A tale of two cricketers

Never have the course of two Indian cricketers run parallel in a manner as remarkable as in the case of Sourav Chandidas Ganguly and Rahul Sharad Dravid. With Ganguly recently retired and if things don’t improve much, Dravid very likely to follow in his footsteps, this is a good time to reflect on their respective careers, both remarkable in their own right, but make even more fascinating a study when viewed in contrast with each other, something of the lines of the plot of many Jeffrey Archer novels.

Their rise to the Indian team prior to their Lords debut ran parallel. Dravid served out an extended apprenticeship in the domestic circuit as Karnataka’s mainstay evoking frequent comparisons from the local press to Vishwanath and Brajesh Patel. Ganguly, on the other hand was never a major run machine in domestic cricket like Dravid and Laxman and came into his own on the international stage only. Unlike Dravid again, who was serious about cricket from his schooldays, he simply came from a family of club cricketers and took to the game seriously only after he was selected for the disastrous tour of Australia in 1992. The tour started Ganguly’s brush with controversy as talk of his refusal to carry drinks surrounded him. He remained controversial for his entire career winning more foes than friends in the international circuit, was hugely unpopular in his county stints and incurred the wrath of match referees more than any other captain in living memory. Off the field too, Ganguly was the more dashing, eloping with his childhood sweetheart in the face of family opposition and his much publicized affair with Nagma, while Dravid remained the committed, model cricketer, diligent to a fault and correct to the extent of being boring.

The face of the Indian batting had always been that of a Bombayite. Right from Vijay Merchant to Dilip Sardesai to Sunil Gavaskar to Sachin Tendulkar to the much hyped Rohit Sharma, the city of Bombay has always staked a claim to the premier batsmen of any generation. The strength of the Bombay faction in the BCCI has always been paramount and has dominated the scene of Indian cricket, both on and off the field. Dravid and Ganguly were not only significant actors who were instrumental in breaking through the dominance of this clique and giving the Indian team a non-parochial face for the first time, they were themselves the most important part of it. That they replaced Vinod Kambli and Sanjay Manjrekar, two Bombay lads who were supposed to be the mainstay of our batting along with Sachin makes this all the more remarkable.

Their Lords debut was not the ideal platform for a youngster looking to ease into the team. On a fast, swinging track they came together with India in a spot of bother. They could not have been more dissimilar in style. Ganguly, later to be described by his partner at the other end as next only to God on the offside kept easing the ball through the point and cover regions. Dravid, then a predominantly leg side player relied more on playing off his pads. Ganguly, as we all know scored a century on debut and Dravid made 95. In the nest test Ganguly scored yet another ton and Dravid missed out yet again being dismissed on 88. This was to be a reflection of things to come as they grew into two of India’s premier batsmen. While Ganguly was the leading run scorer in ODIs till the turn of the century even beating Sachin for four out of five seasons, Dravid established himself as rock solid test batsmen. It was also to be Dravid’s fate for a large part of his career to be a pretty bridesmaid who gave numerous sterling performances only to be overshadowed by Ganguly or Tendulkar. The script continued into the new century when Ganguly was appointed captain and Dravid his deputy.

The Kolkata Test in 2001 was, in a sense the turning point in many ways for both, for Ganguly as a captain and for Dravid as a batsman. Hitting his way out of a slum in the most dramatic of matches must have given Dravid a lot of confidence as his star soared thereafter and he gradually came out of the shadows of his distinguished peers to become India most valuable player for the next half of a decade. He scored runs all over the world, adapted perfectly to the one day set up, filled in as a wicket keeper when required and was a great support of his captain. For Ganguly, this was the beginning of the golden period as a captain. He had the uncanny ability as a captain to back match winning performers and get the best of them.

Many believe that had Ganguly not been made the captain, he would have achieved a lot more as batsman. It is probable for the biggest problem with Ganguly’s batting was that it did not develop after a point. While Dravid and Sachin have constantly evolved as batsmen, made various adjustments to their game; Ganguly, once he has been sorted out, never managed to overcome his deficiencies.

