Instant Gratification

"I decided to sell my Hoover ... well it was just collecting dust."

This was a one-liner by Tim Vine at the recently concluded Edinburgh Fringe Festival which was voted as the best joke of the year.


This line provides instant gratification. It causes one to laugh at the insane relationship a hoover can have with dust, other than well, collecting dust.

The line is all but 65 characters in length, and well within tweetable limits. Similar one-liners that are usually associated with comedians, have become quite the rage nowadays with the advent of twitter’s 140 characters policy.

But question is, has the attention span of human beings reached such a low that any bit of text not as succinct as a precis and greater than 140 characters seems so verbose that one is compelled to turn the page or hit a different link?

Let us take the case of cricket, just as an example. Just this week concluded the test series between India and England. India lost the series. It seemed like they didn’t want to win at all. Then there was the spat between James Anderson and Ravindra Jadeja. Who really did what to infuriate the other will forever remain a mystery. But just as soon as India lost, Mr Jadeja didn’t spare a nickel to go out and tweet something about scoring 100s? It wasn’t really a joke, or a very good satirical comment, and the internet will probably forgive him for his ill-timed opinions because he is just such a joker who gets paid only for giving an appearance on the field. Maybe the joke’s on BCCI this time who love to nurture such individuals with its excess cash.


If these cricketers had spent less time playing T20 cricket, and more time thinking about their game and how to improve on it from a technical aspect, this debacle could have been avoided. I remember that in the 90s, it was customary for Indian cricketers to play English county cricket for at least one season in their career. For most, this was a beneficial experience as it enabled them to get acquainted with foreign conditions without being under the pressure to perform at the international stage. It reaped great rewards for the likes of Sachin, Rahul and Sourav who really showed the world how to play on international tours. Funny thing with the IPL though is that the new talent that are exposed because of it are no longer able to find that window of opportunity to try their hand at playing club level cricket anywhere else. These kids coming through the ranks playing T20 cricket are brilliant no doubt, but ill-suited to play in any conditions other than their own. And apparently, this has become a global phenomenon. Australia are unable to win in England and England are unable to win in Australia, and incidentally both are able to win in India. In all of this, when will the Indians be able to win in either nation? At the rate at which T20 is picking up, and the popularity of IPL is skyrocketing, the best bet for India to win any international tournament might be to hold the tournament in India itself, as they aptly demonstrated in the last world cup, which they won on home soil. Soil indeed seems to have a sense of humour. Wickets on foreign soil are as alien to the current crop of Indian cricketers as colour is to a blind man.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that life has become a series of little laughs and small talks, and rise of the entertainment value of T20 cricket is like the icing of the gratification cake.

I feel for those who write to make a living, because their life is tough as hell. They write with their heart out only to find their articles swiped away for a celebrity photograph or a twerking video. But the question is, can microwave lunches ever completely take over fresh home-cooked food? If the answer is yes, then I love T20 and I definitely love instant gratification.

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