The Dreamcatcher

Having successfully timed yet another edition of the Commonwealth Games, Longines has come a long way in its journey as master timekeeper.

- PARTH CHARAN

IT'S NOT VERY hard to find my way to Hall 3 at the National Exhibition Centre, the venue where the Indian men's table tennis finals are going on, in Birmingham, U.K. Despite the vastness of the stadium, the collective chanting of the sizeable Indian diaspora-along with what appears to be a small army of Indian tourists-serves to accurately pinpoint just where the action is. Of course, they aren't the only ones cheering India's paddlers on. In the battle for gold against Singapore at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, Sharath Kamal, G. Sathiyan, and Harmeet Desai have, through a dazzling display of fortitude and resilience, accrued enough support to drown out chants from the opposition. It's a routine, but timely reminder of sports' ability to bring communities together. It also serves to effectively demonstrate the relativity of time because the milliseconds that led to the men's team retaining gold felt as long as the third act of Ben-Hur.