I’ve been thinking of starting my blog since a while now. Time and again I find things and events I feel like writing about but end up postponing it… Alrite tomoro…and before I know it gets old and loses its appeal for me but I am not going to let that happen once again. Also since I’ve left college, I guess the best fattebaazi corner now is the blogosphere. I’ll start with a piece on sport. Well I occasionally get quite passionate about sports and this piece is about something or else about some things I felt quite compelled to write on!
I initially had the idea of writing about India and the Olympic games but the Phelps and Bindra phenomenon are so overwhelming that firstly l’ll try and dismantle the personalities, of these two extraordinary gentlemen, who have impressed me lately, in my own way or should I say the persona of a superman and an extraordinary gentleman. Well I better stick with the latter coz the former sounds a little blasphemous. I’ll start with Michael Phelps. The good thing I guess about writing on this man is that one can take the freedom to go as over the top as possible with the adulation but would still be justified in his or her description. So I’ll take the liberty and use it to my advantage. Well Michael Phelps: The stories of his performances in the pools in Beijing are reverberating across national boundaries, throughout the world. Such has been the scale of his achievement that the man has made the whole world take notice and bow to his performance. Every word: Aqua Gladiator, phenomenon seems to be so trivial in front of this man. He is that sportsman who has grown bigger than the sport itself. God must be amazed that he made such a man too. Those Olympic golds, he must have made a wind-chime out of those in his room in the Olympic village. Swimming pros like Liesel Jones in their statements say that they care less about their own Olympic golds than they do for being lucky enough to be competing in the Phelp’s era. That’s the Phelps status and may be even more…but hey you already know that! Alright I’ll end the rambling... lemme jus write wat amazes me the most about this man..I wonder what must have gone into training an athlete like Michael Phelps. Was he really built on this earth? What must ve went through: the focus, the work, the discipline, the energy, the sweat..the list is endless. Its hard even to imagine the amount of focus one has to have and the work that has to be put in to reach this level. This is a guy who dreamt big (meaning therby: BIG), wrote his dreams down and achieved what he thought. Phelps achieved the biggest thing he ever wrote. All this at 23 years of age…God this gives me goosebumps…you have lived your biggest dream at such a young age.… wow… I wonder what it feels like!! Also what holds me in amazement is that how can a guy with such extreme energy and restlessness maintain such composure, such a fine balance between him and reality, such fine emotional control. Every ounce of it, he saved and released it when it ought to be…Fantastic! Phelps’ coach used to say they were “Putting money in the bank” when he had to do workouts he didn’t like. Surely it all paid off and he spent every penny just at the right time! I am sure it would be another swimming spectacle when he his ready with his deposits again!
Coming on to the man who has brought the gold for us: Abhinav Bindra. Well Bindra might be far away from the point of personal glory where Phelps is at today, but the amount of appreciation I have for him is no less than Phelps. Its must have been quite a journey for Phelps from being a good swimmer to a huge huge legend but for Bindra too, I believe, its been an equally tough journey winning an individual Olympic gold for a country where patrons for a sport like shooting simply do not exist and where most people would rather prefer to watch gully cricket than the Olympic games. He did it on his own with his nerves of steel. I have been able to read bindra much more than Phelps courtesy Indian News channels and its easy to see that he had no other reason to do this but his passion. He worked 12 years for those 2-3 hours, sounds crazy, but no one can ever do it unless one enjoys the journey. What ‘s most fascinating for me about Bindra is his mental make up. Having a serious stint with a sport for a short while(not on a grand level though), I can surmise how much money, time, preparation, sweat and much more than all that goes into raising your standards to the world level and how important a tournament like Olympic is to a sportsman. In spite of that, it is amazing to see how people like Bindra can maintain total equanimity, that perfect poise not allowing even an ounce of pressure to get on you when you are at the highest level and probably every bit of work you did, all the investment you did in terms of preparation is at stake. This is what that amazed me most about Bindra and his attitude shows when he says “What sort of pressure? I came to a tournament, gave it my best and won it. That just happens to be the Olympics”..wow..Great Attitude. Hats off to you Abhinav for bringing us this glory!
