& the story of a cricket bat

The story is coming right at the end, so please hold on with the pain :).

Just finished watching the recording of Sachin's speech in Wankhede.

Yup, didn't see it live!, despite of claiming him mine for last 24 years. 'Don't have a TV' or 'no internet at room', well I'm not gonna give these excuses. Despite of being silly, they are non-existent. I opted out. Like I did when I got the chance of a lifetime to see him at the Eden, two years ago and again some 10 days ago, just 55 kilometres from where I'm typing now. It was difficult, more than most of you expect, for me to get a ticket. But still that cannot be an excuse, because its HIM!.

I opted out also not because it'll be unbearable for me; I wanted to pour my heart out, which I eventually did over the Youtube video that I had just shared [thanks to the person who recorded it from his TV screen and uploaded so fast, while the official broadcaster was still negotiating the original's price]. Surely it wouldn't have happened back at home, as even my impending exams never could shut-down 'any' cricket on TV, let alone a Test. But here, far away from those 'attributes', I am kinda alone to ponder. & that's the culprit.

I just didn't feel like. Ya, it was that simple. For all my life, I actually have seldom seen Sachin bat or play live! I only used to keep on updating the score, sit for those dreaded minutes when he was in the famous 90s, & then see the highlights or re-runs with devoted attention. When on 14th afternoon, he came to bat, I was watching the match online. Vijay got caught & He descended. I felt the decades-old rush again, and was about to see him getting his first run and then turn away to something. But then, given the historicity of the event, for the first time in my life, I decided to continue. For the first time is life, I was not being worried about him getting out and follow each and every shot looking only for that standard sparkle of genius. & it felt amazing!, as he was in sublime touch. He wanted to play all those great shots, one at a time, in his last (presumably) show. But then two guys came to me with a request that I couldn't refuse even in such a situation. By the time they left, it was stumps at He was batting on 38.

I didn't turn up in the morning to see him resuming. By the time I asked a shop-keeper, he had already taken the last walk back on 74. 'Another missed century!' the immediate & usual reaction of mine. Then almost immediately a calmness overwhelmed that: 'Let it be, He was happy while playing this innings'. I saw that the day before. He wanted to enjoy his cricket, that's why while coming down to bat, he was composed, not tensed, despite of everyone emoting atop their lungs within that resonating cavity of a Colosseum named Wankhede. He wanted to love the game in person one last time, and made sure nothing comes in-between, even the past 24 years!. & when this morning Sammy made us all skip a heart-beat or two for the last time, it was over. The public roared inevitably & He showed the first sign of pain, of leaving. Just before touching the shadows of the stands, he semi-paused and took off his tricoloured helmet and bowed after the grandest display, his career.

I missed THAT in live!, even today's ceremony, the immortal speech and the lap of honour. & it was intentional. Though I'm not sure at the moment, it was because I always missed him performing live most of the time. That's the way I always followed Him and that is how Sachin kept me happy. I stayed that selfish till the very end. I should have been otherwise, at least for the last time. But I didn't. & that's the way it's gonna stay for ever now. He will NOT retire for me; perhaps the same is with countless people around the globe. Whenever I will need to be happy, I'll see some recording of his batting. & He'll be there for me to make me happy. His love for his favourite thing cannot wither-off, as he always says, and we share that love!. So how can he retire, ever?

I'm not in for his praises and stats, nor about what he is for me. Not only because that feeling is completely mine, but because if one doesn't feel the same, they don't deserve to know. Rather I'll talk a bit about the speech he gave at last, and a tad more, before we go down to my story that I promised above.

Though 74 was supposed to be the last ballet, he did one more, as a happy child would. He made a speech, that resonated with us, touching all that is the good within. It was about love, between parents and son, among siblings and friends, in the family; sharing love for the game with his coach, co-players and inspiring most to be likewise. He made us cry. Trust me on this that it is impossible even for the greatest orator; but possible only for one who tries to sum-up everything he loved & keep on loving for all time. It had stories of devotion, sacrifice, care, braveness, pride and honour: all in all the best that human beings can feel, can be.

