I was wondering how to trash my TV set when India lost to Australia, but my wife warned me that it was the maid’s day off.
“You will have to sweep the glass shards off the floor yourself. And I don’t want to miss the Nine O’ Clock News,” she told me.
It was so horribly frustrating to see India lose the World Cup semifinal against the Aussies that I thought of throwing my tea mug at the screen. “It would be so satisfying to see the screen shatter,” I told my wife about the crazy mad rage I felt against the Indian team. But for my wife, the evening news was more important than my venting.
It is said that a family that eats together, fights together, so we make it a point to eat at least one meal together. We pile up our food on our plates and my wife and I sit on two separate couches, put the plates on our tummies, ask one of our sons to switch on the TV and we discuss the gory and bloody events of the day.
Before the match, I had browsed a couple of Indian TV channel websites. They had hyped up the chances of Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni lifting the Cup and had drummed up the excitement to a fever pitch.
After watching the news about rampant violence around the world, I told myself on how everyone could learn from sports, about sportsmanship, on how hard work and team spirit can bring happiness and camaraderie, instead of the discord pervading our daily lives.
I thought maybe I should lift the TV set off the wall and throw it out of the balcony. We live on the ground floor, so it would not hit and kill someone, but it would just go plop in the sand, which would be very unsatisfactory.
However, TV sets have grown huge over the years. Ours has a 42-inch screen and as I looked behind it, I realised that lifting it off the wall bracket would not be so easy.
I had earlier seen a link sent by a Facebook group. A man shouts, “Get out of the way” after watching a one-day International cricket match and throws something at the TV screen and there is a sweet tinkle of glass shattering. He then walks out of the room, comes back with a stick, or maybe it is a cricket bat. It is difficult to tell as the camera is now shaking very badly. The man then begins to slam it on the TV.
As I was busy with these thoughts, news started filtering in about how security was being beefed up around Dhoni’s home. He is considered one of the greatest cricket captains of his generation. Under his leadership, India had won the cricket World Cup in 2011.
It was unfortunate that people did not realise that in any match there is a winner and a loser.
The anger against the Indian team then took an absurd turn as the crowd started trolling on Twitter Bollywood star Anushka Sharma, Indian vice-captain Virat Kohli’s girlfriend, who had gone Down Under from Mumbai to watch her beau play.
Unfortunately, that did not help Kohli’s performance, who hit a one against Australia and returned to the pavilion. People then started blaming Anushka for the Indian team’s bad luck and exit from the tournament. “We need to go and burn her house down,” someone who is totally out of his mind, wrote on his facebook timeline and the barrage of abuses against her began.
Psychologists say that sports is good for your body and soul. But psychologists never said anything about spectator sports where you sit in a Roman arena-like stadium as gladiators gouge and kick each other while you scream “Kill, Kill” under your breath.
Mahmood Saberi is a freelance journalist based in Dubai.
