Sunday, July 30, 2006

32. A PIOUS KID AT KASIAPURAM - 3

PIETY AT KASIAPURAM

Immediately after appa’s wedding, the little family comprising the young newly married couple and their child, that is I, settled in a house in Madurai. But the connection with the birthplace and its attraction for me was there for a very long time. Though we visited Kasiapuram only during the vacations, the visits had a great impact on me. Virtually there used to be a great magnetic pull towards it, at least till I reached my twenties. The nights before the travel by train to my native place were always sleepless. I would try to gather as many things as possible for the friends there at the village. Glass marbles that I took from Madurai were attractions to friends in the village. In the same way the things I gathered from the village were great attractions to friends back in Madurai. The latter used to wonder at the kal kundu, handmade stone marble that I would get in exchange of glass marbles. If I tried to smuggle to village such novelties from Madurai, father would bring Wren & Martin grammar book without my knowledge to give me special coaching during the vacation. Such sessions would make me feel that appa was tyrant and spoilsport of my vacation.

Probably till I reached my teens, days in Kasiapuram had more religious activities. The family-run school was also used as the local church of the village. By the time I got shifted to Madurai the two aunts who were taking care of me when I was in the village had left Kasiapuram. The elder one became a nun and the younger one got married and left. In their place were now two other aunts, father’s youngest sisters, were ruling the roost! Of these two, the elder one was very close and affectionate towards me and she too became a nun later. Her name is Rose. Rose aunty, a very pious one, used to carry out all the church activities. During the vacations not only our families, but two other families would land up at Kasiapuram. Total number of cousins from these families would be fairly large and we were considered by the locals as special since we had come from big towns. All these cousins would gather every evening at the school-cum-church for prayers along with the local children. In the months of May, Rose aunty would arrange special prayers for St. Mary, since we, Catholics, devote the month of May to Mary.

On every evening in May, all the kids from the Christian families would gather in the church and from there we would march out and would visit a Christian family. There we would have a little prayer and a few devotional songs. Rose auntie’s voice used to be very sweet. She would lead the ‘chorus’ – a real chorus since we, the kids, would sing in our own ragam and timing! The best part of this would be the march. There was no electricity in the village on those days. So we would carry a hurricane light and one candle. Treading through the dark lanes of the village to reach our spot would be very hard even to imagine for those who were born and brought up after electricity became common. The candle bearer would lead the group. Invariably some would falter in dark and would fall down. All other kids would enjoy at the fall of one of themselves. Such skirmishes and mischief would never distract our Rose aunty; she would be in her own world of singing and praying. Murukku and black watery coffee made with jaggery supplied at the end of each such prayer meeting at different houses were the routine things given to the prayer group. Still I remember the taste of those two and how much we enjoyed them.

One another interesting and different thing in Kasiapuram was the weekly market or chandai. In those days every big village would have some weekday as the chandai day. Varieties of merchandise, starting from grains, seed grains, agricultural utilities and such vital materials for the populace to novelties like glass bangles would be brought on that day. Usually such chandais would be in some common place earmarked for that. Visiting the chandai at late evenings with aunts or appamma is still fresh in my memory. This chandai was just a few houses away from ours and one could hear the noise from this chandai. I don’t know why I imagined then that the noise from the chandai sounded to me like that of an ocean. Probably a matter of perspectives!


Now for the bad thing. It was my first experimentation with smoking. There may be genetically something in me, which made me always attracted to the ‘aroma’ of smoke – whether it is from a beedi or a cigarette. Till this minute I have that weakness inbuilt in me. Though it is now more than one and half decade that I stopped smoking still the love for it continues. It is right when it is said that a smoker is always a smoker. During one of our summer visits to Kasiapuram a big jing-bang got together and ventured an outing with the sole aim of stealing some nice moments of smoking. We would have been around 6 in number. First day it was in the tamarind-thoppu. One by name Johnson not only initiated but also volunteered to supply the much-needed beedis and a matchbox. In our village beedi-making is a big profession for many, young and old, male and female. So every home had people who were in this trade. But it was considered below our dignity in our families and so none in our households was involved in this. So it had to be somebody who would be ready to sneak a bundle of beedi for us. And it was Johnson.

