SIGHT & SOUND
The greatest show
Amita Malik

One would have thought that the Olympic Games had it all. But all doubts about the winner were cleared as the World Cup Football started winning even long before it had started. And even Brian Lara and the West Indies team, facing a follow-on, lingered before batting time in the dressing room to find out how their football team were doing—and they were doing well beyond their expectations.

What was most interesting of all was the way India reacted. Sold on cricket and nowhere in the football world, India went mad over football. Most pleasurable of all was the graffiti on the walls of Kolkata, clearly outdoing the ones by the comrades during election time. There was puja being performed for the success of Brazil. It was the same in Kerala and Goa. And all those Page 3-wallahs chose to sit with their cocktails before large TV sets placed in pubs.

And let me make a confession. Except that I was a goalkeeper at the age of six when my brothers and their friends played football in our garden in Shillong, what I don’t know about football would fill a book. People have spent years explaining what an off-side means and I am still foxed. But you may bet I will sit up after midnight to watch Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and the rest for their artistic formations in long shot on the football field.

I think the football mania was summed up by two six-year-olds when I asked them why they were backing Brazil. “Because they are poor people,” they said with amazing maturity. And it took me back to Rio de Janeiro many years ago. I watched as little boys, barefoot like our village youngsters, kicked around a worn football on the island in the middle of the city’s busiest street. Just like our little boys in Kolkata or Kochi. Not to forget the Chatterjees of Kolkata, an elderly retired couple, which saves up for four years so that they can watch the World Cup live. They take along achaar and muri (puffed rice) to supplement their meals.

Football fever, it seems, does not observe any age barriers. Because it is truly the game of the masses. And we must bless TV for letting us watch the world’s best, even if we still wonder why India, loving football as much as it does, has not produced international teams. Even Iran, with all its problems, and African, Arab and Asian nations do very well.

As usual, it is a sad story of apathy in investing time, money and official and unofficial patronage and a complete lack of genuine talent-hunting at an early age.

When shall we ever learn to rescue the game from the clutches of politicians, who know nothing about playing but dominate our committees?

Of course, there is life beyond football, and where the average as well as below-average Indian has been hit hard is by the oil hike.

The media have taken up their cause and concentrated, as they should, on the increasing price of rice and dal even as they carry the political attacks by the opposition parties. Household budgets have hit the ceiling and we must thank TV for giving us minute details from individual families.

Even the Rahul Mahajan case is dropping from the front pages and more attention is being paid to the broader sociological aspects of the alarming phenomenon of drugs usage than the immediate examples of this deterioration in our social life.

I pride myself on keeping up with things but must admit that I owe it to the media to become aware of the fact that drugs are being consumed right under our noses and sometimes openly, in the very pubs and restaurants which are glorified for night-out programmes on TV itself. A very sobering thought.

Tailpiece: I wish Zee Sports in particular would not subject us to those tedious 30-minute advance comments by its disc jockey Tania and last week you had them for the French Open tennis by Vishal Uppal. In the case of Zee, they are dull, repetitive as well as boring, and in the case of cricket on Ten Sports, far too long.