Road To Los Angeles: Episode 8

29th August - National Sports Day. So perfect time to post a new episode of the Road to Los Angeles!

Since the last episode a few weeks back, we have had the Commonwealth Games, the Badminton World Championships and the Men's & Women's Hockey World Cups.

At the Commonwealth Games, there is nothing much to be read from the performances. In nearly all events, it is not more than a competitive warm-up. Very few events at these Games would be called truly world class. Men's Javelin was certainly one of them though with Neeraj Chopra on a comeback trail winning a Silver in a field packed with Olympic & World medalists. More heartening was Yashvir Singh getting the Bronze in the same event. 

Gulveer Singh's twin medals in the long races (10,000m & 5,000m) and Tejaswin Shankar winning a medal in Decathlon were certainly highlights for the campaign.

The Boxing contingent delivered lots of medals, but the performance of the weightlifters was not the best. Judo delivered its first Gold medals, but there was also a doping scandal! The doping menace has no end.

At the BWF Championships, India continued the 15-year streak of at least one medal per edition with Treesa Jolly & Gayatri Gopichand winning the Doubles Bronze. Ayush Shetty knocked out the World No. 1 in the 1st round, Sindhu showed that there is still some fight left, but overall the campaign in home conditions could have been better.

At the Hockey World Cups, initially the focus seemed more on the uproar over the changed kit colour than the preparation! The Women's team delivered a good show finishing 5th (best finish in over half a century!). Good to see the upswing after missing out the qualifications at Paris. The Men's team meanwhile disappointed finishing 8th.

So that was it for this edition. Coming up next - the Asian Games, with a few Quota places for grabs across sports

Qualification Summary for Team India: Sports 1, Events 1, Entries 1, Athletes 15

Till next time!

Links: Episode 7

India @79

 

Happy Birthday India!

'Tis time for the annual India post on the occasion of Independence Day, now in its 19th edition (Link for 2025 edition) Its been another weird trip around the Sun!

The nation's political landscape was shaken up by the emergence of a Gen Z movement sparked by a remark from the CJI. A movement based on a cause but fueled by reels! We have witnessed similar uprisings across the neighborhood but couldn't watching it unfold in India was surreal. All election calculations now need to take into account the mindset of an entirely new & different vote-bank! 

On the other hand, we have elected politicians merrily switching parties, making a complete mockery of the entire electoral process itself! While the common citizen is scrambling to prove their citizenship (given that none of the documents actually prove it!) and trying to search the electoral rolls from 2002 for the names of their relatives. Sifting through them is a mental roller-coaster given the sheer volume of typos and the fact that most of the constituencies themselves have undergone a drastic change due to delimitation. There couldn't be a better showcase of bureaucratic theatre than the SIR exercise!!

Moving from politics to the subject of geopolitics. A full scale war in West Asia, leads to choking of key energy transport routes sending most of the World including India to scour for alternate options. The situation may have eased out a bit but things continue to remain volatile, once again emphasizing the critical need for assured domestic energy supply.

And the energy must to be clean & green. Otherwise the already scorching heat wave is going to get hotter. The energy transition also needs to be fast especially with the emergence of AI as an energy guzzler. In the age of AI, it is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate the real from the fake. The more cynical folks now believe everything to be AI generated unless proven otherwise. Better to be safe than sorry in a more AI propelled scammy world.

On the other hand, lots of infrastructure being built but somehow not built to last. Falling bridges, potholed roads, leaking airports - this is one area which needs a permanent fix and not a bandaid solution.

Real money gaming was banned. Good riddance. Something which should have happened much earlier.  Still better late than never! This ban has also lead to a pause in the mushrooming sporting leagues. 

Given that it is still midway in the Olympics cycle, most Indian sports coverage is in a slumber. While sports administration is in shambles. Perfect example being football where an ISL champion club was sold for Rs. 100! India now holds the unwanted tag of being the global leader in doping violations. In this doom and gloom of the back pages of the newspaper the only silver linings have come from cricket - with the Women winning their first ever world title , the men retaining the T20 World Cup, and a 15-year old wunderkind blazing away all and sundry with his bat without a care in the world

So this was it as we enter into the 80th year of existence as an independent country.

Happy Independence Day! 

Jai Hind!

P.S. a map showing the princely states of pre-independence India coloured according to the number of gun salutes!

Bees Saal Baad!

13th August 2006

In the wee hours of one rainy night, sitting in the hostel room, exactly 20 years ago, this blog came into existence with the following

The Genesis

Why am I doing this?

Why did I start this blog?

Will anyone ever read this?

Do I really care if anyone reads this at all?

Why do I want to share my thoughts with the world?

The answer to all the above questions...

...simply, I dont know. I am not sure of the answers but it...

maybe I am doing this because its the latest fad.

or maybe I want an outlet for my feelings

or maybe I want another connection with the outside world

Or maybe at 1 A.M on a Saturday (actually Sunday) night I couldnt find anything better to do...so started a blog

Well, with these confused thoughts, I have made a beginning. I do not know where this journey is going to take me. I do not know what the destination is, I dont even know the route. But as its said "A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step".....This is my first step.

That first tentative step has been followed by a few more (more than 500 in fact). A journey which has lasted 20 years now. Just how old is this blog - to give a perspective, in 2006, Orkut (now defunct) was the social media rage, Facebook was still not available outside campuses, Twitter (now X) did not exist, Chatting medium were Yahoo Messenger & GTalk, not WhatsApp, internet was still more text dominated, unlike its more visual avatar now, and still dominated by computer rather than mobile! It pre-dates amongst other things - iPhone, Instagram, streaming services! In short, in tech terms - quite old! And despite all the changes, this blog trundled on!

To be honest, I still do not have the answers to the questions raised in the very first post. The posts themselves have evolved over time - random, cricket, few personal incidents, movies, to now - books (just me showing off), India's roads to the Olympics (in itself a long journey and not just once-in-four-years-event), year-end lists (TYIL & others) and the annual Independence Day post. Reading back, some of the posts are quite weird & cringe-worthy, but I guess that part of growing up as well!

And across this journey of 500+ posts over 20 years, there is also a realization that the blog was never for an audience but just for myself! Here is to the unscripted route and wherever it goes next!!!