We all went into the interior of the thoppu, which was next to our school. Sitting around the trunk of a big tree and trying to hide ourselves from any passerby and at the same time trying to light our beedis in that windy condition – all these made our adventure more exhilarating. If we saw something moving we would all douse our beedis and run away in search of newer and safer places. Mostly we were running around than smoking. So when the session was over we felt that we did not enjoy it at all. So I and two of my cousins – one younger and another elder to me – decided that we should try the costlier thing, the cigarettes. First we planned to pool our resources. Once that was done the next thing was selecting a safe hideout. We did select a very dangerous spot. It was the well where we were trying to learn swimming that summer. It was quite away from our village and it was on the way to the next bigger village on the main road, Alangulam. We had to have a purchasing spot other than our village shops since news of the purchase in any shop in our village would immediately reach our respective families. So we had a meticulous planning. We chose a shop. We decided that the buyer would be youngest among the three of us. He was not a town-guy like me and the other cousin. So he could always escape with the excuse that the cigarettes were for some other relative of him. At least that is what I told him and made him buy the cigarettes. It was a full pack of Berkley cigarettes. Of course with a matchbox. We straightaway went to the chosen well and the water was a few feet deep from the top and so we climbed down and chose a cozy corner of the well. We settled comfortably and started to get on with our job in hand. Only then we found that it was not that easy for amateurs like us to light the cigarette and have nice puffs. Each step was very hard. Lighting the cigarette against the winds, we never imagined, would need so much skill. Then keeping the cigarette tip dry was absolutely impossible. Even before we lit the cigarette the tip would be fully drenched with our saliva and had to be pinched off. Getting a few puffs was a race against time, as the tips were soaked with our saliva sooner than we puffed!

Anyway, we were in our own world coaching, encouraging and chiding each other. We forgot the world above us, I mean, the world outside the well. We were simply ‘frogs in a well’. Then we had two of our cousins, very seniors to us, descending on us from nowhere. We were caught red-hot-cigarette handed. They scolded and more than that blackmailed us saying that they would report the matter to our families. And that was like sentencing us to the ropes. We pleaded. Then they proposed a deal. We were asked to write on the cardboard of the cigarette box itself a promise that we would never smoke thereafter at all in our whole lives. And then the cousins tore that into very small tiny pieces and threw them into the well and told us that we could smoke only if we join all the bits of papers; else we should never smoke. We made the solemn promises. It appears that of the three of us, my two cousins kept that promise but I continued to smoke throughout my school days whenever there was a chance. I liked it so much. During the end of my degree course I became a habitual smoker and continued that thing for 26 long years, till 6th January,1990.

The late teens had one more attraction in this village life. It was the amman-kodai, the annual festival celebrated for ten days. Though our village was small it had a big temple disproportionate to the local population. But during this festival people from all over the State, especially those who migrated to Chennai would turn up in large numbers. Festive mood would be in every individual and in every nook and corner of the village. Dance programmes would go long into the night. Don’t imagine that there would be grand stage for these dances. It would be all in open spaces in and around the temple. In those days dance in such festivals meant only the folk dance, karagam. We would take vantage points so that we would be able to have an eye on the girls for whom we had a crush or vice versa. Truly the girls would be very romantic during that festival time. Stolen glances and secret signs would fly across the dancing floor. But once the festival was over, they would turn blind eye to us. We had to wait for the next year for the romantic period.

Thus it was church-related joyful days till I was ten, then it was visits to chandai and our hunting that made our village visits joyful, and lastly in the late teens and early college days it was this annual festival that brought cheers to the vacation in our village. But all these faded and I was becoming more and more a town boy because in the early years at least twice we visited the village, a short visit during Christmas and a longer one during summer. As years passed, we stopped going for the Christmas. Visits during summer also got slowly reduced

