Waka waka… whew it’s over!
Off-the-field action gets as exciting, and as tiring, as the real game
It’s all quiet on the home front. Suddenly the remote control lies abandoned, a little lost, and confused about what is expected of it now. The husband and the brother-in-law look equally lost, hovering around a bit aimlessly. There is a sudden lull and a few beer cans are chilling in the refrigerator, untouched. I wonder if something has gone amiss, and although I put up a “yes-I-TOTALLY-understand” kind of glum face, the moment I turn my back to them in the kitchen, I am smiling and humming a happy tune. Albeit softly. But humming nonetheless.
The curtains are down on one of the most spectacular sporting events of the world, which features some of the best-looking men of the world, and yes, the world has changed since. After a month of planning our days and nights around FIFA World Cup 2010, our lives suddenly seem goalless. Umm… you have to excuse the obvious pun. Tell me, who wouldn’t be tempted, and who can avoid talking in soccer lingo after an intensive crash course on everything from corner kicks to the Cruyff turn?
What did you think? My life was untouched by the “Beautiful” Game? My life was thrown out of gear, massacred, hijacked. I began noticing the little things in the first week itself.
Me: “Listen, we have to go for groceries today, in the evening.”
Husband (in dramatic, exclamatory tone, indicating I had said something sacrilegious): “Uh… What? I mean, how?”
Me: “We have to go meet Rina and Sumit at Khan Market for…”
Husband (in a soft but incredulous tone, indicating I was a poor looney woman): “How darling, just tell me how?”
Me (on a Saturday evening): “Hon’, can we go for a movie tonight?”
Husband: “WHAT?” (I think you know THAT tone.)
So I knew, mornings are all work, and evenings, all play. And with play came the appendages. I had to sever ties with my television. I had to almost sever ties with the husband (almost because I had to be at his beck and call.) The boys littered the sitting room with beer cans and bottles till the wee hours; I woke up to the stale beer smell and started gathering up the empty containers and the leftovers of the snacks that I had to serve them like a good little wife should. Well, these, you will say, are part and parcel. What else should I expect during the WORLD CUP?
I know! And I am not complaining! I, too, love the game! I am not an airhead who doesn’t follow sports; I follow, when I want to. But then there was more. Somebody got a free Jabulani. So of course we had to rush to that person’s house. So what if you have come back tired and sweaty from work and hadn’t had time to change and have to wake up early next morning?
Somebody supports the same team as your husband does. So of course you have to pack yourself up and journey halfway across town for two hours to watch a 90-minute match and then drag yourself back with a grouchy husband because the team lost.
Some people support a rival team, so the group piles themselves at our home because the match “gets more interesting” when people break out in fights, with a shower of expletives (I got to learn some very interesting ones, I think some of them got coined there) raining around.
These, as you say, are repeat telecast at every tournament. I was living with them, resignedly. Football fever kept rising and one early morning, 6 a.m. it was, I found the husband all awake. I got worried. Something must be terribly wrong! Or was I hallucinating? Was the clock running right? It was. "Hey, could you make some tea? For all of us?" Okay, so whatever grogginess I had was gone. "All of us?"
"Yeah, the football team," he said casually as if it's the most natural thing that happens to us every morning.
In our drawing room were lined up about twelve boys -- age ranging from ten to forty. All in sneakers and shorts displaying not so appealing legs. I thought to myself, "You guys are no Forlan or Messi or Villa or Casillas or..." Ahhhh, now THOSE are men.
Anyway, I fed them tea and toast, and a friend generously said, "Why don't you come and watch? You may even join us," he winked at someone random. WTF! He thinks I can't play or what? Ego bruised, I trooped out with them to prove a point. World female footballers are thousand times better than their Indian male counterparts.
On the field. "The ball's gone out of the line, can you please fetch it?"
"I am really thirsty. Can you go make us some lemonade?"
"Shanky's got a bad cut. Run and get the Dettol. Hurry!"
"Just stand at the sidelines and kick the ball in when it rolls that way." [Pause] "You can kick, right?"
That was all my participation in the "match".
And then, BAM! I was lying on the ground. "Oops, sorry, happens. Don't worry boys, she'll be fine." Taking a hit from a muddy, smelly football isn't my idea of enjoying the game, and much as I love the adrenalin-rushing, minimal adverts game, I think I won't miss it so much for another four years.
