I was born and brought up in India – I studied, built myself a career, got married in India – It was only recently that work took me to different parts of the world, but as they say you can take an Indian away from India but you can not take India away from an Indian. I have and will always be unabashedly, undoubtedly, a true blue Indian!!
You speak a word out of the line, and I will not sit down and listen. I will stand up and fight – defend the honor of the Nation that made me who I am!
So, when media all over the world (Especially Indian media) was thrashing the country black and blue over its underpreparedness to host the Common Wealth Games, it was a surprise (and sometimes a shock) just observing fellow countrymen’s reactions! Ah, not to mention pretty amusing at times! Now, these are some of the things that happen if you are staying outside India.
- You desperately try to fit into the new culture/society. Suddenly skirts become shorter and holding hands/PDAs become more acceptable.
- Cooking your own meals is as rare and uncommon as clean and traffic-free Indian roads - Fridges are stacked with frozen food of all sorts. Who has the time to cook these days?
- You start alienating/dis-associating yourself from anything “Indian”.
Having said that, m glad not all go through these transitions 
while, some very seriously do!
So, coming to CWG, it was pretty interesting to note everyone’s reactions. To put it mildly, “ashamed” and “embarrassed” were the most commonly used words… the others words pretty much dont matter. The message was clear: People were ashamed of being identified as belonging to a Nation where the toilets werent clean and dogs soiled the mattresses meant for the athletes. Oh how tacky! How would they face their firang team mates the next day at work? Oh! India had really put them down!! Oh, how shameful!!
The pictures released by bbc were discussed – Shameful – Corruption was blamed for everything and anything that went wrong – Disgusting – Kalmadi should be hanged – India unprepared to host such a big event – Shameful – Where has the tax-payer’s money gone? – Disgusting – All athletes backing out – Shameful – Not just reading but forwarding lewd insensitive remarks on the situation – Disgusting
At the same, I found many who had complete belief. And this is all they had to say:
Yes, we screwed up. We went disastrously wrong with a lot of things. But, let us stand united, and put on a great show! This is not just my country’s reputation, but “My” reputation at stake now. If I can not actively help in the process, I can do my bit by not bad-mouthing those who are putting in an effort
I have only one question for all of you who felt let down: If you have a grih-pravesh or a house-warming party at your new house, and I come in a few days early, uninivited, click the pictures of a house still being readied for the big show and put it all over the place for people to laugh at. Would you want your family members standing by your side and condemning the act or joining in the ridicule, pelting stones at you?
Am I just being a romantic or does that make sense?
Sorry about being a party pooper, but it is not the same thing at all.
Whichever way you look at it, money meant for the games has been siphoned off. As a nation we are used to that, but if the quality of work is substandard and you have been charged full rate for it, there is something wrong.
I am not talking about dogs in the bedrooms or planks missing from beds. I am talking about a footbridge that collapses, and a false ceiling that caves in. And I am talking about officials who declare “Indians are used to different standards of hygine”, instead of saying as you do, “I am sorry, you came a little early which is why things are still such a mess.”
Just my two cents worth.
By no means am I saying what happened was right. But, I just wish people’s reaction to it and the role of media in the whole thing had not been “counter-productive”. There is no country in this world where corruption is not an issue. Yes, money was siphoned. And that is a HUGE thing, but this is probably not a good time to bring that up!
I cn totally understand the qs u hv posed @ the end. It does make sense, but in CWG case, it is also about using the money allotted for other purposes. And eating money just cannot be justified
I totally see your point. Eating money can never be justified. Never ever!
Nice analogy
Agree with most of the things said … And I think our media is being over-sensationalistic … There are things good and bad … But the media is showing just one side of the coin !!
It is like branding a person “Evil” because he takes alcohol ! (bad analogy!)
CAM!! Media just ruined it for us.. Sometimes I wonder if there should be some control exercised over Media… As they say, power in the hands of a fool can never do good!
For once, Nova, I disagree with your perspective
Personally, I’m NOT AT ALL HAPPY with India hosting the CWG at this point in time.
I don’t think the corruption or the hygiene are issues to be worried about. When India took up the decision to host CWG, almost every Indian knew there was big money involved and part of it would go places where it does not belong. but well, that always happens, but we’ve met what we set out to do. And the images of the hygiene-related stuff: the media — especially the INDIAN media should have had more sense. For this one, I completely agree with you on the housewarming comparison. The MEDIA were behaving like dumbasses. Instead of supporting their nation, they trashed her. Dumb beasts!
BUT. The crores that came in and was spent for the CWG…that’s what I don’t approve of. IS this India’s priority? Aren’t there a lot of other things that need attention? Like….
Going back to your housewarming comparison: you have two kids who have been sent away from school because their fees remained unpaid, now they’re not getting any education; your old parents need medical aid and need to be taken care of, but it’s not being done; your brother is unemployed, your sister lost her college seat because someone else had more money to bribe her seat off. In spite of all this, if you spent about 50 lakh and build a brilliant house which is everyone’s envy and is a masterpiece… are you really a winner? Were you doing the right thing? Was your money used up for issues that needed priority address? THIS is why I’m unhappy about India hosting the CWG now.
And well
you started off saying you’ll “defend the honor of the Nation that made me who I am!” And two sentences down, you said “Cooking your own meals is as rare and uncommon as clean and traffic-free Indian roads” Ahem 
So, for once, Nova, I completely disagree with your perspective
I think CWG helped India in more ways than one: It told us what kind of problems occur when you host a world class event; it told us if we pull up our socks together, we can pull it off; India has sporting talent which was never recognized… I have a feeling CWG will improve the sporting culture in India if nothing else…
Coming back to the point, defending the honor, accepting reality another… and accepting that unclean and jammed roads are a reality in India and caused by me – totally a different thing!
