FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN CURRY

What ties the English, Indians, Ceylonese, Pakistanis, and Australians together, in a bond far more durable and endearing than shared culinary disaster? The game of cricket. Which is an intensely dull past-time, pointless, and dominated by Parsees.
For a while I was a well-known Parsee lawyer.
A sock puppet account.

Which necessitated studying up on the game. Sorry, folks, that doesn't mean that I remember bucket-all about how it is played. It is complex and pointless, much like American football, which is a far more simple-minded waste of time.
The most important thing I remember reading about cricket is cucumber sandwiches and tea in the pavilion, while the other side is doing something.

Cricket, then, involves cucumber sandwiches. And tea. And lovely little cakes. And getting tiddly on Pimm's Cup cocktails if the game goes on too long. As well as, if you are a respectable Parsee, having dhansak semi-regularly at the Ripon Club on Wednesday.
Plus reading Busybee uncle in the paper writing about food.
Behram Contractor: the Columnist Busybee.


When I worked at the Indian Restaurant part-time, whenever we had a new chap from the subcontinent, at a slow point in the evening the inevitable question would come.


"Is it cricket you are liking?"

"No."


That answer always elicited polite but intense disappointment. Not liking cricket was a flaw in my character. If at that time I had known about the cucumber sandwiches, tea, little cakes, and Pimm's Cups, as well as the Parsee connection, I should have liked it more.
And my character might have been less flawed.


I apologize. Sports bore the heck out of me.




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