<p>‘Let’s go over there,’ my mother would say as she walked my brother and me to an idle stall at the annual school fête in the late 1980s. School fêtes are organised to generate funds to meet shortfalls in renovation, repair or, at that time, free book or uniform distribution or the midday meal programme. Some stalls barely showed any activity, possibly due to a poor win-to-coupon-price ratio. We didn’t win much in these stalls, but my mother seemed happy to have cheered the stall team’s dispirited faces.</p><p>We come across many Goliath-versus-David situations in fiction as well. A strong individual or country fighting against a weaker person or nation. This is especially true when the odds are stacked against the weaker person, as in movies like Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator, Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire or Chak De! India, where a fallen hockey player coaches an underdog hockey team. Didn’t we enjoy India’s run and victory in the 1983 Cricket World Cup?</p><p>Some of us feel for each of the villains in the Batman movie series – The Penguin, The Joker, Bane or Two-Face. They have been wronged by society in some way in their lives, and villainy is their way of fighting back. Many of us empathised with Vijay Verma in Deewar, played by Amitabh Bachchan. We follow him and his brother, played by Shashi Kapoor, from a background of poverty where one becomes a powerful underworld don and the other an upright police officer. </p><p>We feel sorry for Vijay Verma for the discrimination and retribution he faced as a child for his minor offences and for his father’s deeds. We empathise when he rationalises his achievements, which take him to a position of strength from the poverty he knew.</p><p>As for me, I go for a local brand of cold drink when given a choice of multinational brands. Recently, when a national milk co-operative tried to take over the state milk co-operative society in Karnataka, I, like many others, expressed solidarity by purchasing products from the state co-operative. Sometimes shopping at the neighbourhood grocery store helps promote local businesses which compete against mega-corporate stores – both offline and online.</p><p>Why do we root for the underdog? It could be because we empathise with their struggles and at times admire the grit and determination of that person or organisation against all odds.</p><p>We live in an era of social media validation and digital influence. In this competitive world, we tend to root for someone who satisfies our desires for fairness and equality. We also like someone who can rise above the norms and fight against entitlement, bullying, nepotism or sycophancy. Or someone who is beholden in the form of the underdog.</p>
<p>‘Let’s go over there,’ my mother would say as she walked my brother and me to an idle stall at the annual school fête in the late 1980s. School fêtes are organised to generate funds to meet shortfalls in renovation, repair or, at that time, free book or uniform distribution or the midday meal programme. Some stalls barely showed any activity, possibly due to a poor win-to-coupon-price ratio. We didn’t win much in these stalls, but my mother seemed happy to have cheered the stall team’s dispirited faces.</p><p>We come across many Goliath-versus-David situations in fiction as well. A strong individual or country fighting against a weaker person or nation. This is especially true when the odds are stacked against the weaker person, as in movies like Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator, Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire or Chak De! India, where a fallen hockey player coaches an underdog hockey team. Didn’t we enjoy India’s run and victory in the 1983 Cricket World Cup?</p><p>Some of us feel for each of the villains in the Batman movie series – The Penguin, The Joker, Bane or Two-Face. They have been wronged by society in some way in their lives, and villainy is their way of fighting back. Many of us empathised with Vijay Verma in Deewar, played by Amitabh Bachchan. We follow him and his brother, played by Shashi Kapoor, from a background of poverty where one becomes a powerful underworld don and the other an upright police officer. </p><p>We feel sorry for Vijay Verma for the discrimination and retribution he faced as a child for his minor offences and for his father’s deeds. We empathise when he rationalises his achievements, which take him to a position of strength from the poverty he knew.</p><p>As for me, I go for a local brand of cold drink when given a choice of multinational brands. Recently, when a national milk co-operative tried to take over the state milk co-operative society in Karnataka, I, like many others, expressed solidarity by purchasing products from the state co-operative. Sometimes shopping at the neighbourhood grocery store helps promote local businesses which compete against mega-corporate stores – both offline and online.</p><p>Why do we root for the underdog? It could be because we empathise with their struggles and at times admire the grit and determination of that person or organisation against all odds.</p><p>We live in an era of social media validation and digital influence. In this competitive world, we tend to root for someone who satisfies our desires for fairness and equality. We also like someone who can rise above the norms and fight against entitlement, bullying, nepotism or sycophancy. Or someone who is beholden in the form of the underdog.</p>