It is universally believed that Dravid was a clearly inferior captain to Ganguly. I am not entirely sure. Ganguly introduced a lot of self-belief in his team and helped us get over out timid chokers tag and that was what we needed then. But, he was never a great tactician. He was easily rattled as a captain and many a times let the momentum slip through out of a lack of imaginative captaincy. Dravid, was a much more collected man on the field. His captaincy on the field always has more of method to it than Ganguly’s who was tactically always on the whimsical side especially with respect to his handling of spinners and part-time bowlers. But what Ganguly lacked in on field tactics, he more than made up through the way his communicated with his players and allowed them to flourish. Dravid tended more to lead by example through his own performances and commitment but despite the bulk of his runs never really had the aura of a leader.

While Ganguly left on high, scoring significant runs against the top team in the world in his farewell series, Dravid has so far doggedly stuck around in the midst of calls for his head. In the past month, many a sports journalists have made a living out of stories on the lines of “the Wall crumbling.” His century at Mohali notwithstanding, despite being full of character and a testimony to his tenacity, I have a feeling Dravid will not have a swan song end to his career. If there is one thing that he has lacked in his otherwise illustrious career, it is the sense of timing that his longtime colleague and once co-debutante has always had.

"Ringo?"

"Yup!"

"Do you ever feel lonely at the back there playing the drums?"

"Yup!"

"Did you ever feel that you'd like to sing?"

"Yup!"

"Do you ever say anything else but yep?"

"Nope."

"Would you like to be someone's lover man?"

"Yup!"

"Now?"

"Yup!"

The first time I saw her she was a little girl on a swing. As I passed her, she drew close to me, drawing nearer with every second until she kicked me on the butt.

"Sorry!"
She was a little angel. Taller than me. Fair with big, black eyes.
I smiled and drawing myself up to meet her tall frame, drew myself away. She was walking towards me.
"Sorry. Are you hurt?"
"No." That was all I could manage.

Ayn Rand: A Criticism

I was fourteen when I read The Fountainhead and read Atlas Shrugged shortly after. It was one the most thrilling and emotionally powerful reading experience of my life. But this is not about why I like Ayn Rand's writing but about why I outgrew her ideas after a brief adolescence phase.

Ayn Rand was a champion of reason and extremely averse to any idea that reeked of any sort of mysticism or irrationalism. But probably, she had so little patience for anything she suspected to be irrational that she dismissed without actually understanding the fine difference between the reason as a process and what is considered at a given point of time and by a given number of people as reasonable. We do not exist in a vacuum and are never immune to notions of what is reasonable. It’s always important to remember that reason or rationality, and what people may regard as reasonable, don’t mean the same thing.

The consequence of failing to make this distinction is evident in the case of Ayn Rand in that if someone disagreed with her notion of “the reasonable,” it was very convenient to accuse him of being irrational or against reason. It is almost disturbing the frequency and ease with which she branded any viewpoint she did not share as not merely mistaken but irrational or mystical. In other words, anything that challenged her particular model of reality was not merely wrong but “irrational” and “mystical”—to say nothing, of course, of its being “evil,” another word she loved to use with extraordinary frequency.

In fact the degree of moralising she resorted to in her novels was almost appalling. Few clergymen in the Dark Ages, let alone novelists must have used the word “evil” with such frequency. She left you with the impression that life is a tightrope and that it is all too easy to fall off into moral depravity. In other words, while on the one hand she preached a morality of joy, personal happiness, and individual fulfillment; on the other hand, she was also very likely to scare the hell out of you if you respected and admired her and wanted to apply her philosophy to your own life.

The most devastating single omission in her system and the one that has probably caused the maximum damage to an impressionable reader was a complete lack of understanding of how human beings evolve and how they can change. The recipe prescribed by her was a severely disciplined one. You either choose to be rational or you don’t. You’re honest or you’re not. You choose the right values or you don’t. Her followers are left in a dreadful position: If their responses aren’t the right ones, what are they to do? How are they to change? No answer from Ayn Rand. Therein lies the tragedy.

Every philosopher must be understood in the historical context in which they functioned. Rand, born in Russia in the pre-revolution days was a relentless rationalist perhaps in reaction to “a mystical country in the very worst sense of the word, a country that never really passed through the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment in the way that Western Europe did.” Perhaps this should be the footnote to her ideas providing some insight into her fiercely uncompromising outlook.

