Pawn of Dirty Game

On December 9, Santhi Soudarajan won a silver for India in the women’s 800m run at the Doha Asian Games. On Sunday, the very next day, it was revealed that Santhi is not a woman.

The 25-year-old runner failed a gender test, which was conducted in Doha after the race was over and the test report was sent to the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) by the organizers. Till now the organizers have denied receiving the reports (but till when ?? ).

The report mentions that "Santhi does not possess the sexual characteristics of a women".

This is all the more shocking since the Athletic Federation of India (AFI), which selected ‘Santhi’ (I’ll not mention her or him) for Doha, was aware of the issue. Santhi has been denied employment in Railways on the same ground.

Nevertheless, Santhi continued to manage to find a berth in the Indian contingent for several international events as also for Doha. 'Santhi' had first made headlines after winning a gold in 800m at the inaugural Asian Indoor Games at Pattaya last year.
I am not here to speak about how she rose to this phenomenal success despite of her extreme poverty or how many medals she has won till now. I am not even bothered whether Santhi is a ‘she’ or ‘he’.

Santhi is an unemployed graduate in Business Administration and a MCA. Why is it that Santhi’s classmates or other fellow athletes never raised any doubts about ‘her’ gender ?? In fact, one of the classmates is full of praise for Santhi. And as far as my knowledge of south India (especially rural Tamil Nadu) goes, they are NOT very open with the idea of mixing up with a classmate of opposite sex.

The most baffling aspect is that now people are unaware of Santhi's whereabouts. When contacted, Santhi’s state coach Nagarajan or her fellow athletes said 'Santhi' had not contacted anyone after winning the medal. Nagarajan said, "The news comes as a shock. Santhi has been training with me for the past two and a half years. I never felt that 'Santhi' was a man and such things are very scientific for me to comment on."

Apparently Santhi had “left” Doha before the closure ceremony, stating some family problems. Or was Santhi asked to leave ??
One sports official who was part of the contingent to Doha said, "In Doha everything went off well. But I believe someone leaked the information to the organisers, who then got the athlete tested.".

Now that is another shocking piece of news. What exactly he wanted to convey ?? That if the leakage of such a disastrous information had not taken place they would have continued to field Santhi as a woman ??

That we are part of such a hopeless country of 1,000,000,000 plus where it is hard to find a genuine man or a woman who can represent the country with dignity ??
What were we trying to achieve by sending Santhi as a woman ?? One or two medals ?? Is that all we want ? Don’t we have any dignity, self respect left in us ? How many times more ? How many times ?

Compared to the bigger game being played by our so called saviors of rules and regulations, I don’t blame Santhi at all. The extreme poverty has forced that person to accept some morally wrong things.

Santhi is just a pawn of this entire dirty filthy game.

The whole affair is very shameful, scandalous and immoral.

P.S. – Have lots to blurt out. Expect one more post. If I get time, I’ll definitely write it. :))

Current song- Bahaaron Phool Barsaao, Mera Mehboob Aaya Hai – Md Rafi