chowpatty

What is the city but its people?
Shakespeare

I heared about a match coming up the other day. Apparently India and Australia were going to play in Bombay. I'm barely aware of how many players there are per team. I find it infuriating that trainloads of people will discuss nothing else. It's only a game for heavens sake. I dislike games, especially monopoly, which seems especially silly. Evereyone plays monopoly.

And then this lawyer friend of mine calls me up at noon and says that he has a pass (meant for high court judges) for the match, would I like to come? So before I know it I'm off to see a match, a couple of days after learning of its existance. There's a traffic jam from the stadium at Churchgate to Opera House, and a line of people till Marine Lines. The entire seafront pavement is a parking lot. You could hear a dull roar from outside. You aren't allowed cell phones and paper inside the stadium.

Alhtough Wankhede Stadium doesn't look as big from the inside, it was incredible, packed to capacity, 40,000 people. They did the Mexican wave, cheered the Aussies too (this changed very quickly) and, because no one can think of enough reasons to hate Australians, began cursing Pakistan (and its mother, whoever that may be). They cursed Sehwag's mother too.

We couldn't see the scoreboard from where we were sitting so the match went by without us ever knowing exactly what the score was, and how many overs had gotten over. It was too far away to read player's names on their shirts, but a few stood out. Sachin Tendulkar because he was short, Zaheer Khan becasue he was tall, Harbhajan Singh becasue he wears a turban (over which he wore a hat for some time.. this was very confusing) and Sehwag because he got out on the first ball. The rest loked pretty generic from a distance. Aussies are much bigger than Indians and their faces are very red. They also play better, and won the match.

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