Friday, March 4, 2011

When Love turns to Fury

We sometimes witness events that are just plain wrong. But then we can also relate with what caused it to happen. It is so ironic. Such an uncomfortable and awkward feeling to have! How does one make peace with it?

The last blog I published was about how fans from India don't just love Cricket, they are Cricket. It applies every bit to our neighbors as it does to us. So, when you invest your heart and soul, and a part of your very being into the love for this game, pray as one nation and worship its stars, how do you cope when your team is humiliated at home, and your hopes are brutally and ruthlessly raped?

Half a dozen frustrated fans hurl stones at the team buses in a spontaneous vent to express their disappointment and to get the disgust out of their systems. In this day and age it is simply not a matter that will be overlooked or glanced at casually. Gayle's comments on Twitter show how scared and angry one can get in a situation like this. If not with the anger, we can surely relate with the feeling one has while lying on the floor of a bus in an alien country, when you don't know if the things hitting the windows are stones, or bullets or if they are just the beginning of what might be a violent end.

Sadly, what this will erase is the overwhelming love and passion that Bangladesh emanated when the tournament kicked off a couple weeks ago. Every visiting journalist and blogger has written at length about the sheer passion they witnessed in Dhaka, like a beating heart that resonated through every smiling face.

But when you love something this much, emotions know no bounds. Its a very thin line, and though it takes all kinds of people to make this world, it only takes half a dozen in a hundred and fifty million to decide the fate of a hosting nation, to undo all the glory, to paint the rainbow black and turn the lights out.

It will be interesting to see how this event is handled. I hope that good judgment will prevail, but if it doesn't, in the paranoid, volatile and uncertain world that we live in, who would you blame?

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