ஏழு உருண்டை சோறு

First a story:

ஏழு உருண்டை சோறு (7 balls of rice)

There’s this family: A father, mother & their 5 kids. This family had some good in their last births, so God used to give them 1 ball of rice each for sustenance, 7 in all, every evening.

One fine day the mother decided that 1 ball of rice wasn’t enough for her and she wanted more. As all good wives do, she convinced her hubby to get rid of their kids so that the 7 balls of rice could be shared among the loving couple.

Ever eager to please the wife, the father took the kids and left them in forest and impatiently waited to sleep with a full stomach for the first time in eons. The time came and they got……………………..2 balls of rice. The remaining 5 fell to the kids in the forest.

Moral of the story: You will get exactly what you deserve as per your karma, nothing more nothing less.

This story is a favourite of my mother. She would tell this whenever I felt the blues or whenever we lost money for various reasons, repairs, stock etc. I would always go Ebenezer Scrooge on her “Bah humbug”.

Six years & some 40 days ago we bought a brand new 46″ HDTV just in time to watch the first ever FIFA world cup in Africa. The TV & voltage stabilizer cost ₹1,00,000. Prior to buying that TV, I, the mad fan, used to watch sports on dodgy, unreliable, buffering streams on a 14″ laptop screen, awfully straining my eyes.

The Copa del Mundial began with great fanfare with the Rai singer Khaled crooning his most famous 90s hit Didi among other artists and so did the tournament proper. Brazil were in good form, having won the 2007 Copa America & 2009 Confederations Cup, not to mention qualifying for the world cup in comfortable style. Alas, they would be knocked out in the quarterfinals by the Dutch, who went all the way to the final in Jo’burg.

My favourite team from Europa, Spain, began disastrously, losing to Roger Federer’s compatriots 1-0. They recovered to comfortably qualify and beat their Iberian cousins, Paraguay and Die Mannschaft, to reach their 2nd final in 2 years. This meant that for the first time in 48 years teams from the same continent would win two world cups in a row.

The night of July 11, 2010 was all set up. Spain vs Netherlands. European champions vs 3 time finalists. The man who ran the show as Inter Milan won the treble, Wesley Sneijder, vs the heart of Spain & Barcelona, Xavi Hernandez. Iniesta, Robben, Casillas, Van Persie, Busquets, Xabi Alonso. It was the starriest of star casts.

A cagey affair begun and just a few minutes after Casillas brilliant saved from Robben…………power failure. Not at home but at the cable operator’s den. I immediately fired up the laptop and started watching it on the dodgiest of dodgy streams and kept the idiot box on, hoping for the telecast to return. One eye on the laptop and one eye on the TV. Alas, the power never returned and I had to make do with the old faithful.

The first thing I remember as Don Andres volleyed home the winner was the ஏழு உருண்டை சோறு story. I spent a fortune to watch the biggest event in football on the (reasonably) biggest screen possible but in the end had to watch on a tiny 14″ blurry stream. Maybe things really are preordained.

I woke up the next morning and told my mother this:

ஏழு உருண்டை சோறு ஏழு உருண்டை சோறு தான்!