With just five days remaining for the kickoff of the 32-day 2014 FIFA World Cup event in Brazil, entire Kerala has turned into a celebration ground. Soccer fever is at unprecedented levels over this World Cup edition primarily because the tournament is being held in Brazil which Malayalees consider as the Mecca of football.
Huge boards featuring larger-than-life pictures of soccer stars and members of World Cup teams have already lined up in almost all towns and villages in the State. Most major teams participating in the event have fan followings in the State but the colours seen prominently throughout Kerala this time are Brazil's green and yellow.
Brazil's soccer genius Neymar and Argentine scoring machine Messi are the most featured stars in the boards put up by football clubs and fans' groups at all available spaces in village squares and town junctions. Despite doubts over his appearance in this World Cup, larger-than-life cutouts of Portuguese great Christiano Ronaldo also are seen in great numbers.
Soccer fever had reached its zenith even before the start of the tournament in the towns and villages of northern Kerala, especially Malappuram and Kozhikode districts where football is the second religion of almost all the people. The subject of discussion at reading rooms, evening get-togethers and even marriage parties is football - and Brazil, of course.
Here is a glimpse of how important the FIFA World Cup is to the people of Mambad - known as the Mecca of football in Kerala - in Malappuram district: Fifty-year-old Nooruddin Mohammad, a school teacher, has already applied for one month's leave, despite the fact that it is the school-reopening season, to celebrate the world's biggest soccer event.
"I am not alone in doing this. Many of my friends will be on leave for the entire month. It is not a big thing to sacrifice your one month's leave for soccer. After all, it happens only once in four years," says Nooruddin, who would have been in Brazil by now to "experience the World Cup by body and soul" had it not been for the bad health of his 74-year-old mother.
Sports goods centres where jerseys of football teams are being sold and television showrooms which have announced special World Cup offers are reporting big leaps in sales in the past two weeks.