Ola Ola Ola Ola Messi Messi! Ola Ola Ola Ola Messi Messi!

Today is the day after the day I went to the Maracana Stadium, the mecca of the football, for the first time. The clock had struck 63rd minute and Messi received the ball half way up the opposite field. And then came his trademark run, dodging one, then second, then third and finally ball went to the far post, beyond the reach of the Goal Keeper. And the stadium lit up.

Poor defenders wondering what to do

All were enthralled by the goal and the fans stood up, giving their customary bow to the magician gracing the Maracana Stadium on its birthday. For the fans all over the world, not so for the Brazilians, the goal was the perfect gift to the Maracana stadium on its birthday, 15th June 2014.

I will always remember the day I went to the stadium. I woke up early in the morning around 7'o clock. I had my tea and patiently started waiting for the clock to tick itself to 3'o clock, the time we would leave the house. Finally it did. To reach the stadium we first boarded a bus. The journey was an hour long but it was worth it. On my way to the stadium, I looked outside the window of the bus and I was travelling in, trying to understand the city which is playing the perfect host to me. Favelas are the most paradoxical presence in the city.

Favela

For the visitors they are a sight to hold, something from which they cannot remove their eyes from. In a way they increase the charm of the city and makes you talk about them for on and on to people back home thus increasing curiosity among the future travellers. But for the Cariocas, it’s a blemish. Favela literal translation is 'House on the Hills'. The poorest of the poorest Cariocas, who can’t afford a house, live there. The legend has it that the soldiers who didn’t have any place to live, lived on the hills which then developed in to a big slum. But if we look closely, I find favela, the slums, more developed than slums back in my country. And in general that goes for the whole city itself. Strangely, the country has the infrastructure of a developed country yet it’s a developing country, part of BRICS.

We reached Vincent de Carvahlo, the place where we switched over to the metro. In 30 minutes or so we reached the stadium. All paths leading up to the mecca was littered with Argentinians, again not a happy sight for the Brazilians. They were cheering and singing on their way to Mecca. I could see few people with play cards "Comprendo". They were looking for one seller. We marched on and on, in the sea of fans, towards the Gate D. Our ticket had complete information which helped us to reach our seats, without anyone helping us neither we knowing, except for one, more than few phrases of Portuguese. A similar feat back home will be impossible for any.

White - Blue wave

Blue wave part 2

 

I will never forget that time when I stepped inside and saw the field for the first time. I couldn’t close my mouth for few minutes. It was a sight to behold. The brightly lit field, with fans all over the stadium, Bosnian fans, with Brazilians counterpart, having their shirts out cheering, and the Argentinians singing. A competition was going on and I was a spectator. I wish I knew their language. The only negative thing which I found was that the football field looked smaller than it appears on the television.

Before the match we knew that Bosnia was making their debut in the world Cup and no one expected them to do much. Argentina, with names such as Gonzalez Hugain, Sergio Agüero, Lionel Messi and Angel di Maria, can intimidate any team on this planet. But how wrong we were. Bosnia played good, played much better than my expectation. I had expected Edin Dzeko (No one is more involved in more goals than him in the European qualifiers: 14 – 10 goals, 4 assists) to carry the team on his shoulders but it wasn’t so. They had cohesion, discipline, stuck to tactics and more importantly didn’t gave enough space to Messi. Except for the first corner in which the own goal was scored on 3rd minute, Bosnia didn’t gave me any indication or proof that they are newbies. Match went on. Argentina was playing a passing game, building the game from the back. They would move the ball around and around. But the third part was packed up by Bosnia, not allowing either Messi or Angel di Maria to showcase their talent. Poor Agüero was most of the times left alone. This didn’t mean Bosnia had come to defend. When they had the chance they went on doing their business. Sadly apart from Dzeko, they lack world class finisher hence nothing productive came out of it.

