Column

I’m crying. Thanks to Anil Singh and Vivek Singh of Procam Sports. I am weeping like Paris Hilton in a confessional. You see every year at this time the Singh brothers kick off the Indian Rugby match. The idea, a noble one of course, is to get ‘A’ grade film stars to play the match. This is an exercise in futility. As all the actors are busy playing rugby (or some such similar physical contact sport) with the actresses, the Singh brothers have to make do with the likes of me. Rugby, an otherwise exhilarating game, is a bit of a dampener if you actually play it.

The usual suspects filed out with varied degrees of experience. Bharat Dabholkar, in preparation, had twice wrestled with his boxer dog last week and lost. Anish Trivedi, after great contemplation, had his legs waxed to increase his aerodynamics-mainly to run away from the ball and into the bar.

Ash Chandlier, who insists he’s played one season at the NFL (in America), had on the black stockings he had borrowed from his ballet class. Suresh Kalmadi got into the spirit of the game with all his might with both his body guards.

Dhanraj Pillai, Viren Rasquinha and Punella Gopichand used only one leg so as to not to outrun any of the worthies. A couple of actual rugby players like playful Labradors did all the running and fetching. The match was kicked off by his worthiness, his eminence Mr Chaggan Bhujbal, who off the record had not been signed intoat the time of writing. As the game progressed, I, nurtured with an absolute love for sports, brought my passion to the fore with a well-thought out plan.

Step 1: To try and be as far from the ball as possible.
Step 2: To try and stay as far as possible from opposition players without moving to China.
Step 3: The most important thing if you want to survive a game of rugby, was to make sure you ignore your team-mates every time your name is called out. This can be done by looking the other way or perpetually tying your shoelace.

However, despite all my precautions I continue to get injured at these annual massacres. This time Anil Singh managed to stamp my hand at the post match celebrations. Though what on earth were his feet doing on the ground at that time only he can answer.

While I dosed, our team won the match, and I immediately broke into wild celebrations by slinking away with somebody else’s kit bag.

As the sun sank somewhere in the North, super athlete Kunal Vijayakar took my mind off rugby with the two most commonly used words in the Vijayakar language, ‘let’s eat’.