BRIEF CASE: Ecstatic Orgies

September 24, 2007, 11.25 p.m. “Don’t use the word orgies this time”. It was a familiar voice on the phone, that of a journalist friend’s. “What are you talking about?” i growled, irritated, harassed by deadline pressure and the numerous vagaries of a journalist’s profession. A wicked laugh later, my friend repeated: “I said, don’t say orgies today”.That jerked my weary mind into action. My mind travelled back to March 1985. India had won the Rothmans Cup at Sharjah. Cricket fans in Nagpur, where i worked, had gone bonkers. I wrote ‘Ecstatic orgies in city’, thinking it was an apt headline to describe the brouhaha.
The next morning, i was summoned to the news editor’s cabin. He was anything but ecstatic. It was a proper dressing down. My pal had recalled this anecdote years later - on the day India won the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup - to pull my leg. Cut to 24 years ago. A hot, powerless June night had forced me out to the front yard of our house. On such nights, there was not much to do in a township except staring at the sky. I was spying the coming and going of comets and meteors when in the distance i heard the crackle of a radio. Moving away with the crackle were three shadows talking animatedly. Now what could excite somebody on a dark, dreary night like this? I decided to find out.
“Er, sirs, excuse me, but can you tell me what’s on the radio?” i asked. “India has won the final”, one of them replied. “But which hockey match was played today?” i enquired. I could have been forgiven for asking that question. There was no TV in our remote township, and the paper would land three days late. “Not hockey; India has won the cricket World Cup”, another said. “Kyun mazaak karte ho, sir”, i said, incredulous. “Don’t believe us? Hear this”. He thrust the transistor into my hands.
I put it to my ears. It was the familiar voice on BBC announcing how lowly placed India had brought down the mighty West Indies, which had stars like Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts and Michael Holding on its team. I thanked the trio profusely, and sprinted home yelling, my limbs flailing. That was on June 25, 1983.