells you two things: One, a quizzer's arrogance at age 20! Two, how Olympic achievements can become forgettable national trivia.

Specifically, how many non-Indians are likely to have heard of NGP or KDJ, or can even place from memory, Karnam Malleswari (bronze, weightlifting, 2000 Sydney), Vijender Singh (bronze, boxing, 2008 Beijing), Vijay Kumar (silver, pistol shooting, 2012 London), Yogeshwar Dutt (bronze, wrestling, 2012 London)? Let alone athletes PT Usha (1984 LA) or Milkha Singh (1960 Rome), who placed fourth on the track.

I don't know. Non-Indians don't take UPSC exams! What I'm willing to wager a bet on is how few, if anyone at all outside China, can list out the names of specific Chinese champions of each sport, who'll pick up gold after gold at the Olympics - this year, or any other. For us, it's just China that won.

And they evidently deserve to, given what the state, and thereby their sports-inclined citizens go through, in order to prove a point on sporting arenas of Olympics, and its various versions.

One of the explanations a producer attached to the Bollywood film Dangal gave me about its miraculous success in China is that the audiences there probably saw in Aamir's determined, khadoos baap/trainer character, a representative of their own state - who regularly plucks child prodigies out of homes, to sequester them and aim for international gold!

Which, ideally, is true for training in any sport anywhere, isn't it? As cricket coach Pravin Amre puts it in mid-day masterclass, "It's all about getting (the kids) into the next level, constantly." Or as the Olympic motto goes - "faster, higher, stronger." The word "together" has now been added to the credo.

But it's really nations competing for something write home about. And what is sport for a lay audience, if not collective projection of one's unrequited bravado, exulting in unison upon victory - "We won, we won!" No dude. You sat at the bar/couch/stadium. They won. You watched!

That this muscular matter of nationalism is settled not so much by the proverbial size of one's chest, but a gold medal dangling over it - should one ascribe sports field as a permanent stand-in for the battlefield? Saving lives in return, since expansionist, conventional war, in a nuclearised world, is hardly an option? Looking at China, one should hope so!

What about viewers worldwide, over decades, remaining glued still to a unique quadrennial spectacle of sports, such as members of Daft Punk dressed like astronauts, attempting to prick each other with sharp sabers; or a Prince Kong hurling a metallic sphere like a human sling? What draws us to these events, when ‘national pride' isn't involved?

Sheer human excellence - relatively untouched by multiple, extraneous motives. I find passion a bit overstated, when both fame and money are equally expected outcomes. Guessing there's less of both, if you're into fencing or shot put. As against, say basketball (in the US), or cricket (in India). Like high art, it's sports for sports' sake. Just as much for the audience.

Anyway, like Nobel for academics, Olympics simply/unquestioningly equals world's best - the same way real-estate companies promise you an "Olympic-sized swimming pool", as if the pool is some other size at other swimming events!

Beats me to think what that this level of global focus and national attention, once in four years, might mean to athletes who aren't perennially under the spotlight! Instantly recovering from a good/bad day, because tomorrow is another. And eventually only one counts for so much - practically an entire career.

Or as the Mare of Easttown (Kate Winslet) puts it, "Doing something great is overrated. ‘Coz people expect that out of you all the time. What they don't realise is you're just as f''''' up as they are." Simone Biles at Tokyo 2020 was just that much-needed, rare reminder for empathy, towards the supposed super-humans among us.

And then, there are those, thanks to Olympics, who rise from obscurity towards national pride, forever. Of course you'd never heard of Mirabai Chanu (silver, weightlifting, Tokyo '20). Or the girls of Indian hockey, with the back of their jerseys flashed across a national newspaper's front-page flyer, for mounting the semi-finals - Rani, Savita, Gurjit, Vandana, Grace, Neha, Nikki, Udita, Nisha…

Jumping from national anonymity, to desi ‘entrance exam' level of adulation/fame. Kids would of course do well to mug their names up, if not aspire for more!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.