Saturday, July 29, 2006

31. 2 EARLY DAYS AT KASIAPURAM

MY VERY EARLY DAYS AT KASIAPURAM

After mother’s demise, father lived as single in Madurai while I was left with my grandma – I called her appamma – at my father’s native village, Kasiapuram. It was just a few miles away from my mother’s place. I very vaguely remember how I was doted by appamma and two of the 4 sisters of my father. These two aunts were then working as teachers in our own school run by our family. Pattaiya, that is my grandfather, was the one who started that school, the very first in that area. If I remember right, it was St.Joseph’s Elementary School. I remember my aunts taking me by hand to the school everyday since appamma used to be busy doing her daily score at the fields. How vividly I visualize even now the dawn-to-dusk hard manual work the womenfolk at home did. Father used to visit me now and then during his vacations. What stands out during those visits, firstly, as soon as he came home my aunts would lift me in their arms and weep inconsolably. The sight of my father would open the floodgate of their grief on the demise of my mother and my ‘motherless status’. Not knowing the reason for their grief, I would also cry along with them. In those first few minutes, a pall of gloom used to hang over the whole household. Secondly, father used to bring something or other every time he paid those visits. The usual and much-expected thing would be grapes. What we used to get in those days mostly were green, sour grapes. But the grapes father used to bring were black, sweet and juicy and were called Hyderabad-grapes. During one such visit he brought me a tri-cycle. Probably half of the kids of the village should have been around it when the news of its arrival broke out. None would have seen such a cute thing in their lives. I very well recollect that it arrived well packed with flannel tapes. Body painted in bright green, solid wheels in bright red and black rubber handle grips. None in the village – leave alone the children – would have seen such a cute little thing. It was a treat to watch in those days. I was too young to pedal it myself. I would simply sit on my tricycle and there would be severe competition to push me around in our backyard. Duraisamy, a distant cousin of mine was my favored one to push me around. For many years whenever I visited my village I would try to meet him. In the latter years I always found him sitting in a petty shop in an inebriated condition. A five or ten rupee note would in such times make him very happy. One day I got my right toe in the wheel in one such push-me-around sessions. Blood scared everybody and after that accident none came forward to treat me with the ‘royal pushing’. It compelled me to learn to pedal myself. Then I was free to ride around the whole village. Probably in the history of our school, for very many years mine was the only vehicle parked under the trees during the class hours. When I leave in my cycle to our house, there would be scores of people watching a little kid majestically riding his tri-cycle. A real cynosure!

This cycle remained in the family for nearly forty years – that too in full use – as the ‘family tri-cycle’. Only thing, my daughters were denied the chance of enjoying it while other children of my other sisters ‘inherited’ it and rode around. Another novelty of those years in our village home was a mechanical-gramophone – the only of its kind for miles around in that area. My aunts would play the very few records we had only on very special occasions or for visitors coming only for the purpose of seeing and listening to the ‘musical wonder’ of those years. It was a proud possession of the family for a long time since electricity came very very late to our village. Most of my childhood memories belong to those ‘powerless’ days.

So went those days in Kasiapuram. Everybody in the village would be a relative. Every relative petted me. Everybody had a soft corner for me since I was a motherless child. This should have done a lot to my psyche at that age itself. It was one type of recognition I got for many years.

There was a lady-teacher in our school. She was close to my aunts. She was from a nearby village, called Kuruvankottai or something. Everyday she used to come to our home to take her lunch with my aunts. Though her face got completely erased from my mind I still remember her as a very fair, slim and beautiful lady. I don’t remember why and how it happened – probably people were talking about that – I very much wanted that she should become my mother. I don’t know how that proposal got fizzled out. Then comes father’s wedding. I have never found an answer as to why and how I remember many of the things in my life very clearly after that wedding while most of the earlier happenings are all so foggy.

Well, coming back to the day of father’s wedding, inside that village church it was a sort of triangle – my father in front near the altar, I, on the side of church in that big chair and the entrance through which the bride was expected any moment. She then entered. She was in a golden yellow pattu saree, thickly brocaded with golden jaree. Seeing a Christian bride with a veil over her head should have been a novelty for the local people. A group of kids followed the bride marveling her dress. She looked quite pretty but the face had seriousness in it. Probably it was due to the bridal tension. In the latter years also she carried that perpetual seriousness on her face. I always liked her smiling face but never that seriousness-laden face. The wedding was in my mother’s village, since father’s new bride was a close relative of my mother. I was never able to remember any other person, especially the relatives of mother attending the wedding.

It is more like a movie with a lot of cut-shots. Because the next thing that I am able to recollect was the wedding procession through those village streets towards the bride’s house. It was in an open car. I was seated sandwiched between the couple – appears very odd even now to me! Could be compulsion of ….I don’t know what. There were people looking at me during the procession. Those faces showed mixed feelings.

