Abhinav’s father AS Bindra celebrates with wife Babli in Chandigarh on Monday. (AFP)

New Delhi, Aug. 11: Frameless glasses sitting on his nose, the archer bowed to take the gold medal that rings a wannabe India today.

Abhinav Bindra is this morning the country’s most eligible bachelor, the embodiment of male jealousy. The eyes behind those glasses and the impassive face tell us less than they reveal.

As he bends to take the medal and shakes hands limply with the silver and bronze winners, his face is a freeze-frame of a temperature, a mood, a state of mind — a cool that comes only from looking into the eye of Arjun’s bird.

Minutes after the ceremony, the 26-year-old was asked what was going through his mind. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing, today it is my day, tomorrow it could be somebody else’s.”

The mind of the marksman is steadier than the eye. There lies his greatness for, more than anybody else, Abhinav knows that he had a chance and he was able to take it.

Abhinav’s father, unlike him, is a believer in destiny. He had a William Tell story to narrate about the medallist this afternoon: once the elder Bindra saw his son trying to shoot a waterballoon placed on the head of the maid. He hit right, the balloon burst, the water trickled down her face.

When he was taking shots at that waterballoon, Abhinav was only five years old and the flush of Kapil Dev’s cricket World Cup victory was still young. We were young, wanting to be part of the team, or young enough, wanting our sons to grow up to be like a Kapil Devil.

Abhinav was just a year old in 1983, his father wanted that he should one day be among those who corner glory like this. On the strength — or the weakness — of the waterballoon, the businessman from Chandigarh decided otherwise. His son will win glory for himself and, perchance, incidentally, for his country.

Today, Abhinav has won a gold for India that Bharat is applauding. It is strange that it should have taken so long in the land of the Mahabharat, where every family nurtures children with the tale of an Arjun who saw nothing but the eye of the bird reflected in a pool of water.

It is a tale of prodigious talent born into wherewithal. His father, a mushroom and meat exporter, spotted it first and told the world, nourished it, built a private shooting range in his farmhouse in Zirakpur, told whoever cared to listen and even those who cared little. As early as 2001, Abhinav was cited as a prospect for an Olympics gold medal. Yet it is reason enough to celebrate today that he has achieved what he was cut out for.

The Tricolour rising above the rest and the national anthem on the world stage easily brings a lump to the throat. The chorus of emotion that overtakes the country now is in sharp contrast to the loneliness of the shooter.

When he took that final shot in the last round, he had to ensure the forefinger caressed the trigger just at the moment his brain grasped the target 10 metres away — the sensor-to-shooter-loop, in military parlance — the muscles of the shoulder against which his 5.5kg Walther recoiled were soft, the tendons and the vertebrae concentrated on the small of his back, the eye was sharp and the mind was empty, occupied by a nothingness.

Abhinav’s achievement is also in sharp contrast to Rajyavardhan Rathore’s. Rathore is a professional soldier — now a colonel — paid to shoot well for a living. Rathore should be a good shot.

Bindra, on the other hand, could opt out. He is a management professional, a chief executive officer of a company he runs by his own name — Abhinav Futuristics — that is the sole selling agent for the German gun he uses, the Walther. He is exceptional for the discipline he brought onto himself since he was a child. For 12 years, he has been training seven hours a day, six days a week.

But the Bindras ran out of money at one point. The family has been looking for sponsors every year since 2001. In 2001, at least Rs 1.17 crore was spent on Abhinav’s training. In 2004, he needed Rs 1.5 crore. This year, his father said, he went through a three-month paid commando course in Germany to steel his nerves.

His Swiss coach, Gaby Buelhmann, a former world champion herself — the blonde woman who embraced Abhinav today after his victory — can only be compensated if she is also training another shooter. The money has been raised through both family backing and sponsorships.