Ever since I was a child, a couple topics have always been fascinating to me and they are: Military,
Sports & Food. As per the interest, my first choice was to serve my country
in uniform, which unfortunately did not happen. The other two, sports and food,
have been a major part of my life ever
since. So today while travelling on the super highway of The Internet, it was
very interesting to know through some of the articles that the origin of sports
came from Military. Apparently sport was one of the media to shortlist soldiers
by testing their capability if they had the physical capacity, mental tenacity, etc., for the rigours of military training and war.
After reading this, my imagination took over:
Let’s start by removing the uncertain historic data, then we can surely say that the recorded
history of humankind is about 5000-7000 years old. We fought innumerable wars
and still waging quite a few in this modern era, directly or indirectly. And
somewhere in the midst of that training for war, sport was born.
What if, someone back then had the idea of replacing this blood
seeking war with sweat seeking sport? Loss of life is always a sad thing,
irrespective of time, isn’t it? And end of the day, if we closely observe a
piece of sports equipment is almost the same as a weapon, minus the brutality.
But a well-trained and skillful athlete on the field is as brutal as a soldier
on the frontline. My comparison doesn’t stop here. I’m going to the extent that
may be a Special Forces soldier equivalent athlete is the one training for
Olympics? What if the greatest epics of war like the Mahabharata, Illiad may have been the greatest sports narrations and how can we forget The Battle of Thermopylae immortalised by the movie 300? Imagine how the Persians would have been defeated in a game of some sport. My imagination is now becoming boundless!
My point here is that what if, what if we replace Sport with
War? Aren’t we not yet sane enough to understand after two well recorded World
Wars, that a war is not about who’s right but who’s left? Imagine the trillions
being spent all over the world to develop and deploy weapons from ICBMs to
rifles by the respective countries in
the name of national security; instead being spent on sports? Even better, how about settling all disputes
through a contest in sports? How about bringing an international law that all
disputes from international level to the grass root level to be resolved
through sport?
All the weapon manufacturers will become state of the art
sports-equipment manufacturers, putting the best of military technology into
sports. Every government in order to become a ‘Super Sports Power’ will invest
more into food production so that the young are properly nourished to become
great athletes of the future. All the military cantonments will become sports
academies…………………
Sitting in the comfort of my home, here I am doing this ‘wishful
thinking’. I know it’s not a practical thing to happen, but what if it did? Did
we humans already burn all the bridges between sanity and insanity? Is this too
much of a false hope? We are a country
of a Billion and not only that; we are also the youngest nation in the world.
And we know how much we are spending to protect our country from threats both external
and internal. What if we spent all of that on sport, nurturing our young? I am
very sure that with so many resources at our disposal, we’d be fighting for a
top spot for the coveted title “Sports Super Power of The World”.
After this happy but unrealistic, hopless but mood lifting thought ride, I feel
or rather realized that Sport is the only thing that can replace war. Period.
Note: this is just a casual opinion (fantasy) of what could
happen to a world without war. My intention here is just to highlight sport and
the overall goodness that it can bring to the humanity and nothing to belittle
the National Security of my Nation.
