A couple of days ago when India was struggling hard to open its medal tally at the Rio Olympics, Shobhaa De tweeted this:
The tweet, quite obviously, drew her a lot of flak on social media:
Well, despite being roasted left, right and centre for her remark, it seems like Shobhaa De hasn’t learnt her lesson.
When Sindhu swamped into the final after winning 21-19, 21-10, ensuring India a medal, instead of appreciating her like the rest of the country, she cheekily tweeted this:
And now, right after PV Sindhu’s historic silver medal, De wrote a column for Mumbai Mirror, and it’s so ironic, it’s not even funny.
In the column, while praising the ‘teen deviyaan’ aka Dipa Karmakar, Sakshi Malik and PV Sindhu, she goes on to say that “all these wonderful women will be showered with all sorts of rewards and awards once they get back to India. But I believe it’s a sad case of too little, too late. Where was the money when they needed it the most?”
Well, Madam De, where was this appreciation for our sportspeople when they needed it the most? Too little, too late now, isn’t it?
She goes on to say:
“So many potential female Olympians from India are emphatically discouraged from taking sports seriously in the first place.”
Not just that, ma’am. Even if they do reach the Olympics despite all the hurdles, people like yourself continue the discouragement with totally useless remarks.
And then, the most ironic of all, she goes on to say:
“Limelight affects side-kicks the most! All sorts of randoms will suddenly crawl out of the woodwork and try to hog a bit of the glory when our winners come home. They really should be shunned and asked to step aside.”
And that my friends is exactly what hypocrisy looks like!