A Good Sunday Morning!

A great morning. A happy and a proud Sunday morning.

As usual, I woke up, rubbed my eyes and stretched to my heart's content, as if my hands would touch the ceiling. Being the only exercise for months now, the stiffness is getting scary. Made a mental note that I will play squash today and reached for my Hindustan Times.

The daily morning newspaper has been my diet bed tea to get me fully awake (and angry, and frustrated). Today was a bit different. As usual I started reading the newspaper from the last page, but the happy thing was that I didn't reach the front page at all. Thank you to whoever had started the trend of having Sports in the last pages.

This is why I never got to the front pages. I instead wrote a long Facebook update and started writing this blog post. You see, FB does not have a search feature and your updates just get lost to time. A blog was thus necessary.

Back to the papers, the last page was about Shiva Keshavan - the lone Winter games medallist. I have been following him for years and he has been surprising Govt apathy almost every year. In spite of active Govt. support, he has been winning medals consistently for the country. 

Then I read about Parthiv Patel getting a century and becoming the highest run-getter of the current Ranji season. I have always thought that he keeps behind the wicket better than Dhoni and bats immaculately like a test player. Dhoni being the captain killed his career. Then I read about one of my favourite footballer Robin Van Persie, who has surprised even himself after coming to ManU this season. He has scored 17 goals already in this season.

THEN CAME THE BIGGEST SPORTS NEWS COVERAGE that filled my heart.

HT dedicated almost half a page for sports talent from Kokrajhar, Assam. I used to get a bit annoyed whenever media highlighted Manipur as the only NE success story in Sports. Today, I am happy. Boxers like Pwilao Basumatary, Minu Basumatary, Bhagyabati Kachari, Anjali Machahary were mentioned. It was great to know that India youth team of 2011 had 6 of the 8 boxers from Kokrajhar.

In other sports, footballer Holicharan Narzary, archers Hemanta Basumatary and Sanjay Boro were given a positive mention.

This was one of the very few times that Assam was covered in a National newspapers for a GOOD reason. It was neither a terrorist attack, a bomb blast, nor a kidnapping of a tea garden manager. It was about a positive facet of Assam. 

A slight dampener was the title that Indians won't get it right ever. It said, "A revolution of hope in STRIFE-TORN Kokrajhar". The journalist  Indraneel Das could have avoided the reference to the Strife. There were many other ways to title the piece. But we are designed to write sensationalism.

Its alright. At least there is a positive coverage about Assam in a national newspaper.

Click here for the online version of the news article.

Photo Gallery of the Athletes from Kokrajhar, Assam.

Pwilao Basumatary

Anjali Machahary

Bhagyawati Kachari

Minu Basumatary in red

Forward Holicharan Narzary

Sanjay Boro winning the Bronze

Archer Hemanta Basumatary