So Bermuda didn’t beat Bangladesh and therefore even the most optimistic of cricket fans in India are now resigned to the fact that Dravid & Co. would be returning home rather than chasing the World Cup glory in Caribbean.

Though I didn’t spend sleepless night following Bermuda-Bangladesh game but trust me am a staunch cricket fan, can’t stand any criticism of Sachin Tendulkar and I did stay awake till 5 a.m. this Saturday morning watching Indian cricket team’s surrender against Sri Lanka although I was dead tired and on any other day would have traded gold to sleep (ok I admit this was a slight exaggeration)

I got initiated into watching cricket when I was 7. It was the year India hosted Reliance World Cup and I remember how I first got attracted to cricket - it was courtesy a colourful weekly magazine saaptahik Hindustan. It was a world cup special edition of the mag with Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and few others on the cover. That mag was full of pictures of all teams, records and lot of other info. That fascinated me and it was going through those pages and reading all the trivia that I first got interested in cricket.

First match of that world cup was India Vs. Australia and those were the days of day cricket in white cloth and long power cuts. And I clearly remember that there was no power that afternoon and finally when power came and I ran to switch on the TV, they were showing replay of Roger Binny getting run out and India losing the game by one run. So I started my journey of following Indian cricket team’s results with a loss.

By the time we reached semi-finals of that world cup I was not just another new found follower of cricket but an obsessive fan. My relatives can still recount the tale of me crying after India lost to England in the semi-final that year (Oh yeah, and am not exaggerating this time).

And what was to follow was my childhood romance with cricket. There was a time when I used to record scores of every cricket match India used to play in my diary and for tournament finals I used to have elaborate score card as well. I think I must have maintained those records very faithfully till I was in class 8. Well, by then my obsession with cricket had started to give way to a more sane form of following the game. As I grew, obsession got replaced by passion and in few more years passion gave way to passing admiration.

And I thank God for the transformation.

These days when I read news clips about burning of effigies of cricketers and stoning of their houses after their early exit, I seriously wonder do cricket fans caught young grow into such uncivilized hooligans? Is cricket so important? Are we as a country so devoid of achievements that failure of a cricket team is being viewed as a national tragedy?

So we lost ? What big deal ? In a game one of the two teams lose and there ain’t any shame in your team having 2 such days in a week. But that doesn’t mean you would burn their effigies and blacken their posters. It’s such a strange and deplorable way of reacting by Indians that it put me to shame sometimes.

I think it’s not our passion for the game but an inherent fear of being nobody that results in such reactions. A country as big as ours is inarguably greatest sporting debacle on face of earth. Forget cricket and our current list of sporting heroes may not go beyond Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Vishwanathan Anand and Rajyawardhan Rathore. May be this is the reason why Sania Mirza who’s only claim to fame is winning few matches in grand slam tournaments is being touted as bets thing to have happened to Indian Sports. And cricket which till now was practically played by mere 8 countries out of 200+ on the globe became our national passion, coz even by law of averages when only 8 countries will play you would win sufficient times to keep up the façade of being a powerhouse. Being somebody.

I think lot of people in India had strangely chosen cricket as a way to forget their miserable existence and when they come out in streets and vent their anger, it should not be seen as a reaction to defeat in cricket but a reflection of a life they would rather live differently. Their failure to chase their dreams has restricted their dreams to victories in game of cricket. I think they just release their frustration by getting together and bringing down brick walls of dhoni’s house but genesis of that frustration is not in cricket.

I don’t think cricket is a passion in our country, cricket is there because of lack of passions in our country.

-sid

He read the mail again on his blackberry, eleventh time since morning as he settled into the cab that he had just flagged. He had an urgent meeting in another 20 minutes, his first instinct after settling into the cab was to look at the documents for his meeting but then he picked up the phone and scrolled to that e-mail again.

He saw the mail for the first time when he got up in the morning. It was worse than what he had feared. He read it once then got off the bed and read it again to confirm that he is not dreaming and all this is for real. It indeed was real.

Cab suddenly braked on the traffic light, he looked out - it was getting a little cloudy, there are days when weather mirrors your mood and there are other days when the weather mirrors in your mood. But his day has not been gloomy at all. He didn’t forget to pick his breakfast at subway, he breezed through his meetings and telecons with the usual gaiety, had a hearty lunch and heartier laughs over the lunch with his colleagues. It was like any other day, just that every time he had a moment with himself all alone, he couldn’t stop himself from getting back to that mail.

