Welcome to the end of the week! It takes a certain amount of wherewithal to be able to reach the weekend in this sweltering heat. Far as I am from you, I do begin my day by checking the weather app to imagine what life feels like at 40 degrees Celsius, before remembering the underarm sweat and back roll drips that the weather can inspire (perspire?). But in the interests of positivity, there is a surprise: so, what do we have behind curtain number 2? The end of Ramzan! That’s right kids, you are scarcely hours away from deliverance and the return of lunch. If you’ve fasted this whole month I’m deeply impressed by your fortitude and insanely jealous of your calorie deficit. By comparison I’ve spent most of the month knee-deep in take-out calamari, so you may have guessed that my month of resolute purging didn’t really go as well as we had hoped. But there is always time.
This Eid we have more than most to be grateful for because, as I learned from a particularly passive-aggressive cab driver, we won a cricket tournament. I hope you know me well enough to know I’m not being in the least facetious when I confess that I didn’t have a clue there was a cricket tournament this summer. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t until recently that I found out that ODI’s stood for One Day Internationals and not a rehab center called the Over Dose Institute. I used to have to be aware of cricket to be able to have conversational talking points with inscrutable classmates at school. (“You mean Hollywood Squares” was sadly never considered an appropriate response to “Did you see the game yesterday?”) Back then cricket matches lasted for a few days at least and the cricket World Cup was every four years.
By the time my Sikh taxi driver began cursing Punjabi expletives at the windscreen I had surmised we had won
I was pondering these changes in the taxi ride I was taking on Sunday. Hardeep was driving me, and sported a baby blue turban which he told me was an homage to the Indian team. It was a fairly long taxi ride, and he had the radio tuned to the Pakistan vs India cricket match. He was in a jovial mood, Hardeep, asking me questions about what I did in NY and where I was from. When he heard I was from Lahore he kept up a steady stream of convivial joking about the match and how if India wins he won’t charge me money as an act of graciousness. About two-thirds of the way into the journey however his mood darkened, and as the Indian cricket team were bowled out again and again, he beady eyes kept darting to my reflection in the rearview mirror.
I wasn’t actually listening to the match but by the time he began cursing Punjabi expletives at the windscreen I had surmised we had won. The feeling was rather exhilarating, truth be told. Hardeep even spun around to give me a begrudging congratulatory handshake at the end, as if I had something to do with the win. His graciousness vanished however when I asked if I could get the ride free anyway. I tipped him a little extra because his day was likely not going to get much better and I like to think of myself as a benevolent conqueror. National Good News is rare enough that I had forgotten what it felt like to be bursting with national pride. It feels good, unsurprisingly. I know (or at least was told) that this is not the same World Cup that happens every four years, but winning feels good no matter how you cut it.
The scene from a celebration in Lahore after Pakistan's Champion Trophy victory
I was all of seven when we won the World Cup in 1992. Flashes of hazy images remain with me to this day: a mint-green uniform, a sense of elation. I remember standing on the congested Mall Road outside GOR thronged with thousands of people lining the streets to see the Pakistan team. Eventually we caught a glimpse of the open air bus carrying the triumphant cricketers holding the crystal world cup held aloft. Everyone was so happy. People were crying on the streets, dancing, laughing, hugging. It was a jubilant public celebration of the kind we haven’t seen in a while. Part of it even transferred to when Lahore played host to the World Cup four years later, the highlight of which was seeing Mick Jagger in the crowd.
So I’m grateful this holiday season that we, who are so desperately in need of Good News, finally have some. Congratulations to Team Pakistan and Eid Mubarik to us all. I wish you love, food and celebration. And if you are spending your holiday fielding unending visitations from your extended family, I wish you patience, understanding and Xanax.
