Don’t pick up the hockey stick, you moron!

There I was, settling into the day’s work when Boom, breaking news flashed in front of my eyes about the national hockey camp for the preparation of the World Cup due next month being called off due to the deadlock between Hockey India and the country’s players over non-payment of money.
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Now, sitting in a cosy office, getting my salary in time every month from many years, I really did not feel a pressing rage against the way our national sports’ players were treated by the decadent ‘autonomous bodies’ appointed by the state.
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But work is work, I started listening to the press conference of Sri Sri 108 AK Mattoo, Mr President of Hockey India (I’d call him that for the sheer morality and high ethics that he preached, drawing his salary for the talent of preaching the same every month while the immoral, anti-national players dug into their greed asking for money to play the national sport rather than just eating honour for breakfast, lunch and dinner).
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This is where it hit me, the athletes who were demanding for something as inconsequential as money when pitted against big words like ‘National Pride’ and “Love for the game” (our cricketers do the same but with the moolah too), were plain morons for picking up the hockey stick in the first place.
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Now, since I had to follow another fabled theory, i.e. - the ethics of journalism, I was asked to be neutral in my filing of the story and was given the lollipop that I’d be allowed to write my feelings in a Blog. So, here goes…
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Come now, if it was up to us, we would have made cricket and female foeticide our national sport long back, with oodles of pride and staunch statistics to earmark us as leaders.
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Coming back to the speech given by Mr Sri Sri 108, there was not an iota of a hint about the payment to the players over the past year or so, when they have played for the country without asking for money for their life’s sustenance.
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Going into the age-old ‘babudom’ tactics, he rued that the apex hockey body of the country, Hockey India, was made a ‘few’ (8) months back, and they could not do anything about the dues that the players were promised, while they were playing for the country itself.
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His comments came in after the Hockey India officials have constantly received their monthly wages for representing the nations’ useless red tape.
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As of now, none of the demands have been met, there are technical difficulties in all the matters pertaining to the payment of the sportspersons and since Hockey India was just ‘born’, they would not recognize the previous matches played by the hockey players for their country. The players would most likely fade away slowly, by not being selected by the apex body which has already said proudly that India would participate in the World Cup (irrespective of the fact that it might be represented by donkeys instead of these ‘selfish’ players).
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In such a scenario, call me an anti-social element or even anti-national, the first thing I’d say to anyone who picks up anything other than a cricket bat in my vicinity is, “Don’t pick up that stick you moron!”
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P.S- Hockey stick manufacturers need not worry; there is a longer list of clientele for you in the budding ‘Karyakartas’ (workers) of the umpteen political parties.