Freedom Till Full Time

Sir,

This letter is being sent to you on behalf of football-crazy fans across Mumbai. We humbly request you to waive the 1 am deadline that has been imposed on pubs and bars across the city, for the brief period of the World Cup.

As you must be aware, the world's greatest sporting spectacle is currently underway in Germany and, due to the time gap most of the exciting matches start at 12.30 am and finish only by 3 am IST. This puts us out of contention to bear public witness to the best the event has to offer.

Although we don't see India playing as a team in the FIFA World Cup in our lifetimes, this has made us no less passionate about supporting the giants, the challengers and even the luckless in this rollercoaster international tussle.

Further, football is the original crowd sport, best enjoyed in a community setting. When the police send us packing at night, our only option is to watch the action in our homes. We ask you, sir, can you imagine fitting more than five people into the average Mumbai apartment? Can you think what it must do to the already burdened electricity grid to add multiple TV sets tuning in and to put home refrigerators through the additional beer-carrying burden? Can you feel our football-shunning partners' pain as we bring our fanaticism home and disturb their peace?

We have been deeply inconvenienced, hurt and even confused by the administration's lack of empathy towards our cause. Even our neighbours cannot understand why they have to put up with our noisy, but good natured behaviour closer to home.

We beseech you to allow the pubs and bars to remain open. If you want to read more about our plight, please log on to www.mirrorxi.com/forums

We solemnly swear, on behalf of all responsible fans across the city to be well behaved throughout this period.