Opening Ceremony came after just one dress rehearsal

New Delhi: It was the fairytale ending to a public relations nightmare.

After the innumerable counts of corruption and disorganization were caught so persuasively on camera - and reported all over the world - the better half of the CWG extravaganza took centre stage. (Read: World media dazzled by Opening Ceremony)

And what a reprieve it was.  International headlines said the opening ceremony was an advertisement for a modern, high-tech India. At home, the negativity that had taken up all the oxygen seeped into the past.

The most remarkable part of the opening ceremony: that only one complete dress rehearsal had been held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

It took ten months to plan the show which was eventually executed by a thousand producers. 

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Seven thousand performers spread out over a stage weighing 500 tons. There were over a 1000 moving lights. And that centerpiece- the aerostat that cost 70 crore that presided majestically over all the music and dance beneath, reflecting the pride and culture of a nation striving to prove that it is also capable of  efficiency, creativity, synchronicity.

The ceremony cost 150 crores.  "It was awesome," cooed Shah Rukh Khan, who did not attend or perform at the ceremony.

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Those involved with the show say even as politicians and organizers of the Games were snarling contradictions, they stayed immune to the misdeeds and their corollaries.

"We had put blinkers on... we were told just focus," said Viraf Zakaria, the Director of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. 

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