Our Heroes

 Dear Koko, 

Let this letter bear witness to how one hero fell and the other emerged in your life. Also, how you apparently hated Harry Kane at a time and now worship his every move. 

Every generation has a hero figure. If the conversation is about cricket, our parents would talk about Gavaskar and Kapil Dev and how they are just a class apart. When we were young and we would go ga ga over Sachin, Ganguly and Dravid, they would reluctantly agree they are maybe half not bad. If we were discussing football, I remember my father saying Maradona or Pele are the best that the world has seen. They would smile in amusement when we were besotted with the Beckhams or Ronaldos of the world. 

Well, history repeats itself and how! When you would talk about Virat Kohli and how amazing he is, I would eyeroll. How can anyone be better than Sachin? And then, Kohli equalled Sachin's One Day hundreds and I think to myself, move lazily in the couch and take notice, alright, he is not half as bad. That moment you realize you have become your dad, am I right?

But today we are talking about how you chose your own heroes. While we would be talking about EPL, I would try to subtly influence you to support Manchester United (how badly that story has aged), and other friends of mine would nudge you to Liverpool or Chelsea or Real Madrid, you suddenly got hooked on to Bundesliga. I have a theory that this is a rebellion of sorts. If this is any signal of what is to come, I salute you. Well played my boy. 

So moving on, once you started watching Bundesliga it was level playing field because, we did not have too much knowledge about the teams or their history or anything else. Soon you knew everything about it and were casually showing off your knowledge to us at all times. You got hooked on to Bayern Munich and soon everything from Santa Claus's gift to your birthday cake was Bayern themed. You also had a favorite player. Robert Lewandowski was your favorite and you were there cheering at midnight for him. A season went by and Bayern won. A plot twist was impending in this drama as he decided to call quits and go to Barcelona. 

Would you switch loyalties? Do we have to watch a whole new league now? so may questions were roaming in the air when we realized that you had silently and unknowingly built a loyalty to the club. How does this happen exactly, what chemical reaction takes place in our brains when we get so attached to a sports team even when we are geographically disparate and no one has really influenced our decisions. So you kept following Bayern and you were momentarily besotted by Musiala but nothing compared to your worshipping days of Lewi (as you call him). 



Then came Harry Kane. You quite disliked him when he was in Tottenham, so you barely tolerated him in Bayern. But then he scored goals in scores! This was also the time when we watched the documentary on David Beckham and saw how awesome he is (ok maybe I do influence you sometimes, I try). Then there was the Bayern 8-0 whitewash of Darmstadt, where Kane scored a sensational goal from own half. It was amazing, honestly, and you were sold.

Suddenly now you are a Harry Kane fan! Many years later when you read this, I don't know if you will still be a Harry Kane fan or a new hero will emerge, but you will know how your poor Lewi was left out. 

Love,

Ma

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