Nostalgia - Kahan Gaye Woh Din

Far from ordinary – Cricket in the Common Rooms

By Sandeep Mukherjee

A couple of weeks back the Indian cricket team, much to the delight of its cricket crazy populace, defeated Pakistan – but you knew that already! While enough has been said and written about the game itself I wondered if any of us, i.e. ex-BITSians, felt t-rex sized chunks of nostalgia doing the rounds of our cranial cavity. I sure did and I only graduated a couple of years back.

Cricket in the common room was anything but!

I haven’t led a life exotic enough to meet a soul who has condescended to lending sardines a sympathetic ear. However, I’m inclined to believe that they, i.e. The Sardines, would have a thing or two to say, and not all polite, about the gentleman who first conceived of packing them up in tight spaces.

Pilani’s common rooms during the course of cricket matches, especially India-Pakistan matches (which most wouldn’t miss for the world!) or matches that would precede Mech-Sol comprees (when it wasn’t going to matter anyway!) were akin to proverbial “sardine cans”.

I’d be tampering with verity if I claimed to have lost interest in messrs Tendulkar’s exploits on account of this surge of nostalgia but I certainly had more than a slight desire to catch the next Rawalpindi Express back to an indomitable village in rural Rajasthan and into one of Pilani’s common rooms. As it were, I suspect a certain Mr. Akhtar had similar thoughts at least with regard to riding his fast ones back home.

While the polymer seats and metal frames bridging the alleged seats were hardly the most comfortable, there was something to be said for junta screaming to the angst of fatigued larynxes usually in your ear. In winter you’d freeze, in summer you’d melt (and not altogether figuratively!). A quick trip to the bogs meant risking your part of the frame, unless you had loyal wingies standing guard.

The joy during those rare victories seemed to multiply and sorrow upon defeat seemed to diminish – the thought of the Mech Sol compree you had successfully evaded for a few hours quite possibly expedited the latter. Uninhibited utterance of pilanese-xpletives, Chai at Nagar ji’s and nervous chuckles no doubt added to the relief too.

A recent McKinsey and Co. study analyzed productivity growth, GDP and other occult metrics to quantify, in true McK style, India’s potential for growth. To the best of my knowledge it didn’t account for the thousands, quite possibly millions of man-hours of lost productivity by virtue of a nation coming to a grinding halt each time their Eleven take to the field to face, typically, a former colony of the Raj, if not the Sahibs themselves. But such an omission on the part of Harvard educated financial analysts at McK was no oversight. It was their recognition of an econometric phenomenon that plays itself out in Pilani’s common rooms. For there, on these occasions, it doesn’t matter if you’re Rajnikant or Amitabh, Jayalalitha or Uma Devi, Vada or Vada Pav! No sir!

This year I watched the match at Graduate School, with several friends, more strangers and even a few suitably attired natives of the land whose name is not to be spoken. But somehow it wasn’t quite the same. There was plenty of soda, great food, comfortable seats and a climate controlled far-from-common room. But guess what, it just wasn’t quite the same. Don’t think it ever will be.

(c) Copyright 2003 BITSAA International Inc.

Webmaster | Website by jPeople