NO to sports, but YES to medals

Four years ago, we won a medal at the olymipcs, and the nation celebrated. Now, we have three in the medal tally, and we are celebrating.

What I want to bring out here is, what is so big in winning just a few medals? A person winning just one olympic medal is given rave publicity across the nation, but has that strengthened our nation's sport-stamina in any way? There are countries where people who had won tens of medals are just treated normally; but why is it that in our country alone, a single medal is given that much of importance?

An instance from this year's olympics happening in London says that when asked what was the number of medals they aimed to win, the king-nations of olympics like China and USA gave big numbers, while what we had dreamt of was one gold. Yes, just one Gold. That was all we had dreamt of. We talk about aiming big and dreaming big. We always share such quotes and messages; but why don't we actually implement them? 

And yes, there is one more thing which I would like to talk about. We never want our children to become sportspersons, but we want our nation to win medals and matches. We criticize our government and our nation in regard to the shameful performances in sports, and at the same time never encourage our children to  pursue a career in sports.  All we want is marks and grades, and then we want our nation to rock at the olympics! 

We watch cricket matches, and tend to throw tantrums at our players if they don't perform well. We declare that India can never be good at football and olympics. And then, we out and out refuse to support our children when they show interest in sports. Why is it that we are so badly addicted to words like 'education' and 'jobs'? When is it that we understand that education has got nothing to do with success? 

One thing is certain; unless sports are encouraged from ground level, unless there is equality between the field of education and sports, unless the stupid notion that education fetches more success is eliminated from our minds, we can never go big in the field of sports.