Kol fans in war zone keep date with history

Kolkata: As the war raged around Dubai, and a different kind of combative action played out in Ahmedabad, Varsha Lohia, a yoga and gym instructor, sat inside Meadows apartment, near her flat in Jumeirah Lake Towers, opposite Dubai's Marina Beach, madly cheering the Men in Blue."Nine of us plonked on the sofas inside my friend Madhur's home, shouting ourselves hoarse, eyes glued to the television screen, forgetting everything else in the world during those nail-biting four hours last evening. In fact, amid the disruptions and the drone attacks, which we viewed right from our windows only a few days back, it was the World Cup that kept us going, making us look forward to life. Finally, the Cup came to us," said Lohia, who married into a Kolkata family and a Dubai resident for the last 24 years.
"With my father (Rohit, a real estate developer) away in Australia, and the airspace not functional, the past few days were not exactly blissful. But the cricket matches, from the semi-final onwards, made things somewhat easy," daughter Riya (19), a college-goer, echoed. After the big win, they ordered pizza. The grown-ups enjoyed Italian food indoors, while the kids and the pets — the Lohias' Shih Tzu, Nico — went out and celebrated with ice-creams.Rahul Bhattad, who has been in real estate in Dubai since 2008, watched the World Cup with his team of 30, comprising friends and colleagues, inside a villa in Damac Lagoons. His wife, Sunayna, and 10-year-old daughter, Maisha, were with him, cheering for Team India. "We always have a party whenever there's a high-adrenaline match. But around 15 people would gather at the most. This was the first time that 30 of us assembled. We realised we had to make this very special when India made it to the finals, at a time when drones and missiles pounded West Asia. From the first six overs of India batting and bowling, we knew the match was ours. Naturally, everyone was upbeat from the very beginning," Bhattad said. They had Indian and Chinese food, ordered in advance, in anticipation of the Indian victory. "Apart from the celebrations, it was a great way of showing community feelings, camaraderie, and instilling positivity and confidence among fellow Indians. Though our govt was of great support, keeping the system in order, there are Indian families who are here for two or three years, unaware that everything remains normal in crisis situations like the pandemic," Bhattad said. Miles away, in Abu Dhabi, Biswa Chatterjee, an engineer in an MNC, said: "We are facing evacuation almost every day, running to the basement whenever there is an alert. Thankfully, last night, there was no evacuation alert, and we watched the entire match uninterrupted, celebrating with home-cooked delicacies."