The Story of a Football Frenzied State!

This isn’t the first time that I am returning home from my university across the borders, but this will surely go down as the first time, the very first time that something amazes me the way it happened this time. Town to Town, Junction to Junction, there were these posters and banners, huge ones, of the soccer kings of the world. Messi was their god and Kaka the king. There were not many empty spaces left by the roadside or the hearts of the people, for the Kings and Queens of the Malayalam and Tamil film worlds. Yes, there were not many posters of upcoming Malayalam or Tamil movies but Argentine and Brazil football kings found spaces in every nuke and corner of the state.

My mind questioned my memory for similar incidents in Indian Cricket, if any at all, when the stars and the team found poster spaces in tiny towns and not many trace backs were found, nothing of this magnitude for sure, except those of the life sized stars like Sachin Tendulkar and Mahendra Singh Dhoni or except when India won the World T-20 cup 3 years ago. Cricket definitely has a space in the hearts of the nation, but that’s for & with a reason, that they are the number one in it, which sadly ain’t the case with football, it’s just their love for the sport, for the ball, the field and the golden stars of it from halfway across the globe.

Argentina and Brazil may not have reached the finals, but I am sure the stars from Spain and Netherlands ended up winning more fans in their last few weeks of good fortune and hard work, than the rest of their lifetimes, millions of fresh fans and aspirers from a tiny state, the country of the god, Kerala.

Four years from now, when football starts rolling again in the grounds of Brazil, when the high tides of madness about football brushes the hearts of people, i wish if we were, the people of India, presented with a gift, that of a single nation to cheer about, a single flag and a single poster to post across the walls of the nation and a single name to chant in the hearts of the billions of people, that of India and the national football team fighting it out with the mighty big fishes of football for one single glory.