A Calmer You, by Sonal Kalra: Ruined by the World Cup. You, too?
Let’s do some collective ritual to reclaim our torn lives
I don’t know how you feel but I feel that there is a World Cup-shaped hole in my heart. Since that semi-final encounter, an entire country has been stunned and silenced by the irony of the fact that it’s a game and a game can always go wrong. Of course we’ll move on from here, but it’s not easy for those like me who live their life in four-year cycles. Seriously, man. Each time I try and convince myself that my thoughts and actions should reflect some semblance of maturity that ought to come with age, the World Cup comes and ruins my life. That bad hungover feeling, the crankiness, that miserable feeling to snap at everyone in sight, that constant wondering what’s left in life to get excited about — it’s a void and a pain that refuses to go, but go it must.
To find solace that there might be other weirdos who’re feeling like me — there always are, for every single trait of lunacy I exhibit, I went online and read up on PTD. I would have stopped when the abbreviation sounded like Pakistan Transport Department but it was worth it to get deeper and know about Post Tournament Depression — a condition well recognised by mental health practitioners over the world now. Coined, and mostly used in the West to refer to a state of temporary depression among the fans after the end of the Football World Cup, PTD can well be used for cricket fanatics in India, and probably even in Pakistan. Because both our countries’ matches ended, but we continue to exchange respects for each others’ mothers, sisters and other family members with the Pakistani cricket fans over social media, with much passion.
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Symptoms of PTD include:
1. Not being able to come to terms with the reality of the loss: My nephew has repeated ‘Baarish ko zaroori aana thaa?’ 64 times since that day, even as he continues to send very polite verbal and social media regards to everyone at ICC for organising the World Cup in England so that they could hurt us as badly with their weather as they did with their subjugation of us for 200 years.
2. Rewatching the painful bits while being in a state of denial: A colleague of mine has the MS Dhoni run-out video saved on his phone. He runs it in slow motion every evening – the same time when the sun starts to go down and my depression starts to sink in. And we both debate afresh on whether it was a no-ball to begin with, how Dhoni couldn’t have ever miscalculated that there wasn’t a second run, and how a loser who we could beat in gully cricket got perhaps his only direct hit at the stumps as a windfall in life that day. It’s been five days and now both he and I are wondering who should end this ‘watching the highlights’ ritual. We are both depressed.
3. Analysing, analysing, and then over analysing: Why did we play four wicket-keepers? Why was Dhoni sent at number 7? Why was Ambati Rayudu left-out to begin with Why are Sanjay Manjrekar and Ravindra Jadeja so much in love? What would have happened to Ravi Shastri in his childhood for him to always look perpetually angry 50 years later? We have analysed the daylights out of cricket, and there’s no stopping yet. Sadma, you see.
I could go on about more such symptoms, but you would have figured the problem out by now. I genuinely miss the euphoria, the heated debates over who would come at number 4, the live tweeting on every ball, the get-togethers between friends to watch the India matches, the ₹50 satta that I playfully indulged in with colleagues, the camaraderie that develops between strangers surrounding the TV screen in my office lobby. Well, if you too relate to all or any of this, here’s what:
Take a social media break: I won’t but I can tell you to, since I am the advisor here. If first elections, and then cricket consumed and possessed you for the past few months and now you feel a sudden thud in adrenaline levels, give your Twitter, Insta, FB a break for a week or two. They say it rejuvenates our brain chemicals to meet and talk to real people for a change.
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Go cold turkey on cricket for a bit:Finals toh dekh lo if you have any interest left (I don’t), but then take a clean break from watching cricket for a while. The Wimbledon’s been on and there’s some really fabulous stuff happening. Also you may have missed some good content in cinema/OTT during the last month’s madness. And oh, catch up on a book if you are the reading kinds. Just don’t pick up a cricket book.
Focus on pending work: If you are anything like me and my team, you would have loads of pending work on your desktops — deadlines you missed, mails you didn’t reply to, presentations you didn’t work on, school/college assignments that you delayed — all because you were busy feigning illness to skip work and watch the matches. It’s funny how we think no one notices the timings of our sudden sickness. Par desh ke liye toh sab bahana chalta hai. Now get the focus back on work, till the next big roller coaster strikes you. Remember whether in cricket or life, it’s always only a break. The season never ends.
Sonal Kalra has decided to file a petition challenging Dhoni’s dismissal in that run-out. She’s collecting money to fund the litigation. Are you generous? Mail her at sonal.kalra@hindustantimes.com. Follow on Twitter @sonalkalra