Then was the lap of honour, most of which was on the shoulders of MS, Rohit and Viraat, who qualify aptly. He kept on asking them if there is any discomfort, and they replied every time with a push upwards. The luckiest and happiest ball-boy of cricket was in tow, with his overwhelmed sister & mom; all three basking in the happiness of sharing the love of a billion hearts, and call it their own.



The Bat:

October, 1989. A kid lost his maternal grandfather. By the time the ceremonial functions are taking place in November, as usual, he was back into his childish best; making his father's scooter fall down on a rusted barbed fence, along with three other cousins. It got him a puncture and a overnight fever. His father took him for a tetanus shot next morning, but he won't give into that until he got a 'big' cricket bat. That was a repair-stock willow as tall as him that time.

By the time he was ready to wield his big new friend (he could!), he was shown someone, much older, but still a boy. This one was going to somewhere called Pakistan, of which our kid still had no real idea. He started hearing about and seeing him on a regular basis. He wanted to be like that boy at first. Then it went to the extent of getting even happier when the boy-star hit a 100 than he himself scoring something like that in the small ground nearby with that bat of his.

He kept on playing with that bat, even broke it once at the handle-ledge, but gummed it back solid & kept on going. When he was old enough to get into serious cricket, he couldn't make into very far. Still he kept on playing with that bat, only with tennis ball now, as it was weaker than before. But every time he played, he felt a connection, of scripting great innings' one after another.

Then the kid was man enough to leave home, and the bat too. Yet, every vacation he went back, he knocked a ball around with the bat, mostly and necessarily against a wall. Lately he could spot a few termite holes in the bat, which he poured oil into, so that the bat can go on a bit more, can stay with him. Last few times he went home, he couldn't play with it, but made a point each time to check-out its well-being. The bat still survives. He wants it to be there for ever with him. It's the living symbol of his love for the game. He has chosen something else as his life, and tries to be devoted completely to that. But he also wants that bat to be with him all the way: It makes him complete!. :)

Erotica......

To begin with, introduction amounts to the back-story. Started off from my God-forsaken abode [see previous blog] as early as 5:30 am and after 15 hours of international journey, still on a local train (though far better than most of the inter-state trains in India) at 10:35 pm local time, looking ahead at another 1.5 hours of comfortable journey, with no assurance of the vehicle availability for the final 5 kilometers. In the meantime, picked-up a bitter cold due to weather-change (from hot-n-humid dump to rainy spring with 17 degrees max.), making me constantly wipe my running nose in front of this young leggy lass I talked to while booking my automatic train ticket. Motivation enough to write a few pages, but have a little fever to be so spontaneously romantic!

Ya I am in the land of the Sahebs for a week, and by default the first thing becomes obvious is Gori

Maal. No matter how pathetic it is, or at least sounds, the naive facts are so numerous that it is a big factor. In partial self-defense, this is my second visit to this part of the world. Though that doesn't make me a seasoned expert in western heterosexual femininity, I have got enough experience already to get morphed into a different male altogether when I am here. These girls here, with obvious natural make-up of fairness to mask their ordinariness apparent to local males from the eastern men, actually appear more a person to me than those Items I drool-over back home, as a very few supremely close ones have drawn my attention towards innumerable times. & I assure that this privilege was not gained by girls here out of any deliberate speculation from my side. It happened on the first look! & that is something I am speculating over.

Let me simply clarify that girls here are far more welcoming to a foreign stranger than their Indian counterparts toward their fellow class-mates. As character demands of me, I again made the usual mistake of boarding a wrong coach without any thought given to the possibility of specific sitting allotment. In defense, long experience of lokaal train and lack of knowledge towards the language here (bravo, you know now that I'm not in UK, US, Oz,....). Anyways, when it struck me, it was through a couple who were trying to find their seats in the same compartment in which I wrongly was. The girl was lovely, and had to devote a couple of seconds in the usual response, before asking them to show me the seat-number in my ticket. & with a charming smile & comfortably accented English, it was the girl who explained to me the same, and also showed me how to get there. The effect, following the usual F-words murmured, I could very easily wish both of them a very good night and leave.

