Why I won't be watching the FIFA World Cup on TV and will take a walk instead

Hundreds of fans gather around to watch the World Cup every four years

1979, Mussoorie, India. A hill station which the Britishers called the queen of the hills, where the pleasure quotient was quite high on the ‘side’. But for a 9 year old kid like me, it seemed to be where the British love of alcohol met the hill folk love of well, alcohol among other things.This is a piece about the ‘among other things’.Mussoorie had its own version of Olympics and a valued sporting culture where all schools came to cheer and participate.

The first sportsman I recall being in direct awe of was a one armed athlete. Seeing him sock the two limbed who had slower legs to the finishing line made my heart swell. I came back from the meet and started training harder for the hockey team, after being distracted by volleyball, cricket and shot put. We had Indian star players coaching us because it was a railway school, which back then was a safety net for many sports folk. 5 am wake up calls even in wintry Mussoorie and then getting training day in and day out dinned team spirit into me like no later motivational workshop ever could. We went for heats, signed up for training, watched matches from the stands and learnt to root for the person who tried hardest and gawked at the sweat of sheer talent. FACE TO FACE.

The loss and the win came later as a final moment of a goal, but we were in on a journey. I can still hear the many standing ovations for the one who played best, despite the noxious attempt of school loyalties.

Later, as a growing teenager, I returned to the capital to the more relaxed pleasures of watching fit men play squash at our neighborhood railway club. Eventually, some of us women joined in and learnt to play and enjoy ourselves. There was a TV set in that club, but nothing could keep us off the courts.

Yes, many years later I see the privilege of such sporting amenities that are now paid for at sports complexes with long waiting lists. Neighborhood parks that have been gobbled up by real estate across India. Which we pretty much got for free. But it is most of all, this culture of remote controlled lethargy which got me thinking.

It was in the decade that I became a field reporter for a national TV news channel, where I saw how acutely impatient audiences were becoming. While my regard for the sport playing side of sportsmen is higher than your bored cynicism of this instant, what one saw in large swathes of TV game –watchers was animal like loyalties. Nitpicking on mistakes like the player was really an android phone and the app had stopped working. I saw more folk head to bars and beers, than the nearest grounds. I wanted to say to them, not very politely, ‘Get off those channels and go out and support a local team by watching a match, getting up with them to train maybe, cheering them on in small competitions, get a taste of what it takes in an unmediated way. And keep your pissed negative energy off our sporting folk. In India, barring sports folk who made it, they have it pretty hard as it is.’

But I was silent because the stadium roar was like a mob with no heads. I overheard many conversations about how folks who had had a bad day, wanted the player they favored to win. It was a heart’s fumbling time pass for something to be hunky dory in their then lousy day. The rush for big tickets and autographs silenced me into acknowledging 'itemization' further and the sad falsity of the bond struck me - I have no personal failures riding on my sport folk as collective dreams to pressurize them by. Heck, play heartoutbest. That's all.

But slowly, from the insides of an air conditioned TV station to a cubicled digital newsroom began to unravel for me – the business of sport. The industry of sport. Where the match is about heroes and zeroes, where the sweat of all that goes behind is completely missing and we get a dose of it as just entertainment. Gladiators, 21st century version. Sponsored by …The story is well sold.Making an untidy sum for some and not entirely sure what it is doing for a non-virtual sporting culture to take root.

Sell all you like, win all you like, watch all you like, but the real missing tandem of what sport does to you is when you play it versus just watch it. I speak at this World Cup juncture just of that ‘inside’ magic of sport, which no telly can catch. Like the rewarding trust of team play. The sheer joy of sweat, perfecting something day after day, letting the magic of diligence unfold. Playing against your darker limited side. Being open to suggestions. Training under better bosses. Playing for every atrophied muscle inside to speak up and work in ways only hard training suddenly reveals. Despite the politics, seeing the moment before you and going for it. Some crucial moments when it comes together, become wins. And magic moments happen.

And once you have this doggedness and patience and team love, heck, where in life can you not apply this? The surround sound of sale and hail makes it even more difficult to tune into this essence. Especially when one thinks that while growing up, I probably stole an hour of media watching in a day. And today, between our phones and other devices, there’s probably half an hour of awake time in our day which is non-screen time. For now, moms and dads are sure to be fighting high-pitched battles to regulate game hours. Folk are probably plotting different couch potato routines in all good bonhomie and cheer.I understand where you are coming from and its your life, leisure and pleasure.

Maybe, my voice is just that of a swing between sport-insider to media-insider and now, just happy to be outside.

So I ask somewhat aware of sounding like an anachronism - Isn’t sporting spirit so much more than watching it on mute or deafening volume or being a sleep starved ravenous one-sider with a beer? Isn’t it also about balance across a lifetime of trying and of tuning into your core strengths, and working on your weaknesses? And doesn't spectator sport mean little unless spectators grow up too? The best watched moments on TV can be a trail of inspiration at best. But perspiration, now that is something else.

And it is the latter which really causes a true sporting culture to build anywhere. In how we play and how we support.

And that you cannot possibly buy one get one free.

(Back to 1979.That one armed charmer from my neighboring school, was it, you have an eternal fan.

And that's the other thing. Loyalty is so different from sucking up blindly to the hero of the moment. A real champ evokes that over long stretches of time and imagination.

There's not a button you can press for it. )