Of junk food and junkets: Is World Cup fever injurious to our health?

The other day I looked up at the television at my gym and saw the popular anchor of a Bangla news channel roaming around a beach in a red t-shirt with beautiful women in bikinis all around him. It was a bit of an Austin Powers moment. At first I was puzzled wondering if this was an extreme makeover of our tattered old seaside resort Digha, Then I realized he was in Brazil. Our local Bangla channel might not send reporters to report on the ground during riots in the North East but football gets a special pass. We obviously need to have that authentic on-the-ground Bengali take on the World Cup that the news feed just won’t give us. World Cup fever, fanned by an excited media, has given football a whole new oomph that now it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s just hype. I heard of a college principal who has asked that big meetings not be scheduled in the mornings after important matches. Sleeping in after that all–important Brazil game will now become an acceptable excuse to shirk work in already go-slow Bengal. [caption id=“attachment_1567647” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Tollywood actress Priya Karfa (2nd L) and other models display sweets resembling flags of participating nations and the Jules Rimet Trophy of the FIFA World Cup 2014, in Kolkata. PTI[/caption] This is a different order of magnitude from the old hilsa vs prawn face-offs in the East Bengal–Mohan Bagan days. Kolkata despite its over the top embrace of Kolkata Knight Riders has always been a football city with the refrain “Sab khelar sera Bangalir tumi football” (The greatest of all games for Bengalis is football). But that does not mean all football is equal. In the old days, those who didn’t care for football would pretend a certain loyalty to feel not left out at school and office. For Bengalis it was not difficult. Your roots on one side of the border or the other pretty much assigned you a default team. But now true football fans have to compete with another kind of pretender – the ones who are piling on to the party, not the game. Having World Cup fever is quite the status symbol in our globalized society. This glitzy fever is a far cry from the old football fever brought on by playing games in muddy fields in the pouring monsoon rains. This is fever that discriminates. In Goa the state’s Arjuna awardees and football coaches will not get to go to Brazil but six MLAs including three ministers will. As Rajdeep Sardesai tweeted “6 Goa MLAs, incl 3 ministers, packing bags to brazil for 89 lakh junket. Hope they bring back the world cup!!” The Times of India noted four of these six had also gone to England in 2012 to FIM World Motorcross Championship in Winchester to “explore the possibility of introducing motorcross in Goa in a big way and also explore the possibility of hosting international motorcross events in Goa in the future.” That was clearly fruitful. Not! Usually politicians like to go on discreet junkets they hope the public won’t notice – to study the Amazon rain forest for instance. That was a Rs 2.25 crore junket making the Goan one seem like pocket change. Right after the Muzaffarnangar riots, a 17-member delegation of ministers and MLAs from Uttar Pradesh got ready for a 20-day “study tour” of Istanbul, Amsterdam, London and Greece. An MLA said at that time “this is a healthy and enriching experience that allows legislators to visit parliaments, libraries and understand trade and economic activities in other countries.” But a World Cup junket is harder to enjoy discreetly especially when footballers and coaches don’t get to go while politicians do. Surely the Goan politicians will come back with rich and valuable inputs for Smriti Irani’s plans to have a sports day in school, which is actually a great idea in an age where my newspaper comes wrapped every other week with mugshots of serious looking bespectacled young people who have all ranked something or the other in IIT-JEE examination thanks to the miracles of a coaching class. Sports matters and not just because it’s embarrassing that a country this big produces so few big sporting stars. It’s about health, which is more important than medals. Ironically, most of what the media offers up as evidence of World Cup fever in Kolkata seems to be destined to make its fans fatter. The ads in the paper this World Cup have full pages devoted to 50inch LED TVs with a free 22” LED so you can sit and watch the game no matter where you are in the house and remain a couch potato once the World Cup is over. A sweet shop in Kolkata has come up with unholy fusion of Cadbury’s chocolate and sandesh with names like Brazilian samba. The newspaper lists places around the city for a late night munch and match with cocktails like French Striker (gin-based) and German Offside (white rum and beer). The star hotels are rolling out the roast beef with Argentinian chimichurri sauce and the Swiss chicken Zurichoise. The smaller establishments are also eager to cash in with their Lionel Messi’s Penalty Kick combo meal comprising a Cheezy Phat Dawg and chicken nuggets and Choco Lava cake. The World Cup is of course about the magical wizardry of a Messi and a Neymar and a Luis Suarez. But like everything else it is big business and everyone wants to sell-sell-sell and the bigger the banner headline in the newspaper the more the pressure to buy-buy-buy. And surely the upcoming football premier league will hope to ride this consumption wave. IPL cricket. World Cup football. Football premier league. It’s always time to party. India is already the third most obese country in the world according to Lancet. The primary culprits – junk food, alcohol and sedentary lifestyle. All of them will be supersized this month along with bad sleeping habits. If this World Cup fever is anywhere as pandemic as the newspapers make it seem, and we yield to its late night temptations, we might see some great games but also come out on the other side of it looking like footballs.