Does it yield a few crucial points regarding the by-default man-animal insurgence in our part of world? May be. Initially Delhi was unsafe for woman, then it became the Hell-hole, & now the rest of the country is full of horny wolves with fresh test of blood. & the holy grail? Respect towards woman. I find many a persons, from Bolly-stars to JNU faculties (trust me, all of the rest comes in-between), sharing their wisdom & hard-thought-upon solutions regarding the same; but none appears to have the worth of materialization. As far as my own solutions go, all listeners share the view of impracticality towards it. & now I am sitting here in front of an unknown girl whom if I ask something as silly as what is the time, she'll simply tell it to me, with no other thought at all! Ah, do I look totally unworthy of that consideration owing to my Indian features? But then all those who come to India invariable enters with the notion of Indian man-animal. Then what is the reason? Though many alternatives may be drawn upon, I being at the heart of the situation right now, genuinely feel that it is the simplicity that is socially accepted here about heterosexual interactions. You start-off as human-beings interacting together, and if it cooks-up to the level on its own, then you can go to bed right then. Everyone, in every role of his/her life, is given fair chance to develop ones own society; and nothing is deprived of deliberately. I won't call it freedom, but a necessary absence of constraints. A simple fact that got accepted here, but not in our world, where evil is ever-alert to gobble us up on the slightest sin! Wish we could, instead of purifying our sins, turn them into the mandatory spices of our lives.

Reality Check...................

Having to stay in a godforsaken dump heightens ones appreciation for the smallest of joy and celebration. Having a glass of sugar-cane juice, gathering round the puchka (panipuri) stall, a delayed drizzle followed by hails............. all amplified into bright snapshots for your present chunk of life......certainly means a friends B'day celebration much-awaited for days. You get an evening of good food (damn that MATTERS!), iced with notorious (relatively again) fun and pranks. All in all, a spark through an electron microscope. Then you come back, all satisfied and happy, with a slight but growing strain in mind that it is getting over; but with a hope that someone else's B'day must be coming up soon. So you try to wrap-up the evening with loud after-shouts of aimless babbling.

At that moment, a comment comes across, so randomly that its origin stays forever obscured. But it gradually mutates your state of mind into a anxiously frustrated one. More so as it spawned from the mind of your host and friend for whom you were so happy to be celebrate with, the B'day-guy. The person is an well-and-highly educated one, of the kind that is considered epitome of human learning across the planet. But may be, he is an Indian too, and unfortunately not of the rarest kind.

The half-hour debate inside a packed Maruti Omni began with him saying 'I hate Muslims'. There were six people cramped inside with four different mother-tongues, including the local language, and two other considerably common languages. Thus a tri-lingual conversation got evolved into a noisy debate. Amusingly, the opinion ratio was 5:1. & in his moderately potent Hindi-cum-English, the B'day-boy started to to defend his statement on the face of much excitement instantaneously aroused.

'They always betrayed us' he ushered 'ever since I have come to my senses, in the remotest place in the state (!), I have seen them exploiting our countries leniency towards communal aggression in the name of secularism. All of them are of bad blood and of natural criminal minds.'

'How can you even say that?' exclaimed one of us 'have you ever been to all of them, stayed among them, or known them all?'

He was defiant to the hilt 'I have seen enough! Everyone of them should be hunted down and thrown out of the country. Although they are officially only 400 millions, in actuality they have already overrun our population. They can take four wives and reproduce exponentially like guinea-pigs. We should forcefully stop them from doing that, or we will be exterminated in very near future.'

I inquired '& what right do you have to do that? Isn't there any regard in you towards human rights and fundamental freedom which are cornerstones of our constitution? Do you approve nationwide Islamic castration?'