Maracana

Since the start of the game I was not hopeful and wasn’t expecting Bosnia to do much because I was aware of their problems. Dzeko was well guarded. And that Messi goal in the 64th minute made it clear to me that Bosnia will go home empty handed. But my youngest fufaji had faith in Bosnia and since fifth minute he had been saying on and on that Bosnia will score a goal. That moment came in the 85th minute when Bosnia scored from open play. From there on it was game on. The whole stadium, Bosnians and Brazilians stood up, cheering the men forward. Sabella, the Argentinian coach, substituted Sergio Agüero and shut the shop. It was a nervy end for them. All in all the match was money worth it. I got my own cup at the end of the match, Budweiser, the official sponsor of World Cup :)

We should give credit to the Brazilians for constructing such an amazing stadium. We were out of the stadium in 15 minutes without any hiccups. We walked and walked, mesmerised. We had witnessed history. I would surely recount it to my grandchildren. Walking out towards the station came the first nervous moment. A team of riot control police was on duty. They had the full gear on with the gun and the shield. I walked quietly, trying to pass them quickly. At once I crossed, they changed their direction 180 degrees. It felt that something wrong is going to happen. I stepped on a temporary bridge which was connecting to a concrete overhead footpath which then connected to the subway station. The temporary bridge was jam packed but we still went on walking. At this moment I was nervous and wanted to enter the station quickly. The worst imaginable thing happened at that moment which made my heart race. The bridge started to shake, just like in an earthquake.

On way to the Bridge. Notice darkness at the top.

Dhakk! Dhakk!

All around me people started shouting in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French. The only word I could make out "Shaking". On and on I walked. I knew that that I cannot go down and swim against a strong tide. I know I can’t. And since I was in middle of the bridge, the only way out was up. Thankfully I am not back home, otherwise there would have been stampede. Brazilians and the rest are cultured and we managed to climb up without any other incident. With Argentinians singing and we enjoying the music managed to board the metro. The metro at that time resembled Rajiv Chowk which was a soothing thought. Through the metro, then the bus and finally car, we reached home safe and sound.

Lo! What surprise. A birthday cake was waiting for us at the home. Not that we reached home safely, neither we were celebrating Maracana's stadium birthday, it was my eldest Fufaji's birthday.

Is something wrong? -- Another Short Story

"Is something wrong with your mother? She was talking nonsense to me for a long time" said the school sports teacher to a young small boy of 13 years.

The young boy had a puzzled look on his face. He didn’t know how to reply to the question. Inside his heart he knew that on some days his mother did talk nonsense but he couldn’t fathom the fact that his teacher was talking about the same to him. He kept quiet.

Now it was the time for the teacher to feel awkward. He reproached himself for asking such a stupid question. Building upon that stupidity, he asked "Are you listening to me boy?" this time a little louder.

The boy didn’t reply. His friends, who were sitting next to him, hadn’t heard the teacher the first time, now looked at him and then at the teacher. They could sense something was wrong but couldn’t pinpoint to it. Upon realising that there wasn’t any reply to come, the teacher went away shaking his head, leaving the child alone with his friends.

They were sitting in the middle of the auditorium, waiting for the annual day program to start. The most outspoken child of that small group looked over to the child and asked politely "What did that A-hole want to know?"

The child looked directly at his friend’s face, as an acknowledgement to the question, and didn’t reply. But the emerging tears in his eyes were enough to tell his friend that there was something wrong. The whole group started to badmouth the teacher. The program started and all was forgotten.

That afternoon after the school got over, the young child walked to his home, alone lost in his thoughts. He knew that his teacher had asked him a good question, a question to which he himself didn’t know the answer to. He walked quietly on the footpath. The footpath ended and he crossed over the road and went to the other side. On this side of the road, there was a school from where the children were making a lot of noises. But the young child was oblivious to the craziness around him.
"Should I ask my father about this? Will he be able to give me a proper answer? ....Nah he wouldn’t be able to. He always busy in his work and if I ask this uncomfortable question, he might shout like the last time when I had asked him where did the children come from?....Who else can help...hmmm…who else can make me understand and let me know of the proper answer. Maybe the kind lady who lives on the first floor will be able to say something. No she wouldn’t be able to and I don’t think I am that comfortable discussing with her."

