For victory in the Caribbean, a prayer in Chennai school

While students across the country were preparing for their annual examinations, cricket fervour in a school in a Chennai suburb reached a feverish pitch with its management declaring a holiday on March 7 to allow students to perform the Navagraha homam for the victory of the Indian team in the World Cup.

Nine purohits sat around the homam, stoking the holy fire, reciting slokas and praying for the team’s success. Nearly 2000 students joined in the two-hour yagna held in the school’s open air auditorium with a huge eight feet by six feet photograph of the team as the backdrop. Two brightly painted cricket bats were also propped up near the fire.

A board, measuring 20 feet by 10 feet with signatures of students, wishing the cricketers good luck, occupied a prominent place. Teachers and parents also joined in.

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Meanwhile, at the Puzhal prison, touted to be ‘Asia’s largest and most modern’, prisoner Abdul Rahim moved the designated TADA Court for installing a Direct to Home facility so that he, along with other inmates, could watch the World Cup matches.

Rahim, an accused in the case relating to the August 1993 bomb blast at the RSS office in Chennai, even offered to pay.