World Cup 2015: Team India's Silent Worshippers Pray the Loudest
Team India has a billion followers. Loud, colourful and passionate. At least most of them. For others, it is about making the most from the shockingly less that life has allowed their way.
He sits and sleeps right next to a constantly smiling Shikhar Dhawan. He spends the better part of the day ogling at the India opener who is dressed immaculately in a black suit. That the cricketer is advertising home and car loans on this giant billboard matters little to twelve-year-old Rajesh. Forget a home, he doesn't even have a roof over his head and yet, Dhawan's poster in the advertisement lets Rajesh dream under the smoky night sky of the capital - dream of cricket, World Cup and his favourite superstar.(Dhawan Ton Scripts India Win)
As a cricket-crazy country cheers its fifteen demi-gods Down Under, Rajesh - an orphan apparently left to fend for himself - does his best to say a silent prayer. He hardly ever knows when and where his team is. Once in a while, wiping cars with a filthy cloth for money at the busy Nehru Place traffic intersection, he overhears radio commentary from inside cars. That brief moment of joy is enough to last a lifetime. Not everyone, you see, have 'first-world problems' like slow 3G and poor DTH signals.(Sensational Shikhar Slams Ton)
Ask Rajesh what it is about cricket that puts a beam all over his unclean face and the young boy breaks into a shy grin. Underneath the ill-nurtured innocence though, there is a spark. "Mujhe cricket se zyaada kuch pasand nahi (I don't like anything better than cricket)," is his simple explanation. Ask him about his favourite player and he would point at the billboard. Ask him what the colour of the Indian jersey is and he would point to Lays potato chips masala flavor - a packet flung out from one of the passing cars. But ask him about his favourite team and he would yell out to a bunch of urchins on the other side of the road - each more disheveled in appearance than the next. And quite dangerously black from the car fumes. Bleeding blue, it's clear, is a state of mind.
For a national team that has supporters from all walks of life - in offices and in pubs, in cities and in villages, in temples, mosques and churches, Rajesh and his scruffy friends may not mean the world. For these children though, the national team does mean the world. And so much more.
Every billboard, each disregarded leaflet and on every newspaper that carries a photo of a cricketer, there lies a treat for all the Rajeshs that fade away on the streets of India, each day, every day. They are indeed the silent worshippers of Team India, one's who pray the loudest!
As for Rajesh, he wasn't seen on the day Dhawan slapped a ton against South Africa. Here's hoping news of his hero's knock reaches him somehow.