I'm not an Indian!

Yes, I'm not an India, atleast that's what everybody says, even though I live in India, even though I was born in India, even tough I have lived 26 long years of my 26 year long life in India.

Not that I like to sneak away to US of A like those gujjus or punjabi's or those gulti's and hence want to prepare myself to be that way.

BTW all my gulti friends have just one ambition in life, to go an settle in USA. Ask them a question "Why?" It helps you get good girls for wives. It helps you get good dowry. What a gulti if haven't settled in USA. Man! One heck of source for drain, I mean brain drain.

Back to where I started. So why am I not an Indian? Simple, because I do not subscribe to the passions and interests, well actually the primary interest, of any and all Indians. The passion that cuts across all boundaries of caste, wealth, literacy and all the barriers we have for ourselves in here. I am not bitten by that bug. I am not ready to waste my day. I am not a fanatic who can spew statistics to either show how much an ardent follower I am or to show that I am more neck deep into this than any other. This is not my past time and this is not of my liking.

I don’t like to watch cricket.

I don’t like to watch cricket, even if it a one-day against the arch rivals India and Pakistan. I am least interested in cricket. To be true I cannot hold a bat and make an attempt to connect the bat to the ball. I an not interested in fielding. I’m not lazy, I play soccer. I do not like to gather that leather ball, or catch it.
I hate to waste 8 hours of my day watching cricket on TV and rest for whatever is left in that day to give rest to my eyes.

To me cricket is a game in where 22 idiots play and 22 million idiots watch.

So I’m not an Indian.

I still remember those days, when I was a kid. And if you are a kid who has an elder brother who’s crazy about cricket, then your life is doomed.

Summers, month of May. I come back from school, eat my lunch and about to jump into my bed to take that afternoon nap. And bang! Someone threw a ball at me. It hit my forehead and I hear your elder brother scream “Get up lets play cricket” Saying no is not an option. He has a bat in his hand and believe me being beated by a bat is worse than hell. So I reluctantly move on. Go outside the house, its terribly hot.

No No. Don’t even think about batting. It is always the same I have to ball first. Get the elder bro out and then beg for my chance to bat. So I would ball, swinger leg cutter or what ever I used to call them. And I had great stamina in balling. I used to ball for one to one and half hours continuously, while my brother used to have great time polishing his batting skills. By the way the batting end of the wicket was always fixed and was always in the shadow of the house. So I guess it would also be comforting and not traumatizing as balling with the sun shining on my head.

So I would ball for couple of hours. If I was lucky I would get my brother out.

Form here there are so many uncertainties.

- If he agrees that he is out, without saying anything, which was rare, I would get a change to bat for few minutes.

- Most of the time I had to prove to him that he was out and I was my chance to bat. And it was rare that I would win an argument and bat.

- This was the most common. If I bowl him out he used to run after me holding that bat high in the air, like a samurai wielding his sword. He would run after me yelling that how dare I bowl him out. And then I would run anywhere I could shouting for help, crying. And since my brother was more of a sports-person he would out run me corner me. And then whatever happened is history.


I don’t like cricket. I’m not an Indian.