There are occasions where one has to carefully speak whilst discussing matters of sensitivity in public places.And in India, these matters relate to politics(especially now being the election season), movies, religious issues,..and of course cricket.I had one such similar experience today when i had been to a petty tea shop, during a short tea break from my work.
I was with 2 of my colleagues and i discuss cricket with one of them very regularly..This time the point of discussion was the most thrilling match of IPL 2009 till then, between the defending champs and a team owned by a bollywood superstar.
The match had gone to the wire and thanks to a flamboyant knock from former India captain, the champs who looked set to win, had to settle to a tie.However, it is a different matter that the champs went on to win the match in the deciding 'super over'.The bone of contention of our discussion was about the result.
This colleague of mine always had only one opinion about the former India skipper...contempt and i had immense respect for what the captain had done to Indian cricket,albeit all the controversies associated with him.My point of argument was that, without his knock they would have lost hopelessly, while he was hell bent on his point that he could not finish off the match,to which i agreed. However when he tried to mention that his innings was a fluke, i was tempted to make the discussion even more heated.
Since this was taking place in a busy street, there were many people around.And an auto rickshaw driver overheard us and poked his nose into this chat.I ignored him and so he spoke to my colleague and began blabbering about how the last over went and how good a young 18-yr old fast bowler had bowled it, getting out the former India captain.
So my colleague said " Yes he bowled really well..he's a good bowler".
In response to that, i stressed "He needs to get his bowling action right".
The response from my colleague was "We'll talk about this later"..
I wondered what made him say this. I now had glance at the other person,whom i had ignored and it was then that i realized why he joined the discussion.
We finished our tea as the guy was continuously chattering and making an eye contact, started walking back ot our office
My colleague then asked - "Do you know why i stopped the discussion?"
I responded in the affirmative. And then i told him that "Yes, but i was speaking to you not to the other guy.The bowler is good but his action looks really iffy".
Now then...the reason why the auto driver joined the discussion was because of the surname of the bowler(I need not elaborate much on this!!)
And lo...this was taking religious proportions out of an animated discussion on a sport..!!!
And thus i have decided to be extremely watchful of similar such experiences that i can possibly come across in the future...
But this is the case with people in India...!!! And certain questions pop up in my mind...
1. Why are sentiments associated badly with things, that should be dealt with logically??
2. Why would anybody want to interfere into a discussion happening between strangers ?? And that too without any invitation ?
3. Aren't people feared when speaking on certain topics, to people of different religious background??
Or rather do they really have to fear?? Are they not common people??
I am not sure whether i can get answers for these, but one thing for sure...
"Freedom of speech" is never the same anymore for me....!!
