Onne Onnu, Kanne Kannu (The Only One)

Most of the earliest questions have been answered convincingly - "Is your country filled with cows ??", "Are the streets full of snake charmers ??" and the likes. Thanks to Aishwarya Rai, the IT boom, Anthony Bourdain, National Geographic and YouTube its pretty clear nowadays that we are a country with gorgeous women, nerdy geeks, tasty food, beautiful places and beastly traffic.



Couple of the new age questions, like "Is there a caste system in your country where people have to do the same job that their father did??" or "Is Bollywood _the_ movie industry of the country??" can be handled if we sit down for a discussion. No, unless you are a politician and No, unless expensive and gaudy costumes (with a few notable exceptions) are the primary benchmark for an industry.

There are other questions that are way too easy to answer "Is it true that most politicians in your country are scummy ??" or "Do actors and sports stars stand a better chance to become administrators over someone who might be actually qualified and with a track record in doing that ??". An answer like "its the same darned story everywhere" with a sad face elicits a big empathic sigh and the topic is done.

However, there has always been one question that I had never ever been able to get around answering. "For a country of billion people, for all the talk about being the next superpower, for all the pride about being a part of the oldest civilization, for all the general bravado shown all around, why haven't you guys won a single individual Olympic Gold ??".

Not anymore. Never again. Abhinav Bindra, thanks for breaking the jinx (or our usual mediocrity at the Olympics) by doing something that no Indian had ever done before. Is this going to change the way Pepsi & Coke pump money into Cricket as if there is no other sport in India? Is this going to stop Suresh Kalmadi from pretending as if he himself won an Olympic Gold? Is this going to be a step in building the non-existential infrastructure for the other sports? Is this going to bring about a change in the "recommendation" culture in our sports quotas? Is this going to enable colleges to form an NCAA like organization to foster sports? Who are we kidding? But still, there is at least one less question that we don't have to take anymore and that's good news.

Oh, by the way, smart aleck questions like "So, for all these years, you just have a single gold medal to show and you actually write a blog to brag about it??" would be redirected to /dev/null.

Read on ... (at your own peril, obviously) ...