New Delhi, June 5 -- On Tuesday night, 3 June, as the Royal Challengers Bengaluru cricket team won its first Indian Premier League title, I felt a sudden unease. Not because I don't love cricket or the joy of celebrations-I do-but because I've lived long enough in Bengaluru to dread what happens next. Traffic snarls, jammed roads becoming choking funnels, rains turning half-built streets into muddy rivers. So, instinctively, I started mapping my next day's routes, mentally avoiding potential flashpoints. But not once-not even remotely-did I imagine lives would be lost celebrating something as simple as a cricket victory.

And yet, painfully, that's exactly what happened.

By Wednesday night, 11 people had died in a stampede at Bengaluru's...