The next cut-shot is father’s village in the late evening of the wedding day. In this scene, the whole village had converged on to my pattaiya’s house as was the custom of those days. There were a few petro-max lamps brightening the celebration. Kids were hovering around those lamps – another novelty for them. The house, to the village standards of those years, was comparatively a large one – one of the few storied houses in the whole village. There were three entrances. I was sitting on the steps on the southern side, a side entrance. I was engrossed looking at the urchins playing around the hissing lamps competing with the buzzing insects. Someone from behind touched my shoulders. I turned and looked up. It was father in pattu dhothi. He sat near me. He asked me who was the bride to me. I said “chithi”. That was what I was told. Father said, “She will be hereafter your amma and you should call her so. Okay? “. I said yes and kept that word always. Not for the namesake. I meant it always. Visitors to our home in the later years never could find any difference. But later…. It all changed…. by a quirk of fate or what? Anyway, that’s another story altogether.

Friday, July 28, 2006

30. MY APPA'S WEDDING THAT I ATTENDED -1

MY APPA'S WEDDING THAT I ATTENDED.


When I look back, the earliest memory of my childhood is my appa’s wedding. Yes, it was the wedding of my father. I vividly remember most of the details. It is like ruffling through an old family photo album. The photos are old, sepia-toned retaining the old-world flavor. The images in the photos when I look at them start moving back and forth in time. It may be like a sequence of still photographs. But when I look at each one of them, I get a short length movie running in my mind. It absorbs me into the picture, which by this time gets animated. I become part of it. Things move around me. I move around things and people in each photograph.

Among such photos the very fist one shows the interior of a village church. My father, the bridegroom, is in a cream colored suit of shining gabardine. He is kneeling at the pew and praying or so it seems. The bride is yet to arrive. I have not seen her yet. I’m inside a big chair specially provided for me, since chairs in those years were rare commodities, that too in village churches. I don’t know how was it for my father, for me the waiting was filled with suspense and a sort of thrill. I’ll describe the wedding later, since I have to provide a few more details to fill the gap.

Though father’s wedding is, as I said, the earliest memory, there were few other things in my memory bank. They, however, are not as clear as the wedding and the subsequent events. They have a veil hung over them. Like moth eaten photographs. They are not clear. Probably that is compensated by the sound track – the oft-repeated narration of elders in the family rambling into my ears during my growing years. What elders said help bring back some foggy memories. Elders used to say a lot about my mother. But unfortunately I don’t remember anything about her. However hard I try I don’t get even a hazy image of her. After my birth, I am told, she became very sick. Got tuberculosis. A dreaded disease in those days. She was given some treatment in Madurai. A few months before her death, for some time she was in Madurai Government Hospital as an inpatient. In my later age, I remember some of my relatives were trying to identify the block and ward in the concrete jungle of that hospital. I wantonly avoided knowing it. I don’t know why I felt that way. When her condition became worse, she wanted to spend her last days in her village house. So she was taken to her birthplace, a village named Kurumbalperi. Both of us were there for a month or two. During these days she tried to keep me away from her fearing I would also catch the disease. From what others recall, I should have been a big nuisance to her. Anyway her painful days were over when I was hardly 2½ years old. It occurred early in the morning around 4.30 a.m.

I had a periyamma – Madurai periyamma – who used to be very fond of me when I was a kid. She was in Madurai and she was pregnant then. On the day of my mother’s death, this periyamma had a dream. In the dream mother in a complete white dress came to her with a piece of sugarcane in her hand. She took a bite of it. Chewed and spat it. Then she said to periyamma “ Akka, I’m going. Look after my son”. And then she drifted off, rather floated off. Within few hours she received the telegram informing the demise of my mother. This had been quite often repeated by my periyamma. I don’t know what to call this. Calling it a trumped up incident looks unethical and ungrateful to the memory of my periyamma. So, though I grew up wondering about the rationality of this, I was never willing to question it. This is one of the two incidents in my life, which has a supernatural touch. About the other one, I will talk later.

