The Muppetification

Bieber and Miss Piggy mix sourly with football

Kamala plonked herself next to me on the sofa. “My husband, and most of India can sleep on time again!” she declared hopefully. I was still looking grumpy and on edge after the finals. “Don’t cry for me Argentina,” she sang off-key in the hope of cheering me up. Instead, Eva Perón turned in her grave, and I surreptitiously slid away on the sofa. We were unimpressed by both Kamala at home and Madonna at half-time. I was already upset because my favourite team had lost. And got more irritated because they had made me sit through a stretched-out Super Bowl-type entertainment fiasco, in the middle of a feisty game of football.

Adding Justin Bieber to Fifa finals is like adding ethanol to petrol – sadly unnecessary and potentially harmful. Fans had come to watch Messi, the song and dance just made the whole match messy. The performances were almost as inappropriate as Trump lingering onstage, photobombing Spain’s moment of victory after bombing most of Iran. He stayed on when everyone wanted him to leave, a problem many politicians suffer from. Now here was a much better occasion to wrap someone forcefully in a white bedsheet and whisk him off the stage. Maybe Delhi police could have been sent to the Fifa finals instead of Jantar Mantar. 

Trump had added childish behaviour to his repertoire, when making an infantile phone call to Infantino. But he finally had to hand over the winner’s trophy to the country he called a loser. The only spectacle more cringe than watching Trump being booed by a home crowd was watching Miss Piggy and Kermit add to the commercial catastrophe created at half-time. Each performer was individually a star, but put together in a completely chaotic manner, resembling the celebrities fighting for attention on Lock Upp. 

Meanwhile, every foray that I made into the kitchen for a late-night snack, made me realise that the cockroaches in our kitchen cabinet were becoming more visible. The little ones that we had neglected were making their presence felt, and were scurrying around playing their own Hunger Games. I stood and watched them silently, somehow reminded of Messi’s iconic bathtub photo with Yamal. Maybe, for them too, it was time to hand over the reins to a new generation.

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