Tazim recently sent me a veritable Napoli for Dummies, an article that I had all the reason to appreciate, and re-share with the seething mass of dummies there's never dearth of. But what a depressing article. 2 years of IIM-A usually means you're always bordering on the neurotic fear that the next day will bring a structured framework that robotifies love...life...friendship... and other such crap people seem to find important (along with the need to be cool, for example by rubbishing things people seem to find important, or by acknowledging the act of said rubbishing, so on so forth...). The only thing left for that article was to assign points for each aspect, weightages for relative importance of each point, and map on 3 simultaneous axes against other teams, finding clusters, time-shift trends, and probabilistic marginal utilities (the way I did 10 years back to arrive at who I would claim was my favorite team.....). The fact that this was required, along with the rider at the beginning about de facto popularity of EPL, in U.S (where the article is based) prompted around 5mins of snicker-accompanied Americosis (the by-default need to love to hate all things US and US-an), followed by 2 days of Indianosis (the well reasoned, carefully thought out arrival at the need to hate all things India and Indian.... a condition not to be confused with the band that released such hits as "Mere paas Khade raho", "Gussa par peeche mat dekho", and "Wonder-deewar").
There's only so much you can laugh at their self-obsessed MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL etc before you say hey wait why we laughing... there's thrice as big a gulf in football interest and ability between India and U.S as there is between U.S and Argentina, optimistically. Actually I'm just kidding, there's thrice as big a gulf between India and U.S as there is between future-earth and the Arachnid planet Klendathu (which could also be interpreted as, holy shit those spiders is closer than we thunk!). So imagine how much more structured a framework article Indian prospective-fans probably need... Indian football fans can't stand Indian football fans, and with good reason. a) Indianosis, b) ok i haven't really got past the Indianosis to think rationally about why else I can't stand them. For eg, Indian ManU fans hate Indian Arsenal fans, not Arsenal fans in general or even Arsenal players, hell they even hate Indian ManU fans, each assuming the other joined just during the glory years. The problem is choice. Ask a Valencia fan why he's a Valencia fan, and he looks at you like you're crazy while slowly spelling out "because...I....am....from Valencia????", ask an Indian Val fan though and I need to begin my tale at 2000, smoothly transition radical formations, inter-league influences, inter-country influences, and horizon cash flow expectations all culminating in an intricate preference matrix that points to Valencia fandom as the only rational choice.
Miss one small element, and I immediately have bloodthirsty Indian fans questioning my motives, methods, morals, and general hygiene, all of which I assure you are impeccable, except the morals part, unless you excuse the whole murdered-cripples fiasco... Obviously, I have less of a problem with this than EPL fans or Madrid and Barca fans, a little because my back-story is flawless and beyond reproach, but mostly because no one here really knows what Valencia is, with some wondering why I would think the ManU winger could win La Liga...or come 3rd.... So this post was really meant for Indian fans of above mentioned teams, I know you think you're die hard enthusiasts the team draws strength from, but they're really no different from a well explained school of economic theory you lean towards more than their less well explained counter Keynesian counterparts. However much passion we rouse up, it's as good as rabidly cheering on equation derivations, particularly depressing it's Euro season and we'll shortly be rabidly cheering on countries that in all probability hate us, massacred our people, and want to nuke us even now. I wont sign off this post by soliciting your thoughts, and respective objective frameworks, because I don't really care what you think. You're Indians after all..... geez. Now excuse me while I go listen to "Kya Kahaani hai, (Subah glory)".
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