I usually dread the end of holidays but leaving Greece was particularly traumatic. I have returned now to the Big Apple by way of a two-hour layover in Paris, which sounds glamorous but was actually horrifically racist. Obviously I was “randomly selected” for a search on my way to my plane, which is not something I ordinarily mind when it’s done in a separate section of the airport. But no, Charles De Gaulle airport security staff thought it would be fun to search me (and my underwear) on that little bridge connector that takes you from the terminal to the actual plane. In plain sight. As each passenger walked by me they gave me that look, the one that communicates sympathy veiled in fear wrapped in condescension. I meanwhile felt like Malena at the end of that eponymous tear-jerker.
But I kept my newly infused Grecian spirits high, even as I was diverted because of bad weather to another city. The week I returned turned out to be the closing week of a show on the classical treasures of Pergamon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had heard so much about the show - mainly that it included some of the finest specimens of ancient Greek art that are known to exist. It was a wonderful albeit crowded way to say good bye to my time in Greece, and even though the show is now closed I urge you to Google some of the statuary - it’s well worth your time.
The Olympics combine world peace with fat-shaming, and therefore occupy a very special place in my heart
Still, not everything was about endings. That week also saw the beginning of the Summer Olympics, another thread that goes to Greece (I admit I’m beginning to sound like the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding). I, as you may have guessed, am a huge fan of the Olympics, especially the summer ones. It’s the one event that combines world peace with fat-shaming, and therefore occupies a very special place in my heart.
I saw the opening ceremony in a bar here with friends, which basically meant watching two minutes of the ceremony followed by 12 minutes of ads for laxative yogurt brands. The opening ceremony was fairly dull, to be honest, although I was surprised that the Brazilians asked supermodel Giselle to walk across a stadium for a full ten minutes to the sound of “The Girl from Ipanema”. There she was, strutting about, and just when you thought it would end, she’d walk some more. By the end I, along with the other billions watching, was sufficiently convinced that cat-walking deserves to be an Olympic sport unto itself. I would have loved to support more of the Pakistani team, of course. This is the first year that we haven’t had an Olympic hockey team, which is sad but unsurprising (what, pray tell, does our Olympic committee do for the four years between games besides give dinners?). But I did spot the small team sporting their Nawaz Sharif-inspired ensemble, and briefly felt a moment of pride at the fact that we have women swimmers in the mix.
For most of the three years and 50 weeks that the Summer Olympics are not on TV, I am perfectly happy not being a professional sportsman. Indeed, one might even call me grateful. I go about my business appropriating lines from movies to myself like “I am only a boy, standing in front of a salad, wishing that it were a doughnut” and do my thing.
But I can’t be the only one that’s filled with a deep and urgent regret for these two weeks that I am not an Olympic-level diver-meets-runner-meets-gymnast, wondering what I am even doing with my life if I can’t do a pool lap in less than two minutes? I use the body dysmorphia watching Olympic athletes inspires in me to my advantage by watching the games only when I am at the gym, so as to push myself that much harder. If that man can pole-vault his way into a perfect three-point landing, then surely I can go for another 45 seconds on the elliptical and we all know that that is basically, like, the same thing.
Gisele Bundchen at the Rio Olympics
The television circus of the games can fool one into thinking that it’s a reality TV show and not a real competition happening in real time (especially when you see it on American TV, an inanely comical medium that makes the whole thing look like The Hunger Games meets American Idol). It is in fact dangerously real, and the true horror of this struck me when, while watching a male gymnast do the vault, I saw him land on the ground as his left leg broke spectacularly at three different points. I was staring at the screen open-jawed as people crowded around him and his absurdly distorted leg and the fact that he didn’t just look at his shin and faint (unlike some in the audience) is a testament to him.
That moment, the near-win or tragic loss, is so much more intense because we know how much these people have trained for these few moments in their lives and how much pressure that must be. The idea that these kids from across the world have devoted themselves single-mindedly to one pursuit with an intensity that is, well, Olympian, is laudatory. That’s what I think inspires most of us about them, whether we are on the treadmill at the time or not.
