|
Over 15,000 volunteers and most of them Indians.
This may sound like a jingoism, but honestly, this article doesn’t stem from crazy nationalism.
This is the way Indian expatriates see it.
This is the way a number of expatriate (non-Indian) organisers of the Asian Games are beginning to see it.
Indians are doing a LOT of work here. As volunteers and contractors. And it is Indians who are turning up in large numbers at the stadium, shelling out honest, hard-earned riyals to support their teams and to support The Games, hosted by the country they temporarily call ‘Home’.
In fact, at a press conference, a BBC reporter asked the Qatar National Olympic Committee president HE Sheikh Saoud Al Thani why there were more Indian spectators than Qatari spectators. The response was classic, gently but deliberately skimming over the issue of nationality and saying any one was welcome to view the Games.
No question of acknowledging that Indians are the single largest expatriate workforce in the country, in any case. That we drive their economy!
Now, forget the contractors. They are getting paid.
Forget the spectators, they are having fun.
Let’s talk about the volunteers. Indian volunteers. Many of whom are school kids.
Earnest folks, getting into the spirit of the Games.
Folks who will not even be given due credit for the efforts they have taken.
The organisers, instead of celebrating the diversity of their volunteers and taking pride in the commitment of their expatriate population, choose to refer to them as a whole, as if they were all Qatari nationals.
That Indians number most in the total volunteer numbers is overlooked. Are we meek to accept it? (And shall we inherit the earth for it?)
I am not so sure if it’s meekness.
The way I see it, what has held us in good stead wherever we go is that we bury our head in work and our hearts in nostalgia… we labour on, getting the best out of a place and out of our work.
As a community we have never been troublemakers. We don’t riot. We don’t fight.
We work.
We try to be the bigger person – not by design, but rather naturally.
We stonewall insults and it ricochets.
We and the Chinese have come a long way with this attitude. The Chinese, obviously a longer way, given their absolute dominance of the Games.
Is what I have said jingoism? So be it, and I continue…
Fact is, we are never attacked (verbally or by gesture) because WE DON’T or WE ARE NOT. It is because we DO and we ARE.
Because we DO work, we DO succeed, we ARE educated, we ARE earnest, we ARE committed.
The only DON’Ts are: We DON’T give a damn to silly insults and we DON’T retaliate.
Not because we lack pride, but because we have a lot of it.
We are proud of where we come from. Proud of what we have inherited. Proud of what we have achieved. Proud of the legacy we hope to leave behind.
We are proud of turning our ‘drawbacks’ to strengths.
Our non-aggression to freedom – a model still admired 60 years later.
Our food deficit to surplus.
Our population woes to our human resource assets.
We take pride in proving the naysayers wrong, with action and not our words (except this one instance)!
And that’s what the Indian volunteers are doing – letting their presence and actions speak for itself, even if their efforts are not publicly acknowledged and appreciated.
Does it mean we are saints from heaven?
Far from it.
We have our share of problems as a country and attitude issues as a people.
But what no one can take away from us is that we are as a people committed to succeed, and hence drive the nation. As against China, which is committed as a nation, and hence drives its people.
(The writer is a journalist currently Dashing Around Doha, at the Asian Games)
Dashing around Doha –
1
|
Dashing around Doha – 2
