FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 - Ball room for the soul

Ball room for the soul

World Cup soccer comes in 90 minute helpings of alchemy. The high point of alchemy came in the Dark Ages with the now lost art of transforming lead into gold. A present-day chemist can’t do it despite all the mod-cons at his elbow. It’s because he’s crippled by his exactitude and obsession with proof. Besides, he has absolutely no talent for metaphor. But World Cup football, that platinum practice of this sport, is tattooed all over with rejuvenation and uplift. It is understandable that the football star comes dipped and coated in the dayglo wattage of fan worship but if it was just a one-way-street soccer wouldn’t be anywhere near as popular. The truth is, it does just as much for the nameless foota follower, if in an abstract sort of way. This unremarkable quantity, the football fan, is, as a direct consequence of his devotion and avidity, morphed into an inspired being, magnificent as an eagle. That is the self-same creature you see, slouch gone, body language transformed, gliding around stadia stands, bars, brothels and large public display TVs, quite the monarch of all he surveys.


Is the game everything then? Of course it is, seen as a pheromone-laden metaphor for sex, glory, life, death, immortality and mass hysteria. The lashings of exuberance, energy, speed and virtuosity are the component parts of exultation. The euphoria is the draw. The process is the adrenaline rush experienced during the primeval thrill of the chase. Waves of energy flow back and forth between player and spectator a time or two before going to the very roots of our collective life force.


Energy, physicists tell us, is a zero sum game. But since we cannot create or destroy it, we can, and do pass it around. In fact, it must be the most enduring pastime since Adam and Eve and Adam and Adam for that matter. Every pass has its frisson of electricity, every lunge its particular joy. Even if we’ve had to outsource our passes for want of a home team fit to field. It needs to be viewed generously, this Indian deficit, as a sign of the times in an ever shrinking world. So we can’t produce a world class team to play a game we love. Never mind. We’ll just get around to loving someone else’s. This is liberating. We can now root for European or Latin American, African or Arab. It’s like enjoying the company of other people’s children. If the foreign team, in a sense, runs around till it pukes, one can simply say whoops and move on. The more promiscuous, or is it risk averse amongst us, can hedge their bets and back several teams simultaneously without exhibiting a shred of nationalist guilt. There is, who would have imagined, a good side to incompetence.


Meanwhile in Munich, after the early arriving street parties and painted faces, the football songs and Bavarian beer, the actual soccer play, supported by walls of expert commentary beamed out on the latest High-Definition television systems, has also begun. The theme song, a soaring one-world message called “Time of Our Lives” sung by the operatic quartet Il Divo and the lissom buxom Toni Braxton has just been launched. Of course, some people, maybe more than just a few, prefer the sing-along ditty from Melodia Brasil, but then, that’s the thing with music.


The World Cup carnival plays out like this, in high resolution bits and pieces, resulting in a month long catharsis for one and all. The player and the spectator, the commentator, stadia and TV screen are conjoined at the hip. This is a team-minded hydra. Alone, it is not much good. One might as well kick a can down an alley. Sao Paulo or Buenos Aires alleys and kickers, are, however, exempt.


Let’s face it. World Cup football is a unifier with choice. For the Kolkatan it is Brazil or Argentina. For the Germans it has to be Germany. This might seem restrictive but if you want to have knees-up-mother-brown fun then don’t host the party. For the many others, it may well be the lost art of making a little ball room for the soul. As the Gospel according to Mark has it: what is the use of conquering the world if you lose your soul in the process? Never mind. But try to remember that it’s only a game.

(747 words)

Friday 9th June, 2006

By Gautam Mukherjee
CEO, Indus Overseas

Also published in The Pioneer, Sunday 11th June, 2006 www.dailypioneer.com