After mother’s demise, father lived as single in Madurai while I was left with my grandma – I called her appamma – at my father’s native village, Kasiapuram. It was just a few miles away from my mother’s place. I very vaguely remember how I was doted by appamma and two of the 4 sisters of my father. These two aunts were then working as teachers in our own school run by our family. Pattaiya, that is my grandfather, was the one who started that school, the very first in that area. If I remember right, it was St.Joseph’s Elementary School. I remember my aunts taking me by hand to the school everyday since appamma used to be busy doing her daily score at the fields. How vividly I visualize even now the dawn-to-dusk hard manual work the womenfolk at home did. Father used to visit me now and then during his vacations. What stands out during those visits, firstly, as soon as he came home my aunts would lift me in their arms and weep inconsolably. The sight of my father would open the floodgate of their grief on the demise of my mother and my ‘motherless status’. Not knowing the reason for their grief, I would also cry along with them. In those first few minutes, a pall of gloom used to hang over the whole household. Secondly, father used to bring something or other every time he paid those visits. The usual and much-expected thing would be grapes. What we used to get in those days mostly were green, sour grapes. But the grapes father used to bring were black, sweet and juicy and were called Hyderabad-grapes. During one such visit he brought me a tri-cycle. Probably half of the kids of the village should have been around it when the news of its arrival broke out. None would have seen such a cute thing in their lives. I very well recollect that it arrived well packed with flannel tapes. Body painted in bright green, solid wheels in bright red and black rubber handle grips. None in the village – leave alone the children – would have seen such a cute little thing. It was a treat to watch in those days. I was too young to pedal it myself. I would simply sit on my tricycle and there would be severe competition to push me around in our backyard. Duraisamy, a distant cousin of mine was my favored one to push me around. For many years whenever I visited my village I would try to meet him. In the latter years I always found him sitting in a petty shop in an inebriated condition. A five or ten rupee note would in such times make him very happy. One day I got my right toe in the wheel in one such push-me-around sessions. Blood scared everybody and after that accident none came forward to treat me with the ‘royal pushing’. It compelled me to learn to pedal myself. Then I was free to ride around the whole village. Probably in the history of our school, for very many years mine was the only vehicle parked under the trees during the class hours. When I leave in my cycle to our house, there would be scores of people watching a little kid majestically riding his tri-cycle. A real cynosure!

This cycle remained in the family for nearly forty years – that too in full use – as the ‘family tri-cycle’. Only thing, my daughters were denied the chance of enjoying it while other children of my other sisters ‘inherited’ it and rode around. Another novelty of those years in our village home was a mechanical-gramophone – the only of its kind for miles around in that area. My aunts would play the very few records we had only on very special occasions or for visitors coming only for the purpose of seeing and listening to the ‘musical wonder’ of those years. It was a proud possession of the family for a long time since electricity came very very late to our village. Most of my childhood memories belong to those ‘powerless’ days.

So went those days in Kasiapuram. Everybody in the village would be a relative. Every relative petted me. Everybody had a soft corner for me since I was a motherless child. This should have done a lot to my psyche at that age itself. It was one type of recognition I got for many years.

There was a lady-teacher in our school. She was close to my aunts. She was from a nearby village, called Kuruvankottai or something. Everyday she used to come to our home to take her lunch with my aunts. Though her face got completely erased from my mind I still remember her as a very fair, slim and beautiful lady. I don’t remember why and how it happened – probably people were talking about that – I very much wanted that she should become my mother. I don’t know how that proposal got fizzled out. Then comes father’s wedding. I have never found an answer as to why and how I remember many of the things in my life very clearly after that wedding while most of the earlier happenings are all so foggy.

Well, coming back to the day of father’s wedding, inside that village church it was a sort of triangle – my father in front near the altar, I, on the side of church in that big chair and the entrance through which the bride was expected any moment. She then entered. She was in a golden yellow pattu saree, thickly brocaded with golden jaree. Seeing a Christian bride with a veil over her head should have been a novelty for the local people. A group of kids followed the bride marveling her dress. She looked quite pretty but the face had seriousness in it. Probably it was due to the bridal tension. In the latter years also she carried that perpetual seriousness on her face. I always liked her smiling face but never that seriousness-laden face. The wedding was in my mother’s village, since father’s new bride was a close relative of my mother. I was never able to remember any other person, especially the relatives of mother attending the wedding.

It is more like a movie with a lot of cut-shots. Because the next thing that I am able to recollect was the wedding procession through those village streets towards the bride’s house. It was in an open car. I was seated sandwiched between the couple – appears very odd even now to me! Could be compulsion of ….I don’t know what. There were people looking at me during the procession. Those faces showed mixed feelings.