He reached his destination five minutes before the appointment; his meeting lasted 40 minutes and was a productive one. As that was the last thing on his agenda for the day so he took up the offer from his host to go for few drinks. No, he was not trying to get drunk and forget what was happening miles away. He was just spending a Friday evening the way it ought to be spent. He went to his favourite Chinese restaurant for dinner and it was only at midnight when he took a cab back to the hotel that he looked at that mail for the twelfth time.

“She has gone in a coma”. That’s not how the mail had begun, neither were these the last words, but these were the words that shook him when he first read the mail. He stayed at these words. He was still trying to comprehend the magnitude of those words. He didn’t believe it when he read it in the morning. He didn’t believe it when he kept calling her number for last 2 days at hospital and got no response. He didn’t believe it when he had talked to her 3 days back before leaving for London and she had said, “I think, I’m dying.” And he was not ready to believe it still.

Shock manifests itself in various ways, sometimes it takes form of tears, sometimes it evokes anger, very often it brings anxiety and tension and there are also times when it numbs you but he was showing symptoms of none of that. His shock has obliterated every symptom of shock. It was not that he was hiding the pain, he had just driven the pain away because he had refused to believe anything that could hurt him has happened. He was aware of reality but he has refused to live it. He didn’t try call her number, he didn’t even try and call her friend, he didn’t worry about what would happen to her because he has stopped acknowledging that something has happened to her.

He has reached London just a day before; he has to stay here for at least a week. And till he flies back, there’s nothing he can do. He agreed to come to London only when doctors told him she is out of danger, he was postponing this trip for almost a fortnight now and finally he decided to steal a week. After all, it was just a week, he thought he would be back by the time she is ready to be discharged. He talked to her before leaving for London. They talked for a long time, she was scared and it showed. He attributed that to all the medical setup she was seeing around her. But he was more scared than her and she knew how much he wanted her to get all right. Every time he used to tell her “it’s gonna be fine”, she understood that he was telling it to himself rather than her. And she knew that she needed to make him believe that she would be fine because in that moment he needed that belief more than her. So as they kept talking she hid her fears, made him believe that his words has calmed her nerves and when finally when he left he was sure she would be fine and she was sure that he is sure of that.

He reached his hotel a little after midnight, he was a bit sleepy but he didn’t want to sleep yet. He surfed channels for a bit and settled on re-run of a soccer game he had missed last week. Two of them used to talk at this hour usually but today he didn’t look at his phone even once. He was not expecting any call and neither had he got any call to make because he knew it won’t be answered because it can’t be answered. It’s scary when you live through something like this without being scared and he was doing exactly that. You get anxious when you expect that something worse can happen to you, but what about those moments when you know worst has already happened. Do you get scared or do you get fearless? For him this was the worst that could have happened. You and I may say that this could still get worse but for him that was an impossibility. For him low has already been reached, his frame of reason and faith has genuinely excluded any possibility of anything worse.

Had someone followed him since morning, knowing what had befallen him. They would have had no difficulties reaching to a conclusion that he is a heartless cruel piece of rock. After all, but for his repeated effort to find in that mail some hope to cling to, there was nothing that may suggest that he has been saddened by the news that the morning sun brought. Had there been a device that could have figured what’s going in someone’s mind, still he stood no chance as there were little if any threads of anxiety or pain running in his mind. He has not reacted to the news at all, not when he read it first, and not on any of the countless occasions during the day when that crossed his mind.

This was his act of defiance, his challenge to providence. He stood there alone in large battlefield called life and called out the fate to throw at him all it can. It was like that torture-room situations, where the victim when tortured doesn’t writhe in pain but laugh at the face of perpetrator. And he was doing exactly that. He lived his day just like any other day because he wanted to mock the fate. He didn’t pray to God to make her right because he wanted to shame the God to have put her in that state. He just switched off the night lamp and closed his eyes, he was tired, it takes a lot of effort to take the world and his battle had just begun.

She was still asleep.

He got up from his chair and looked out of window; it was a dark night and all was so still outside, not a single indication that any life exist in the dark outside. There were still few hours to go before dawn would break. He turned back to look at her and then decided to wait at the window for a bit longer. While there was no moon outside and there was a dim table lamp glowing inside the room but still room seemed darker to him than pitch black night.

When they had just met, they used to talk well into late in the night. He remembers this time of the day from those times. With his phone on the ear and night made darker by the shadow of big neem tree right outside balcony of his room, he had seen lot of these nights grow old and weak till they give way to a fresh dawn. He wanted to go out and sit in the garden outside with her, but she was asleep.

