The IPL ‘DHAMAKA’!!!...Creating Further Fissures…?

Its here, it is embedded, has grown roots and gaining strength from match to match. The much hyped, talked about ‘Mano - (aur) - Ranjan ka Baap’ (which it literally is turning out to be, much to the chagrin of the ‘prime time Saas, Bahu’s and different Parivaar’s paint, powder, jewelry and jingle soap’s). The ‘money spinner’ has started the ball rolling and is fast gaining speed to become a ‘smasher’.

Everybody is happy, from the conceiver's to the deliverers….and mind you they are not few but many who are involved….starting from the BCCI, IPL, DLF, the Team Owners, the Players, the Participants, the numerous Sponsors, TV Channel with telecasting rights, the Presenters, Commentators, Experts, State Cricketing Boards, the Stadiums, the Local Administration, Police, Transport Agencies, Hotels, Food and Beverages Industry, the FANS, the new time Cheer Leaders (Imported as well as Indigenous) the pickpocket’ers and even the Vehicle Lifters… not to forget the ‘Billion’ viewers … the media…print as well as visual / audio / digital….everybody is having a ball, some with growing money in their pockets and the rest enjoying the tightly packed entertainment giving ‘Adrenaline’ to their otherwise uneventful, somewhat boring and predictable evenings.

The ‘Flip’ side is turning out to be otherwise. It is another knife cutting the ‘Indian sub-continent Cake’ into eight pieces of regionalism. The structural format invites you to be regionally loyal ; the ‘saucy’ advertisements ‘de-spirit’ nationalism and provoke you to follow a mis-concepted ‘Team Spirit’, fueling a new fire along side the raging fires of castes, creed, language, state, quota’s and religion etc, as if they were not enough ; to bring the country to ‘boil’.

But as it is said “Money is the greatest ‘Pied Piper’. It can and it has, as in the past, lead the masses knowingly and also unknowingly to the greatest of heights and lowest of ebb, depending what its master wants. So, everybody is in line and ‘in tune’ with this …‘Father of all’.

Maybe, with a little ‘twist-n-twirl’ in the present concept of the Mano-Ranjan ka Baap and its charter, it can ‘father’ a movement which can ‘douse’ the other fires raging the country and influence the masses towards spirit of nationalism, game spirit and spirit of up-keeping peace, harmony and respect for humanity.

It should not pose a big problem if… the all powerful players - the conceiver's, the deliverers and all three forms of media decide upon this common agenda. All they have to do is to start the process by indulging in… ‘self-less-ness’ instead, and vis-à-vis. The rest would follow automatically with this flow.