Part time lover and full time friend

In the web of human relationships, so rigidly marked with tags and classifications, there are times when lines are blurred and categories are irrelevant. But are they, really ever? Don’t we always desire to define our relationships within the set labels? I do, I know. Even though it sound much more mysterious to say with a shrug, “We are..umm well, I don’t really know what we actually are”, I still always have this nagging question at the back of my head.

But, sometimes maybe it’s best to do away with labels. We should just enjoy what we have and not spoil it by subjecting it to constant pressure to belong to one of the many categories.

I can't write..atleast not tonight

Bombay Rain

Diagonal rain. Waves scud towards the sand

crest and trough. Through clouds, a strand
of light shimmers down to a silvered zone of sea.
The gulls circle its uncertainty.
And rains - untimely, unsure, sporadic
throw off schedules, flood roads, congest traffic.
A sea of umbrellas on the street
And late by an hour, boy and girl meet
I watch the rain, think of thee

Cleansing her soul, you that she.

Words are flying out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me


Images of broken light which
dance before me like a million eyes
That call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a
restless wind inside a letter box
they tumble blindly as
they make their way across the universe


Sounds of laughter shades of life
are ringing through my open ears
exciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which
shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the universe

Koyal

Tujhe ek aawaz mili kya tune saara aasman hi apne sir par uthha liya hai
Tujhe marmvedi dardila meethha swar jo mila hua hai
Disha Disha mein, dal dal mein, pat pat mein usko rasa basa dene ko kya tu sach much antarprerit akulai hai
Ya tu apna, apni boli ki mithhas ka vigyapan karti firti hai
Abhi yahaan se, abhi wahaan se, jahaan tahaan se
Woh madmaati apni hi rat gayi lagati gayi lagati gayi lagati

© Harivanshrai Bachchan

Protocols

What can I say to you? How can I retract
All that that fool, my voice, has spoken.
Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked,
The protocols of friendship broken?

I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn
Past the still house where you lie sleeping.
May the sun burn these footprints on the lawn
And hold you in its warmth and keeping.

- Vikram Seth

What is so special about Seth's poetry is the simple, elegant verse, the easy to relate ideas that he writes about ranging from loneliness to heartbreak, and the crisp economy of style, not to mention the strict adherence to metre. This is one of my personal favorites from All you who sleep tonight.

Hello, Goodbye

October 22, 2007

Rose stood waiting at the canteen as I got off the Churchgate station and walked towards her. With a distance of about 30 yards between us I tried to drink in the reality. It was close to four years since the time we last met. In the winter of 2003, I was still a kid. Four long and eventful years in which so much had changed. I do not know if I felt more mature as I walked towards her. But somehow I've always felt that childhood had ended somewhere in that winter four years back. And this was merely a stop gad period before adulthood would set in.

As I got closer I took a long hard look at her. A thousand thought ran through my head. I wondered how much she had changed in these years. Had she put on weight? She certainly seemed a little different. Was she this tall when i last saw her?

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Long time."

"Long time."

"Were you this tall when i last saw you?"

It turns out she was. But minus the two inches of heels she sported now. She took off her sunglasses and smiled at me. The same black lustrous eyes. Keki Daruwalla once wrote of a woman that she was a hoor with eyes so bright that they could light up the darkness of the underworld. He might as well have been speaking of her.

Sunglasses, heels, kohl in her eyes. Some things had changed. Yet others hadn't. The same gold pendant which she always wore, small earrings like the ones she would buy somewhere near New Patna Market, a plain white top like many she had. ("Do all your clothes look the same?") But she looked different. I do not know in what way but the girl I had known most of my life had not been this beautiful.

Over milkshake in that college canteen, we broke the ice. My life in law school, hers in the hostel, my brother's wedding, her mother's illness, law and justice, movies and books. We spoke almost like two strangers. Why are we talking like this? Who cares about mundane things like old common friends? About what happened to old what's-his-name and what became of old so- and-so. Let's take a walk and throw Landor at each other or something or make non-executable plans to go trekking on the mountains or something.

