Quatrain XXXXVI -- SANIA, AFTER THE MANIA

It was all cosy, until the media was tutored, managed

Her stylish clothes, manicured bytes, all modern and all rage

But Sania’s progressive halo wilts, when the mullahs bellow

When she ‘refuses’ to pair with an Israeli, she is just yellow

* Sania -- Globosports first big marketing kill first surfaced to our senses, after strategically calibrated saline doses injected by her sports agents, sent the media pulse throbbing. The PR calypso peaked after she performed better than any other Indian woman tennis player. There she was… a middle-class success, fancy clothes, smart, ‘modern’ bytes. A spin doctoring overdrive brought her this far. Then her mettle showed. Such regression that sent very very wrong signals to her peer looking up to her. Youngsters who were triggered by very coercive branding techniques to believe in ‘Sania the icon’. In her first standoff with the Islamic orthodoxy, she came out as a wimp (the Khushboo retraction) and now her refusal to play with an Israeli player fearing scandal… What can one say? Read this CNN/IBN story for more. http://www.ibnlive.com/sports/