My midweek musings.

The beauty of innocence.

Saw this evening’s episode of ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ on the Sony television channel. On the hot seat was a young school teacher named Chawda Vanraj Sinh, who hailed from a small village called ‘Khas’ in Gujarat. In that village till the recent past, the tradition for the children and youth was to shun education so as to get involved fully in the agricultural efforts and become accomplished farmers. However, the father of Vanraj decided to buck the tradition and encouraged his son to study. Vanraj is a graduate and is currently a teacher in the local government school that has about 800 students in its roll.

The young man feelingly narrated the hardships undergone by his parents, in bringing him up, during the course of his stay on the hot seat and he wanted to set up a library with the prize money he got from the show. His simplicity and absolute purity of thought were simply charming and endearing. A refreshing rural innocence was overwhelmingly evident and I wished that he won the entire prize money. He, finally, went away with Rs. 25 lakhs and I wish him all the best in his endeavours with the fond hope that he never, ever loses that innocence!



The hunger to win.

Yesterday, it was our hockey team that did our country proud by its fantastic performance against England at the Commonwealth Games. Coming from behind, they notched up an impressive 7 – 4 victory which reminded me about the movie ‘Chak de India’. And today, it was the turn of our cricket team to win the second test match against Australia at Bangalore. These two spectacular wins, against the rich haul of 35 gold medals in the ongoing Commonwealth games, show a resurgent India which is eager to do well and make winning a habit!

As an Indian, I was getting disgusted and tired of large Indian contingents going for international sports fixtures only to return empty handed and slink away, during the wee hours from the airport, on arrival. I would like to believe that all of it has become a thing of the past and India is going to do well in a sustained manner from now on!!