No Goals Achieved !!!

Conversation with a Phirangi Friend, in a Phirangi Land
"So do you follow soccer? Oh, wait. You guys call it football in India, right?"
"Yeah! It's kinda strange. Given that you hit a Ball with your ... err ... hmmm ... your Foot!!! the naming does sound a little strange!"
"Oh shuddup! No seriously, is soccer big in India?"
"It's bigger than big - it's BIIIIG!!"
"So how come you guys don't feature in the World Cup?"

Very true! How come we guys don't feature in the World Cup? We are a country of one billion people. Couldn't we find eleven people who kick a round piece of air filled leather blob the right way???? Come on now! What are the chances of that. Given our population and gusto for the game, we should send two teams for the World Cup. "In a thrilling semi final match, India A beat India B. We know that half a billion people are happy and rejoicing right now. What say Mike?" Now that's what we should be hearing on TV. But no - the reality is quite sad. So sad that we are all busy picking favorites from other countries. My dad is supporting Argentina. My sister is supporting "the team David Beckham plays for". My uncle likes to pick lesser known teams and support them - so it's gonna be Costa Rica for him. Blah blah!

And it's not just football. Basketball, wrestling, tennis, swimming ... you name it and we suck in that sport. Lemme repeat the point. WE ARE A COUNTRY OF ONE BILLION PEOPLE. We have snow, water, rain forests, everything. Combining these two statistics we should win gazillion gold medals in every freakin sporting event - Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics, Olympics for the people in moderate climate zones, Wimbledon - whatever! But No! The only games we seem to excel in are the ones that got surprisingly left out from every big sporting event - or which in common man's lingo means - GAMES THAT NOBODY CARES FOR.

It's like they had this auction going on for all the big games and the Indian dude representing us landed up really late. The auctioneer took a quick look at him and sighed.

"Too bad Appu! You are late. We have nothing left for you. The Americans came in early and took most of the good stuff - athletics, basketball, tennis, boxing, everything! The Chinese sent a lot of people too and they got a decent deal as well. We had the long distance races left for a while and we gave them of to the people from Africa. The South Americans sent in a big delegation for soccer alone. So that was theirs. Too bad Appu. We have nothing left for you."

So Appu becomes all dejected and whimpers.

"What abt snooker and billiards?" Appu asks, albeit in a subdued tone.

"Those are gone buddy. We have carrom left though. It's the same thing, just less interesting."

"Ok! I'll take that," Appu sighed.

The guy in charge of distribution felt sorry for Appu at this point. So he cut him a deal.

"What abt cricket?" he asks. "It's this game like baseball but the players have to be more dressed than a man attending a business meeting. It's like you are going for a luncheon but stopped midway to play some sport. Not too many people wanted it. Only the English and Aussies claimed it. And remember no women will ever get associated with it. Not even cheerleaders!"

So Appu becomes all excited hearing that the Brits play it. We were ruled by the Brits for centuries. The very mention of the word England gets us excited. So he readily agrees to taking cricket. He even agrees to share it with everybody else in the sub continent."

Just as he is about to leave, the auction master calls him again.

"Hey, do you want khoko and kabaddi as well?"

"What's that?" Appu asks.

"I dunno. No one else did either. I believe you have to hold your breath and repeat Kabaddi, Kabaddi, Kabaddi till you faint with breathlessness. Oh! And there will be a lot of dirt too. Want that?"

Now we know that as Indians we don't let go of anything. You can give us a free blue whale and we'll take it and put it in our living room and flaunt it to every relative. "My son got this blue whale FREEE! He did not have to pay a single penny for it." So Appu lapped up khoko and kabaddi as well.

Once again he was about to leave and the auctioneer called out again (how dramatic).

"Want this game called Chess? Well! To be perfectly honest, it's not exactly a game. It's more like an indoor thing. The Russians love it coz it's cold in Russia and they can play chess inside their rooms. We have some chess shares left. You care for some? But we believe that you need a high IQ and boredom tolerance to be a master in it and ..."

Appu was all ecstatic at this point. "A thinking game did you say? Oh we love thinking games. That way parents can fool their children into playing this game while what they are actually doing is preparing them for engineering school. My people will love it. Thank you. Thank you," he exclaimed.

And that is how we got it all. Hmmmmm!