Wednesday, July 11, 2007

We shall overcome

Playing cricket in an overcrowded ground is an experience in itself. (Not that it's a new experience, I have been playing like that for ages now!). On the other hand, when I get to play a match in which only fifteen (11+2+2) human beings are allowed on the entire field, I find it overly luxurious.

It's rather fun to be part of n different matches at the same time. In each of these matches, you can play a crucial role. You are part of a team that's playing its own match - here most likely you're the lone fielder standing on the boundary line saving valuable runs for your team. If not, you must be the part of the "common" fielding team and should be helping out your opponents in the mundane task of guarding the boundary. Although it can be against your team's intentions to save four runs or even worse, take a brilliant one-handed catch, you do it with extreme devotion. Both the teams appreciate your role. In the mean-time you can enjoy yourself by watching another match being played ten feet away (without getting in the bowler's line of fire). You can even amuse yourself at how silly the other dismissal looked on field VII and how you could have scored nothing short of half a dozen runs off that particular delivery. Often you find yourself being requested to return a stray ball that found its way towards you from hundred metres. Or you can catch a safe ball that has already scored its maximum: you being standing off limits for that particular match.

It's all happening here.

We have grown up in a society where getting used to conditions is more often a rule than exception. More often than not the scenarios dictate terms and we adapt to the situation. It's not only in cricket as I described, but take any other aspect of our lives. Take a overcrowded bus or overcrowded train, take a road-side decent idli-wada hotel where people are patiently waiting for their order to get ready (even after knowing that they are 45th in the queue); or for that matter take the basic public utility as a toilet on which even the toughest stinkometers (if there is anything like that) would give up. We are taught to adapt to conditions over which we have little control. We are used to overcoming anything that comes as an obstacle. Most of the times we don't give up.

This was not a self-appraisal, but just a note on how we live. And not to forget, how we enjoy our cricket on an overly crowded uneven piece of land of which we assume our side is always greener (and it hardly is)!

3 comments:

Nandan said...

The second paragraph might well apply to one's job profile in a company. Or stretching it bit further, to different roles a single person is needed to assume to survive.

Anand Sarolkar said...

Yes. We are always taught not to bother about things that are not in our control but even if they are not in our control they do affect us.

Shantanu Prabhudesai said...

A very thoughtful article indeed!