Cricket World Cup - A Thought

Yuvraj Singh, match of the tournament of 2011 cricket world cup, was diagnosed with cancer soon after his team won the cup.

Where does he go for his medication? Why does he have to go abroad? He should have found the treatment in his own country, one would expect. "India" (with a sizable non-Indian support staff) was the world champion, right? World champions should be good enough, if not the best, in basic things like healthcare, right?

Your children are not educated, even those who have degrees. Your boys are effete and your girls are molested and half your working population stands in queue of foreign embassies for work permits, of any type, of any where, as if you are not a country but a hellhole everybody wants to get out of. And you are not ashamed of all that! You are ashamed of a loss in a cricket match!

Perhaps our sense of pride and shame need to be restored to sanity.

Last week, one of our media channels - Times Now - tried to trend #ShameInSydney on Twitter, hoping to ride on the wave of sentiments similar to what they would have observed in neighboring Pakistan few days back. Thankfully, the TRP ploy backfired and what actually trended was #ShameOnTimesNow.

I was pleasantly surprised by the way twitterati in large refused to go down to the level media had decided for them. However, many creeps couldn't resist mud-slinging at a Bollywood celebrity to taunt her boyfriend - their star player - leaving a very bad taste in mouth. 

The fans should be more critical of their own performances as all of us play our own sports in our own arena. We must cheer our teams, but I don't see any glory in winning through someone else's hard work. This "Lagaan" must go. A Bangladesh or Pakistan or even India can not defeat England just by defeating them in a cricket match. We must realize that we have been thoroughly defeated in all the games that really matter. And it's hightime we lifted our game.

Let's not overload a sport; let's not outsource our aspirations to 11 men. 

The Lost Key

No one knew how old the village was. Few believed it lived since the beginning. Others differed, but not very much.

The villagers were simple people. They had enough, and perhaps they could have more, but they aspired to want less. When they prayed, they prayed for all. They believed, yet they would urge their young to seek; and the seeker was one who had questions. Sparingly they spoke, and intently they listened. Often they would go to faraway places where nothing was heard except the murmurings of Divine. Once they come back, they would pen down what they had heard.

And their experience would become part of their age-old repository of knowledge that sustained them for eons. They had a veritable treasure - their lore and myths were layered and lyrical, their epics were as vast as the oceans, and their philosophy had depth unfathomed. The books cultivated them, and they preserved their books, in a place securely locked by a key others knew nothing about. Only the villagers had the key; only they had access to the treasure.

In beginning of when the time started to rot, came from the West the barbarians, crossing the river, those who knew neither music nor sculpture. Blinded by the certainty of their faith, they had no eye for subtlety and symbolism. Apart from them, no one expected them, and no one was ready for them. What followed was a chaos unseen by any, and by the time it subsided, the world had changed for ever. 

The village is still there, though it looks very different. Poor villagers, who now speak a strange tongue with considerable difficulty, know that the treasure is still there, but can only peep from outside, for they have lost the key.