Over beer and Fish n chips at Cafe Leopold, things got a little warmer. Past relationships and prospective ones. ("Forget about it. She's way out of your league.") Her bunch of suitors ranging from irritating to interesting. ("Give me call if you want me to beat them up or something." "Like the old times?" "Like the old times.")

"Are you still a virgin?"

Spechless and gaping.

"Oh God! You're blushing like a girl."

"Please. I am not blushing. I was just taken aback."

"So...?"

"What do you think?"

"Who'd ever agree to sleep with you?"

Over ragda patties at Chowpatty, things got a little better. We even threw a bit of Frost at each other. As i was about to graduate to Donne, she stopped me.

"Lets not get into poetry."

"Whats wrong with poetry?"

"Nothing. It just depresses me."

"Ok. Lets take a walk and I'll tell you about a story about how Sunny Gavaskar once got a haircut midway through a test match."

As i narrated the tale of how the great Dickie Bird was once approached by the little monster with the most peculiar of requests which Bird might initially have mistaken for some low form of Asiatic humor but on realising that the batsman was serious he produced a razor-blade and sliced off locks of his hair which were blowing into his eyes and the haircut had a very unSamsonlike effect on Gavaskar as he went from strength to strength and scored his first century in two years, she fell by my side and held on to my sleeve as we walked.

"Look at those dividers."
"Don't they look like Shiv-lings?"
"Imagine what a tough time a person would have pouring water over all of them."
"Do you know Shiv-lings are actually phallic symbols?"

Meeting her was like discovering my childhood again. Childhood juxtaposed with against my present. Old crushes, long forgotten and vehemently denied now, the first whiff of smoke coughed out on stolen cigarrettes and now both of us lit up like veterans("Not bad, you don't wet the butt anymore."), memories of ways through woods on snowy evenings and reading out Shakespeare aloud, plots of running away, planned and partly executed, revolutionary ideas and dream of changing the world.("You're still such a dreamer") But, times had changed. We were growing up.

"Hey, we're growing up!"
"Not we, you are."
"You mean you aren't."
"No, I already have. You're the one who's still a boy."

As she sat across me on the train, both of us were aware of the the very few minutes we had together. A thousand thoughts ran through my head. Four years this time, God knows how many more before we'd meet again. I wanted to tell her how much I cared for her but why increase the pain of parting. I do not know what was going through her mind. All the sarcasm was gone from her demeanour and she sat with her defenses down, her face small and her eyes sad. Why love someone? Life is so much simpler without it. I felt the burden of unwanted love heavy on me. At that moment, I thought of another on whom probably a similar burden lay heavy. We are a chain of a horrible cliche which is too much of a cliche to be even taken seriously.

Two of us

February 24, 2008

My day began at the Churchgate station. It was past 2 p.m. when I arrived at the station but for me the day has just begun. I have always felt that it is an excessively Western thing to believe that the day changes at midnight. There are times when you do not know whether it’s today or tomorrow. You’ve been doing what you were doing since it was yesterday and since you’ve been awake it’s still today in your head. But when you think of it, it is tomorrow. But as long as I don’t sleep, I do not feel that the day has changed. It’s almost as if the day has stretched beyond the stipulated hours and is surviving on borrowed time. There are times when I lose the sense of time and stick to my own ways to define it. Yesterday ended when I left the office today where I had been working all night and half the day and today began as I descended from the train some stations ahead to meet her.

Waiting outside Eros, I am mildly disturbed. For some strange reason, I am reminded of the image of Sachin waiting for a very young Poonam Dhillon outside a movie theatre in Trishul. She never made it for the rendezvous, meeting an accident on the way but she arrives in a while, late as usual, but better late than not.

There are many different ways in which two people behave as they meet each other. Some launch into a dramatic monologue expressing extreme pleasure and good fortune at this opportunity fate has provided them with(case in point a former roommate), some attempt an eloquent pause as they offer their hand for a handshake(a roommate), others still just start off talking about whatever they intend to talk about(another former roommate). But whenever I met her, it was always the same. She always starts by being preoccupied with something or the other, paying the auto-driver, staring at something across the road that caught her fancy but comes out her reverie in a few seconds and immediately launches into an anecdote about whatever happened to her most recently. I am amazed at the consistency with which this cycle is repeated.

