Wednesday, Mar 26, 2014
Mirpur: As Bangladesh celebrates their Independence day today (March 26) patriotic songs were played all night
through the loudspeaker outside my hotel room. Despite reaching the hotel way past midnight after the Bangladesh-West Indies match from Mirpur, the songs and the celebrations around kept me awake till dawn.
The streets were full of people celebrating all night, and food stalls were open for everyone to enjoy. “If only Bangladesh had beaten West Indies ....it would have been a memorable national day,” remarked the security person at the hotel.
Although the music was loud, the tunes were melodious. A Kolkata journalist revealed that most of them were poems penned by the great Indian poet from Kolkata, Rabindranath Tagore. In fact, even the Bangladesh national anthem has been written by Tagore.
Cricket is a way of life here and the team’s performance has a huge impact on the people here. Most people wear the Bangladesh team jersey as casual wear, and cricket has united the people in a big way.
However, there are also a few skeptics of their team due to various reasons. Some do not support their team simple because Bangladesh has often disappointed them with their poor performance. “I don’t go for Bangladesh matches because I don’t want to see the team getting thrashed after spending money on the ticket. When you come out of the match you feel terribly depressed,” said Shekhar Mondal, a businessman whom I met at the breakfast table.
There are also a few who support the Pakistan team since some of their ancestors are from there. In fact, there are quite a few people here who are originally from Pakistan and settled here following the partition. An order from the Bangladesh Cricket Board threatening to ban local supporters form carrying the flags of other teams competing in the tournament has created some tension here. It seems the board has ordered security officials to take away the flags of other countries if they are being carried by Bangladeshis. It is said, this step is to discourage anti-Bangladesh sentiments and also prevent any clash. But with Indians and Pakistanis resembling Bangladeshis in their looks, security officials are having a tough time.
A security official took away an Australian cap worn by a Bangladesh fan. He protested saying that he had bought the Australian cap as it was cheaper than the Bangladesh cap, and the only purpose was to protect himself from Sun. Of course, his appeal went in vain.
Ironically, many Bangladeshi fans, despite wanting their country to win, also looked forward to the huge sixes from Chris Gayle. Unfortunately, Gaye played a sedate knock. They then hoped for atleast some Bangladesh batsmen to go for the big hits, so when Tamim Iqbal came out to bat all of them were heard shouting ‘Choy’. When a Bengali journalist was asked whether Choy was Iqbal’s nick name, he clarified that ‘Choy’ in Bengali means six.
A number of journalists from India who are here are from the South, and vegetarians. So the first thing they learnt was the Bengali word for ‘vegetarian’, which is ‘Niramish’. Niramish is a tough option here given that majority of the dishes have either fish or meat.
By K.R. Nayar Chief Cricket Writer
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