“Chaach, are you going to be sad like last time again?” My 7 year old asks me as I look at Hotstar on my phone.
“Why baby, what did I do last time?”
“Well, you didn’t speak for almost a week. It’s just a game, Chaach, when will you learn?”
We’re in a cab on our way back home 80% through the World Cup finals, and surprisingly, I’m feeling okay. But her comment still catches me off guard. Just a game? Just a game?! I understand that her perception of reality is warped by virtue of being at an age where she believes in things that don’t exist. Like the tooth fairy. Or Santa Claus. But this is a step too far. What next? She will claim that a Man flu is just a common cold?
Deep breath.
Inside you there are two wolves fighting, one is a romantic and one is a stoic.
Which one will win?
Whichever one you feed.
“Haha no sweetie, I’ll be okay this time…”
***
The day didn’t start like this. Finals days never do. I woke up earlier than expected. I went to bed like a cocooned caterpillar, and by the morning, somehow there were a thousand butterflies in my tummy. I’m bouncing off the walls. Before my first cup of coffee. I’m moving from room to room, mock-bowling like Jasprit Bumrah.
My partner wakes up bleary eyed.
“WE’RE WINNING THE WORLD CUP!!!” I proudly announce to her beautiful face.
“Bleaarghhh” She makes a sound like she’s gargling her epiglottis. She must not have heard me. How can one not feel joyful this morning?. “Can you get Emma’s books from the shop near the school? And please take her with you” Okay, she did hear me.
“Emma, who’s winning today?”
“AUSTRALIA!”
“No, what?! India. We’ve been flawless. We’re the best team in the world cup. ”
“But I’m supporting Australia because my BFF is in Australia”
“No, no you have to support India today”
“You told me I can make my own choices”
“Um… yes… But, you don’t understand. We’re going to win today. This is going to be a core memory for you. You will feel a lot better if you support India”
“Aussie Aussie Aussie!”
Fine. Maybe your core memory is going to be a teachable moment, miss. India is going to win today. It is inevitable. You can change your mind midway through the match, you can celebrate with a momentary jig of joy when India finally wins. But, deep down, you can only experience happiness proportional to the emotional investment you’ve made. That’s the law of nature. That’s how the universe works.
I dive right into the LLLC Whatsapp group.
When you’re deep into your 30s, the real blessing is not having friends who will gift you books. It is in finding a few who will read the books you gift them. Imagine being lucky enough to be part of a gang where everyone reads all of your inanities, and encourages you all the time. If time is the currency of friendship, LLLC is its treasury.
For the last few years, this has been my happy place. And for the last 45 days, this has been my family. We’re excited. It has been an insane season. This will be the crowning glory. The day that we talk about even when we’re in our eighties.
“Folks, this is a safe space no? Can I just say I want to see a close match today?”
“What no, please. Delete this message” I am told in a chorus.
I empathise with them. But there is no room for jinxes or seat changing tactics to make your team win today. But to be honest, it’s getting a little predictable. The stoic has been satisfied, but the romantic is craving a bit more.
This World Cup has been like a walk in the amusement park. Yes, all the rides have been joyful, but are you really going to leave without riding the roller coaster? I am not. I want to feel the edge of the seat against my buttcrack. I want to feel my sphincter clench so hard that it feels like my heart is going to be sucked down with the G force. I want to close my eyes, utter a silent prayer, and affirm to myself that I am going to be okay, and then once it’s over I want to pretend like I always knew we were going to be fine, and soak in the afterglow for days together.
***
Australia are 172/3 and romping home to an unimaginably comprehensive win. The camera pans to someone in the crowd. He’s waving to his left and to his right. I am reminded of the phrase “Maranam rangabodham illatha oru komali aanu” - poorly translated as “Death is a clueless clown who hasn’t read the script”.
I call time on our presence in my friend’s house.
“Emma, come, let’s go”
“No, I want to stay till the end!”
The red cherry of cricket may not have blossomed, but the party apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Just like her dad, she has to be the last person standing. However, I am firm in my assessment. As the parent in my room, biology has imbued me with an unprecedented clarity in my thinking. We have to go now for the sake of our host’s remaining sanity. Because other people’s kids are annoying. Even more so if they’re supporting Australia in the world cup final, and India is actually losing.
We reach home, and I am still stoic. It doesn’t hurt as bad as the last 17 times. I imagined only two outcomes - an Indian win or something truly special from Australia. In the end, it has not ended with a big bang, but a whimper. It has still been an epic run. A truly glorious autumn. Perhaps, it’s poetic to call it a great fall.
What I definitely don’t want to do is listen to the so called experts who have no idea how the game works and will run their mouth for money, the emotional idiots who can’t accept that any other team is allowed to play and win, the hindsight Hero Hondas who have removed the silencer from their bike and want to ride around loudly laughing like lunatics, or the stats merchants who will torture data to tell you why this happened, - I, I alone, know the exact measured reason why it’s just a random twist of fate India lost. And I’m okay with it.
