Are you yet another one of those rabid cricket fans?

Update: Updated so it was less of a direct braindump - which
it was earlier ( sorta stream-of-conciousness style).
Actually it was more like dog turd. So, I really thought I
ought to edit and make it a little more readable. I'm not
sure if I've succeeded but here it is anyway.

Why is this nation so damn obsessed with cricket?? And, it
really is like the entire goddamn nation is absolutely in
love with the game. Am I alone in not being NOT THAT keen
about the game? If a match is going on and some guy on the
road asks you what the score is, and if you say that you
don't know, they really look at you like you've got a head
growing out of your ass! And, I'm not exaggerating, people
really do think that you are a freak if you aren't watching
cricket. I'm I would've gotten beaten up for posting such
"blasphemy" on the Internet, if not for the fact that there
are a grand total of two people who read my blog!!

Come to think of it, people have been obsessed with cricket
for as long as I can remember. I think half the reason why
cricket is so popular lies in the fact that a cricket game
goes on for like a whole day at the minimum, plus, we have a
couple of minutes break between overs, when some guy gets
out, hell, there's a break far too often - and this is
ofcourse absolutely perfect for advertisers.

There is however something far more sinister at work. And,
no I'm not a guy who believes that everything is a
government conspiracy. But, isn't it strange that almost the
whole damn country absolutely loves the sport, and that
there are very very few exceptions? And, its a sport, which
is in many ways like a song or a painting, in that people's
opinions on them generally vary. But, it is not so in this
case. Why?

The answer to that, is that we've all been brainwashed into
liking the game. I know that sounds straight out the
x-files. But that is my theory. When a person is told
something enough times, even if that seems to be completely
bullshit at first glance, they'll start to believe it. It is
however not just a matter of being told the same thing
multiple times, its also a matter of seeing that there are
already many more people who believe it. You think, 'Oh,
there are all these people who already believe it, so, it
must be true. I mean, atleast some of them would've analysed
it, and would've pointed out how stupid it all is if it
really was. So, it must be true'. As Orwell quite nicely put
it, all you need is a bunch of sheep going 'Four Legs good,
two legs bad', on and on.

What happens in our minds is that, it becomes an absolute,
something that you start believing without questioning it,
something you take for granted. When you go for a walk
outside your house, you dont think about whether there is
any air out there that you could breathe, you just take it
for granted. Hell, if we were to question and think about
every such thing, we wouldn't have the time to think about
anything else. So, our minds quite conveniently convert them
into 'laws', something which just 'is'.

Just look at all the stuff about cricket around us.
Everywhere one looks, on TV, magazines, billboards,
newspapers, etc. There's almost no escaping it.

This 'realization' (okay, so all of you already had all this
figured out, yeah, I'm perhaps a bit slow, bear with me), to
be frank, scares me. It scares me a lot. How much of the
other stuff that we believe is not something that has been
thrust into our heads? What about your religion? Why do you
pray to the god you pray to now? What about the political
party you believe in?

A small incident comes to mind which highlights this. I was
once chatting with a friend about political parties in our
state, and I found that we supported different parties. Now,
this was at a time, when I knew almost nothing about
politics in the state, or much about either of these parties
or their leaders. And when my friend criticized the party I
supported, I got pissed off! And I was thinking, "how can
this person be supportive of this party?!" I thought she was
being so narrow minded and utterly stupid! Looking back, I
can see the absurdness of it all - where did my political
party affiliations come from? I know for a fact that I knew
absolutely nothing about either of these parties, I
certainly didn't know enough to make a judgment about which
one it is better to vote for. It was all just stuff I'd
heard from my parents and stuff I'd seen on TV - I'd been
brainwashed!

Religion is ofcourse the primary example of this. But,
discussions about religion are perhaps meant for another
post.

I don't know what other things that I believe in that have
actually been thrust into my head. Do I perhaps believe them
so absolutely that I am unable to see their absoluteness?

Next time you see yourself believing anything as an
absolute, think about where it is that that belief came
from. You'll surprise yourself.

I sure did surprise myself.