The Commonwealth games

Ah, the Commonwealth Games!

Oh the excitement! The anticipation!

The greatest show on earth ( after the Olympics, Asiad, Winter Olympics, FIFA WC, IPL, EPL, UEFA Champions League, Malleshwaram-Chamrajpet tennis ball tournament and the Undertaker-Rock Steel Cage Match ) is coming to India.

The greatest sporting nations in the world ( except the US, China, Russia, France, Germany, most of South America and... well, most of the world ) will send their most celebrated athletes ( except Jamaica whose sprinters have pedicure appointments... and Britain who value their athletes' lives and digestive systems... and Pakistan who are "our valued tourist visa applicants, kindly hold the line"... and Spain who arent good at much else besides football and weren't invited anyway... and... ) to parade their stuff in packed stadia and on millions of televisions. Its a minor detail that the stadia will be packed with empty seats and construction material and that the televisions will mostly be tuned to Rakhi Sawant's karwa-chauth.

Come on, you people, stop kidding yourselves. There are so many reasons why the Commonwealth Games are a bad idea.

To begin with, India does not have a culture of sports. There's a reason why we only excel at a game where you can legally appoint someone else to run for you.( See, thats where this outsourcing thing started ) Ergo, we don't have too many champions (yet) in most of the events. So, there won't be enough spectator interest for most of the events. This will also dampen the grandeur of the television show and harm the commercial viability of the exercise.

Secondly, New Delhi? Of all places? The clowns there haven't gotten a good patch of grass going in the cricket stadium for decades now. Without delving into reasons, suffice it to say that problems cannot be solved by the same people who created them in the first place.

Thirdly, India? You ask why not? Terrorism. Most of the big names are giving it a miss as they value their left eye more than their bronze medals. Of course its preposterous to suggest that there will be security lapses, with all those committees thinking otherwise. But do you blame the athletes for choosing to play safe rather than play a harp wearing all-white and a halo ?

Fourthly, there's this little matter of an India-Australia Test series at the same time. Need I say more?

This ego trip for some bureaucrats is going to hurt us in many ways. Tax payers will end up footing the bill for a badly organized jamboree. The organization will be sub-standard and will hurt the nation's image and jeopardize our bids to host big-ticket events like the Asiad in future. With due respect to the super-patriots, the few billion dollars that will be burned, could've been put to better use. In fact, we could've bought a couple of the Commonwealth nations with that kind of money.

Birds from the balcony

Watched a strikingly beautiful shikra in action yesterday from the terrace.

Just spotted two owls hovering around my place tonight. Judging by the calls and the size, they seemed to be barn owls.

Maybe its time to get our locality notified as a biodiversity hotspot!