Sunday 25th May was the day I was long waiting for. That weekend 2 friends of my friends came to pay a friendly visit from Pune, and that whole week I was just hoping that god won’t be so cruel to me that he will select this particular weekend and remind my (girl) friends that a guy lives in Mumbai who has been in peace for a bit long time than he should be. But well as it is said, nature has his way of doing things and it is best for you not to try to understand it.
So it was Saturday (24th May) morning woken up at 9:30am thanks to an hour long song of my doorbell, barely able to open my eyes watching them standing on my doorstep. I smiled at them with my inner conscious asking ‘why on earth you had to choose this weekend’ but my roommate had different opinion on this. Oh, almost forgot, many of you must be wondering – ‘What was so special that weekend? OMG Did he already knew that Mumbai Indians was going to have that spectacular win!!!’ but no, it’s far more entertaining, competitive and unfeigned (really had to look up in dictionary for this word :p) sporting event than IPL, some of you might have guessed, for those who are still thinking, it was UEFA Champions League Final. Ok, so now I see them sitting on my couch and they with my roommate started discussion on which disc to visit today night. My roommate knowing my plan of watching football at night insisted to go Blue Frog at Lower Parel, which would make it practically impossible for us to return Vashi before 1am. He was quiet assured that I won’t say no to our guests if they wished to visit it. But he grossly underestimated my stubbornness and my will power to witness this match. Then the fight started, it was 3 to 1 and I gave all the silly reasons that I could (including increasing crime rate in Mumbai) and tried to make them look serious concerns. And somehow I was able to convince them to go for bowling at Inorbit mall, have dinner and then play 3 patti until one has to sell oneself (sorry for exaggeration :p but could not resist adding it).
The day passed and Saturday night came, I knew I had a task in hand. A difficult task, but failing was not an option. We went to dinner and I made sure that we were back from before 10pm which would give us plenty of time to play cards and stress us out diluting our sharpness between the ears that will ultimately lead to start of an activity that would require least use of brain. Things were going according to my plan, and guess what I had exactly what was required – The Twilight saga. Awesome, the movie started and I slowly slipped away from the room.
Wearing my white jersey, I was sitting in hall, 1 foot away from TV in a position that cannot be explained, cursing Bale, then Ronaldo and so on when suddenly a voice came from behind. “Tu white wali team ke saath hai”, bloody hell its Real Madrid not “white wali team”, ‘ok’ came as acknowledgment. Then it was next question, “Woh red wali kaunsi team hai?? England ki team hai kya?? Par unki to sirf red colour ki t- shirt hai, red white koi combination hota hai kya” That moment I thanked god that FC Barcelona didn’t make it to final. Then started coming comments “Kaise baal hai iske”, “aise thodi hairband lagate hai woh bhi rubber ka lag raha hai”, “ye pura ganja kyn nahi ho jata, yun aadhe baal rakhe hai aadhe uda diye”. With 90 minutes over, it was extra time, and explaining them concept of extra time was easier than I thought (thanks to introducer of super overs in T20), but now I wonder what would have happened if there was a sudden death situation. The match was coming to its final moments and with such a dramatic end of match, emotions were at their zenith on both the sides of TV and then when I was thinking that the worst is over, came a masterstroke – “WOW!! uski body to Hrithik Roshan jaisi hai!!! Ye picture mein try kyun nahi karta.”
That was it for me, the glass was full and luckily the match was over. Even though my team won the champions league, I was feeling like what the Raptor in Jurassic Park 1 must have felt, just 1 weak point was needed to come out of the cage and charge!!