'Why not? India should be put under totalitarian military rule anyway, given the political impotency we are facing for more than a decade. It should be like Kashmir, where 90% of the population, given a chance will go with Pakistan. Only the military is holding it with India'

'Do you know what military rule is?' I asked, with some more excitement '& do you think that Kashmir was ever been a part of political India before 1947?'

'No I haven't. But I know everything will be put into place once armed forces take it over. May be you are right about the political history of Kashmir, but it will work for India as a whole. One just needs to siphon them out of our system.'

I was shocked: 'You never seen what military rule is all about, or in that sense, the President rule.

In North-East, especially in Assam, Manipur and Nagaland, it has traumatize the whole population for more than two decades. Innocents getting killed out of suspicion, their female relatives too, but after being raped. Even kids were not spared. I have personally seen their predatory eyes peeping out of huge convoy trucks towards any female presence in the visible range. I was just a kid of 8 when operation Rhino was undertaken, or else I would very well had been vanished out of plain sight for being a youth. They exclaimed (un-officially) that half of us are terrorists, and we should be killed as a whole, with the other half being collateral damage.'

He continued: 'That may be so. But all the terrorists in India are Muslims!'

Imagine our faces! 'and they are strategically eroding us at all levels. I mean see the way they spread and multiply.'

I objected: 'ULFA are mostly all Hindus, all their leaders are.'

'Oh, they are different. They are fighting for the cause of expelling Bangladeshis.They are against Muslims.'

'Is it so? Paresh Baruah had been a citizen of Dhaka, his children were schooled there under Muslim names. & what about killing 28 innocent KG students in 2004 and killing dozens of locals in Guwahati? You don't know what terrorism is. I was born amidst it!'

He remained adamantly ignorant: 'But that doesn't justify the Muslims. They have been causing communal riots forever. They killed a lot of Hindus over the time since independence.' Subsequently the Godhra issue surfaced and he continued: 'I really commend what happened in Gujarat, in Godhra. They almost extinguished the Muslims. It should be done more often. That's why Modi is my favorite politico.'

Definitely too much for another friend of ours! 'You know what Godhra is? I was born near it and spent till my early adulthood thereabout. It is the second most remote place in the otherwise shining state. We have seen Hindus, in guise of Muslims, burning Hindu households. And they killed innocent people. My friends family was burnt alive inside their house. I was locked alone inside my house on my mother's B'day, while hazards were going on outside. We didn't die, but no one could sleep normally for months. I appeared for my board exams under military guard. They use to stroll in our village, adding to the fright with their mostly indecent behavior. I have seen the death of my known, and it was not only the Muslims who were responsible.'

'I don't care!' the B'day-boy was adamant: 'In my place, they use to still our crops. That's a huge loss for a farmer. If it takes a riot to get rid of them, better be so.'

'But that means death, rape and total chaos.'

'So what? For a farmer, a loss of potato crop is equally severe!' Just imagine our faces, again!
He continued 'And look at the ruling Congress. It is run by Muslims too. To whom Indira was married? Wasn't he a Muslim. I tell you their blood is the most rotten.'

'But what about Indira's lineage?'

'Oh doesn't matter. Children never get traits from their mother.......... And whatever you say, you are damn impractical. I hate Muslims & that's all!'

…......The Omni entered the campus & we parted with one last B'day wish to him. But could we part with what was happening a few minutes ago? Obviously there was no point continuing that 'discussion' (I daresay it was all but a debate!) with him, but I'm sure it is still lingering in the minds of rest of us.

Multiple points I have carried out of that half-hour. & the corresponding feeling had been a cocktailed one; that of anger, frustration, disappointment and above all, hopelessness. To be fair, I must disclose that the entire group was of researchers in physics and chemistry, four of which being PhD students, and all with multiple international publications. One can pause and rewind at this point and scan through the above narration of dialogues, not just for believing, but for eager comprehension. How one of US could speak like that? Though unnecessary, I assure we are all Indians, and we stay/work in a International-level research institute of union funding. & to be honest, I'm still partially dumb-struck.

