Lassi and Cricket fever

LASSI ? AIYAIYOO

The Cricket World Cup ought to help us learn a lesson that is not often brought to the forefront of our consciousness. I am not talking cricket.

LASSI ? AIYAIYOO

I am talking about human emotions. Many of us saw the football world cup recently and also the Beijing Olympics. Few of us would not have noticed a curious phenomenon—that human beings across all cultures exhibit similar emotions in similar situations and what is more we tend to express emotions in a remarkably similar manner.

The way a foot ball coach slaps his head when his team misses scoring an ‘ easy goal’ the manner in which a cricket team rushes and jumps on each other when a vital wicket is taken, the way fans in the stadium rejoice when an athlete from their country wins a medal—these are universal ways in which we express emotions .

Studies have shown that people from tribes in the Amazon that have had no contact with ‘civilization’ also express emotions the way a New Yorker does . Maybe we are all hardwired in a similar fashion.

The ULTIMATUM GAME is a game devised by experimental psychologists to try and see if a quality like ‘ fairness’ is understood the same way all over the world. The game goes something like this.

I give a guy ‘ A’ say RS 1 LAC and tell him that he ought sit down with ‘B ‘and arrive at a formula for sharing this money amicably between them. The money is given away free. The only condition is that in case the two are unable to arrive at an agreement on fair sharing , the no one will get the money and it will then revert to me ,the experimenter.

This game has been tried across the world including among remote tribes that have never encountered people like us and the results are very interesting. .

It seems that fairness is also hardwired into the human psyche. Wherever the game was played the guy to whom the money was given HAD to be fair to the other guy .It did not matter to ‘B’ that ANY money was better than no money. The guy ‘B’ insisted on a ‘fair’ share of the money. What is fair differed from culture to culture .But the maximum that ‘A’ got was 80% .‘B’would refuse anything lesser than 20%. But a fair deal is what people everywhere strive for.

This is not to deny the many differences between people in attitudes, preferences, disposition etc. Thus rarely will you hear westerners throw up their hands and sigh ‘That cannot be helped’ or ‘It God’s will’.When an Indian faces rough times—loss of job for instance-- he may rush to an astrologer, wear a tabeej on his wrist, fall at the ‘lotus feet’ of a Guruji, visit his favoured temple, in short he may do many things other than consult an employment counselor who might tell him how he can acquire skills that could land him another job. Which is what many westerners will do.

By the way now that we are all suffering from cricket fever let me illustrate how different people express emotion in the cricket arena especially the commentary box. Only a Tamilian commentator can express extreme sadness in an inimitable style at the fall of a wicket that would lead to India losing a Test match. A certain Tamilian commentator shouted into the microphone AIYAIYOO !

I bet no other commentator can do that spontaneously!

And only a cricket genius from Punjab can sit at the high table at Lord’s on his first overseas tour and when asked by the liveried waiter what drink he preferred, ask for lassi !

K.R.RAVI

WWW.KRRAVI.COM