The next cut-shot is father’s village in the late evening of the wedding day. In this scene, the whole village had converged on to my pattaiya’s house as was the custom of those days. There were a few petro-max lamps brightening the celebration. Kids were hovering around those lamps – another novelty for them. The house, to the village standards of those years, was comparatively a large one – one of the few storied houses in the whole village. There were three entrances. I was sitting on the steps on the southern side, a side entrance. I was engrossed looking at the urchins playing around the hissing lamps competing with the buzzing insects. Someone from behind touched my shoulders. I turned and looked up. It was father in pattu dhothi. He sat near me. He asked me who was the bride to me. I said “chithi”. That was what I was told. Father said, “She will be hereafter your amma and you should call her so. Okay? “. I said yes and kept that word always. Not for the namesake. I meant it always. Visitors to our home in the later years never could find any difference. But later…. It all changed…. by a quirk of fate or what? Anyway, that’s another story altogether.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

29. WORLD CUP - MY DIARY- TRIVIA

TRIVIA:

**********During the matches there was a row of persons wearing bright orange colored vests. These people would be standing around the stadium facing the audience,while the fierce battle for supremacy would be going on at their backs. Any lively action at the ground would be reflected by the vociferous audiences. But these persons would stoically stand guard, never getting tempted to turn to see what was happening at their backs. When the whole world was watching the match they would be turning their backs to the play. So near they were, yet so far they were from the matches! How would they have selected people for this unenviable job? Did they pick up avid cricket fans from India?

Even for any one dayer one could find a big crowd on the roadside teashops and shop windows to witness the telecast of these matches. So is our interest in Cricket. But no such thing was sighted in all these days of world over football fever. Our Indians stoically kept away from such ‘trivial sports’!


=============================== = =======================



*********People say that God is Omniscient and all that. It seems It knows past, present and future.
During the football match days I used to wonder sitting before a TV at every match. The questions in my mind would be always who would win the match and whom did I want to win and all that suspense. This feeling heightened as the championship proceeded. There would be a lot of suspense and at the end of the every match according to my expectations and wishes I would be either feeling happy or sad. Anyway that sort of gripping suspense till the last minute keeps the interest in the whole championship and in every game.

But I used to wonder – If there is a God, naturally It would know the results for every match even before the match starts! And also the final winner of the championship even before the football fever starts for the whole world. So no suspense to the Almighty! Right?

What a boring ‘life’ it would be for the Almighty – a life devoid of any suspense, a long and boring one ! POOR GOD!!

Sunday, July 16, 2006

28. WORLD CUP - MY DIARY-page 12

ITLAY vs. FRANCE

RESULT: 5 : 3 (PSO)


Much water has flown under the bridge. Once the final was over the mood to complete this diary also waned. Both the teams went in full steam from the first whistle and an early goal by France thru a penalty made it all the more fierce. Then came the equalizer within the regular time. So it was 1 : 1 and the game went into extra time. There were two fierce head-butts from Zidane, the French captain. One during the second half and it hit the horizontal bar and the Italian goal survived. But in the second butt the victim did fall flat. That was a brutal head-butt by Zidane onto the chest of Matterizi, the Italian player. Zidane was duly shown the red card and was sent just a few minutes before the match came to an end after the extra time. Then in the penalties the first shots by each team was scored but the second and third shots were missed by the French while it was all so easy for the Italians. And victory was theirs.

The Zidane affair is being discussed for long now and since Matterizi has made some foul and personal remarks, the world has gone with Zidane and felt sad for the way he left the ground since it is the last in the long and glorious march of the French in the last three championships.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

27. WORLD CUP - MY DIARY-page 11

SECOND SEMIFINAL

FRANCE vs. PORTUGAL

RESULT: 1 : 0 (P)ZIDANE

More than the players of Portugal, Scolari the name of the team’s coach was more in the media. He is considered to be the top person as a terrific coach and his teams were always on the winning streak…etc…etc… but that place of pride was snatched this time. Portugal lost to France thru a penalty goal awarded for a foul in the Portugal’s goal mouth on Henry. The penalty awarded was taken by the Zidane. No nerves. No external show of feelings. Just a plain kick. Ball safely traveled to the left corner of the net, escaping the outstretched hands of the Portugal goal keeper.

