Giant TV and the Final..!
My neighbour who’d bought a giant TV for the World Cup came out into his garden and looked across the wall with bleary eyes, “What do I do?” he wailed.
“What do you want to do?” I asked quietly.
“Watch the India final!” he whispered.
“India final is not going to happen,” I told him gently.
“Boo hoo,” he cried and I jumped across the wall and led him into his sitting room where I sat him down in front of his blank giant screen.
We sat in silence for a while and I mourned with him, the death of an Indian dream. He silently started sobbing as I tenderly put my hand on his shoulder, though in a few moments I myself overcome with grief started weeping along with him. A passerby peeping into the room came in and seeing the blank giant screen cried out hysterically. Others came in, sat down either cried along with us or sobbed quietly, lifting their heads and staring once in a while at the dead screen that stared lifelessly back at us.
I knew I had to take hold of myself, my neighbour and all the other grief stricken people, “Friends!” I whispered aloud and watery, tear filled eyes looked up at me, hope and despair writ on their faces, “Friends, we can’t go on like this! How long can we weep when we see a TV screen?”
There was a new wave of wailing as everyone looked at the empty screen and wept. “Life goes on,” I said philosophically, and we have to carry on somehow?”
“How?” asked my friend shaking my shoulder, “how?”
“By telling ourselves that there are other things on the screen than only cricket!”
“The India final!” cried my friend.
“The India final!” cried all the others in the room.
“There isn’t going to be any Indian final!” I said with what I thought was a tone of finality though I felt my voice quiver as I muttered those words. The sound that hit me, made me wish I’d been silent.
The grief was becoming unbearable.
“If there is no India final what is there left for me?” cried my neighbour.
“This!” I said boldly walking across the room and switching his set on to the news channel; there was nothing: I tried the movie channel; there was a blank screen, I then tried hockey and football and finally cricket, nothing came on. I looked at the back of the giant screen; there was no unit.
“This is a dud set!” I shouted and rang the manufacturer.
“He asked for a set to view the India Final!” laughed the salesman at the other end, “so we gave him just that!”
“But there’s no machine behind!” I said.
“Like there’s no final!” shouted the salesman.
“So you knew there was not going to be an India final?” I asked incredulously.
“Ha, ha, ha..!” laughed the voice at the other end.
“Who owns the company?” I whispered.
“Rahul, Sachin, Ganguly, Harbhajan, and all the rest of the team…!”
Was it a trick or did I see the giant screen laugh at me as the rest of India cried.
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