All’s well that ends well!!!

Prayers do work, don’t they? I had sincerely hoped and wished for Delhi to pull through the Commonwealth Games when the Queen’s baton relay happened in October last year. You can read the post here.

And yayay, we did it! Yes, there were a lot of hiccups and major roadblocks; the corruption was deplorable (and is unforgivable); the apathy of the government officials involved was disappointing … but we managed to put up our India shining face – bright and vibrant – when it mattered the most.

In the last couple of months, along with national and international media, everybody was bashing the preparations. As I watched the images of dishonesty and blatant money games flashed on TV, I kept my fingers crossed. While the media reports were not really exaggerated, I was a little miffed that they spoke about nothing positive at all.

However, in retrospect I guess it paid well. Indians round the world cursed and kicked and came out in the open showing their anger and shame at the Kalmadis of CWG who tried their best to barter national integrity and pride for the green bucks – a coffer filling exercise was the CWG for them!

Last minute fire fighting did a lot of damage control – we Indians thrive on jugaad, don't we? ;) (jugaad is a colloquial hindi word – loosely translated as getting things done by hook or by crook – I found a wiki link too for it here – wow Internet rocks!)

While I am thrilled at the spectacular show that Delhi organized, I feel that after the back patting is done, we need to book the culprits who caused so much confusion and delay. They need to be punished in order to set an example for other such events to come – nobody puts national pride at stake, and then gets away with it!

Also, we now need to maintain all the infrastructure we have managed to assemble thanks to the CWG budget - yes, it overshot ten times the initial amount, but we cannot undo that – what we can do is ensure that we preserve the progress we have made – preserve the spirit that is India, the spirit that is Delhi – the spirit that sometimes becomes an obscure flame thanks to selfish politicians, but still emboldens and illuminates the world when the time beseeches.

Go Delhi go!