MUMBAI: The sports world is at a halt. The Olympics have been deferred to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
So this summer, rather than celebrating new heroes, we are likely to hark back on India's glory days at the quadrennial event. And they don't come more glorious than Abhinav Bindra winning the gold in men's 10-metre air rifle at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It was the country's first, and to date only, gold in an individual event.
But the man himself firmly believes in living in the present. And away from the shooting range, now that he's retired.
"The range is still very much there," he said, referring to the arena his parents built in their house near Chandigarh.
"I've never been back, but my parents have kept it as it is in case I changed my mind."
The man behind India's biggest triumph at the Olympics retired from shooting after finishing a heart-breaking fourth, missing bronze by 0.5 points, at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
One of the most intense athletes India has ever produced, the 37-year-old says there is no urge to return to the sport he gave everything to for almost two decades.
"This nervousness going into the competition, I hated it. I don't miss it at all," Bindra said during an event in Mumbai earlier in the month. Only minutes before, the shooter, who lived in a world where success and failure is decided by fractions of a millimetre, had described himself as "chicken-hearted" and a "lousy competitor."
Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, Bindra had tried everything from brain-mapping to climbing a 40-foot pizza pole to become a better athlete and shooter. But a day before the final, with little else left to do, he relied on some 'liquid' courage to get him through.
"I stole a Jack Daniels from the mini-bar of the hotel," says Bindra. "And drank it the night before I won the gold medal."
Having won the gold medal though, while the rest of India burst into raucous celebration, the bespectacled Bindra gave just a tiny smile.
"I found success a lot harder to deal with," he says. "Before Beijing, I had failed so many times, I got used to it."
Bindra might have been someone who found comfort in the "mundane," or in the "process," but he is genuinely excited about the "fearless" Next Gen of Indian shooting. He says, when they are put on the Olympic stage eventually, they will have to learn "managing expectations" the hard way.
"I think the most important thing in any sports career at the end of the day is, the only person you're answerable to is yourself," he says.
"You can't suppress that pressure. The pressure when you are shooting the last shot for a gold medal at the Olympic Games. There will be a spike in your heart rate. You have to learn to deal with it by being adaptable by accepting it and not running away from that pressure. You have to basically accept and suffer through it. It will be painful for a couple of hours but it won't kill you."
Bindra may not have the time for nostalgia, but he could shine a light on the path to success for the younger generation.