Avery's Observation
It does not matter if you fall down as long as you pick up something from the floor while you get up.

Part II
DISCLAIMER: The following may be a repitition of the newspaper reports, but from my viewpoint, not from a newspaper reporter.
The last part concluded with the match just about to start. The pitch and the ground was dry inspite of heavy rains the previous nite. On the ptich was my uncle, waving to all the players and generally roaming around aimlessly like a drunken ant. India won the toss (luckily as always) and elected to bat. The sky settled down do a dull color quite contrastingly to the atmosphere in the stadium. There was this huge cheering as Sehwag and Sachin walked down from the pavilion to the pitch. The match started at 2:30pm sharp. The first over, inspite of the impressive run up shouting of the crowd for all the balls, only produced 3 runs. But the next few overs were blazing, with Sehwag getting ahead of himself and producing some good shots.
Once the match gathered momentum, I settled into more interesting things, like looking at who all had come to the control box... There was this Dawood style family right behind us - pretty menacing, I must say. And to my surprise Arvind Swamy of Bombay and Roja fame also came up. I myslef did some bird - watching (mostly pigeons flying around aimlessly in circles) and also some birdie - watching. Hey, Any self - respecting guy of my age would do that. The seats being on the posh side, it is of no surprise that there were some pretty good birdies fluttering here and there. While my binocolurs were mostly trained to the pitch, they occasionally did waver to the stands around me... Pretty time consuming, I msut say.
The weather still hadnt made up its mind. Apparently, the sky became brighter every time the score accelerated at a very fast rate. It vacillated twice or thrice like that. Once Sehwag was gone, there came Laxman; he too hit some shots. Then he went too. This was followed up by Dravid at 91. Then he too missed the ball. The match then remained on Yuvraj and Tendulkar; the latter inching slowly towards a half century.
A person does seem to get very hungry sitting there simply. The catering stalls there were on the costlier side, each item being priced at double its normal cost. That did not deter me (not that I had a lot to spend but because it was a one time affair). Not many culinary delites to savor too...
At around 4:30pm at the end of about 19 overs, the cloud settled to a vary dark grey. And the umpires called for floodlites. As they were getting warmed up, we had to wait a while. So I engaged myself in other activities as mentioned before. But still it was pretty boring. They resumed play at around 5pm and played for about half hour, till the 26th over. Then the Rain Gods went totally against us and produced the thunderstorm as promised. India was 141/3 and Sachin was 46 - So close, yet so far.
The covers were brought right on and werent removed at all; the prospect of the match continuing being darkened every minute. We had tea in the High Terrace consisting of uppuma and icecream. The rain did stop for some time; but as soon as they started removing the covers, it came back with greater force, much to the dismay of all. At around 7:30 pm, the refrees decided that they would abandon the match and the captains shook hands and left.
Sad, forlorn faces attached to drooping bodies started dispersing away from the stadium in the presence of a lite drizzle. Imagine the plight of others who would have spent close to about Rs 3k to come to the match and lose all of it due to a common occurence of nature's acts. Rain may be called a necessary evil today.

The next day was Diwali. I didnt buy any crackers. I hadnt bought crackers for a long time now - abt 4 years. Somehow after coming to college. I lost all interest in them. I spent the day doing some assignments which were given for the weekend and watching the idiot box. My nitetime was spent in the terrace watching others' money going up in colorful flames and patterns in the sky as well as loud sounds. Thats probably one reason why I dont celebrate Deepavali as others do.
Bye for now. Enjoy a nice weekend.

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