Of cricket, racism and more

Soon after India lost the World Cup T20 semi-final to the West Indies, a social media message landed in my inbox urging everybody to sell “your colour TVs, now that the match is between black and white, it can be watched on a B&W TV”. Or words to that effect. I can’t quote exactly because infuriated at what a bunch of racists we Indians were turning out to be, I hastily deleted that message in case it polluted my handset. With our white skin complex, it isn’t too difficult to guess where the “humour”, of a dark variety of course, lay.

But in nail-biting finish on Sunday evening, when the Windies pulled off a coup of sorts in the last over, my fellow Indians redeemed themselves at the Eden Gardens stadium. The spectators, perhaps the most emotional in India, were clearly rooting for the West Indians.

In the end, the captain, Darren Sammy, said how the team had faced all kinds of odds to come out and play: “We felt disrespected by our Board. Before the tournament Mark Nicholas called us a team with no brains.” Even getting their uniforms for the tournament was a struggle. Compare that to our spoilt cricketers and their multi-crore endorsements.

I have to admit that my cricket-crazed days are long over. As a teenager I’d vie with my four brothers to make it for at least three of the five Test-match days at the MCA (Madras Cricket Association) Stadium in Chepauk. We’d get comfortable ‘bucket seats’ on the pavilion terrace. But, it must be admitted, it wasn’t really love of or deep interest in the game that took me there. It was more being part of a family picnic. One would eagerly wait for the lunch break when Jabbar or Rashid, our drivers, would bring to the stadium a well-laden basket, complete with mutton cutlets, shaami kebabs, chicken patties, home-baked cake and other such goodies.

Huge double-bedsheets would be spread on the grass within the MCA stadium, and the lunch, complete with chilled ice cream sodas (a Spencer’s speciality), would be devoured.

I haven’t been to the MA Chidambaram Stadium in ages, but of course any such access for cars to bring in home-made lunch, specially for ordinary spectators, has been impossible for decades. Leave alone the luxury of having a picnic spread in the stadium complex. And this was impossible well before Madras turned into Chennai, when the flood of vehicles — four-wheelers as well as two-wheelers — made its own demands on parking space. And then of course we moved into an era of security… every little aspect of life has become a security threat now. These days, surely many spectators at major sporting events anywhere in the world must experience anxious moments wondering if there is a terrorist attack planned that day.

We have now moved into an era… a world… where simple pleasures that we once enjoyed have simply disappeared, or become luxuries reserved for VIP netas or the power-wielding babus.

And things will , and are already, getting worse, in the highly divisive world we inhabit today. The latest evidence of this was the video footage of a far-right activist in Belgium running over a burkha-clad Muslim woman, deliberately, wantonly, and filming her too. After the ghastly Belgium blasts, clearly in retaliation for the arrest of the sole surviving Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam from a Muslim-dominated Brussels suburb on Sunday, a protest was held against the terrorists.

One of the activists broke through the police cordon, spotted the Muslim woman crossing the road, and ran over her. She hit his windscreen before being thrown on the ground bleeding and with grievous injuries but still conscious.

Yes, the Belgium, as well as the Paris attacks were horrendous but they were carried out by the IS, which claims to be perpetrating such barbarous and violent crimes in the name of Islam. But they are terrorists. No one knows the ideology of the woman who was mowed down. But her Muslim identity, established by her dress, was sufficient to warrant such an attack.

Welcome to the era of an eye for an eye…seen through an eye blinded by hatred, prejudice, fury….