A True Fair-Weather Fan

Most people choose which sports team to support based on proximity, tradition, or players. After arriving in India, where cricket is treated like a religion, I knew exactly which team to support: The Kolkata Knight Riders.

My support for this team was solely due to my obsession with their owner, the great Shah Rukh Khan . SRK is probably the most famous man in India, acting in a crazy amount of Bollywood films. According to T.G., he is the equivalent of Tom Cruise in fame and people’s wavering opinions about him. Almost every clip we saw in class had him in it and I slowly became a borderline-creepy fan. I find it amazing that very few Americans know who he is, when he is absurdly famous here. I had no idea who he was before taking this course.

As I said before SRK owns the Knight Riders, so obviously I chose them as the team I would support. I knew they were doing well and advancing through the playoffs, but how no idea how far they had gotten. Yesterday, I was thrown off guard when I heard they were playing in the finals against the Chennai Super Kings only about 20 minutes after I had bought a knockoff Knight Riders jersey and my “King Khan: A Collection of SRK’s 8 Greatest Films” set.

So, I raced down to Chilies, where the rest of our group was and, after Gautam and I had changed into our new jerseys, took our seats to watch the game. I’m pretty sure every person in Chilies was making fun of us 10 Americans attempted to cheer for a team when we didn’t even know the rules. I kept asking people, “is that good,” or “why is he doing that?”

After finishing our food, we waited for halftime and then caught a rickshaw to bring us back to the hotel. Once we got back, a few of us huddled around the TV and watched the rest of the match.

Here’s where our ignorance of the rules has a major effect. Imagine how hard it is to see the team you are supporting lose, and how exciting it is to see that team win. Now picture the emotional rollercoaster we were on as we thought we saw our team lose twice until they finally won. We had not the slightest idea of the rules.

Me and Gautam posing after the win with our new jerseys on

After a quick celebration and twitter update, I stayed by the TV a little longer to watch them interview SRK. All in all, after watching all of my favorite teams lose in the playoffs this year (except the Celtics, knock on wood), it was nice to finally have a win, even if I didn’t know the team existed two weeks ago and only supported them for a period of three hours.

Now I’m more excited than ever to start my internship Wednesday, because SRK also owns Red Chilies.  Until then I have some downtime, and 8 new movies to watch. Namaste.

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