Indian Independence Days are becoming mighty routine with the Government wearing colourful turbans and ‘Talking Loud’ from the ramparts of the Red Fort in a ‘strange language’ – that many of us think we understand. We then digress to the life of the Father of the Nation; debate about Gandhi & Bose (who did a better job in getting us our Independence: the one with the Stick or the one with the Gun?), and go home to watch the mother of all TV Shows: the Tamil style debates, ‘Patti-Mandrams’ do roaring business on such occasions. Along the way, we buy and wave the tri-colour or glue it to the ‘podium’ of our cars, where it stays!

I’m a wee bit cynical at the moment, seeing the disastrous performance of India at the Rio Olympics. One little girl, Dipa Karmakar showed us – in a brief ‘Produnova’ vaulting moment – that we are actually made of mind-boggling stuff deep inside, but refuse to flex that muscle & use intrinsic yoga powers for snake-charming our way to a ton of medals! Remember, we once won an uninterrupted string of Gold Medals in Hockey (…they came, like Wordsworthian daffodils, in a never ending stream) – stick-to-stick and then… one fine Olympic Summer, we got beaten blue, black & brown, by the biggest stick, ever. No looking back!

Time to readjust our cross-hairs, focus and set ourselves a ‘modest’ goal of winning not less than 20 Medals (any metal) in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Let’s do it!