-by Amena Hassan I remember when a college friend told me at the dinner table that Pakistanis were obsessed with cricket. Offended by his assumption, I immediately told him that wasn't the case. Pakistan is a country of rich cultural heritage, I said, which had more to it than simply cricket. When I ventured to ask him what made him adopt such an unfair assumption, he replied, "Well, they dribble over every run, roar at every out, and think that a cricket game is the war of Independence all over again." Although, I didn't bother with the game and found very little exhilarating about it, I still felt it was the right moment to look thoroughly offended, without exactly knowing why. A recent quote that I read from an online article in Little India stated, "Indeed, cricket is one of the better legacies of British Colonialism. This gentlemanly game, which teaches teamwork and good sportsmanship, sprouted up in every one of the former colonies, from India to South Africa". The legacy of cricket lives on, and now they're even making movies about cricket during the British occupation. On my last day of vacationing in England this summer, before returning to the United States, I saw my third and last Indian movie of the season-Lagaan. This was not just any movie-it was a mega-block buster Bollywood event and apparently the most expensive film ever made in Indian history. Set in pre-partition India, I expected some serious war action, but the action was left to the second half of the movie, a cricket match between the provincial farmers and a group of ruling British officers. This was no ordinary match however. "Lagaan" meaning tax or payment, was the object of the game. If the villagers lost, they would have to pay triple their usual crop tax to the British, which was hard enough to dish out due to the late monsoon rains. This movie says much about the present psyche of the sub continent where even in the movie Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims band together for a common cause-cricket!! It may be a fight under the guise of freedom from a common enemy, but as I continued watching this 4 hour long movie that resembled a 19th century version of Hoop Dreams, I became astounded at how the sport is deeply embedded in the culture of both Indians and Pakistanis. As someone who took no interest in the game, I'd come to see, admire, and be astounded and puzzled by the emotions that run deep in the game like an Indus valley undercurrent. In essence, I can't say the movie is about freedom-but more about the dangers of life without cricket. During the peak season of wicket mania in England, the longer I was exposed to cricket coverage, the quicker the game started to penetrate my psyche. Unknowingly, it crept up on me like a sly Casanova, and was the focus of most of my relatives who found nothing strange about settling in front of the television for a whole day with a cup of tea, or a plate of sliced mangoes, to "dribble over every run". Ask any of my uncles who had to work night shift for 20 years in a factory in Britain-he can morally justify the anarchy of cricket fans in one minute and come up with his own ethical reasoning for a swift pitch invasion. M My main concern was sitting in a corner of the living room where I could receive the least amount of bodily injury by a hoard of jumping cousins who went diwane, with their earsplitting yells each time Shahid Afridi propelled the ball past a batter and into a set of tumbling wickets. I marveled at the fans, the green, face painted, neon wigged fans that stubbornly put up with bad weather and lingering delays. There was absolutely no doubt in the universal consciousness of Pakistani fans, who would win, as thousands of text message updates flooded the cell phones of followers on the job. And it happened to be Election Day in Britain-Hague or Blair, no one in the stands cared who would be prime minister, because Pakistan was playing England all day and very few were budging to wrestle with queues of voters. When there were only a few runs left in winning the game, I covered my eyes, and although I wasn't praying to the skies for an unprecedented win, like the villagers in Lagaan, I secretly began hoping. But it was hard not to get emotional, especially when I began watching the reactions of the losing British. Sometimes, I adore them, and I couldn't imagine the world without their dry wit, and cocky understatements. However, there was no doubt, as I heard the commentary on the television, that the harsher critics were the British, especially after a pitch invasion by the fans in green, spilling out like hundreds of escaped marbles on a mossy picnic table, when the wickets got stolen along with the expensive cameras fitted within the poles. The commentator at that time, Ian Botham, the former British captain, who didn't want to make the same mistake of uttering a public apology, as he did last year, when he burst out, "I wouldn't even send my mother-in-law to Pakistan!" And the British criticized us for not siding with England? N No wonder thousands of British born desis chose to side with Pakistan or India, rather than the country of their birth. It seemed fans lived vicariously through the athletes of Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi and Peshawar, even if they came from Birmingham, Manchester, Oxford, or London. Later in the hour, the captain of the team, Waquar Younis, took a trip around the field shouting at fans to stay behind the lines while we chuckled at the confusion at home, maybe a little embarrassed, but secure in the knowledge of our roots that it was the British who invaded India, not the South Asians who invaded Britain-until now. In a field of wavering emotions, Captain Younis strode alongside the stands, accompanied by five security guards. His gestures seemed to say, "Stay back...wait until the English team actually loses before you go stir crazy." He didn't have to say anything else. For the next twenty minutes the fans actually behaved. And as I marveled at their compliance, I knew that cricket may have become a symbol of freedom from the British, for those who chose to see it that way, but it was also a symbol of freedom from self--forgetting ourselves for the thrill of the game. [Amena Hassan is a freelance writer and researcher and began writing at the age of five. Born and brought up in London, England, she went to high school and college in North Carolina, where her family eventually moved. She hopes to attend graduate school in either Creative Writing or Journalism in the coming years.] |