I know our friend for last three years and he is of the usual lot, which normal people might call 'intelligently deluded'. Yes we all are. But that should make us liberal, not communal! Every other day I have this discussion with a few closest to me that all our India is developing into a pitifully minor urban utopia. The 'well-educated' modern Gen-Y is growing aware, strong and more interestingly active regarding many national-level issues; for example those of reservations, Mangalore pub incidence, Delhi rape case,............. But where are they from? The metros, plus a few big cities and a hundred small ones. What is the total population of these? 200-250 million at most, out of which 150-180 million live in slums, earn daily wedges, work in factories. They don't bother about Damini, as long as their wife/sister/daughter is safely inside after dark; they have to earn their daily bread! So 30-50 million is the totality of that 'youth', less than half of them adult, and even less 'enlightened'. So, say 10 million hot young energetic men/woman are aware & changed regarding religion, economy, politics, blah, blah, blah,........whew! But then, what is the present population of the country? A conceivable 1.2 billion!!!

Still I use to take solace in that 'we' all belong to that 10 million, perhaps the smallest minority in the country, that too, without any reservations. I was shown last night that I was wrong. I find no point in explaining what was wrong with my friend's views. If one can appreciate, he/she doesn't need it. For the rest, its fruitless. I'm more bothered about how he could still be like that! After five years of college and University and another four years of graduate studies with research experience

in 'pure' sciences, with the 'maturity' of 27 years and in a relationship which took three years to develop, he doesn't give a damn towards either fundamental human rights or genetic propagation of traits. He believes that ones believes can make his/her blood 'impure', which propagates through generations. & therefore he HATES them!

I personally am of the notion that if you disregard the basic constitutional principles of your nation, that too one founded 'by the people, for the people', you ARE committing treachery towards it. But the bigger question is, how can you keep doing it & still think of justifying it? I strictly state it clear that I'm not for any control over how one should evolve into an adult; unlike the Republic of China, which as a matter of fact revered by this particular friend of mine! So he has quite freely evolved into what he says he believes in. Coming to the background issue, the guy is staying away from home for 10 years or so, four of which are spent in a research institute (trust me, we don't have any other place to go, normally!). May be it is the backlog from early life, but is it that stubborn to let him free of its clutches? Then he says that he has seen Bihar, and it is pathetically backward full of stinky Muslims. & that 'observation' actually amounts for two days in the outskirts of Jamshedpur in a friend's place! Trust me, he is an experimentalist seasoned in taking numerous data to make statistical prediction incorporated into results which are rendered established by scientists world over.

We, no matter how high have climbed-up in our socio-intellectual ladder, we are mostly stuck inside our selfish and ignorant cocoons. Americans may not be able to differentiate between Osama and a Sikh, but are we any better? The 'best' of us don't even know about our own self, our own countrymen, our history and geography (I'm from Jorhat, Assam and I still go back home to 'hills' in vacations!); & also don't give a damn and keep on bolstering about whatever minuscule and highly misled philosophy we have. That too at a level that we shrug off all that is put against that by our equally, if not more & better, informed colleagues/friends with a singular 'I don't care'. & still we have accomplished the tag of the youngest country in the world with the biggest prospect of all-round development.

No Sir/Ma'am I don't see a future in the sun. May be we still need a man of Steel to lead us. But then, are we always supposed to be led? Why free will remains always statistical no matter how extensive the exposure to the facts is? I might be too biased to place my card on a singular event dominated by one person. But this was only a recent and elaborate example. We also have about 400 undergraduate students in our institutes, less experienced and educated, but never the less, young adults, and by no means less aware. & yeas, very highly talented. But I have observed the same trait, in varying degree, in most of them. They are bright kids, and will make many of us proud in recent future, but certainly making some of us disappointed already.

Then I wonder, how, despite of this and all the rest, we INDIA are not only surviving, but growing in influencing the rest of the world more than ever! It's an astronomically difficult task to model this humongous complex system in a logical way, so that any analytic social model can emerge. It's perhaps completely chaotic! But then, maximum entropy indicate stablest state. Perhaps that is our true identity, and nothing will ever go bad for us :)