They conquered the world without sight. The state cannot even see them.

There is a ritual in Indian sport, perfected over decades: the champions return, the garlands come out, the chief ministers pose for photographs, the announcements rain down, house sites, jobs, cash prizes. Then the cameras leave, and the state forgets. India's blind women cricketers are living through the forgetting right now. In November last year, Deepika T.C.'s team won the first Women's T20 World Cup for the Blind, unbeaten through the tournament, thrashing Nepal by seven wickets in the Colombo final. Captain Deepika, from Madakasira in Andhra Pradesh's Sri Sathya Sai district, scored 92 off 45 balls against Australia. At Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah's residence, the team was honoured: Rs 10 lakh and government jobs for the Karnataka players, Rs 2 lakh each for the 13 from other states. House sites were promised by leaders and officials. A year on, The Hindu reports, nothing has moved. Deepika is still waiting for her house site. Her teammates are still waiting for jobs. "Due to our partial vision issues, we cannot move around government offices to follow up on house site issues," she said. Read that sentence again. The captain of a World Cup-winning team is telling the state that she cannot chase its clerks because she cannot see well enough, and the state, which saw her clearly enough to garland her, now cannot see her at all. Periyar would have recognised the pattern instantly. He spent his life mocking a society that worships symbols and abandons substance. What is a felicitation ceremony if not a statue built of flowers, erected for the cameras and left to rot? Anna warned that power without compassion is mere theatre. The theatre played in November; the compassion never arrived. Consider the arithmetic of neglect. The Board of Control for Cricket in India sits on thousands of crores. The Cricket Association for the Blind in India, which finds these players in villages and trains them, begs for funds for coaching, fitness, food and travel. The players, aged 16 to 28 and mostly from poor rural homes, get no playgrounds or fitness guidance locally. The only money that has actually reached them in a year is Rs 50,000 each from a shipyard's CSR fund, handed over at a charitable trust's function in Vizianagaram last Sunday. A shipyard. Not the sports ministry. Not the BCCI. A shipyard. And notice who is being neglected: women, disabled, rural, poor. Every disadvantage this republic claims to fight, concentrated in sixteen athletes who did the one thing the state asks of its sportspersons. They won for India. The tricolour went up in Colombo because they could hear a rattling ball better than anyone else on earth could see it. Deepika's request is almost unbearably modest: "The government has to do its own and instil confidence among us." Not charity. Dues. House sites that were promised. Jobs that were announced. Playgrounds to train on. The state that posed with them can find the files with their names. Until it does, every speech about Beti Bachao, every Women's Day poster, is what Periyar would have called it: a garland on a forgotten grave.