So, just how much fun was that?
We wept, we shouted, we laughed, we hugged each other, and we went to bed thinking 'what if'. For 15 days, we were on edge as we celebrated and lamented and got utterly swept up in the emotion that is the Olympic Games.
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We became invested in the Manu Bhaker redemption tale and were awestruck by the champion will of this 22-year-old. We were carried to dizzying heights by the inimitable Vinesh Phogat when she showed to the world that an Indian can in fact beat the unbeatable. We spoke amongst ourselves of battles fought off the mat that we had carefully chosen to ignore, because it was no longer ignorable.
When it ended the way it did, we raged at the world on her behalf. '100 grams? HOW DARE YOU'. Wrestling laws were attacked, the brutality of a weight cut dissected to the minutest detail. When Neeraj Chopra and Arshad Nadeem played out the single greatest 1-2 in South Asian Olympic history, we were reminded of our innate bonds with Pakistan, and we basked in the reflected glory of these two great outliers.
It wasn't just the winners or the high-profile names, either. When the archers struck out, we were left asking 'why'; 'when shooting can get medals, why can't archery?'. We read up on the federation and brutally examined it. We marvelled at Balraj Panwar, who got to the Olympics just three years after picking up the sport of rowing, but were left wondering why our athletes couldn't have started earlier; why they weren't given a better chance to make a fist of it.
We wept quietly when we saw PV Sindhu crumble in a manner we'd never seen before. We leapt high with Lakshya Sen and crashed hard with him -- some of agreeing with Prakash Padukone's stern comments on athletes taking responsibility, others disagreeing.
But everyone of us had something to say about it. That's the beauty of sport - drawing us in, beseeching us to explore layer upon layer, binding us up in an unbreakable spell.
And now we're sad. LA 2028 seems so far away... except, you know what? We don't have to wait four years to dive headlong into Indian sport all over again. We are in there now, and we really can just stay put.
For years now, writers and commentators and experts have tried to guilt people into watching Olympic sports outside of the Olympics by playing on nationalism and emotions, but two things are clear - it doesn't really work beyond a point, and we really don't have to do that now.
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Reason: We have world class athletes and, as sports fans, we don't really need any other reason to watch them.
Watch Neeraj Chopra medal in a World Championship or winning a Diamond League event against the same monstrously good athletes he competed against in Paris; it feels just as good. He can make us fly with the javelin, hitting sporting nirvana in a manner no one else can.
Watch Nikhat Zareen defend her world championship title, or Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty battle week-in, week-out with the best of the best, or Swapnil Kusale medal at a World Cup, or Anshu Malik going all-in at a world ranking series event... it is just as much fun. It is just as sad. It is just as incredible.
We don't have to revisit this incredible relationship once every four years (or, to a lesser extent, every two years counting the Asian and Commonwealth Games); it can be the kind that lasts a lifetime: steady and consistent. The more invested we get, the more we will be able to understand the complex rules of other sports, the way athletes prepare.
If we don't like the wrestling rules that dictate weight cuts, for instance, knowing the rules will help us create consensus against it better. We can question them together; we can rage at them together... and we can do it every time a wrestling bout of substance happens. The more involved we are, the more the administrators have to step up, the more the athletes have to too. As much as us understanding them, they will know that we are fully invested in them.
We can understand better where Padukone is coming from with his comments: the more we watch our badminton stars, we can judge their potential better, their abilities. Was PV Sindhu really a medal chance? If we watched her only at Rio and Tokyo, we couldn't possibly have thought otherwise. Was Sreeja Akula taking world no.1 Sun Yingsha to nine game points a freak occurrence, or is there something stirring in Indian table tennis? Can the nation's archers really become world-beating Olympic medalists?
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We won't be misled by big online accounts posting nonsense like 'X has won a medal already', or 'Y has reached the final' even before the Games have actually started. We will understand what Vinesh and Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik have to say about how their federation is run: from the slapstick to the utterly serious, we can kill misinformation in one stroke. And we can have fun while we are at it.
We are all sports fans for a reason. For some of us it's an escape, for some of us a vicarious pleasure, for some of us just plain entertainment. We all get fully invested, emotionally, in this pastime we humans have created for ourselves. We do it because at some level it matters to us all. Why then must we starve ourselves of it for the next four years?
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Watch Indian sport. Read Indian sport. Follow Indian sport. This isn't really a request, it's more a recommendation. When LA 2028 comes along, we all need to be ready to take this rollercoaster ride we call the Olympic Games.