More Copypaste
That’s what the chai-walla said on a news channel a few days ago, after it was announced that All India Radio was not going to broadcast the India-Pakistan series, the first test match of which begins tomorrow at Lahore. Chai-stalls and chai are to Indian Cricket what Pubs and Beer are to English Football. Well, almost.
When I was in Pune, hostels did not have TV's and it became difficult to keep track of cricket. Most mornings began by pouring over cricket news (heh), over a cup or two of chai at one of the 12 chai-stalls I frequented. (Yeah, I just counted) One got used to not watching TV, but we felt deprived when some teachers dismissed the class early so that everyone could go home and watch the match. Sometimes we got lucky and everyone trooped over to a benevolent localites home, but more often than not, we stood for a few hours around one chai-walla or the other, listened to the radio, and sipped tea and ate sugary cream rolls or vada-pavs. We rarely got a place to sit.
Most of the chai-stalls around my hostel had only a radio. People who knew each other only by face would debate Dravid’s position in the team and whether Azhar should still be captain, given his consistently bad form. Sometimes my opinion was sought on a particular point being debated by someone I had never spoken to. Often it would become a free-for-all debate, before someone else would tell everyone to shut up and listen to the commentary. Thirty of the forty people there would respond to a loud ‘Score kya hua hain?’ query from a passerby.
The family who ran a chai-stall outside their home once allowed forty of us into their small living room (no more could fit in), to watch Tendulkar make a hundred during the 1999 World Cup. Tendulkar had just returned from his fathers funeral, and we all cheered and clapped, moist-eyed. That was, however, all the cricket I got to see during that World Cup, though I heard enough on radio at the chai-stalls to debate cricket with others in the hostel.
In my last couple of years in Pune, a new apartment-block came up, and on the ground floor, three new chai-spots opened: two were messes and had TV’s. Whenever India was playing a match, close to a hundred people would be standing around the TV placed on a drum outside each mess, for almost the entire match. There were always more people watching when India was batting, than when fielding.
When I was in Pune, hostels did not have TV's and it became difficult to keep track of cricket. Most mornings began by pouring over cricket news (heh), over a cup or two of chai at one of the 12 chai-stalls I frequented. (Yeah, I just counted) One got used to not watching TV, but we felt deprived when some teachers dismissed the class early so that everyone could go home and watch the match. Sometimes we got lucky and everyone trooped over to a benevolent localites home, but more often than not, we stood for a few hours around one chai-walla or the other, listened to the radio, and sipped tea and ate sugary cream rolls or vada-pavs. We rarely got a place to sit.
Most of the chai-stalls around my hostel had only a radio. People who knew each other only by face would debate Dravid’s position in the team and whether Azhar should still be captain, given his consistently bad form. Sometimes my opinion was sought on a particular point being debated by someone I had never spoken to. Often it would become a free-for-all debate, before someone else would tell everyone to shut up and listen to the commentary. Thirty of the forty people there would respond to a loud ‘Score kya hua hain?’ query from a passerby.
The family who ran a chai-stall outside their home once allowed forty of us into their small living room (no more could fit in), to watch Tendulkar make a hundred during the 1999 World Cup. Tendulkar had just returned from his fathers funeral, and we all cheered and clapped, moist-eyed. That was, however, all the cricket I got to see during that World Cup, though I heard enough on radio at the chai-stalls to debate cricket with others in the hostel.
In my last couple of years in Pune, a new apartment-block came up, and on the ground floor, three new chai-spots opened: two were messes and had TV’s. Whenever India was playing a match, close to a hundred people would be standing around the TV placed on a drum outside each mess, for almost the entire match. There were always more people watching when India was batting, than when fielding.
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