Road To Paris: Episode 4

Our first Qualifiers are here for Paris, with 3 Quota places earned in Shooting. There has been a slight lull in the overall action post the Commonwealth Games completion and the Asian Games sized hole in the sporting calendar. Here is a summary of the major events in the past couple of months

Quota Places Won

• 
  Shooting: Men’s Trap – Bhowneesh Mendiratta claimed the first Quota place for India at the World Shotgun championships. Good to see a comeback in Trap shooting for India.
• Shooting: Men’s 10m Air Rifle – Rudrankksh Patil secured a Quota Place by winning the Gold medal at World Rifle/Pistol Championships.
• Shooting: Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions – Swapnil Kusale secured a Quote place by finishing 4th at the World Rifle/Pistol Championships

There were a couple of near misses as well in the women’s section. But still a long way to go in the Qualifiers.

In other action

• Neeraj Chopra becomes the first Indian to win the Diamond League Champions Trophy – the man continues to be trailblazer!
• Wrestling: At the World Championships, India returned with 2 Bronze medals – Vinesh Phogat becoming the first female multiple medalist from India while Bajrang Punia claimed his 4th World Championships medal. Overall, the campaign was mixed, with some youngsters showing promise, while some favored ones getting knocked out early. Also a few of Commonwealth medalists were missing from the lineup. Begs the question – are we prioritizing an event like Commonwealth Games (with a better probability of medal) over World Championships (which are far more prestigious)
• Table Tennis: World Team Championships. Sharath Kamal was missing. Indian men upset the 2nd seeded Germans in the group stage but couldn’t make much headway in the knock-outs. Same was the story for the women’s team also.
• National Games have been held after a gap of 7 years!

Doping Menace: Two Tokyo Olympians have been given bans for doping - Shivpal Singh (Men’s Javelin Throw) suspended for 4 years and Kamalpreet Kaur (Women’s Discus Throw), banned for 3 years.

Qualification Summary: Sports: 1, Events 3, Entries:3, Athletes: 3

That’s it for this episode. The qualification action will be picking up in the coming weeks

Till next time!

Links: Road To Paris – Episode 3

More the Corners, More the Cobwebs

Diwali is around the corner. The biggest celebration of the season - the festival of lights, crackers, sweets, and savories. But before the main event comes its precursor - the Diwali cleaning!

Apart from being a health & hygiene activity, Diwali cleaning is also a practical demo in the subjects of archaeology, history, and mining.

You might not spot a single spider in the house the whole year but there is a cobweb, in every possible place, the corners, the beams, the pillars, the doors, the window ledge, curtains, wall hangings and showpieces. In fact, any place with a corner, there is a cobweb! How it got there is a mystery unresolved, but it is there.

The house itself seems to be generating dust – under the beds, behind and on top of the almirah, the table, on top of the shelfs, everywhere there is a thick accumulation of dust hiding, just beyond the reach of the daily jhaadu. Only excavated during deep cleaning.

There is an old English saying – “a rolling stone gather no moss”. Might be true for a stone but a rotating fan gathers dust, lots of it. The thickness of the layer of dust on its blades is the best indicator of the usage of a particular fan!

From the deepest recesses of the drawers, come out the chronicles of our shopping history - the bills. Many with the ink completely faded and some whose products may have been used and disposed of, but the bill has been retained, for what purpose, no one can say!

Of course, add to this our tendency of squirrelling away stuff for a later day. And that’s how we end up with lots of disposable cutlery (courtesy Swiggy & Zomato), a big plastic bag filled with smaller bags, old clothes which have lived their full life but still hoarded away as they await nirvana by becoming a pochhaa! Our deep entrenched habit of not wasting/reusing/recycling just ends with lot of unwanted stuff occupying all sorts of nooks and crannies in the house!

Diwali cleaning – the only time in the year when your apartment starts giving the vibes of being a bungalow in size. And during the course of it, we also decide to do the clearing more often, but as is wont with such pledges, doesn’t really happen. It is back breaking stuff, especially when at times you take a pause to catch your breath, look around and realize that somehow the house seems messier than before you started. But at the end of the day, also an oddly satisfying one!

Wishing all readers, a Very Happy Diwali! 

P.S. Expect to see a lot of LinkedIn gyaan on the subject of cleaning in the coming days!