Growing up in the nineties I spent most of my childhood and young adulthood watching cricket. The rise of Sachin Tendulkar, his early landmarks, Shane Warne's bad boy ways, Hansie Cronje's tragic disgrace and death, all these were memorable things as I navigated my way through life. And of course there was Pakistan. Since my early childhood I like million others in the country was conditioned to believe that defeating Pakistan in Cricket was the single act of patriotism that entitled the Indian Cricket team to the veneration fit for gods.
Pakistan. It's got a strange allure, Pakistan has. At least to me. My earliest memory of childhood is of me running around in the playground singing "Hawa hawa" a Pakistani song made famous by the travelling circus back in the day. And then someone on the radio played Farida Khanum and Mehdi Hasan. That day ghazal changed forever for me. During my adolescent I-am-different-from-everyone phase I loved to shock people by singing Dil Dil Pakistan all day. In college as the grunge scene was heating up I lost my heart to the voice of Bilal. And Faisal. During international trade fairs and dastkar melas conversations came out of the intention to haggle at the stall with pretty hand embroidered kurtas and trinkets and surmas. Later with my circle of friends expanding, Pakistan came even closer. But cricket got pushed farther and farther away.
As I grew older, deserted streets on account of a match in Sharjah became a thing of the past. I moved out to a bigger city and a different circle where people got more excited about Arsenal vs Manchester United than a day long or a 5-day long game of cricket. Deteriorating diplomatic ties between India and Pakistan ensured the two teams saw each other less and less.
So when India and Pakistan faced each other on the pitch last week it was a time of great personal significance for me. As it was no doubt for countless others in the sub-continent. It was strange and poignant and tense and cordial and so much more. It made my skin tingle, it made me smile like a fool. To me the outcome hardly mattered. I cheered and gasped as much for Sachin as I did for Shahid Afridi (who by the way has turned out remarkably well considering how ugly he was when he began his career). I had missed it. Absence makes the heart grow fonder as they say. It was perhaps not the most exciting match as far as skill and prowess is concerned. It wasn't even technically flawless. Catches were dropped, centuries were missed. Yet it was the most heartwarming eight hours spent glued to the TV in a long long time.
0 comments:
Post a Comment