I think that as a nation we have matured – yes CWG corruption was a sad and shameful episode, so were the dirty toilets. But we had the balls and gumption to take it on the chin and expose it. The games will be a success and we (hopefully) will have learned an important lesson – and will be vigilant in the future.
I completely agree with you!!
Well, I will have to disagree with you
It is not the same thing as somebody clicking pics before the Grah Pravesh at all.Our organizing committee had thrown open the village – claimed that it was all done and ready for the athletes to move in. It was only on inspection by the respective countries that these issues came up. So I do think it is not about somebody doing a sneaky sting operation at all. There was corruption, money clearly has been misused, and things were not properly planned and executed – I think this is clear beyond doubt.
Having said that, we have managed to get things together, move forward and hopefully will host a very successful games.
And I also feel that people who were responsible for the mess up need to be pulled up and penalized – they have done wrong.
As for frozen foods, PDA and short skirts – I don’t think these things are alien to India anymore
I end up looking like a behenji in comparison to friends and cousins who live in India. And if freezing food works – why not? What is wrong with it if we can save some time and energy by not cooking everyday – I have no issues with it – whether I am in India or abroad.
I second this….ceiling falling off..breaking of bed…snakes in room…all this DOES NOT come under first class preparations and the excuse that a politician gave “every country has different standards of hygiene” is just so lame….I am not ashamed of the preparations etc..I am ashamed of the siphoning of money so openly and just so shameless behavior of our politicians.
Dear Nova,
What a lame excuse!! how can you compare this event to a griha pravesham or even a punjabi wedding (as Mr Gill did), this is a world event (i mean 71 countries are taking part in it). The money that has been spent is enormous (around 77000 crores – 20 Billion dollars!!) if properly put to use could have rooted out many basic problems in India. The teams were not uninvited, in fact, the pictures were taken by athletes who were supposed to occupy the apartments. We are a poor country where more than 80% of people live under Rs 20 a day, in between somebody decided that we are an economic super power and lavishly spent the tax payers money, this “chaltha hain” attitude will take us no where! in a country where only 2% of people play any kind of sport or have access to sport… we have spent thousands of crores on infrastructure that will not be used by the common man… all the apartments will be occupied by the elite of India…. where is the infrastructure for sport which gives access to poor kids…?? how many of the poor kids will be allowed to enter the games village? we are not in a position to spend so much money on the stupid games which were introduced by our colonial masters to prove that they once ruled us…. to remind us of that slavery….!!! and there is corruption from top to bottom… we could have bought a country with its own army with that kind of money… where in the world does a toilet paper costs $100??? there is no accountability… people in the top management have no answers.. they are just playing the blame game…. who is accountable for such corruption? where does this end? the entire world knows we are not a nation as clean as the village … we have corruption rooted deeply…. filth every where in any major city is common… we don’t respect our country… we piss in streets… first we have to sort out all these things before we invite other people to our house and humiliate us….. i am sorry to say… but i am not a supporter of these stupid games….!!!!
I don’t use tax payer money for my grihapravesh. That I think is the essential difference here. They overshot the budget by billions of dollars and still there is no accountability for that money. Sure the games are a success, but are we forgetting that so much money has been lost?
Indian hair has its own inherent advantages: it is simultaneously thin and strong. The hair comes from Indian widows, who are required to shave their heads, and then put through an osmosis process where the color pigment is removed.
Neha,
You have NO IDEA how much I have loved the comments on this post
Phew, there is still hope for us afterall !
There are two kinds of Indians. Those who trash everything indian and those who cannot trash anything indian. Is there any happy objective medium in between ? I personally was not ashamed or embarrassed by by the filthy facilities but by the fact that they were filthy and in a state of utter disrepair just days before the start of the games. I don’t feel i have any obligation to feel proud of the utter apathy incompetence and corruption of the indian government or officials.
I was with you until you mentioned griha-pravesh. I am proud to be an Indian as any other yet I won’t take CWG issue as a misguided issue of patriotism. Our government/politicians DID screw up and HUGE, actually MAMMOTH amount of corruption took place.
You need to hand over venues at least two months before the event to security so that they can conduct drills etc. But no, even a month before venues were being constructed. How can one conduct drills with laborers still working!! Our national reputation and security of millions was at stake. No, now that it went well is no excuse for that kind of behavior. It is not a personal ‘griha-pravesh’.
There were some unfair reports as well, but this is not to be denied we DID go wrong. We had 7 years to prepare!! We had an awesome opening ceremony and games did go pretty well, but there WERE still some glitches – empty stands while people were denied tickets. Ticketing issues. We are supposed to make money out of this expensive games and this is what we did. Though our security was high-end and personnel warm and nice, yet there were issues like they made guests/visitors part with their personal belongings and later failed to return. Delays in games and so on. Much as I don’t care for foreign media who try to be malicious, I am not going out of way to justify the wrongs government did. I’d take it in spirit and hope that now the games are over, we will clean up the mess at home.
I wrote a long post here, that states my grouse more clearly – http://bit.ly/9OrThX
Poonam’s comment sum’s up my opinion to this topic. Unfortunately, we cannot deny or pretend there is a huge morality and corruption problem within the CWG committee and the govt. Pride should be kept at bay to deal with REAL issues. No doubt the media has blown up the whole thing into huge proportions!