In one big blaze and burst, like Diwali coming before its officially approved time, it was the discovery of quite a new India. One that did not believe, as in the past, in showing up where the world, ambitious and gung-ho, had gathered in self-effacing diffidence and left in due course without being so much as noticed for any length of time. We had an Olympic gold medallist who had decided to shine forth in renewed splendour topping the men’s javelin throw in the global track and field championships and jaws hit floors everywhere, around Norwegian fjords and perhaps the Amazon Rainforest included. And wonders did not cease. There was an Indian teenager who had left chess wide eyed, ending inches off winning the world’s chess crown, having taken on the superman who held it in an amazing show of skills and maturity the eventual winner spoke glowingly of.

He is so young they will praise him for a long time. Badminton’s supreme competitive spectacle yielded an important bronze medal in the men’s singles segment, disabusing many of the notion that India had fizzled out after fizzing for some time at its highest levels. Neeraj Chopra, Praggnanandhaa and HS Pronnoy drove home the message of India’s coruscating progress emphatically and incontrovertibly, announcing both eclectic choices of discipline and their singleminded pursuit of excellence in a clean break with a past when options were quite limited.

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Higher takings than before have been cited to explain a spurt in a wider participatory enthusiasm in a liberalised economy which is said to reward enterprise richly but southern India can be seen to have institutionalised a certain clearly thought-out process, an uncompromisingly organised and rigorously monitored one that prizes systematic attainment of growth in a way which is for most of India to find a superb example in. Chennai, it has been said, is now not just the nursery of Indian chess but it also houses several players D Gukesh, for one who might as well have been Magnus Carlsen’s rival in the world chess final. The newer players quite obviously owe a lot to history, dominated overwhelmingly by Viswanathan Anand, but the polished, cerebrally oriented city has fostered a chess culture too. Hyderabad’s badminton academy exemplifies the way champions are made, with Pullela Gopichand reminding aspirants that if they fall short, they are the ones who will actually be found out: blaming circumstances will not do.

It is about overcoming the odds to fulfil one’s objective. The world appreciates champions. The lesson, explained in Gopichand’s autobiography, may not have been taken equally seriously across the land, showing why we do not do well in many mainstream disciplines and are mired in mediocrity in many others. It retards growth but parts of India are less aware of it than they should be. There are those who have fallen behind the rest, losing their way, discordant notes in the happy chorus India now rings with.