Mr Roy loses his love Chirpy Bose to Paul Oktopus

Mr Roy is dejected and a feeling of helplessness has taken over his luminous personality. His glowing eyes are pale; teeth needs an immediate polishing session at Dr Prashant Rao Bhatodekar, the dentist. He is no more the animated man thumping his belly whenever he comes up with some secretive news. He infact no more comes up with any secretive news except price hike plans by cement companies and fare hike plans by airlines.

What is spelling doom for the rising star of Indian financial journalism? The shameful exit of Argentina that too beaten convincingly by no team other than Germany. Yes the loss of Argentina has given him the shock of his life. After the irritation with Vuvuzela last week, Roy saw his favourite team crashing to a 4-0 defeat.

Roy’s girlfriend Chirpy, who dislikes football, had booked two seats at a posh Bandra club just to give his lover a sense of joy when the Argentine players would have taken off their shirts after thrashing Germany. But destiny and Paul, the Oktopus had other plans. Shit happened and Roy had to handle it. And the sad thing is that he is handling it alone. Why?

Well Chirpy has left Roy for the Oktopus. Not quite literally but it happened. Chirpy who is studying psychology at a Chembur institute is an avid animal lover. Her name itself was comes from an animal function. Chirping or twittering of birds. Since her childhood the cute roly-poly girl would talk incessantly in a birdy manner whether any one listens or not. And so the name Chirpy.

Roy was the only one who would listen to her like an old quiet lazy rooster and that was the point of her attraction for Mr Roy. But after Argentina lost Roy also lost his temper and the first incomplete sentence he murmured was, “kill that Paul Oktopus.”

That’s was it. Chirpy also lost it and slapped Mr Roy in front all the Argentina fans. Chirpy cried and said you and Argentina deserved it. You guys have been talking of killing and frying that poor voiceless animal throughout the match. Paul eto cute. It’s poetic justice. You all are products of shameless capitalism. You talk about ideas, wear Che Guevara t-shirts and hail Argentina. May I know the reason?

Do you have any idea of what is happening to the globe? Climate change, greenhouse gas emission, endangered tigers only 1411 left in India and not to speak of shrinking marine animal pool. Poor Paul may not be there tomorrow because of you men. You all are the same always think of war, killing etc. This chirpy is not your game Mr Roy, you crouching tiger in the disguise of a rooster. I abhor you and declare my relationship with you null and void from this very moment.

I have added Paul Oktopus to my Facebook friends list and he has accepted it. I will rather romance an intelligent creature like him. We will play FarmVille, we will build barns and houses that will adopt cute little animals and not dirty old roosters like you. Chirpy ended her twittering while Roy was yawning and wiping his (-10) powered thick glasses.

Now Roy realized Chirpy Bose has made enough of a scene and the whole Argentina fan club has forgotten the loss of their team and is making fun of him in hushed tones.

Roy in his inimitable style stood up put his hands on his t-shirt just over the eyes of Che Guevara printed on it and said. “See I stand for what I think and don’t bring Che into your Octopus love. And as much biology I remember let me tell you, ‘These Octopuses are invertebrates, shapeless, boneless.’ They are just the kind of men you hate the most.”

Roy despite his immediate disaster management speech actually lost two things in life. His love for football and Chirpy, his cute little bird.

Roy hates everyone these days and doesn’t catch anyone on Gmail chat. He doesn’t have a status message anymore after he removed, ‘Waka waka tis time for Argentina’ last Saturday.

I have been trying to help him coping with the disaster. I found a nervous Roy checking Chirpy's profile everyday on Facebook to find out if she has changed her relationship status from single to be with Paul Oktopus.

I asked Roy what is the future plan action. Roy said, "I will create a group in Facebook called - If 1 million people join this Facebook will remove Paul Oktopus's profile."

I just checked and found one group with the bizarre name of '101 Ways to kill Oktopus Paul / 101 Reasons We hate Oktopus Paul'
What's happening? Who's playing the ball those men or the Octopus?
Photo courtesy: Google image search and funnylifeblog

Indian soccer in tennis ball and flip-flops

The football fever is on across the world. Like many Indians I feel and act confused by the utter ignorance about the game, the trends, the players and the buzz around. I am well present on the social networking arena, read as widely as possible for a journalist, yet I miss everything on this game. Sometimes the genuine passion and knowledge people around me display I feel threatened about my indifference. I simply can’t communicate on this subject except a confessional script like this.

The social and cultural environment I was brought up in had Cricket and Gilli-danda as the most dominating games, in primary school and neighborhood playgrounds. So football was out of question till I reached high school. Mine was a large class with more than 400 students, while the school had more than 2,000 students and we had two playgrounds. We had to play everything in the same space and time, the one hour recess in the afternoon. If you stand on the top-arch of the school building you can see upto five teams playing football in two playgrounds, while upto ten teams sharing space in between to play cricket, handball or Gilli-danda.

As everyone wants to be a batsman in cricket, everyone wanted to be forward in the kind of football we were playing. Though I was kind of a leader in my batch after running for class monitor elections twice and losing by a margin of two and five votes, I had little say in the football team selection. Like the national game and sports associations ruled by certain people, our school football team was designed, choreographed and even decimated by a small group of people who never wore the jersey but played bets on it in multiples of ten rupees.

I was interested in the game for the sheer fun of running and hitting the ball. But I was rather chosen for the event-less goalie’s position, where I failed miserably because of the ball’s size. After all we were playing soccer with a lemon yellow coloured tennis ball on green grass and mud (The school had few balls which were out only during annual sports). Almost no goalkeeper of an international repute could have stopped such a tiny ball.

One day out of frustration I ran ahead and tried my legs at snatching the ball from the opposition player who was just about to hit the tiny lemon into our side of the post. You must have watched the scene. The opponent fell flat with my one stroke. I couldn’t understand why? Later the big boys who were putting money on our teams told me that I have the strongest legs in the school.

I was asked to play as a forward from the next day. It was thrilling! I realized I was no great player with techniques; I couldn’t even roll the ball between my legs or hit it in the desired direction. But as I told earlier, the kind of football we were playing in our flip-flops was mostly mud wrestling with the objective to keep the tiny ball at your legs.

When it rained, as it did for a large part of the year we loved the game. I was called the ‘danger man’, a local coinage for the ferocious one on field. If I had the ball people avoided body contact and stayed clearly away from the legs. I had those unusually powerful, green muscles showing legs thanks to the 16 kilometers of cycling I had to do besides some early morning Yoga aasanas with dad helped.

I became the bully on the field, though I rarely scored. Drenched in rain I remember many conflicts on the mud, putting fear into the eyes of the smaller looking opponents. But every hero or tyrant has a final day. So did come my day on the field. One of the newer entrants recruited by the non playing gamblers had a spiked shoe. One with sharp spikes that can peel flesh of your succulent legs and tear your ligaments. It happened to me though I didn’t let the pain show on the face but decided to hang-up my flip-flops forever.

I briefly played football at University again mostly to track the most powerful opponent and offer fierce resistance. But nowhere did I fell in love with the game or get to learn anything.

It was an unfortunate thing that I missed the game the world loves. It seems despite the entire hullabaloo, it still has not caught my attention or fancy. It is like mathematics. If it doesn’t interest you it doesn’t click. So I give a miss to the Jabulanis, Vuvujelas, Messis a miss. But I still very much connect with the gorgeous Shakira doing waka waka.
this time for Afrika.
(Photograph Kids playing mud-football Photograph)