Walking on a street in Nerul (Navi Mumbai), at 11.30 in the night, you are singing ‘Maujja hi Maujjaa’, dancing ‘wierdly’ to the tunes of ‘Nasik dhol’ hums, smiling your way to glory, its just a hangover of the historic match in ‘D.Y. Patil stadium’ – the bbbigest stadium in Mumbai, witnessing its first match ever!
‘Mumbai Indians match tickets! Please get me a ticket I beg you!’ Here starts my journey to get to my FIRST MATCH in a stadium, ever! The‘oh! My god! I am so egg-xited’ syndrome never seemed to end. Arrangements to the stadium and back were all done, don’t ask how! Well, after all not everyone gets the opportunity to such a historic match, you see.
Ok, try and get the picture. You are 12-15 youngsters, in 3 different cars, getting to a stadium, 4 hours in advance. In the car, with absolutely no idea of the scorching heat outside, the smoke of the trucks and other vehicles, the traffic, its just The Match in our heads at the moment. You reach the parking place next to the stadium (almost impossible to find in case you are oblivious of the place), and all of a sudden there is just an ourburst of noise! Hundred thousands of people on the road, all excited and hence yelling while talking, people losing their way and hence yelling, people preparing their slogans and other gigs – and hence shouting. ALL this- on the road!
“Sawant kidhar hai?”, “Anna ka gaadi kaali hai?”, “BABA ko Namaskaaaar” (and by that he meant Sachin, I bow to thee my master), “Cheer leadersssss-aaaaaaaaaah!” Were some of loudest one-liners for the evening.
Just when we are at one of the many gates of the huge stadium, everyone starts howling that the match umpires are entering through this particular gate. So we all start pouncing on each other to have a close look at the ‘Umpires’, who eventually happen to be ‘just another firangi’ , waving at the crowd, getting all the attention one could possibly get from that huge crowd. We laugh at our stupidity and move on.
Enter the stadium, all 20 people running together with the crowd of 1000 other people, to get to the top of the stadium as fast as possible. You run 1000 steps in a jiffy, the spiral staircase, and you enter the GRANDEUR of a stadium located in the outskirts of the main city, open sky, plush green ground with blue little things practicing their game, the blinding flood lights, and there you have 20-25 students, standing with their mouths open, speechless, spell bound, mesmurised, giving in to the carisma, with the huge open stadium virtually swathing each person present there.
Starts the toss, up with you slogans, “D.Y. Patil main aaya bhoot, Nehra ki maa ki c***”, “S(y)mon(ds) GO BACK!” , “ R.P chooooooo”, “c****** banaya, bada maza aaya”, and all of a sudden, the crowd of 65,000 bursts into the chants, “SACHIN, SACHIN”, “ Jeetega bhai jeete gaa, Mumbai jeetega!” ,“MUMBAI… MUMBAI”. With the toss “seemingly” in favor of Mumbai, the crowd starts swaying to the mind cracking MUMBHAI NUMBER – NASIK DHOL! And there goes the group of these youngsters, jumping, thuming, howling away their “me Marathi” slogans!”
Cut to the entry of the players 15 minutes later (you don’t want to know what happened in those 15 minutes *smirks*). Players enter the ground, getting the crowd craziest ever. All you hear is “SURYA ... SURYA”. As Sachin speaks to the media, shown on the small screen there, one of the craziest Sachin FOLLOWER- Abhishek Subramanian starts his Namaskaram for his God, Sachin, catching the eyes of many a spectators.
