Why is everyone excited about Sindhu now? Is it an achievement to lose in the final? Is silver our final aim? Haven't we achieved anything better in any other sport? Is everything because she is a girl? Is she the only sports woman in the world? Is she the best sports person in India? Is she the only Indian to win a medal? Or is she at least the first to win a medal in the current Olympics?
Perhaps we had waited so long for a medal that when we saw someone winning the semi finals, it has created that hype. We were hopeless about winning a medal two days ago before Sakshi Malik finally got a medal for us. We had literally given up on the Olympics and went back to interesting events, where we could see our favorites winning. This hope of winning a medal was broken down when the most expected Dipa Karmakar couldn't manage to register her name in the top three. We were contended about ourselves in the belief that contending in the Olympics and giving our best was the greatest achievement for India and winning a dream was an too much more than our capacity thanks to the poor infrastructure and encouragement in our system.
The lost hope was never lost again when somewhere we heard that India had got hold of its first medal as Sakshi Malik won a bronze in wrestling. That would have been celebrated as our best achievement in this Olympic if the news about Sindhu qualifying to semifinals had reached us a few days later. The lost touch of expectations had just resumed.
Sindhu was not that peaceful dwarf whom we had always imagined when we thought of a badminton player owing to the personalities from China. She was almost six foot, which surprised our psychology internally. Seeing her we Kind got a feeling that she could do more than a bronze for us.
With not much of enthusiasm, expectation and excitement, we took glances of her play in the semifinal initially. Whenever she scored a point, her energy went high with an aggressive celebration to show the world that she owned the point. It came to the surprise of Indian fans who would have imagined a peaceful girl when they had heard the name Sindhu, from South India and moreover a badminton player. That aggression boosted us.
If it was all about attitude and nothing special about the performance, the expectation would have come down at the beginning, but Sindhu's performance was equally terrifying and she simply smashed her Japanese opponent winning two straight sets to enter into the final. The tremor in the opponent's body made Sindhu look like a daredevil from an alternate universe.
And yes. She had lost the finals after a successful first set, but not too many times had I seen live updates of badminton score on social media by not only the press, but also the common unfrequent Facebook users, who hardly post anything on Facebook. It was stunning when I saw too many people going live on Facebook uploading the badminton video. There hadn't been even a few times a badminton match was trending when there was a cricket match going live.
Sindhu had seriously made India follow the Olympics. People like her would the reason for the development of other sports in India, because more than achievements emotions matter more for us.
Sindhu is the new icon of India and she represents the capability of India.
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