Opinion When the queen fell from the sky

In this mad,mad,mad world,where everything was as topsy-turvy as the “Queen’s” descent to the Olympic Stadium,one island of predictability stood firm: Jantar Mantar,where Team Anna was observing another fast.

The opening ceremony was utterly delightful; funny as the British sense of humour,warm and friendly as “Hey Jude”,pastoral as sheep dogs,spectacular as fireworks and altogether a smashing success but for our having to sacrifice an entire night’s sleep to watch it live from 1 am to 4.30 am,Sunday. So our whoops of joy to greet Mr Bean were interspersed with stifled yawns.

Sleep deprivation is the price we are paying to watch the London Olympics live — especially events featuring Indians (like Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa’s exit from the badminton doubles contest),or the swimming finals (Michael Phelps’ loss in the 200m butterfly final).

Want more complaints? Well,Saina Nehwal was not “live” in her first badminton encounter (although her second match was in real time); boxer Jai Bhagwan’s first-round bout was interrupted and we missed tennis player Somdev Devvarman’s first round loss. No loss,right?

Three channels are live in London: DD Sports shows events involving India and otherwise,whatever — horse-riding,for instance. ESPN also covers the India-specific games while Star Sports does the rest. They all give you highlights. If you have not subscribed to any of these sports channels,never fear,TV news is here to keep you in the picture. So you could have watched Gagan Narang shoot for bronze on ABP or Times Now.

Once he’d shot into Olympic fame,TV news went for broke — not entirely surprising — on the Monday of the northern power grid breakdown. News teams must have been posted outside his parents’ front door because the moment Narang clinched the bronze in the 10m air rifle contest,they barged in and cornered the poor dears. TV lights blinded them,questions in different tongues assaulted them,everyone spoke simultaneously so when Narang’s father spoke,he wasn’t audible. Meanwhile,Narang’s mother looked like a frightened rabbit in the glare of a car’s headlights.

Some of the DD Sports reporting team looked so mournful you’d think they were at a funeral,not the Olympics. When the Indian archery team lost out,Rajesh Tiwari,mike held firmly to mouth (hasn’t DD heard of clip-on microphones?) looked as bleak as an overcast London sky. So did the others. Except Charu Sharma who is always sunny side up. He’s also DD’s man for all sports,doing live commentary for boxing,hockey,shooting,etc,and interviewing our players/ managers. He makes commentary sound so simple,anyone could do it: “(Jai Bhagwan) needs to conserve energy for later rounds… I think he has a pretty good chance… there’s a fair amount of activity… he dances around,all he has to do is stay away from his opponent…” The comments are so generalised they could apply to any sport or event: “Something to think about for Gagan Narang… the man from Norway’s not had a very good tournament but he’s made a big recovery… what a long journey it’s been for Gagan from Athens,Beijing to London… (Gagan) has to put is nerves under tremendous control…’’

Vijay Amritraj is doing a Charu Sharma for ESPN. But he and the channel need to do their homework. They celebrated Jwala-Ashwini’s victory on Tuesday night and said the duo were through to the next round,when DD Sports had already informed us that the win wasn’t enough for that.

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com