So, you don’t like cricket…?!

World Cup fever is building and as cricket is religion for most of India, B-Town isn’t taking any chances with big movie releases…most blockbusters are being scheduled before or after.

Doesn’t matter if they end up eating into each others’ profits, releasing barely a week after one another — filmmakers figure it’s still better than trying to go up against the national obsession.
Random Question: what happens if (could it actually be? In cricket-mad India?) you’re not a fan of ‘the gentleman’s game’? (This might, maybe, apply more to the women — still to meet (an Indian) man who is not transfixed by the drama on the pitch, no matter the drama in his personal life/workplace/other leaves him unmoved).

Would you still be allowed entertainment that’s even halfway entertaining while the rest of the world is being entertained by sport? There are smaller releases which might surprise us. And other sport, like perhaps the smaller tennis tourneys. Or then the small screen, which still has the Bollywood biggies vying for eyeballs on air. Or… let’s see, the same diktat (from fans to non-fan spouses) doing the rounds of spam mail when footie fever was on, last year/every four years — excerpts:

• During the World Cup the TV is mine at all times.
• If you see me angry/upset because my team is losing DO NOT say ‘Get over it, it’s only a game’. If you say these things, you will make me angrier, and I will love you less.
• You can talk to me when the commercials are on.
• Tell your friends not to have babies, parties, gatherings that require my attendance because I will not go, I will not go, I will not go.

(Not paraphrasing it all, but you get the drift.) Could that be entertainment, these relentless e mail charters? Or then, really, when you can’t beat them, join them! Even if you’re not a fan!

Because cricket today, despite controversy, has come a long way from the time I used to wickedly further chaabi my dad (normally even tempered, reduced to almost sobbing in rage and frustration in front of the telly over a particularly poor performance by our men in blue), “Papa, you can trust the Indian team to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, na?!” But it isn’t really like that anymore is it? We have an

ambitious captain and a fairly young, hungry team — would it be so bad watching them play? Could they — Would they (?!) this time, entertainment apart, be able to make believers out of us all?!

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World Cup mania and in the swing of celebratory anticipation, marriage season too. Tinseltown saw Imran-Avantika, Sportsville had Lara-Hesh… up next — Politico Varun Gandhi will wed in March, and then Brit royal William weds fiancee Kate in April. In fact, WillKat’s wedding may be billed the big tourist draw but a recent poll there actually has Will’s brother Prince Harry topping the list for ‘most popular fantasy husband’.