Cricket, onions & crocodile tears

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Cricket, onions & crocodile tears

Deepak Lokhande
Saturday, February 19, 2011



The World Cup is being played at home and our patriotic party, the Shiv Sena, has given out its pet call: We won’t allow Pakistan to play on our soil.

After the 26/11 attacks, the nation was angry. Most Indians, including yours truly, wanted instant revenge. That didn’t happen and the anger still simmers. It has now boiled down to instant hanging for Ajmal Kasab, who is the face of the 26/11 massacre.

Given the international situation, I guess most of us will settle for the retribution, albeit grudgingly.

To digress a little, barely a couple of months of ago, we were crying over the price of onions. They were being sold for almost Rs100 per kg and all of us were cursing Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar who did not sow enough onions. We didn’t care for the farmers who lost their crop to untimely rains.

But when the government didn’t do anything to bring down the price of onions, apparently as important as oxygen in our life, we cried hoarse. The only people who were laughing were the Jains and the Vaishnavs, who could do without this ingredient in their cuisines.

Today, onion prices have crashed and the farmers are crying. We are getting our onions at Rs25 a kg and all is well with the world. Now what has this got to do with the World Cup, and Pakistan’s participation in it?

Well, do you remember India imported onions from Pakistan during the crisis? Did anyone say no to the onions from Pakistan? Could we not have made this small sacrifice for our martyrs?

Could we not have said we will wait for the fresh crop, but we won’t eat Pakistani onions? Are onions greater than our national pride? And farmers, who are they? Ouch, that hurts.

We don’t want Pakistani players in the Indian Premier League, we don’t want Pakistani singers after the film Sarfarosh revealed they could be spies, and we don’t want Pakistani artistes here because they don’t allow ours there.

So, let’s just stick to the patriotic games that we play. Let’s celebrate when we defeat Pakistan in the World Cup. Frankly, it’s all that matters. Just don’t lose to Pakistan, right?


Cricket, onions & crocodile tears - Mumbai - DNA