IPL, Deepika Padukone, Cell phones & More

Season Three of the IPL has started with a bang. Evenings in most Indian households have been duly hijacked for forty-five days. In mine, everything has been moved around to suit the timings of the matches, whether it is dinner, late night conference calls, business trips, family outings or walks for the dog.
Sorry, but cricket comes first.

Even the movie makers & the multiplexes have caved in. They tried fighting it out for the last two years, but seem to have learned from their experience. No new movies will be released till the finals are played out on 21 April. Instead, many of the multiplexes are screening the matches live. Now that’s what I call entrepreneurial spirit – make the most of a losing cause rather than just sit around whining about it.

Several matches have already been played, but this is about the first one. The opening match was scheduled to be played at the D.Y.Patil Stadium at Nerul, Navi Mumbai, practically spitting distance from my place. I booked tickets online well in advance and waited eagerly for them to be couriered. A smug expression fixed in place, I scanned the ticket and pasted it on Facebook, crowing all the while. Ah, the marvels of modern technology! I didn’t have to stand for hours in a queue, jostling with the sweating unwashed masses. Lucky me!

Little did I know - I would have to do just that on match day.

Come the fateful Friday, I got back early from work and set off with wife & kid in tow at 5 PM itself, even though the program was to start at 6:45. Even so, we were late. All of Nerul seemed to have been taken over. Cars, SUVs & buses were streaming in, mostly from Mumbai. Parking had been provided at various places, but impatient Mumbaikars showed scant regard for any kind of propriety and abandoned their vehicles all over the place. Soon serpentine queues snaked out of the sprawling stadium complex and spilled over onto the roads. It took us a full hour to make our way in past three gate and four checks. The godforsaken monkeys in uniform even took away my cigarettes, curse them!

On the plus side, the stadium is beautiful and the seating is uniformly comfortable. The crowd was made up mostly of college going youngsters. We were on Level 2, approximately at mid-off. (That’ll make sense if you are a cricketer or a cricket-lover) I caught up with a friend, who was in the Press Box, (the lucky dog) and we killed time till the festivities began.

As night fell, things started moving. The captains of the eight teams were called on stage. The loudest cheers were for local hero, Sachin Tendulkar, while M S Dhoni, Saurav Ganguly, Anil Kumble & Gautam Gambhir did get a decent round of applause too. The captains went through an oath-taking ceremony, which finished pretty quickly. Then the CEO of the IPL, Lalit Modi seized the microphone and didn’t let go for quite a while. The crowd tolerated his nasal drone for all of five minutes and then began to boo him. They went, “Ek Do Teen Chaar, Bandh karo yeh atya-chaar!” I liked this crowd instantly. They had their hearts in the right place.

Thankfully Modi folded his tents and slipped away, making way for some real action.
This came in the shape of a laser light show and some live bands backed with dancers. UB40, a British Reggae band belted out their hit number, “Can’t help falling in love”. Bjorn Again, a cover band for the famous ABBA played “Mamma Mia”. Then came the hit item of the evening.

The stage was covered with a mushroom like white diaphanous cloth, which lifted, there was a bang ....and there she was, Deepika Padukone. Svelte, sexy and every bit the star, she went through a quick medley of numbers including the one that stayed in mind. “Uff, teri ada....”

Poor Lionel Ritchie. He came on after Deepika, who was a hard act to follow, especially in India. And I really doubt if the youngsters around me had heard his hit single, “Dancing on the ceiling”, which was a major hit when I was in college, that’s more than twenty years ago.... before many of these kids were born. As expected, he got a thanda reception. To add to his misery, some wise-ass among the organisers started off the fireworks outside the stadium at the same time and his song was drowned out.

The crowd was getting restive by now. This tamasha was had gone on for a wee bit too long. After all, we had come here to see a cricket match, unless somebody had mislaid the script. The slow claps started and so did the chanting.
The message seemed to get across to Modi & co. The match did start. Kolkata Knight Riders, led by that old warhorse, Saurav Ganguly, won the toss & elected to bat. Before the KKR fans could settle their butts into their seats, Chaminda Vaas of the Deccan Chargers had struck twice in the first over. Manoj Tiwary went off the first ball and Ganguly followed on the fifth, both for blobs. KKR have been wooden spooners for the first two editions of the IPL and they seemed to be displaying at least one virtue – consistency.

Wickets kept tumbling till the latest imports, Angelo Matthews & Owais Shah dug in. They managed to stay till end and give KKR a reasonable total of 161.

In the break, I went out and bravely tried to buy some cokes. I pitted myself against the sea of humanity that was frothing at the mouths of the two pitifully small stalls set up by the retards that ran the show. I really wonder – what do they use for brains? They have banned plastic bottles at all stadiums due to the propensity of my countrymen to fling the said bottles into the playing area. Okay, I can understand that. But, shouldn’t that be offset somewhere else by providing water in some other shape or form? Instead, you had what looked like a million guys baying at half a dozen chaps in the stall for cokes being sold in paper cups at three times the price. Bandits!

After a while, I gave up and returned to my seat, telling my son stories of Gandhiji and his fast at Yeravada Jail. Yeravada, if I’m not mistaken, also has a lunatic asylum. Figures.

In the meanwhile, the action had begun and the Deccan Chargers had started their charge. They had been the last placed team in the first year of the IPL. Last year, they surprised everybody by winning it. Laxman & Gilchrist went about the chase in a calm and professional manner, before VVS departed for a sedate 21. Gilly went on to make a quick fifty with a few hits over the fence, but after he departed, the DC team seemed to self-destruct and inexplicably lost the game a truly surprising result.

Somewhere during this self-destruction, I discovered that my cell phone was missing. After searching all over, I concluded that it had been stolen in the melee outside the coke stall. Retracing my path, I found several guys like me, hollering for their mobiles and wallets. Somebody, apart from the cricketers had been scoring at the stadium that night.

The crowd was too large and the cops seemed too harried to answer my questions, so I gave up and went home, thanking my stars that I still had my wallet and credit cards... and house keys... and car keys.... you get the drift.

The weekend was surprisingly peaceful. No calls at all. I actually savoured the radio silence. We really overrate the importance of the damn instrument..... but can’t do without it – a strange paradox.

Late on Sunday night however, my neighbour told me that the cops had nabbed a gang of thieves and seized a lot of cell phones. I hot-footed it to the Police Station, but sadly, my phone wasn’t among those seized.

So here I am, with a new instrument and a new Sim card, but the same old number, trying to gather the phone numbers that were in the old handset. Do give me call and I’ll store your number again.

Cheers!