For athletes and viewers, life has come to a strange standstill

March 15, 2020 5:00 AMIn my boyhood in Kolkata, a city once prone to protests, they would shut down the city now and then. "Bandh" they colloquially called it, which literally meant closed. Offices, schools and restaurants would shutter and the streets empty of cars. But then you'd hear it, the bounce of a football and the crack of a cricket bat, as everything, even the wide main avenues were turned into fields. It was the irrepressible human urge to play.