The road to large viewership has a shortcut called 'notoriety'. It is because of all the notoriety hungama that I watched the opening ceremony of the XIX Commonwealth games. Though I knew that I would not be shown the dirty players' rooms, or the absence of the volunteers on the telly (least of all on DD), I was curious to see how it would turn out. And I was pleasantly surprised for the 1st hour. The CWG ceremony started off with a percussion mela with drums from Manipur, Chenda from Kerala, Punjabi Dhol and more from other parts of India. The din was terrific and it also showed that drums don't just beat in Africa. A wonderfully choreographed sequence!
Ofcourse, there was the 'Aerostat' - a huge helium filled balloon, which turned into a Bodhi tree backdrop for a showcase of the Indian classical dances. There was mehendi done on cloth by children, a yoga piece, an Indian Railways tableau with coaches of bangles, loudspeakers, Bollywood, cycles and sugarcane juicing machines, puppets hanging from the balloon, snake charmers with their 'been' etc etc. In short it was overkill. The ceremony sold and resold every famous Indian export.
The crowd was jubilant and applauded each sentence delivered by prince Charles and the others. I may have done the same, probably from relief that the stadium isn't collapsing over my head.
Meanwhile, on TV, DD seemed to be on an earning spree. I caught ads of the Indian Railways, RBI, ONGC and what not!
Anyways, now that its begun, we can breathe freely only after it ends. Lets just hope that we have a nice games. And that we get out of this with our honour intact.
