THE GREAT SHOW IN THE BIRDS'S NEST!

Watched the pomp at the bird' s nest in Beijing!!!! Man what colour, what music and what a show they put on!!! I don't think we could match that in a million years. Man to man we have enough to put on such a great show. But would it have been politically possible? Clearly no. There were 20,000 men just standing and rowing a virtual boat. It was so synchronised and beautiful that it beat the real thing!

The laser show too was a great spectacle and in the teams walked in proudly. Proud to be representing their nation, proud of their achievements in their respective fields, proud to be part of such a big extravaganza.

Now the real thing starts from today. Many will compete. Some will win, quite a few will lose. Of course in India there will be the usual hue and cry about how our athletes cut such a sorry figure at the world events!

There will be the noise about how federations in India are run by politicians and that there is no money in any sport other than cricket. There will also be a few positive drug tests. Hopefully , I am keeping my fingers crossed, that the figures this time are low.

As an Indian, I do hope that we do bring home a few medals, just to prove the sceptics wrong. I also hope that we learn some lessons from the Chinese about co-operation, hard work, and completing work on time. See how they built that stadium for the Olympics!

Of course I am also thinking of how much money went into the show! Just imagine how many hungry people we could have fed, how many roofs we would have put on some homeless people's heads.

But then that is the world these days. We each would like to flex our muscles and show the world how much we can do better that some one else. It starts at home, where we would like to own a Ferrari, or a BMW right up to the Nuclear war heads that the government would like to have( at the tax payers cost).What our neighbour has we too must have, must we not? After all we would not use the nuclear war head ,would we? One bomb and we would be destroying ourselves along with the neighbour it was intended for!

But then , as I say, it is not about what we need , it is about what we want.

So long live the games. And yes all the best to the Indian athletes. Hope they come back covered in glory, so the government can decide who to give all those Khel ratna and other awards!