“WE WANT SIXER, WE WANT SIXER”, “SURYA SURYA”, hoots the entire crowd with the first ball for the match. With the miss, we all stand to cheer for our team. Second ball gets four runs straight for the team, we cheer again, jumping almost on the spectators sitting ahead. We all sit back again, expecting the next ball to be a great hit too. DARN! There goes a wicket! Shocked, I am still at my seat, when I see my guy-friends all jumping and hooting. To get the picture right, I pull the colar of one of them, as he explains the magic of the FIRANGI CHEERING SQUAD for the Deccan Chargers, right below our stand. Boys will be boys, is all you say, and join them in gaping at the ‘HHHHHHHHHot’ cheer girls! *winks*
A few overs down, Mumbai supporters were down, we all sit silently, biting our nails with nothing better to eat. All of a sudden, I jump out of my seat, “O MY GOD! Its R.P SINGH!”, almost diagonal in the field as to my stand, but gets my attention through out the match. As the guys are, they start with, “R.P c******” slogans, giving the *phhhbbtt* looks.
As we all sit through the boring overs when Mumbai Indians just refused to face the ball, there starts, well almost, a competition, in the middle of the match! It all started with a few bored spectators, making paper planes out of the “4” and “6” placards, and flinging them up in the air to reach the farthest possible end, or fly in the most exciting fashion ever ! Yes, THIS was our ‘entertainment’ (apart from the cheering squad, ofcourse!) for that one hour when Mumbai played (or otherwise).
Undoubtedly, the funniest part for the whole day (for me) was the time when they played music in between the overs! (Yes! That is what they do when we watch ads on TV. Phew! After years of research et al.) ‘Funny?’ you may ask. The answer would be obvious when you watch a mad enggineering crowd (and by that I mean all guys), dance (that is what they call it)! to the tunes of funky hindi bollywood songs. But nevertheless it was great fun.
Well, during the course of the match, with Gilchrist at his best in T20, and ofcourse today’s best, one lesson of my life- cheer for the player, not for the team!” Thus we all start cheering for Gilchrist, who swayed the match to his side ofcourse. With V.V.S Laxman hitting a six, my group starts pulling this guy’s tees –Rohit Kulkarni (name ‘mentioned’ on request) who promised a strip tease if Laxman hit a six! It was just FUN FUN all the while.
Gilly Gilly, Mumbai is so silly! (Random)
After the most expected and deserved win, the Deaccan team was finally felicitated during the presentation. However, we had lost interest in all that and were deciding on how to treat our stomachs (now hungry for almost 5 hours). AND. The best part for the day was just about to be heard by me. “We’re going to a dhaba to have diner.” –Abhishek (my adopted daddy for the day! Hehe). And me- *almost faints out of excitement* “ yayyyyyymmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
“mauuja hi mauuja” is what I was singing for like half and hour after that, dancing ‘wierdly’ in the middle of Nerul roads, at 11 in the night!
“eeeeeeeeeep! We’re at the dhaba!” said the excited me to myself. With just 2 of us girls, and 12 guys, the stares that came along were innate. As I enter, these guys were talking to the owner(I guess), and going by the way he was talking, I just walked out, banging into Abhishek, who laughs as he thought I got freaked out by the look of the dhaba. Hah! (do you really think that was the case?) Hmm.
Next I hear myself saying, “what a perfect time for electricity to kaboom!)…and we have candle light dinner, my brother by my side *winks*
Later, as we are all about to leave, I go out and join Abhishek and Alok outside the dhaba, just for a walk. (They refused to walk, is a different story though :P) So I go and stand in one corner, staring endlessly at the road, just to feel it, the atmosphere of such a place at 1.30 in the night, with few people out on the road, and you take a walk there all alone. The thought itself gave me kicks! However, however, however, my wish to go there had to wait as my social bee came out to talk to me, Rohit (who scratched his face while watching some football match the previous day out of frustration, so hard that it left a brown mark! This is one guy who loves his face- and probably the only one to do so...hehe).
Hence, my nightmares of me trapped on the same road, not being able to walk, since I couldn’t take a stroll there that night. Nevertheless, I ve decided to sneak out of my house once, at around 1 in the night from by balcony and run to the dhaba. I finally get to live my dream when I walk there , to sing out to some ‘rapchik’ numbers, all alone, mid-nights, highways, and somemore nightmares.
Love. Hugs. Tc.
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