He took his chair again ad closed his eyes; he had not slept properly for last few days. Last seven days to be precise. It was last Monday when she got admitted in the hospital, doctors told him it’s a simple surgery and she could be back home by in a day or two. He believed them; he convinced her that it would all be fine. After all these doctors spend their lives learning how to get these surgeries right. He was sure, she was not. But she went along because he wanted her to. He wished he had listened to her. She was still in the same position as she was when they brought her back from the operation theatre. Doctors say she has not responded well to the treatment, she is unconscious for six days now.

He took a deep sigh and opened his eyes to look at her. He has tried it so many times in last few days, hoping every time that as he would open his eyes he might see her looking at him. That’s how it used to be when he used to lie down on her lap and close his eyes, she would keep talking and he would keep listening, and every time he opened his eyes, she was looking at him with her deep black eyes. He longed to see those eyes looking at him again.

For first two days, he believed when doctors told him that she would be conscious soon. They appeared confident and he drew his confidence from theirs. It was on Wednesday night when he started to get jittery, he started questioning them, he stopped believing what they said by Friday. He had it figured that it’s beyond doctors now. He has now started hoping for a miracle, he always believed in miracles. But as he sat in dim light of the table lamp his faith had begun to give way to fear. For the first time in his life, he has begin to fear that he might lose her, such a thought that had never entered his mind from the time they had first met. At first when they met, he didn’t mind letting her go but slowly she became so integral to his life that he just never thought of a life without her. And now suddenly he has realized that this could be a possibility. He shuddered by the whole thought, he wanted to shake off all these negative thoughts. He wanted to believe that she is just taking a bit long to get fine, that’s all. He needed someone to tell him, it’s all gonna be fine.

He got up and looked out of window once more, night was still dark. But suddenly he realized something had changed. He could hear the breeze knocking against the window, dead of night was finally being challenged. He stood there listening to sound of wind hitting against the glass window. No one could tell what that sound was trying to tell him, but he stood there listening for hours and had it not been for first signs of dawn break he wouldn’t have noticed that it must have been hours.

And then he turned and looked at her. She was still asleep in the same position, but he was not worried, it seems he knew she would get up today.

And she did.

-siddhartha

He’s always there (almost always). At the end of every day as dark of the night try to hide the world, he slips in and stay up ….standing guard till dawn breaks. Every poet looks up to him for inspiration. Beauties around the world often get jealous of him and night wears him as her most cherished jewel. On nights, when you can’t sleep he’s always there to keep you company, all you wish more is that moon could talk.

In the age of neon and almost uninterrupted power supply, the joy of a walk in moon-lit night is fast becoming a thing of past. But I have been lucky, for once those power cuts in dead of the night and those street lamps gone bad while I was growing up do give me a reason to be thankful, for they gave me a chance to experience the night as God wanted it to be, quiet and pure, dark but not blind and hidden but still seen. It’s tough these days to find a place where you could just be left alone with the dark of the night and light of the moon, nights these days are better lit than the days.

But for me, charm of the moon has not dwindled a bit. Right now, from my bed as I glance out of window up in the sky - the pure white moon against a pitch black sky presents me such a fascinating view. Sometimes it becomes difficult to decide that did God create night first and then created moon to make night look prettier or did He create moon first and then as an afterthought made night so that humanity could see the moon everyday (almost).

Here I'm!!

After a 15 day break, actually it’s a longer break. Coz I just blogged thrice in entire Feb so to write only thrice in 5 weeks is more or less one single long break :-)

For last day or two as I got slightly free to blog, I was toying with the idea of revamping the look of my blog. I thought let me get back from my hiatus by giving this blog a new look. You know kind of making up for not writing. So I checked templates, tried them and ended up realizing how new blogger keeps popping up XML errors with most of the template codes.

And then finally it dawned on me that what on earth am I doing? Why can't i just go back and put my fingers to keyboard (that expression has been invented to replace to put pen to paper).

Sometimes, in our effort to make up, we end up preparing too long. How often you just want to do things perfectly, say the perfect line, buy the perfect gift, wait for the perfect moment, when all that’s needed is just another line, a smile and need to do it now. We want to make up for things we didn’t do by trying to do something special and then delaying the whole thing coz you are busy wondering what could be special enough, when in reality all that is needed is to get back to old ways of doing things without trying to pull off a rabbit from the hat.

So I would keep my hat on the head and will spend time writing rather than looking for new templates.

-sid