ELEVEN THOUSAND FOOLS

 

"Choose your rut carefully. You may be in it for the next ten years."

-- Anonymous

The common thing about George Bernard Shaw and the game of Cricket was their love-hate relationship with each other!

In those days, the Gentlemen’s Game took five days to complete… and, they called those games ‘Test matches’. Imagine two teams sweating it out on the grounds for five consecutive days while thousands of spectators sat there glued to their seats! Television was a distant reality… Radio had just come. And, the idea of masses deserting their offices, classes and household duties in order to watch a match in a stadium, somehow, repelled the legendary writer. Perhaps, little must he have realized that his comment about the game of cricket, too, would go on to live as a legend like him:

“Eleven fools play and eleven thousand fools watch!”

Tonight, it’s the first Playoff of IPL – 2013… Mumbai Indians V Chennai Super King. 

The Gentlemen’s Game has come a long, long way since the fireworks from Mr. Shaw!

Twenty-20. The game will be over in just four hours… Just like a blockbuster movie; just like the Russian circus which we kids once watched. In Eden Garden, nearly one lakh ‘fools’ turn up to watch the spectacle… another one billion watch it glued to their TV sets from their homes. The ‘eleven fools’ from each side… The DJ, who literally controls the heartbeat of the packed stadium… The vibrant drummers and the lovely cheerleaders, scores of cameramen, the animated commentators, both in the commentary boxes as well as the in the studios… Advertisements worth millions of dollars… And, the prizes galore… 

Big money, Big show… a very, very Big-time idea…!

I am dying to watch today’s first Playoff… I am rooting for Mumbai Indians, you see.

“What is this madness?” Someone reacted before me, last night, “each team has already played, without even breathing, sixteen matches… They are into a bloody rut!”

Obviously, I did not tell him that I was dying to watch the first Playoff today!

This gentleman – the modern-day Bernard Shaw – worked for a bank for the last thirty years… He was there in that bank when computer had not arrived… He is still there…Yes, he has been there in that bank all through the transformation of the Gentlemen’s Game – from Tests to ODIs and now T-20s… And, believe me, he has been doing the same work, in the same manner, and, almost from the same chair (If that is not exaggeration or dramatization)!

So, last night, when this gentleman yelled saying “What is this madness… They are into a bloody rut!”, I quietly laughed in my heart and said, “Who is not, my friend?”

We all are in a rut…!

I have done nothing else in my life, as a profession, except teaching… for more than three decades that is! Training young-ones in PD or this blogging everyday… I think, they too are coming from my teaching streak.

So, should I yell at myself saying, “What is this madness? I have been teaching for nearly thirty-five years and still going on without any plan to retire…. I am into a bloody rut!”?

The rut is life… and, the rut is good!

Tell me my friend, one thing that you and I are doing, here on this earth, which is not a rut!

Everything you and I do, yes, here on this earth – whether playing cricket or teaching students, whether cooking food or eating it, whether making love or preaching Gospel – yes, what on this earth is not rut?

Rut, the dictionary says, is a sunken track or groove made by the passage of vehicles. Yes, it is caused by a repeated and prolonged activity. But, then, the dictionary tells us that rut also means an annually recurring condition or period of sexual excitement and reproductive activity in male deer!!!

Now, hear that out, my friend!

It says ‘an annually recurring condition or period of ….. excitement !!!!!’

So, trust me, rut can be 

a very, very productive thing in life 

 as long as there is excitement around it. 

So, Sir Bernard, I don’t mind being one of those ‘fools’ tonight… 

“By the way, sir, how did you manage to write, sitting in one corner of your room, for all your life… till your beard touched the ground? With all due respect, sirji, what was that madness?”

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Vivek D'Cunha