Congratulations, India!

I have never been a Cricket fan. Still am not. But it would be a lie if I said that I am not super happy and insanely proud that India won the World Cup. It's a well known reality that Cricket in India is no less than religion, maybe even more than religion, for it is easy to find an atheist in India, but to find someone who is anti-Cricket would be a task insurmountable. That said, you can find plenty of agnostics in the world of Cricket... and an agnostic is usually more open to becoming a believer than otherwise.

And such is Cricket in India... omnipresent, most love it, some stay indifferent, but no one can ignore it. Of course not, when over 50% of advertising is based on Cricket, when Bollywood makes movies on Cricket, when kids learn who Sachin Tendulkar is before they know the name of the President of India, when offices expect their employees to not show up for work when there is a match... the examples are endless. Yes, Cricket in India is more than religion. And a match between India and Pakistan is battleground. War. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7v3vFexeSM

So not surprisingly then, it was the semi-final between India and Pakistan that finally shook me out of my slumber in a foreign land. Before then, I was aware of the absence of Cricket from my environment like I was aware of the absence of the smell of rain, or cars honking, or cows on streets, or street dogs... a mild generalized dysphoria, for the absence of these things could be somehow rationalized and lived with. But day of the semi final, I realized that's certainly not true for Cricket. The air in Delhi smells different when there's a match between India and Pakistan, God I could only imagine just how heated it must be if that match was a semi-final for the World Cup Championship. And then of course, I see facebook updates of people playing hookie from work, or even better... officially getting the day off! Well, of course, it was the most epic match. Nothing could replace the semi-paralyzed state the country entered that day.

Well, maybe winning the World Cup. Due twenty eight years, that cup made the men in blue cry! And I am certain they weren't the only men who cried. It is marvelous how maniacally in love with Cricket India is! No, it's not the game in itself. What then, is so powerful about Cricket that it transcends all of the nation's differences, issues and concerns?