No medals, high spirits: The Indian psyche.

There's a famous Nike ad that goes, "You don't win the silver. You lose the gold."

As the Rio Olympics draws to its conclusion, India may well finish without a single medal in its kitty. Strangely this hasn't dampened the enthusiasm levels in the country. Most Indians have taken this loss in their stride and are celebrating their athletes who lost.

The people at Nike and their ad agency must surely be scratching their heads and wondering what they've missed and where they went wrong in understanding India. Even as American, Australian, Chinese, German and Fijian athletes weep at the loss of a gold medal, we're happy with nothing. 

"We participated and did our best. It's fine if we didn't win." is the common refrain.

I'm not commenting on the right or wrong of it. I've only been wondering about why we Indians have a different attitude to winning and losing from every other country. The answer perhaps lies in our very philosophy of existence.

Westerners believe life is linear. You only live once. Therefore it's important to make the most of it. Their ultimate ambition is immortality through achievements and deeds that are remembered till posterity for the record they created or broke. Hence since time immemorial they've recorded their achievements for posterity, cherished and awarded them.

But in Indian philosophy we believe that life is circular. I.e we are trapped in this cycle of life and death. Whatever you do, there's no escaping it and you will only return to this world to perform your earthly duty once more. Only those mahatmas who rise above their materialistic desires are freed from this cycle.

So what's great about an Olympics record or a gold medal? For it is not the end of the world. There will be many more Olympics; countless, infinite number of Olympics in the lifetime of the universe, which is still expanding. And in that  infinitude, there will be many opportunities and situations for us to win countless medals. So why fret about this one?

After all we're all just energy that get converted from one form to another, trapped in this same universe. Which itself will expand, then contract into a dot and explode with another big bang again. Then again and again continuously. Forever.

Neither you, nor I, neither Dipa Karmarkar, nor Michael Phelps will escape this. So eventually we'll catch up. For now, lets celebrate. Jai Hind.