Suresh Kalmadi must know people hate him, but there's nothing like the sound of 50,000 people jeering you as you're trying to deliver your speech, your moment in the sun, at the start of the event you've engineered, to really drive that message home.
But I doubt he cares, he likely has a house made of gold bricks to go home to, each brick stamped with a little Commonwealth Games logo.
Kalmadi only really has two friends about now: his son, who is the part-owner of a company bringing F1 racing to India (in a deal brokered by his dad), and the owner of Wasabi by Morimoto, the uber-expensive Japanese restaurant at the Taj Palace hotel, where he apparently likes the sushi. A lot.
Still, the opening ceremony was truly spectacular: giant mendhi hands! A yoga demonstration! A colourful and oversized depiction of what it's like to get a train! It celebrated India through and through and I doubt there was a heart in that stadium that wasn't swelling with Jai Hind pride at being a desi.
(Thanks US Embassy in Delhi for the image)