**
Inside you there are two wolves fighting, one is a romantic and one is a stoic.
Which one will win?
Whichever one the timeline feeds.
If India loses the world cup final, and you’re bombarded with convenient narratives that explain why an Aussie win was inevitable, then it won’t be a stoic or a romantic that roars to the top spot, it will be a third wolf. The quixotic one. The wolf that will fight to death for perceived unfairness, and lazy stories that become the truth of the timeline…
If you watch a movie that’s a solid 8, but has an IMDb rating of 5, what do you do? Obviously, you rate it 10 stars and recommend the movie to anyone who will listen to you. If Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver started The Bugle together 15 years ago, and John Oliver shares your birthday, and has a popular show with a large audience, who is your favourite comedian? Zaltzman, of course, he’s outrageously funny and doesn’t have the kind of audience he deserves. John Oliver is a sellout who parrots lines written for him by a writer’s room pandering to TimelineWokeness plus 10 percent.
If New Zealand lose the world cup in 2019 because they couldn’t score one extra run in the super over when they knew they had to, are they unlucky? Nope. In fact, they’re extremely lucky to have made it to the finals considering their overall performance in the competition. Just like they were lucky to have made the WTC finals because Australia’s over rate counter was away on Christmas holiday.
The quixotic wolf will climb to the top of the Unfair Sentiment hill and howl away at the moon through the night. It will fight anyone who comes. It will die on this hill.
Years of fighting this losing battle has taught you to never feed this wolf. Your sense of fairness is your own, and it will consume you. It will wear you out. It will burn you down. But nothing will change. And nobody cares.
**
I wake up the next morning and someone has opened the shutters to the idiocy dam. Every single annoying video, hot take, and middling meme has been added to the breakfast buffet. Quixotic Wolf is rubbing its eyes, and blinking at the bright lights. No, please… just ignore everything. Just take the day off and set an auto responder “WTF is this nonsense?”.
But I drag myself to work. Perhaps some coffee will help. Oh God, no. The machine has been taken over by a cloud of stupidity “Why was Kohli so selfish? He got his 50th century so no need to win the world cup is it?”. You’ve been here before, you should grin and bear it again. But this is not like an assessment of politics or the economy which has a real effect on people, they’re talking about the world cup finals. I can’t stand by and take it. Screw the coffee.
Back to the desk. Someone shares a piece from the journalist who watches everyone in the nets. His pieces were full of golden nuggets when we revelled in Indian wins. Today he’s written absolute garbage. How can this writer become so useless overnight?! If only India hadn’t been so unlucky. This was not like a football match where you’d been outclassed the whole game, this is one where you were sucker punched in injury time. Is that why they call it injury time? Because it causes heart breaks?
I’ve managed to quash the quixotic, but the romantic has risen. It’s just pain from here on out.
***
It’s day 4 and the pain is not dulling. I alternate between movies I’ve never watched, and the sepulchral silence on LLLC. It’s broken only by a few who talk about some T20 game. I cannot believe it, these must be the guys who get on Tinder 4 days after the love of their lives leaves them at the altar at their wedding which was meticulously planned for a year. I will watch a Gautam Vasudev Menon movie today.
Day 5. The only intelligent cricketer in the world has proclaimed he was surprised and amazed by Australia’s tactics. Content whore. I bang my head against the elevator door. The elevator opens and the security guard smiles at me. I smile back. We’ve had our own amazing 45 days. Through the time it takes for the elevator to travel 30 floors, we’ve been beaming at each other every day, with smiles from ear to ear broken by half spoken phrases
“Aaj bhi jeeta!”
“Kya champion team hai!”
“Iss baar toh cup hamara hi hai!”
“Rohit kya mast innings kela!”
“Shami ka toh jawaab nahi”
“Kal Wankhede me match hai na? Achcha aap ja rahe ho? Jeet ke aana!”
I am guessing it’s going to be a silent ride today.
“Arre woh Australia waalon ne beimaani karke trophy leke gaya. Aap ko pata hai? Aur ek LBW galat tha. Aur unhone trophy pe pair rakh diya. Abhi Rohit Sharma ICC ke saat baat kar rha hai. Finals phir se khelega bol rha hai”
I smile back. This is not going to end is it? I am watching The Banshees of Inisherin for the first time later that day. I can finally understand why someone would end their friendships with lifelong friends overnight, why they would choose to avoid dull conversations.
As the movie ends, there’s a stoic acceptance that I am going to spend the rest of my life on Inisherin, and there’s no cure to the supposed idiocy of other people. The peace that I miss has to come from within me. And there’s only one way through it. By living through the pain of what could have been, but not wasting it howling on Unfairness Hill.
This too shall pass. With time. Like my dad used to say about a Man flu - if you take medication for it, you’ll be better in 7 days. If you just let it be, you’ll be better in a week.
❤️🫂🫂