It is to willingly sacrifice your energy, sleep schedules, and sometimes meals for a service where returns aren’t guaranteed. There is no salary, no provident funds, and no pension. Even happiness isn’t assured.
Your chartered accountant will tell you it’s bad investment. But who reads offer documents before investing in mutual funds, anyway?
Fandom operates on disproportion. It is a thankless voluntary job because in the frenzy of liturgy, one is, more often than not, invisible. And nowhere is this drama more operatic than in Indian cricket. Voices get swallowed by roars, and the devotion of that one hypothetical fan — who may have skipped his cousin’s wedding to be there — just goes unacknowledged.
Perhaps that’s what makes the job noble. You fall in love and do so unconditionally.
But these little stories do not always end in heartbreaks.
Take February 26, India vs. Zimbabwe at the T20 World Cup, for example. Members of the Bharat Army are tearing their throats raw, singing a shantyesque tribute for Abhishek Sharma fielding at long-off. There are others who are simply calling out his name. But wholly concentrated on his assignment, the Indian opener doesn’t look back. He is not to be blamed; that’s the tunnel vision elite sport demands.
The efforts, however, continue.
At the turn of the over, Tilak Varma jogs into the position. The ritual follows—the songs with slightly altered lyrics, the shoutouts, and the claps. Tilak’s unmoved.
But soon a wind of change sweeps across the venue, this time without Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine’s tenor ushering it in. Halfway into Bharat Army’s chorus, Tilak breaks into a jig. And that is enough for the whole of Chepauk to clock in.
For a fan, the smallest gesture had just crossed the quiet line between moment and mythology — fleeting seconds of memory they will guard like buried treasure for an entire lifetime.
Published on Mar 07, 2026
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