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Sportswriters reserve their best adjectives for encounters like these: India playing Pakistan, on a Saturday evening, in India’s largest cricket stadium, in the country’s most sports-crazed city.
And even as I sit down to write this piece in my Salt Lake home — after spending a couple of hours outside the Eden Gardens on Friday afternoon — I can hear an announcement being made from a rickshaw on the street, “Dear residents, tomorrow evening 7.30, please come to the community centre to watch the India-Pakistan match on a giant screen.” Only in Kolkata.
At the stadium, a constant crowd of about 200 people remained gathered outside the main gates. Some of them hoped to get tickets. Some others hoped to catch a glimpse of the cricketers when their bus entered or left the stadium. The more optimistic ones hoped to be allowed in to watch the players practice. The possibility of all three was absolutely nil, yet they hung around, waiting for a miracle for happen.
Seeing them wait, passersby also stopped to join the crowd; and seeing the crowd, TV channels arrived. The match was going to begin 28 hours later. Even as I watched, from a distance, a fan being interviewed by a TV reporter, I felt someone in the crowd touch my arm. It was a woman, dressed in a very shabby shirt and trousers, and so emaciated that it was impossible to tell her age. She could have been 30; she could also have been 50.
“Sir, if you don’t mind,” she said in fluent English — I was certain she was going to ask for money, “do you have a spare ticket?”
“I don’t even have a ticket for myself,” I told her. She slunk away.
To give her the benefit of doubt, she could have been a genuine fan. In the normal course, she might have queued up at the ticket window. But, for this game — which was not originally scheduled at Eden Gardens but was thrust on it overnight because of Himachal Pradesh’s refusal to host the Pakistani team at Dharmashala — tickets are simply not available, no matter how thick your wallet or how many hours you are willing to stand in the queue. The Cricket Association of Bengal sold the tickets online, that too through a lottery system, which has deprived hundreds, if not thousands, of die-hard fans of a seat in the stadium on Saturday evening.
That said, no one in their right mind, no matter how kindly they feel towards emaciated eloquent women, would ever part with a ticket for an India-Pakistan match at the Eden Gardens. It’s like giving your property away to charity.
What particularly struck me on Friday afternoon was the presence of a large number of young couples outside the stadium. Most of them were desperate to get tickets, and each time I approached a couple for a chat, it was the woman who was more vocal about expressing disappointment at not getting tickets.
“We were trying to book tickets online this morning, but the page was refusing to upload,” said Srabani, who gave her age as 22. “So we have come here now, let’s see if we can get two tickets, though I don’t know how.”
“Tickets are available,” the man accompanying her said softly, “but a 500-rupee ticket is selling for 5,000 rupees. There are quite a few black-marketers in this crowd, but the thing is…”
“The thing is we can’t afford Rs. 5,000 for a ticket, can we?” Srabani snapped at him, “There is a huge difference between 500 and 5,000! I basically wanted to watch Shahid Afridi, but it doesn’t matter. I can watch him on TV.”
This time I slunk away and soon bumped into another couple, who incidentally had tickets for the Saturday’s match. The man avoided eye contact with me and the woman wore sunglasses, but she eventually answered my questions that were directed at both.
“As an Indian,” said the 1996-born Sanjukta Mandal, “I will be happy if India wins, but to tell you the truth I am a great fan of both the teams. Pakistan has never lost in Eden Gardens. So this match is going to be as good as the final [of the ongoing T20 tournament].”
“But Bengal is also going to elections from early next month. Do you care more about the elections or cricket?”
“Cricket, of course! I will think of the elections on the day of voting,” said Sanjukta, who will be exercising her franchise in Assembly elections for the first time.
“And who will you vote for?” I asked her.
“I will see,” she said, “Each party is unique in its own way. Honestly I don’t care who wins, they are all the same.”
As soon as I shut my notebook, she asked me, “I am a student of science, but I want to be a sportswriter. Do you know of any college that teaches sports journalism?”
“None that I know of, but the best journalism college in the country happens to be in Chennai, where I live.
“Oh really? Thank you!”
I had barely moved away from her when the crowd suddenly began to get excited. And I asked a man, whose toes I accidentally trampled upon, as to what was going on. “Maybe a cricketer is going to arrive,” he replied. The source of excitement turned out to be a team bus that arrived — empty — at the stadium, but I found the man’s accent to be very familiar.
“Where are you from?” I asked him.
“From Chennai.”
“Even I am from Chennai,” I exclaimed.
“Oh really? I am Baskar, and this is my friend Madhavan,” he introduced me to another man. “We both cancelled our flight tickets to Dharmashala and booked fresh tickets to Kolkata, but we don’t know where to buy tickets for the match. Do you have any idea?”
“As far as I know, the tickets have been sold online.”
“Oh well, we tried that too, but no luck. We will come back again tomorrow morning to see if we can still get tickets,” said Baskar, who lives in Sholinganallur.
“Or else we will go back to the hotel and watch the match on TV,” added Madhavan, who lives in Maduravoyal.
“Are you sure you can’t help us get tickets?” Baskar asked me.
“I am afraid not.”
“I think they should allocate a certain number of tickets to every State.”
We eventually shook hands and they went away. In their presence, I had suddenly felt at home — that too in a city which, in many ways, is home.
