>Ja beta, jee le apni zindagi

>

Now don’t tell me you haven’t seen Amrish Puri give Kajol the ticket to live her life by undertaking a journey on the Eurorail in that romantic flick called DDLJ that continues to run in some Mumbai theatre! But this ain’t about an iron-fisted dad and his daughter. This is about The Guy and me.

So, hopefully, we’ve already established that like every other Indian guy, my husband eats, breathes, sleeps cricket. He can watch a match from start to finish, the toss and prize distribution ceremony included. And watch still another one with only a grin to give to his wife as explanation for the unreasonableness of it all. And with the Cricket World Cup breathing down my throat, you know what things are like back home. To make matters worse, the World Cup’s come home, I mean it’s playing in the Indian subcontinent. And some fancy friends of The Guy put the idea in his head that they must go to watch at least one match live at the stadium. Tickets were booked for Bangalore, where India plays England this Sunday, even though there was no match ticket in hand! But umeed pe duniya kayam hai. And even while the ‘source’ is supposed to yet confirm the passes to the match, another ‘source’ has been tapped to get passes for other matches that India is playing in the country!

This second source, a friend of mine who’s saying he’s going to shave off his head if India wins (how are the two related?!), was chatting with me on FB, telling me about his plans to go to Mohali and Mumbai yada yada to watch the matches, mentioned just as The Guy peeped into the chat window – ‘You know the next World Cup will take place in India 20 years later, and we’ll be in our 50s then!’ And that was all the reason my husband needed to justify his wish to travel all over the country to watch India play whichever other country! Since then, he’s actually been making travel plans, pullingI all the powerful strings required to procure match passes, VIP no less. There’s frenetic messaging happening everyday, dates being discussed, locations being looked for, budgets being mentally drawn up in the head. Of course, I’m nowhere in the picture nor on the flights to Bangalore, Delhi or Mohali.

So what is my reaction to all of this? Despite my grudging tone in this post, I was all like ‘ja beta, jee le apni zindagi’. Not one to hold back someone from doing what they want so much to, I think that there’s very little that men like The Guy, do for themselves in general. I mean, he rarely ‘wants’ anything. And I think if this inane cricket stuff is what he wants, what’s the harm? A few thousands spent on your heart’s desire is exactly what we earn for. No?