Why India sees PV Sindhu defeating Carolina Marin as a revenge game
In hindsight, it feels like we watched an episode of the revenge game if there were any. The way the Indian fans reacted on social media after PV Sindhu defeated Carolina Marin was not just pride at the badminton player's achievement.
Here was another bout of some chest-thumping, almost like we were possessed and didn't quite know how to handle the victory.
There is no doubt today that Sindhu is ahead of the curve and not even the Chinese worry her. But it is also an undisputed fact that despite the loss, Marin remains the Olympic Champion.
Revenge may or may not come with the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, but the intense rivalry between the two will go a notch higher.
Forget the players, can we, the audience, handle it?
Perhaps we are too new at watching the game. We need to learn from the supporters of Federer and Nadal.
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| Most of us remain in denial about our penchant for racism. Photo: Videgrab/IndiaToday.in |
Are we starved of big heroes (Bollywood doesn't count) that we go berserk every time our national flag goes up in a sporting arena?
Do the sporadic non-cricketing feats catch us on the wrong foot or is there more to it?
As an aside, we may now have world champions, but our presentation ceremony to reward them with medals is still stuck in the Doordarshan age!
Over the years, few incidents have proved that we are a complex bunch of people who need to constantly yell to validate our superiority and attack those we consider - even when it comes to something as superficial as one's looks.
The recent attack on Africans is not the first in our country. In 2012, a student from Burundi was badly beaten up by few locals outside Jalandhar's Lovely Professional University, where he was studying. He died two years later.
But we will never admit the presence of the elephant in the room, that we seek a false sense of bravado by pouncing mentally or physically on those who we see as lower in the chain.
Most of us remain in denial about our penchant for racism, perhaps it is ingrained, so we don't even think anything is amiss.
Isn't calling a native of the Northeast "chinki" part of our everyday vocabulary as much as the legendary disdain for dusky girls among match-making aunties?
What whites do to us is the only definition of a hate crime we know.
The urge to proclaim our superiority doesn't always only have a racial undertone. Sometimes, we are so stuck in our tunnel vision that we see people only in the light that we think is shining, never mind if they are achievers in their chosen fields.
For instance, Indian Twitterati couldn't get enough of abusing Tennis player Maria Sharapova for her drug ban and it was not because she had been playing with an unfair advantage.
We were rejoicing at her karma because she had once upon a time dared to not recognise our God, Sachin Tendulkar. Never mind if Russians know as much about cricket as Indians would about the origin of the vodka!
What we do have are the numbers. The Chinese are too busy constructively conquering the world so by default whilst we hunt in hordes we can make anyone bend.
"Sacrilege"! the British Daily Mail didn't recognise our "leggy lass" Deepika Padukone. Tennis star Novak Djokovic made history when he had dinner with the Bollywood, whose name the tabloid didn't bother to mention.
The world's top tennis player became a bystander as outraged and hysterical Indians forced the Daily Mail to re-print their headline to acknowledge their domestic superstar.
Our sense of entitlement spreads even to foreign shores where we try and claim many who made it big only because they left our shores.
Astronaut Kalpana Chawla, UN ambassador Nikki Haley and even basketball star Sim Bhullar, who almost played the NBA and many others have only their Indian origin in common.
Some weren't even born in our country, yet, we insist the icons and their glory are ours.
Luckily, Indian-origin American politician Bobby Jindal spared us the histrionics by disowning us.
Taking ourselves too seriously is a side-effect of our common disorder: the superiority complex.
But to fix a problem we need to acknowledge it first.
We, on the other hand, being Indians, couldn't be happier living in our bubble that won't take too long to burst.
If cricket has taught us one lesson, it is this: we may not like the world dismissing our heroes, but our own fandom is conditional. Sindhu too will be only as good as her last win.