As any match where the fate is decided by penaltyFIFA 2006 or shoot outs, this game also was a disappointing one for me. There were at least one more incident at the French goal mouth which raised a question: why not a penalty now to Portugal. Anyway the match was over and French team sails into the finals. Portugal’s C. Ronaldo showed his mettle. I liked what I saw in him.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

26. WORLD CUP - MY DIARY-page 10

FIRST SEMI-FINAL

GERMANY vs. ITALY

RESULT: 0 : 0; ET - 0 : 2

From the very first whistle the match went into top gear. The ball was consistently visiting both the ends. The custodians proved their mettle time and again, especially the German, Oliver. For both the teams there were many a thrilling escapes. Especially for the Italians it would have been a great heartburn when for two successive shots just at the first few minutes of extra time the posts came to their rescue. The players also showed their skills so well that rough and unnecessary fouls were much less. The Italians had a higher percentage of ball possession but the opportunities created by both the teams were almost even and so the whole match was a nail biting experience.

The full time play did not bring out any results and the game went into extra time. The first 15 minutes were over again without any result. Then in the second half of the extra time also minutes passed without any result. But in the real 'dying' moments the German goal fell by a concerted effort of Italian forwards. The Germans immediately surged towards their opponents' goal mouth but it was only a vain attempt. But within the next few seconds – in the real last seconds of the game -another goal for Italians. German's fate was sealed.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

25. WORLD CUP - MY DIARY-page 9

QUARTER FINALS:

30th June 2006

GERMANY vs ARGENTINA

RESULT: 1 : 1; 4 : 2 (PSO)

Two disappointments in this match. One, Messi did not play in this game, I don’t know why. I have not seen him playing so far and everyone is talking about him. I missed him. Second, Argentinean game was just at par with the Germans, not any notch above them. Two equal sides fought for supremacy and of course that was quite absorbing. Both the goals scored came in the second half and after that the extra time did not bring in any definite result. So the game went for penalty shoot out and Germans won.

ITALY vs UKRAINE

RESULT: 3 : 0

Every one knows what is sleep-walking. But I don’t know whether people know what is ‘sleep-watching’ I did that on that day. The match started by 00.30 a.m. and even then I was half asleep. I remember the game starting with referee’s whistle. After that everything was quite cloudy since I was lying in front of the TV. I used to wake up now and then and see the score. When I first saw it was 2:0 and when I woke up next 3:0; and at the next time three people were sitting and talking about something that was happening in Germany…they called it World Cup Football Championship or something. Who cared? I went to sleep again with one difference – to wake up this time only late in the morning, that too, to shift myself to the coziness of my bed!


2nd July, 2006

PORTUGAL vs ENGLAND

RESULT: 3 : 1

At the start I wanted Portugal to win the match. But as the match was approaching the end after the extra time, I wanted England to win. I thought, well, if a full team of players cannot win an oppent with just 10 members playing, that too without their star players Beckhamm and Roony, they don’t deserve to be the winners. But the commentator was making a commentary that Englnad has never won by penalties. This time also the same blind lady of fortune turned her back to England.

In their earlier match against Trinidad & Tobago, England forwards Lampard and Crouch were quite an eyesore for me. It appeared to me that with these two in the forward line, T & T need not worry at all, so was their abilities as scorers. Lampard took many a ashot at goal, but almost all of them were way away from the target. If forwards take shots like that, why the opponents need to worry. Crouch, the other forward looks to me more a caricature of a football player. His game just matched his looks. He was lucky since finally it is his heading that resulted in the only goal scored against T & T. After Rooney left the scene because of his huff Crouch took his mantle. He and Lampard played their 'original' game and spoiled or wasted many chances of their team. It all finally led to the penalty shoot out and England as is their routine lost it.


BRAZIL vs. FRANCE


My favourite is, for like most around the world, Brazil. Wanted Ronaldo and Ronaldinho to come at the peak of their form at the right moment. But that never happened.

There were many moments when Brazilian goal was at danger. Somehow they came off from them . But both Cafu and Ronaldo got booked with yellow card. Juans’s crucial tackle earned him a yellow card but almost saved a sure goal. Credit for the fist half should be given to Zidane. His play making moves and the ball distribution were fantastic. He is the only star twinkling bright. Like Beckham, his free kicks landed right on the desired spot. In one such shot the ball was just tapped by Henry resulting the French one goal up. I thought this would spur Brazilians a little more and one could witness some sparks. But all these expectations were turned to naught and the French team kept up this slender margin and entered into the semifinals, leaving the Brazilian fans in tears.