A Different Ball-game!
IPL Season-2 is here. It could not have come at a worse point in these troubled times than now. Its just not about Cricket either...
It is hailed as a big extravaganza spanning two tumultuous months...The sub-continent is going through an unprecedented tense period, hardly conducive to playing host to a galaxy of International cricketing stars who will land here to taste individual success under the Corporate Sponsors and line their pockets nicely on the way out..
Economic slowdown has already painted a pall of gloom universally and money has all but disappeared from people's wallets. Must people be tempted to spend their leftover money on the tickets now?
Terrorism has cost us lives and landed us in an unenviable position of being an unsafe place to tour or do business with as far as rest of the world is concerned.
26/11 is now a wound that has hardly healed and a stigma that just can't be wished away...This time the media has doggedly made sure that it won't..
.....IPL authorities are planning to inaugurate the games in the same city now. Am I being paranoid, tell me?
The once in five year Political circus of Parliamentary elections is also here in the same period and the country will be subjected to escalating political pressures and many criminals will go into active mode across the country in this period under the aegis of various aspiring political bigwigs...
How can anyone guarantee that among the milling, yelling, flag waving spectators that there is not one unsporting character who has a hidden agenda...? A devilish package hidden among his belongings?. Cycles, Tiffin boxes have all been used as killer bomb containers before..
How many security men will be needed and what all can be checked and passed at the these venues scattered all over the country...? Some of the places are known to be notoriously vulnerable to terrorist threats before...Mumbai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad...Which city is insulated from these murderous threats?
Even if nothing more dastardly happens, you can be sure the furore from cultural police against the scantily clad young cheerleaders could ricochet again too...
But the new Team owners like Preity Zintas and Shilpa Shettys are not too worried…They issue platitudes like the insensitive Lalit Modi who has had to eat his own words no sooner he used them..
Ms Zinta says. "Even Srilankan cricketers who were attacked recently in Pak, are also ready to play..what are you afraid of etc".. 'Preity' bad example indeed...We are afraid of this, exactly, Miss Celebrity...Insensitive and greedy people like you who walk over other's graves without a pang of guilt!
We do not know whether to regret about such callous celebrities who are anxious to fill their coffers and have their hour of glory at whatever cost...or shock about the recklessness of these Cricketers who make up their minds, without ‘minding’ the perils they are walking into, when they trot out into grounds...
And we have not even started talking about Srilanka and Tamil genocide and the undercurrents of this resentment in Tamil nadu, or the Maoists and Naxals who blow up roads, bridges and train tracks in umpteen states regularly with utter disdain towards life and properties of others...Nor have we even discussed about the ever changing political -army turmoil next door in Pak or the recent horrid Army mutiny in Bangladesh...
We will have players from all these places and we should believe nothing will happen and game should go on..
Yes, Game should go on, may be. But Life..or Death..?
We are not so sure now, are we?