The young boy was lost in his thoughts. No solution came to his mind. He went on walking sheepishly. In an about half hour, he reached his home, dropped his bag on the chair present inside the drawing room and switched on the television, forgetting the all important question which was bugging him. An hour went so. No one came to trouble him. His mother had prepared the lunch and was sleeping noiselessly in the next room. Finally his thoughts came back to the question. Still nothing came to his mind. But this time, instead of procrastinating, he had made up his mind. He switched on the iPad, which his cousin brother had gifted him for his birthday, and searched for "My mother is mad?" on Google. The search result astonished him.

"My mother is angry at me, what should I do?" Irrelevant question! He flipped through some more results. They were as useless as the first result.

There was a nice article "My mother is sick and I am mad as hell." It was a heart wrenching article about the mother suffering from cancer and the daughter who couldn’t do anything about it. Even though the article was beyond the maturity of the young boy, still tears came in to his eyes at the end of the article. He could empathise with the pains of the daughter. Still it didn’t answer his question since he knew that there was something mentally wrong with her.

This time he searched for "My mother is mentally sick." and the results came more specific to what he was looking for. They were lot more serious and grave.

The firs result was "mental illness, suicide, depression in my family." He opened the link. It was a gruesome description about the family and how it was affecting the psyche of the author. In the middle of the article, the young boy scared closed the link. His heart was pounding. It took him a while to understand that such problems weren’t present with him. He went to other results and started to read them.

After a while of reading, he finally he came across an article which was more suited to his taste. It was a list of mental disorders on Wikipedia. It was a comprehensive list which didn’t make much sense to him. But the idea struck his mind. This time he did a better phrase search on Google.

"Mental disorder + hallucination + nonsense talking"

The search results were full of schizophrenia. Excitedly, finally being able to find something concrete, the child started to read as much as he could about it. There loads of articles, stories, news and images about it. He went on reading about it for an hour.

Looking over to the symptoms, he started to make a mental note. There were words to which he didn’t know the meaning of for which he had to do search for their meanings.

Distress - Yes
Hearing voices or noises that are not there - Sometime, as stated by others
Inattention – Don’t know
Confused or unclear thinking - No
Reduced emotional expression and social engagement - Definitely yes
Paranoia - Maybe
Hallucination - Yes

Most of the symptoms matched with his observation and he was convinced that his mother had schizophrenia. Happy to solve the problem at hand, he went on reading. Suddenly he came across a word he had recently studied in school "genetics". He did a search on the word to confirm its meaning. As per the meaning and the article, schizophrenia is genetics; hence he has a 50%-50% chance that he himself is suffering from it. This revelation stumped him. He started to think. In his heart he knew that he wasn’t like his mother, neither has he behaved like her nor his actions suggest. He knew he was completely different from her. He didn’t face any problems nor had symptoms like the ones mentioned in the article. But as per Wikipedia, schizophrenia sometimes had a slow onset and can hit a person in his middle age. "Am I mad? No I am no mad. I am sane. But yesterday I was behaving like a lunatic when I had caught Daman cheating. He had started to shout that I am mad. Oh he must be joking…… What if he was right and I am actually but I don’t see it myself just like my mother.....stop talking nonsense....what if Daman is right?"

His mother walked in the room. She had a smile on her face. She quietly kissed on his cheek and everything was right in his mind. Forgetting the stupid fight he was having with himself, he switched off the iPad and the television and started to describe the whole day to his mother. His mother listened to everything he said. She then stood up to warm the milk and came back with a milk with bournvita in a glass. He drank it quickly, asked her permission for going out and went out to play.
Later in the evening, he came back tired and sat on iPad to open Facebook. The page on schizophrenia was still open. He looked over to the page and his doubts again sprang in his mind.

And the debate started again. "No...Yes...No...Yes...No..." It went on.

Suddenly someone tugged at his shoulder, breaking his chain of thoughts. It was his younger sister. He smiled and asked what was troubling her. She looked squarely in his face asked softly, making sure no one else could hear, "Bhaiya Bhaiya, is something wrong with mother?"

He looked at her, dumbstruck.


PS: Sorry for the mistakes. Didn't have time to edit the story.

Tribute to Beatles!

