From filthy to fabulous

It was a most surreal experience, sitting in the office earlier this week during the India-Sri Lanka one-day inter-freaking-national in Rajkot. One oh-so-2008 flat-screen LCD TV in a corner of the office was tuned to the match, and every few minutes I'd look up to see what the score was. (The match was on a Tuesday. Tuesdays, as you know, are terrible at work. You can blame Monday on Sunday, and Wednesday offers mid-week relief. Tuesday is when everything you didn't do on Monday comes back and Dilscoops you in the cojones. I had achieved staggeringly little on Monday.)

So I'd look up. And Sehwag would be on 15 off 0.27 balls. And then I'd go back to work. And then look up. And Sehwag would have just scored three sixes off one single ball by Welegedara while Welegedara was still running up to bowl above-mentioned ball. And then I'd go back to work. And look up again. And, astonishingly enough, the stock market is up 37 points.

Because some idiot changed the channel.

Meanwhile Sehwag is scoring so many runs that umpire Tarapore, in order to save time and get some cardio, has decided to keep signalling fours non-stop till further notice.

All this while, even as I struggle to deliver value to my clients and exceed my office Key Results Area expectations, I am thinking to myself: "Where were you blue bastards and your tickles down leg side and tracer bullets over midwicket when I had the time in my youth to spend entire days and nights watching this stupid sport?"

Because, as any 30-plus-year-old Indian cricket fan here may remember, we spent very large portions of our youth supporting the national cricket team. Through thick and thin and match-fixing and Sanjay Manjrekar, we held fast. We persisted. We shouted, screamed, waved, hit empty water bottles together. We skipped chemistry practical examinations even when we knew, because we had bribed the multi-millionaire lab assistant, that the bloody thing was aluminium oxide.

We crowded, in the multitudes, into tiny little dingy hostel TV rooms, in the fleeting hope that today, at least today, that Paras Mhambrey fellow would bowl four wicket-taking yorkers in one over.

And what did we get?

"Tendulkar ton fails to lift India."

"India fails to capitalise on Sachin blitz."

"Tendulkar century in vain."

"Venkatesh Prasad single-handedly delivers above three headlines."

"Amol Majumdar the next Sachin? ROFLMAmolO."

And that old classic: "Azhar said something."

And now, just when my generation, a generation of futile faithfuls, is old enough to work 5.5 days a week and worry about provident funds, it finally happens. The bluebottle flies have become the blasters in blue. Harbhajan is pointing intensely at the screen and saying, "Dekh lega India!" instead of the age-old refrain "Baki tournament dekh lenge India se!" (Translation: Harbhajan is pointing intensely at the screen and saying, "India will whip your behind!" instead of the age-old refrain, "India will whip your behind if you don't have Test status!")

Alas, the futile faithfuls have no time to partake of this recent glory. We have jobs to keep, wives and husbands to please and high-resolution, fully detailed memories of exactly where we were when Desert Storm happened in Sharjah.

Sigh.

But wait. What am I cribbing about? What about CK Kapadia and PV Premraj?

Kapadia and Premraj were my father's colleagues in Abu Dhabi. Over some 20 years the three of them always sat at desks next each other, even as their trading company's fortunes boomed along with oil prices, and they moved from desert outpost to skyscraper.

Kapadia and Premraj were mad, crazy cricket fans. One corner of the office stationery warehouse, controlled Mugabe-like by Premraj, was a shrine to Sunil Gavaskar. Books, posters, old issues of Sportstar and Khaleej Times supplements from Sharjah tournaments lay in clean stacks. No one was allowed to touch them. Or terrible mistakes would happen in leave salary disbursements.

My first cricket book, Runs 'n Ruins, came from that collection.

Premraj was also among the first people to ever buy that Sachin-special gold coin. You might recall that a large jewellery company, with smart marketing MBA types, decided to launch a limited-edition series of gold medallions to commemorate Tendulkar's first hundred something-or-the-others.

It had Tendulkar's face on it. This was the 90s, of course, so it had to be a large coin to accommodate all that hair. Premraj had one coin. Or maybe two.

Kapadia, on the other hand, was a cricket psycho of Mumbai proportions. A sweet, gentle old man, Kapadia saab would metamorphose into an epithet-expounding madman as yet another match slipped out of captain Dev's grasp.

"Saala Paandu Kapil Dev!" Kapadia would scream in the office, using a word I have skilfully masked with a rhyming alternative.

Dad, on the other hand, was an ultra cricket sceptic. He did everything in his control to provoke poor Kapadia and Premraj. Observe what happens when I call to tell him that I may have failed in sixth-grade Hindi and my entire education lies in ruins:

Me: "Hello? Dad? I may have under-delivered in Hindi..."

Dad: "What did you say? Kapil Dev got out? Again?"

Me: "What? No. It appears that in Hindi I have achieved 16 out of 100..."

Dad: "Horrible! This team is a disgrace! He scored just 16??"

In the background:

"PAANDU OUT HO GAYA SAALA!"

"No no Kapadia saab... As long as Roger Binny is there..."

"PREMRAJ, YOU FOOL! You take this Roger Binny and usko !@#$ mein !@#$ karo..."

Me: "Dad, what precisely does !@#$ mein !@#$ karo mean?"

Dad: "First you learn your sixth-standard CBSE Hindi please..."

For at least 30 years Kapadia loved, hated and lived Indian cricket. Around three years ago he passed away after a sudden illness. He never lived to see India become No. 1 in Tests or ODIs.

But that does not mean his legacy must go to waste.

Today, a Friday goddammit, I hope at least a few of you futile faithfuls will join me in yelling choice epithets at the Cricinfo website or office TV. At least during the lunch break.

Sigh.