Fire

It was an innocuous Thursday evening. Schools and colleges were closed for Christmas vacations, people in corporate jobs were on their year- end leave. A nice time to have a quiet celebration. 

Parel in Mumbai was once upon a time a hub of flourishing activity with quite a few textile mills situated there. However the textile mill strikein the 1980s  ensured that most of the mills never opened. Slowly the mills were sold and Corporate Offices and Shopping Malls started coming up in these mill compounds. Lower Parel regained its status as a hub of economic activity in Mumbai. Most Television Studios are located here. Quite a few Corporates have their head office here. It is but natural that the locality also morphs into a party hub. After all people working more than ten hours a day need to let their hair down. A whole lot of fine dining restaurant and bars have mushroomed in the area. Being centrally located, it ensures a decent footfall.

Communist ideology which once flourished in these mills has given way to crass capitalism.

However 28^th December wasn’t another Thursday. A few minutes past the hour when the dates change, there was a spark. Suddenly one of the restaurants caught fire, and spread. Fourteen innocent lives were lost, mostly women.

The standard blame game has started. Corrupt municipal officials, politicians, fire department the promoters of the restaurant have been blamed. Some people will be arrested, some will be suspended and after a few days everything will be forgotten.

I personally think it is we as a society who is to blame. When I say we, it means you and me. We patronize corruption, right from childhood. On a daily basis I see a lot of people driving on the wrong side of the road. These are educated people and the vehicle ranges from a motorbike to auto to even a car. The perpetrators of the offence (in their minds it does not qualify as one) range from teenagers, middle-aged women, to even senior citizens. We have scant respect for the rules. Many times I have stopped people and admonished them, only to get varied reactions. Some are sheepish and apologise, but a majority respond arrogantly with “Mind your own Business.”If a father takes his child on a bike on the wrong side of the road, the child never realises that it is wrong. Now if this person meets with an accident, we will always blame the bigger car, and the police for not doing its duty. We sympathise with the aggrieved person even if he / she is wrong

Similarly I see people littering on the road, when dustbins are nearby. I have seen people who are in senior positions in corporates, throw the soft drink can out of the running car, throw the toll receipt at the toll station itself. In spite of strict enforcement on drunken driving, we still have people who drink and drive. Those who refrain from driving after a drink only do so out of fear and not out of concern for fellow drivers or passers by.

I have seen people disappear during fire drills in corporate offices. It is considered a colossal waste of time. I have rarely seen a fire alarm taken seriously. People don’t even stir when the alarm rings. I wonder whether they even recognise the sound of the fire alarm.

You will ask, how is all of  this connected to the fire. It is part of a larger malaise. We simply don’t follow rules. We take pride in boasting about how we have bent the rules. How can children who have grown up seeing their parents break the rules, be expected to follow the rules.

Tomorrow when our children grow up and are setting up an office or a restaurant and the department throws them the rule book, they will throw it back with a wad of notes. Because rules are meant to be... bent, broken, twisted – but not followed.

Today as we get into the new year, let us take a pledge – to follow the rules, not bribe officials, pay our taxes, not litter on the roads, stop jumping red lights even when no one is watching. Let us take the pledge to be a model citizen... so that we leave this country as a better place for our children. Let us stoke the fire of compliance within ourselves. We need to make the beginning ourselves. Charity after all begins at home.

Match Referee

Game. The word represents a contest. Two teams playing against each other or two individuals matching wits and skills. However, there is one game which you actually play against yourself – golf. It is an ultimate test of concentration and trying to focus on your abilities and routine and get a better score than the last time you played the same.

When you play the game on a weekend, you are not offered solitude. The club pairs you with different people. One such pairing, found me playing with a lady who was had represented India in cricket. For someone whose long cherished dream was to play cricket in whites at Shivaji Park, one of the nurseries of Indian cricket, it was a dream come true. What more can a cricket fan; no a fanatic want than to spend four hours in the company of someone who has played cricket at the highest level? Of course at the age of 45, the fanaticism has been converted into admiration and I began picking her brains. About the sport, the concentration levels, fitness, staying motivated and the love for the game.

It turns out that the lady in question is also a Match Referee. Now that is interesting. For me a match referee was someone who has a very cosy and dream job. Wear a tie and suit, go out for the toss, get paid to watch a match and then hand out a few fines.

As a child, we were told that the grass is always greener on the other side. I understood the meaning of this statement, when the lady explained to me her duties.

She is a match referee for domestic games in India. Her job begins a few days before the match. It starts with inspecting the arrangements for the players, in terms of accommodation, food, travel etc. No, as a match referee, she is not responsible for the same, but is responsible to report on the appropriateness of the same. She then has to inspect the ground conditions and also the equipment like rollers, super sopper, scoreboard, sight screen etc. After all the Board has paid for the equipment and she has to report whether the same is in order and fit to use.

She then has to inspect the cameras, whether they are placed properly as per standards. She also had to interact with the cameramen, to check facilities and arrangements for them. We take a lot of things for granted when we watch the matches on TV, but an incorrect placement of the camera by even a few degrees can impact the outcome of a match. She has also to check about the availability of a doctor at the ground and whether an ambulance is present at the ground.

Once she is convinced that everything is in order, she has to convene a captains’ meeting. She has to explain the basic behaviour and the code of conduct. She conveys to the captain cases where a certain player cannot bowl, as they have been reported for suspect actions. She also conveys the disciplinary history of players coming into the match and the impact a violation of the code can have on the team, or the player concerned. She has to handle super sized egos. The bigger the player, the bigger the ego. She also mentioned that she has to play the dual role of the third umpire.

At the end of the game, she has to prepare an umpire’s report, which is a very critical part of the job. This reports the decisions they made on the field, the quality of decisions, errors if any, how they handled player pressure, enforced discipline, ensured speed of play etc. Over and above they also have to report on the facilities, the equipment, the conduct of the match as well as handing out disciplinary actions against the players if any.

On the whole it seems to be an enormous job. She says, that in India the system is more difficult, as the match referees also have to double up and play the role of the third umpire and adjudicate on decisions referred by the on-field umpire.

So it is a tough job, where the match referee cum third umpire has to concentrate on every ball, at the same time, focus on the conduct on the ground. The match referee for international matches has an easier role, as there is a separate third umpire.

I was told that India has only one match referee for international matches. One of the reasons is that to be an international match referee, one needs to have played international cricket. Apparently most of the male match referees in the domestic circuit don’t have international experience. Hence they are not on the international panel. But the lady match referees in India have played international cricket. They can qualify as international match referees.

Very recently, Claire Polsak of Australia became the first woman to umpire in an Australian men’s top level fixture. Another glass ceiling broken. As a follow up of that, why can’t women be nominated as match referees in international cricket?  They have inbuilt softer skills to handle delicate situations better.

Since the 1983 Cricket World Cup, the BCCI has had a great impact on international cricket administration. With the amount of cricket being played today, there is going to be a huge pressure on the existing pool. It is time to expand the pool.

The BCCI should moot the idea of Women match referees in international cricket and begin by referring some of its own woman match referees on the international panel. Time to break another glass ceiling.