Thursday 31 March 2011

Me and My Cup

In 1987, I was in class XI, under pressure to study hard such that I was well-prepared for the engineering entrance exams that I was scheduled to take the next year. I bunked my tuition classes and watched on Television, India being swept out (literally) of the World Cup Semi-finals by Graham Gooch and England. And just for the curious, I failed to clear the entrance exam whereas all my friends did.

The next time we had the world cup semi finals in India, I was doing my M.B.A. Needless to say, I bunked a presentation to be at the Eden Gardens and saw after a dream start (both Jayasurya and Kaluwitharna going cheaply), succumb to poor pitch reading and inept batting. I had to escape early, with minor injuries from a thrown bottle , to avoid being lathi-charged by the police after the crowd failed to accept defeat gracefully. There was another fallout too—A punishment assignment which screwed my grades in the 3rd semester.

In 2003, Sourav and his merry men conjured visions of the impossible before the finals and I, obviously, bunked office. The story was repeated and the Aussies belted us out of the finals in the first half itself. And once again, I got a reprimand that had an implication in the annual appraisals that year.

This year Dhoni and his X- Gen reached the semi finals after defeating the erstwhile invincible Australia. It was mouth-watering stuff, as the semi final opponents were Pakistan. Now what do I do? Here I am running my business and there’s really no one to force me to work, if I don’t want to. But I took a call. I fixed a meeting in Durgapur late afternoon. I was not going to watch another defeat. I was going to work. My  ‘didi’ was going to Mohali, my friends had bunked office and my colleagues had arranged for a mass viewing inside the office. But nah! I was going to work today.

And look what happened!! :))))))))))

I promise to work on this Saturday too.