Friday 22 October, 2010

Why the CWG was like the Second World War

Unnecessary. If one chap can run faster than another, why should a billion other chaps care? But we do. Same with war. Always Caesar's; never ours. But there has never been any shortage of cannon fodder.

Pyrrhic victory. Rs 75,000 crore – Rs 65,000 per Indian, when our per capita annual income is Rs 44,000 - plus several score lives, and untold misery for the workers and the citizens of Delhi. Enormous opportunity costs all around. How does it matter whether the games were successful?

Wrong victors. Chinese died. Russians died. We died too, more than Americans and British put together. In terms of fraction of  population,the Yugoslavs and Poles were bothered. But Errol Flynn won. With a little help from Churchill. And anyone who doubts that is a racist or a communist. Just as anyone who wants Kalmadi investigated is a traitor.

Well, the Greeks had a successful Olympics in 2004; by last year, they were bankrupt. And other Europeans wanted to degrade them to Arab status, that is, they were no longer fit to be whites, never mind the foundations of Western civilisation and all that.

What will be our fate? We start brown.