The Two Halves

 

The cricketing season madness has overtaken this part of the globe. I am not a sports enthusiast, but if you are in India – unless you are dumb, deaf and blind – all three at the same time -you would know that a cricket match is on.

The  other day, I stopped  over for a quick bite at a Bandra café  and by the time I had finished eating 57% of my Vegetarian Spaghetti Bolognese, a group of well dressed men  arrived and grabbed the table next to me . Until then, I wasn’t aware I was sitting on one of the most strategically well placed tables and the second half of the “match” was just about to start. In a moment, men of all castes, creeds, language, color, sizes appeared from nowhere. The bodies pressing against each other, mouths open, pupils dilated and beads of sweat rolling down from behind their ear pinna speeding south towards their Louis Philippe collars.

During the next 43% of my meal, I heard – “Kya yaar, itna simple tha”…."Yaar kya catch choda”….”Yeh sab fixed hai...aaj dekh India haarega”…”Kya C*****pa  hai yaar”. On my BBM  and Facebook, many status messages read the similar expert opinions.

I looked at the LED Screen and looked back at the crowd on the other side and a thought crossed my mind …

We live in a world clearly divided into two halves. One half is where there are people with lots of opinions , men and women who specialize in commentary and shout and dance like monkeys  – their enthusiasm is very high , may be they are much more well read and experienced too-  but they exploit their potential only to an extent of  giving free advice on afternoons like these.

The other half is those few  who choose to take a step ahead and leave this crowd behind . Those who choose to be deaf to the world and practiced on the field on many scorching afternoons while the “experts” contributed to their belly fat sitting on a couch eating potato chips . 

On a lighter note I thought we do need people on both sides – employers and employees, thinkers and doers, people who spend lives questioning and people who spend lives finding answers, cowards and warriors, the people who play and those who clap at the end. 

I don’t know what exactly I discovered that afternoon, but one thing just got clearer – One can either spend life building opinions or building success.

As I finished the spaghetti and paid the bill, I already knew which side I want to be in …