alice's peephole

It was my greatest fear that the stadium lights would go out – plunging the ground into darkness and basically broadcasting this (power) failure to the entire world. I can now safely say that this did not happen. Unfortunately, everything else did. Among the many bombs that had been casually tossed around the South-East basement offices, the first that exploded was the one where a last minute ‘request’ was made to provide baggage handlers to carry the players’ luggage. Seeing the stretch on manpower, my tomboyish, feminist colleague immediately offered to lend a hand. I, failing to come up with a quick excuse, found myself accompanying her in stumbling around under the weight of the heavy kit bags – the sizes of which were comparable only to the size of the heads of their owners. Now I am not one to shy away from attention, but the sudden deluge of comments and flashes from cameras disconcerted even me. I looked out from under the bag to see shocked faces all around me. Some of th...

If I was a gossip columnist, I would be able to water this down/ spice this up for public consumption. If I were famous, I’d write this like an autobiography. Since I am just one of many who are working to organize the Indian Premier League 2012, I really don’t know what to call this one. It’s definitely not the bird’s eye view of things at the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium. Maybe it’s the worm’s eye view – the one that didn’t get eaten by the bird anyway. And it’s a not- so-brief narration of the ground realities. Pun intended. When I first saw the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium, hereby referred to as ‘the Stadium’, it was just a work in progress. No, I’m totally lying, it was breathtaking. The imposing structure could be seen from miles away. What was less impressive however, was the teeth-rattling, nerve-shredding village road that led up to it. Gahunje village, the postal address of the Stadium, could be approached through aforementioned road, which wound through Mamurdi village. One...