Nozomi & the third world

Rohit Mahajan

THE world, magical and wondrous and disgusting, reveals itself best to those who travel and explore. In Japan, you might find a shop cashier running after you to return you small change, worth perhaps a few rupees, you had left behind. That’s wondrous. Japanese visitors in India might encounter something disgusting. Nozomi Okuhara, former world badminton champion from Japan, did encounter something disgusting in India. Nozomi, who had lost to PV Sindhu in the 2016 Rio Olympics semifinals and won a bronze, is on a comeback trail. She needs to earn points to qualify for the Paris Olympics, so she’s been travelling across tier-2 cities in India, playing tournaments so that she can make it to Paris.

On way to Cuttack to play at the Odisha Open Super 100, Nozomi had to stay the night in Delhi, close to the airport, a 10-minute drive to the hotel, she was told. Her Uber drive ride didn’t materialise for the cab never arrived; she reluctantly hired a private taxi, for Rs 1,344, which was six times the Uber fare. The driver added a ‘toll’, and the total fare turned out to be Rs 1,890, 10 times the fare being shown for her Uber ride. “I had no choice but to pay,” Nozomi wrote on a Japanese website. “Ah, I thought I had been fooled completely, but I was able to arrive safely at the hotel with my luggage, so I’m glad.”

It’s sad that tourists in India, having been fleeced, are grateful for being left physically unharmed by us — ‘Thank you for not mugging me or robbing me or raping me or murdering me, good sir!’

In Cuttack, Nozomi found that the hotel she was directed to had no room for her — she sat in the lobby for hours before another hotel could be arranged, through the intervention of the Japanese federation.

Nozomi, who’s a very polite person, was overwhelmed by the experience, and also by the kindness of the staff at the first hotel — they let her sit in the lobby for four hours and even gave her water at the end! “Even though I was occupying the sofa in the lobby for four hours at that first hotel, I was really helped by the kindness of the hotel staff who even gave me water at the end without saying a word,” she wrote.

“India has a wide range, from random people to kind people, so even if you don’t want to doubt someone, you may end up doubting them, or you may feel like you’re being rude and a not-so-nice person,” Nozomi added.

A case of once burnt, twice shy — but it seems getting burnt has been the mainstream experience of badminton players in tier-2 India. Malaysia’s Soong Joo Ven, playing in the Guwahati Masters Super 100 tournament, found muddy water gushing out of the taps in his hotel. He shared a video of muddy water on social media, with the caption: “Imagine showering and brushing your teeth with this water here in India!!!”

At the Syed Modi International in Lucknow, Singapore’s Jessica Tan found bird droppings on the courts. She, too, posted evidence of it on social media, commenting: “Super interesting court test. There were birds flying in the hall and bird droppings all over the court.”

After a tour of India, Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden had said India was a ‘third world’ country. “They (opposition batsmen) are very difficult to get to face up… Often we find ourselves with hands on hips waiting for someone to either face up or someone in the sight board to move away; all the little frustrations that happen in Third World countries and the heat as well.” All hell broke loose, and proud patriots spoke of India’s achievements, attacked Hayden for ‘racism’ and referred to Australia’s past as a colony populated by criminals. Hayden stood by his comment.

And it is a fact that India is a third world country — half the population lives under the poverty line, 80 crore people rely on free foodgrains provided by the government; superstitions and weird beliefs make us discriminate against others over caste, creed, ethnicity, language… India, land of mind-boggling contradictions, draws to itself people on a spiritual quest — very often, their utopion dreams are dashed.

On the flipside, India, as we know very well, is the world’s fastest-growing big economy — it’s a matter of pride that we’re the world’s fifth-biggest economy in terms of GDP, poised to overtake Germany and then go on to challenge the top-three — USA, China and Japan.

New India has global ambitions in sport — in organising sport, that is. India would bid for the 2036 Olympic Games. The 2010 Commonwealth Games — with collapsing bridges, falling roof tiles, leaking roofs and dirty water in swimming pools — brought humiliation to the nation. Then there was the corruption, for which the taxpayer — and the Congress party! — has had to pay a heavy price.

Have we learnt a lesson? The Olympics in India would be a sports lover’s dream come true. But can we ensure that the world’s elite athletes are provided cockroach-free bedrooms, walls free of paan spit, and clean water to bathe with — let alone protection against being swindled or robbed on roads?

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