You can Leave Cricket but cricket will not leave you

"India is a Cricket crazy  Nation" I have heard these words and read them 100 times but did not understand the mean until today when India beat Pakistan in the world cup semifinals. Its 2.00 a.m in the morning. I would never do this crazy thing of sitting and blogging at this hour. The reason I am doing this means ,I am an Indian and I have gone crazy. I had earlier tweeted that while the whole nation would be indoors glued to the television sets I would like to go out and explore how a quite Delhi would look like. I had given up the quarterfinal game against Australia an headed for the wonderful discourse of Swami Parthsarathy. That victory in quarterfinal did not stir up the emotions of the nation as against the game against Pakistan. While most of the offices closed for the afternoon to allow its employees to catch up with the game, I decided to be at work as normal. One solace was that the live streaming of the game on internet would make to stay updated. After what happened today I got a new Philosophy " You can leave cricket but cricket will not leave you" . The theory of Karma is again at play here. As I reach office I get called by my boss to come over to my head office to sort of some urgent work. Here I am regretting that well my dreams of watching the game on internet is all thrashed and as day proceeds I am confined to my boss chamber with more and more work. Finally the time arrives. Boss gets busy and I am left alone in her office with a TV for all my self. I am wondering at my luck to watch India play live on the TV which is much better than that on the internet. India finishes its innings. The Nation is disappointed. Its not a great total on board. Defending it would be a challenge. I leave the office and accept an invitation from a friend to join him for the dinner at his home. As the Pakistani side gets to slide the excitement is in the air. I leave my friends place for home. but Cricket does not leave me. The driver of the bus I board had the commentary loud in the bus. I sense India is closer to an historic win. I disembark from the bus and again cricket is following me. I pulled to a near by cell phone shop where the game is live on TV and a large number of locals have gathered around and cheering. I join this group and see them all erupt once the victory is achieved. As the game comes to an end the deserted streets are once again busy and people are out to take the victory lap. Cricket is following me again. I meet up with the inmates of Venkat club house -Neel & paul .We rent a cab and head out to India gate. It looks that all roads are leading to India gate. I have no adjectives when it come to describe the scene there. Thousands has poured in there in cars and bikes waving the tri colour with victory cry. Men, women, boys ,girls are all there dancing to the tunes of bollywood music blasting out from car speakers. Its at most bedlam . This moment can only be experienced not explained. I have never seen the city coming out and celebrating this way. It was like my being in Rome in 2001 when the team ROMA won the Italian league. I wonder a victory over Sri Lanka in final would not stir this kind of spontaneous celebrations. For all of present there ,It was like India winning the Finals.

The SMS started pouring and this is when I realized how stupid our mobile operators are. They did not not anticipate India's victory and so did not implement their " Looting Tariff" for sms that they normally do for the big holidays. So here is cricket, the greatest religion in India which is a great leveler.

I started the day with no intention to watch the game but then ended up getting immersed and so " I can leave cricket but cricket will not leave me. Jai Ho