The IPL final alongside the wrestlers’ plight was a jarring contradiction: let our tribalism not be with the silence

We watch sport to escape our realities. An unending workweek, an unyielding superior, an achy shoulder after shadow bowling in the kitchen, tepid tea, climate change – everything from the apocalyptic to the mundane fades away when you sit in front of the television set, watching MS Dhoni walk out to rapturous applause for another toss in another IPL final.

We watch sports to feel something, everything, all at once. Joy, despair, expectation, acceptance – maybe ee sala … maybe someone will smash five sixes in the last over, maybe Thala will do his magic. We tell ourselves that the stakes are high. The actual high-stakes stuff of life is pushed aside.

But try as we might, some realities have a horrid habit of catching up with sport. Like on May 28.