The beleaguered chief of the Organizing Committee of the Commonwealth Games, Suresh Kalmadi hit back at his detractors saying that he has succeeded in making the games the most successful games in the history of the commonwealth games even before the first event has begun.
Speaking to Onionuttapam.com, Kalmadi said that never before have commonwealth games garnered so much interest amongst the common man as much as this edition of the games. “In the past, these games barely generated any interest even in the participating commonwealth countries. Except for the host countries which had no option but to hype them up and Great Britain which as head of the commonwealth had to feign interest in these games, no other country gave a shit about commonwealth games.”
“But thanks to my efforts, the whole world has discovered the existence of Commonwealth Games” beamed Kalmadi. “I’ve made Commonwealth Games ‘World Popular’” claimed the OC chief.
“CWG has always been a distant, poor cousin of Olympics Games or Asian Games and with every passing year it was becoming less and less relevant in our post-colonial world. As far as public interest in India is concerned, it ranked only slightly above the equally irrelevant SAF Games and many, many rungs below the over-hyped but pointless IPL. But now as a result of the mess we have made, people all over the world are talking about the games.”
“I’ve breathed new life into the dying games.” said Kalmadi with pride.
“Let’s face the truth. No one really gives a damn about a bunch of athletes running, jumping, swimming and throwing things to collect medals for their countries. In these attention-deficit times, people demand a lot more entertainment than what these usual run-of-the-mill sporting contests are capable of providing. We have given people all over the world with a far more enjoyable spectacle in the form of collapsing footbridges and falling ceilings – a spectacle that has resulted in thousands of jokes and hundreds of hours of heated television debates. Can any athletic event generate that much interest?” he asked.
“Audiences have a lot to look forward to in the coming days. Media from the world over will also have their hands full with stories about swimmers ruing lack of practice due to discovery of dead rats in swimming pools and nightmarish tales of athletes spending sleepless nights fighting blood-thirsty mosquitoes.”
According to Kalmadi, this edition of CWG will draw record television audience who will tune in not to watch the athletes in action, but to see if any stadium collapses.
“In our entertainment-saturated world of today, the only way to generate interest in boring mega-events like the commonwealth games is by creating entertaining controversies. Throw in some pictures that confirm the worst stereotypes people have about India, a few minor disasters that reaffirm their worst fears about our country and add to the drama some stray dogs and snakes and you have millions of people eagerly awaiting the unfolding of the games with anticipation, suspense and excitement.”
“By created an unprecedented buzz for the games even before the games have begun, we have succeeded in making these games the most successful games in the history of the commonwealth games.” Kalmadi asserted confidently.
“In other news, Ramprakash Yadav, a third-world laborer is working hard to make the stay of first-world athlete guests at commonwealth games village comfortable and luxurious.
Yadav,38, who lives in a third-class mosquito-infested shanty on the outskirts of New Delhi slaves hard from morning to late night for a paltry amount of Rs. 125 paid to him at the end of the day to ensure that his first world guests enjoy “world-class” facilities during the fortnight they will spend in the capital city of India. At the end of the month, Yadav will take home a princely amount of around Rs.2000 which will be used to feed, clothe and house his family of six consisting of his wife, three kids and his parents.
Third-world Yadav has spent thousands of days of his grinding life building 5-star hotels, malls, penthouses and posh apartment blocks for the first-world upper classes of New Delhi, but his own home, the dingy shanty where he lives with his family, doesn’t have a toilet, or even a water tap and receives electricity only few hours a day.
He will never be allowed to step inside the premises of the 5-star hotel or sleep on the luxurious beds in the apartments that that he helped build with his labor, because his priority in life is making life of first-world people smooth, easy and opulent. If he does his work sincerely, he will be rewarded in his next life by the gods that govern his life with permission to be born into a family of lower-division clerk at Delhi University.
Meanwhile, the stray dog and the snake that have become cause of much concertation due to their unlawful entry into games villages are confused and are wondering why they are so unwanted at the sports carnival. “These humans are a queer lot. Everyday we see many of them shaking hands and taking group pictures with a clownish biped tiger, a disgrace to his wild and ferocious species. If they don’t like us animals, why does this stupid-looking tiger adorn every wall of this goddamned village?” wondered the stray dog who was judged guilty of jumping on a bed in the games village and tarnishing the image of a nation of over a billion people.
