How does a new Olympic silver medal winner celebrate? Mohini Bhardwaj is tattooing the five rings to her wrists and exchanging rings of a different color by getting engaged. It’s a far cry from surviving on PowerBars:

“… [A]fter practice, I’ll grab all the pennies and go to the Coinstar and get like $12 off the Coinstar and be so excited that I could buy some soy milk and cereal…” [The coach] became aware of Bhardwaj’s fun-loving side in 1997, she said, when Bhardwaj stayed out late with the members of the Russian team at the world championships in Switzerland. She partied too much and studied too little, once coming to the coach in tears, proud that she had finally earned a B in a class. “Her peak of being a rebel was probably in the late 90’s, so it really wasn’t her time,” Kondos Field said. “This time, she did it for herself…”

By the way, that multi-culti paragon The New York Times thinks a desi with a nose ring is ‘walking on the wild side’:

She has walked on the balance beam and walked on the wild side; she still has a subtle piece of jewelry pierced into the left side of her nose.