An American Yankee in Dada’s Pitch

An hour before the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Rajasthan Royals were to face off, I found myself in a wedding hall in southern Calcutta discussing floral arrangements. As my sister-in-law, her future husband, and his father discussed the merits of marigold over roses, I continued to nudge my wife about the time. Here I was, the American firangi (foreigner) in the land of Rabindranath Tagore and Rani Mukherjee performing the part of proper jamaya (son-in-law), a role I was about to play brilliantly to hide my more devious intention of attending an Indian Premier League match. Now, my entire façade was melting as I got trapped with the familial responsibility of matrimonial minutiae. Choosing the right bouquet for a Bengali-Gujarati wedding confused me more than explaining the nuances of cricket to a baseball fan. Wait, maybe, it’s the other way around.

As the debate raged on my compulsive desire to get to Eden Gardens was taking over. I had never been to a real cricket match before, so I naively thought getting there early would be like going to a baseball game during batting practice. I mean how cool would it be to catch a sixer hit by the likes of Sourav Ganguly or David Hussey? Alas, that childish fantasy would change along with a number of others. But, presently, my wife was doing her best job of ignoring me. Her little sister’s wedding festivities took precedence over the task of going to a match.

My sister-in-law, sensing my growing impatience, took mercy on my circumstance and made her choice. On the way out the door, my wife slapped me in the back of the head. “It’s my sister’s wedding,” she said. “And you’re ruining it with your stupid matches.”

I wondered if she would still accompany me to Eden Gardens or whether I would have to make the pilgrimage myself as the lonely English speaking, Bengali-bereft tourist lost in the City of Joy. I’m sure the price of the taxi ride would be tripled as soon as they heard my northeastern American accent. But she acquiesced and soon we were in an Ambassador heading up Chandra Bose Road in a caravan of clanging horns. Along the way we passed billboard after billboard of Shah Rukh Khan and his beloved Knight Riders. I desperately wanted a jersey from the Reebok store we passed by, but I’d have to wait. My obsession with collecting jerseys began in childhood when I, along with an entire generation of school kids, donned our NBA garb. I had graduated from the American sporting scene and started religiously wearing my sky blue Sahara India jersey when I fell in love with cricket 20 years later. My wife, of course, dismissed my fandom on account of mental derangement. “Only an idiot would wear a jersey with his last name on it,” she said. “Are you so dumb you forgot your surname?” The King Khan #12 jersey would be mine soon enough.

The evening was surprisingly cool, but the Calcutta humidity still left rivulets of perspiration falling onto my brow. The noise and hubbub of a city drifted by us. Finally, on the other side of the horizon I saw bright flood lights shining from a gigantic pole. I stared agog through the window. I hadn’t felt like this since I was seven and saw the Shea Stadium (the home ground of the New York Mets baseball team) for the first time. My wife shook me from my enchantment. I thought we were stuck in traffic, but I realized the cab had stopped. Time to get out and walk. I paid the driver. As my wife and I joined a cavalcade of Knight Rider fans on a trek to the stadium we could hear the loud echoes of “Om Shanti Om” (a popular Bollywood song). People were now sprinting. The match was about to start.

Police were everywhere - on horseback, in giant SUVs. I thought I was at an Obama rally. I stared at my tickets. My future brother-in-law had procured them for us the day before, but when I asked him to come with us he declined due to family obligations. You know that wedding thing. His loss. My gain. In line, men, children, and a surprising number of women tried to rush through the gates only to be stopped for security checks and frisking. I had brought a camcorder with me to record our experience failing to realize the strict edict the IPL had in place. When my wife opened up her purse, they saw the device. We had to convince eight security personnel to give us our tape back resorting to pleading that our honeymoon footage was on there. We lucked out.

I had been told by a number of people that Eden Gardens wasn’t the most fan friendly of stadiums especially after reading Soumya Bhattacharya’s cricket memoir “You Must Like Cricket”. When my wife and I finally located our seats we saw that the entire row was full. We would have to split two feet for sitting space between each other. The row above us was empty and we joined the ‘sit anywhere you want’ phenomenon and took a seat on a dirty stone slab bench. Eden Gardens was feeling as old as the Roman Colosseum. Our vantage point was along the long-off boundary hardly the ideal place to get any true appreciation of the game. That was one thing that I noticed right away was that I couldn’t get a sense of the game, the sounds of a bat smashing a ball, nor the body language of a fielder. Seemed much easier just to stare at the jumbotron and watch the action there. The stadium was far from full, but the fervour of the fans undulated. I couldn’t help but be swept up in all the hysteria.

Near us through the barbed fence were the infamous cheerleaders that I heard so much about prior to coming from India. I couldn’t understand the fuss. The Rajasthan cheerleaders so eerily resembled the cheerleaders from my high school in Orlando, Florida that I was having a sentimental remembrance of an old crush. When the teams were introduced the crowd went berserk like at a WWE match. And when those around me were dancing I couldn’t help but join in. My wife was already clapping and roaring. When Ganguly came to bat I don’t think I’ve ever heard such adulation from a crowd for a performer since Hanna Montana.

With the match underway, I noticed a bevy of police officers everywhere. I asked my wife why that was the case. Before she could answer I heard a voice from behind me. It was for Shah Rukh. Decked out in his Knight Rider jersey was 12-year-old Vihaan Hada, obsessed cricket nut and international political expert. Through the remainder of the match, Vihaan would school my wife and me about the IPL fever in the country. The first thing he did was offer me this observation about our botched seats. “Indians have no civic sense.” He’d been to a number of IPL matches and sat near Shah Rukh Khan in his previous visit. He was as curious about American sports as I was about cricket. As I tried to explain the dimensions of a baseball diamond, someone knocked a sixer and Vihaan and his friend Siddharth both stood up in their seats and waved their ‘sizzling six’ signs. Another Shah Rukh tune burst through the speakers and everybody was dancing again. Later in the match, Vihaan would ask me who I preferred, Hillary or Obama.

My first IPL encounter resembled a strange, surreal amalgam of various American sporting experiences. At first, I felt the familiarity of attending a college football game with all the Kolkata Knight Rider jerseys around me and the collective feeling of a unified city. Then something happens - a fight breaks out in the crowd and the police rush in and I’m at a baseball game at Yankee stadium. When a boundary is made and a ‘fundo four’ sign is thrown up I find myself at an NBA Slam Dunk contest.

The IPL has often been compared with the English Premier League in its structure and formation. Sure it’s commercialized, filmi, splash, glitz, glamour, and that ever hilarious word I’ve been reading all over, razzmatazz, but by god, the tone and ambience is quintessentially American. Is that why I’ve been enjoying all the tamasha so far? I can’t say for sure. Though I kept trying to find an American counterpart to offer me a comparable subtext, I simply couldn’t locate one. The IPL was another experience all together.

My wife and I didn’t stay for the entire match. We left early not from boredom or the disappearance of Shah Rukh, but jetlag. Before we departed though, I heard further up the stands a familiar twang I’d become so familiar with, the confused American. I walked up and met a group of newly-arrived Americans working at a local NGO. I asked them about their experience with cricket. This was there first cricket match so far. Did they understand the game? Nope. They didn’t need to.