Fab 4

"We all live in yellow submarine, yellow submarine"
"We all live in yellow submarine, yellow submarine"

Vivek was brushing his teeth while listening to this song. It was his favourite song with his favourite sound, the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks. “Ah this is heaven” thought Vivek. The crashing waves reminded him of his home. The voice of Paul McCartney was majestic and the guitar strumming and the drums added music to the soul. Humming the tune inside his head, Vivek pressed the replay button on his phone. He could listen to this song whole and do nothing.
He finished brushing his teeth and went back to this room. Benjamin was waiting for him for there.

“Oye how was the last night’s dinner date? Got some action?” he asked in an excited tone with an wink at the end of the comment.

Vivek’s face, which till now had a smile, suddenly had a horror look. He took a moment to steady his heart. He said “It was more of dinner fight. All was going smoothly. And suddenly she had to bring up something. Damn! All went downhill. We ended up fighting till the end.

“Ohho” replied Benjamin.

“Let’s change the topic. I was hearing strawberry field forever. That song never makes sense to me. Then it struck me. I replaced strawberry by opium and the whole song now makes sense to me.”

“What do you mean?” asked Vivek, irritated.

“Here I wrote it for you some to make you understand”

Let me take you down

Let me take you down
‘Cause I'm going to Opium Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Opium Fields forever

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me

Let me take you down
‘Cause I'm going to Opium Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Opium Fields forever

“Hahaha….I see..that makes perfect sense to me now too” Vivek said.

“Just imagine.”

The two friends started to laugh and went on laughing for half hour. They cracked jokes. They made faces. They shared stories. Finally Benjamin left leaving Vivek alone in the room.

Suddenly Vivek’s phone started to buzz. It was a message. He took the phone in his hand to scroll to the message. It was from his girlfriend.

“I hate you :X Never contact me ever again”

“Eh!”

Vivek tried to message her on whatsapp to explain. She had blocked him. Phone. Again blocked. Message. Blocked.

“God what has happened” he thought. His Ipod changed to another song. He had forgotten about it playing.

You're going to lose that girl,
You're going to lose that girl.
If you don't treat her right, my friend,
You're going to find her gone,
'cause I will treat her right, and then
You'll be the lonely one.

You're going to lose that girl,
You're going to lose that girl.
I'll make a point
Of taking her away from you, yeah,
The way you treat her what else can I do?

His iPod was playing the song “You are gonna lose that girl!

What coincidence!

He angrily shut his iPod off and went to sleep

An hour late he woke up. He was sweating. His clothes were drenched. Sweat was flowing down his forehead. He was scared. He had a nightmare. He went outside the room to the water cooler. He bent down and drank cold water. He washed his face. And then came back to the room.

His room was dirty. Dust and garbage was accumulating. Every day he would always think of cleaning his room. But something always came up and this idea took a backseat. But today is the day. He decided to finally clean his room. He picked up the broom lying in the corner and was about to start cleaning.
But first thing first. Songs need to be played on his iPod. He pushed the play button.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly, I'm not half to man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

Why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say.
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.

Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play.
Now I need a place to hide away.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

“Damn!” The song finished. He replayed it. Again. And again.

And then the tears started to flow down his cheeks which lead to bursting of the dam. He was crying.

Later in the day, Vivek stopped crying. He was alone. He missed her. He wanted to talk to her. He was sad. Benjamin had come to invite him for lunch. Seeing him so sad, he thought otherwise. Vivek was angry. Hurt. Blocked.

“How can this happen to me?” he thought.

He picked up his notepad to write something. Somewhere in between, he had written lyrics of ‘When I am 64’. He played that song on his iPod.

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

And the song went on as......

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

“Oh man! Crap!” The song ended with the things he wanted to say.

“That was something” he realized. Satisfied. Complete. He stood up.

And in came Benjamin. “Sorry bro. Sorry to know. She is a bitch. Don’t worry” he said.

“How do you know?” asked astonished Vivek.

“Well it’s the gossip of the day in the hostel” replied Benjamin.

“Great what I needed.”

“Anyway I have something to cheer you up.” Benjamin took out weed from his pocket.

And then the two smoked up listening to John Lennon’s trippy song

I am the Walrus, goo goo g’joob.