The New Nation - Internet Edition

Maswood Alam Khan

The number 8 is associated with prosperity and confidence in Chinese culture. China perhaps would not have agreed to host Olympics in any other year that would not bear the digit 8 as a qualifying index and I guess China might have been planning to bet or spend any fortune at her disposal to host Olympics or for that matter any other prestigious international event to be held exactly after six thousand years---in the Year 8008.

2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, therefore, is due to begin in the Beijing National Stadium precisely at 8:08 PM (China Standard Time) on 8 August 2008 and more than 80 state leaders and royals are expected to attend the opening ceremony.

I don't know exactly how many of the current 205 National Olympic Committees (NOC) will ultimately participate in this grand event. But I am sure numerologists in China are keeping their fingers crossed in an expectation that the number would be 202, a lucky figure to augur well from the numerological point of view as the number 202, as summation of its three digits, equates 4 that can wholly divide the lucky number 8.

Most NOCs participate regularly, although various circumstances could cause a nation to be absent from the games, as was the case for six NOCs at the 2006 Winter Olympics.

A man who never in his life played a game or found it a wastage of time to watch a game may wonder why millions of people are so crazy about test cricket, world cup football or Olympic games; himself an avid plant lover he may wish how pleasant life would be if people instead of splurging money on games would spend their funds for gardening.

In a similar vein a game lover would pity the plant lover wondering how a man could be such a duffer to waste away his whole life watering plants only, never ever savoring the intoxicating flavor of games either as a player or as a watcher!

The plant lover and the game lover look at each other as mad caps---two diametrically reverse views which may sound mutually exclusive to a person who is neither a plant lover nor a game lover.

How popular are sports today? Well, in America alone there are 265 television stations devoted primarily to sports talks. Surveys show that 60% of literate people all over the world get a daily infusion of sports statistics and highlights from such media as television, newspapers, books, magazines, radio, blackberry devices and cell phones.

In today's fast-paced world where it is sometimes hard to keep up with things, sports offer well-defined boundaries: your team, my team, a set of rules and people to enforce them. When we play sports or when we get caught up in the action as a fan, we are taken outside of ourselves to concentrate our full attention on something that holds our complete focus and interest.

One day an illiterate friend of Albert Einstein rushed to his house to ask: "Albert, there is a rumor in the town that you invented something called "Relativity"! What is that stuff like?" Concerned about how to make his unlettered friend understand the complex equation of the 'theory of relativity' Einstein groped for an easy answer understandable to his ignorant and gullible friend and finally replied: "If you put your head near a burning oven for two minutes, it would seem you have spent two hours; but, if you hobnob with a cute lady for two hours, it would seem you have spent only two minutes. That is RELATIVITY."

Indeed time flies by when you are engrossed in a conversation with your fiancée or delve into something exhilarating like watching a football tournament with your favorite team battling against another popular squad. A child forgets the whole world when she is immersed in a different world painting a model sitting at a solitary corner of the living room segregating herself from the rest of her family.

Sometimes a physician, in addition to medicinal treatments, prescribes a hypertensive patient to involve in a mind-soothing activity like 'praying to God', 'watching a game on TV', 'listening to classical songs', 'viewing a particular soup opera periodically broadcast on a television channel', or 'any doings that may allow him to escape from clutter of temporal noises' to lower his blood pressure. Amazingly it works, a little magically!

The famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle compared sport to a meditative state in which participants are "taken out of themselves". This concept is commonly known today as being "in the zone"---an intense mental state whereby all of the athlete's strengths and talents are perfectly in sync. Whether we are playing a sport or whether we are intense fans, once the action begins, we are purely engrossed in the moment and time seems to fly by.

Rabindranath Tagore said: "The difference between a mad and a genius is as thin as a razor's edge". The world would indeed seem like a madhouse if we observe how crazes of different shapes and colors sweep our societies at different times.

An invention that was ridiculed in the past is now revered; a fashion that was deemed a shame yesteryear is viewed as the latest craze of the current year. Among all the maddening obsessions, however, crazes for sports and games are the best options for both our physical and mental health.

There would have been many more feuds and wars among neighbors and many more trillions of dollars would have been invested in defenses of nations had there been no game and sport for clubs and countries to adopt as their tools to defeat their rivals. In war defeat is humiliating and the vanquished people hardly find time, money and energy to fight again with the conquerors. Beautifully, in games and sports defeat is rather a springboard on the part of the defeated to renew their zeal to fight next time again against the winner.

The fascination of sport can best be described by reading the Olympic Creed: "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well."

China, a craze nation for sports and the birthplace of football, must now be passing her moments "in the zone". Besides thousands of spectators in the Beijing National Stadium, nicknamed the "Bird nest" having a seating capacity of 80 thousand people, 4 billion television viewers, including most of the 1.33 billion Chinese citizens, will remain mesmerized, focused and lost in a different fascinating world watching a plethora of Olympic events live to be broadcast entirely in high definition television (HDTV) technology at day and night---burning midnight oil in many corners of the world where and when it is time to sleep.