We head to The Pizzeria for lunch. As we settled down for lunch, both of us grope for a distance which was once ours. I think we are trying to gauge something without realizing it. Can we still talk? Through a stroll around the Marine drive, a visit to the Oxford bookstore (a tribute to Rishabh) and to Bombay University(is it Mumbai University now?), walking around in circles and letting life take the same course, through broken chappals and aching legs, local trains and five star hotels, discotheques and a trip down the memory lane, we discover that we can. Feminist reflections to “auratein haraamzaadi hoti hai!”, law school and its trappings, new-fangled theories on love and marriage, romanticism and acceptance; we traverse familiar and overdone concepts yet it is refreshing.

“You know I can imagine us not talking for say, three years and suddenly running into each other and..”

“And picking up immediately from there.”

“Yeah.”

Some things never change in life. Her laughter clichéd though this sounds, ready and extremely naughty wit, scandalized responses, a taste for irony, the detached sympathetic way in which she speaks of herself, mean and dismissive yet classy reflections on all and sundry, the half smile lingering on the face, the easy candor. Some others do.

“We’re best this way”

A luncheon date which extends into many more hours through the day, and night as we let this day turn into one of those where two people decide to just sit and discuss their fears, the changes they have undergone, the end of childhood and the pains of growing up, dreams and compromises and how life has changed, for the better or for the worse. There is something about people you know and who know you; you can always talk to them no matter how much life changes. Why do we always talk like this, theorizing about life, analyzing everything from a psychological angle yet the whole process never getting pretentious as it does with others, throwing in random anecdotes, and always talking in terms of general principles without really saying much directly about our lives, yet saying a lot. The past, with all its complications looms large, yet we can talk like this simply because we are two people who want to.

It is late morning by the time I drop her to her place. I take a cab back to the Churchgate station. As I embark the train and settle down, I fall asleep, my day ending exactly where it began.

License my roving hands, and let them go

Before, behind, between, above, below.

John Donne
From On his mistress going to bed

Donne is damn cool and wrote some of the sexiest lines ever. More on this after the Moots are over.

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

Whose woods these are I think I know,

His house is in the village though.

He will not see me stopping here,

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,

To stop without a farmhouse near,

Between the woods and frozen lake,

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep,

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

This seems all the more apt in the midst of my moot week when I have loads of work to do. In any case, ‘Stopping by woods…’ has been one of my favorite poems ever since I can remember. Frost wrote poems which could be read on many different levels, and you could still enjoy the superficial surface meaning. Here, he plays a fair bit with the overdone sleep-death metaphor. Beyond the surface is the more melancholic feel marked by a longing for death and weariness from the pain of existence and the imagery of winter and night sets a fine backdrop to it.

Time, they say, is a great healer. Pain subsides, anger evaporates, dynamics change. Yet, do we get over the tribulations of the past? The ghosts of the past remain that, ghosts. Out of sync with our present reality, unreal, yet somehow still there, floating somewhere in the backdrop.

The Tragedy of being Rahul Dravid

When I was growing up, in the second half of 90s, Sachin Tendulkar was god. He still is god, many would argue (There are some others who might also argue I am still growing up!) but back then, we saw Sachin achieve the greatness many predicted he would since the first time he played international cricket and go beyond. He was a fearless competitor in an otherwise tame team and singled out the world’s best bowlers for special treatment, not the old warrior who is a sedate presence in the otherwise bunch of strutting youngsters that the Indian cricket team is now. That was Sachin, a performer at the peak of his prowess, now he is a veteran playing out his final symphony.

But I am digressing. While most around me loved Sachin, my adoration was reserved for the quieter, sedate, Rahul Dravid. Dravid debuted around the time I became obsessed with the game of cricket. While many speak of his solidity and consistency, I always thought he was a treat to watch. His on drives, his late cuts, his driving through the covers or through the ‘V’ are first rate not only in terms of technique but also had the stamp of an extremely stylish batsman.

Dravid has, for a while been one of those batsmen who lie at the fringes of the great batsmen of all time. Is Dravid an all time great batsman? Not too many would answer that in the affirmative. What makes a great batsman? Sachin most certainly is one. Lara and Ponting are the only two others who would qualify without any debate for the tag in their generation we look at the past two decades. Steve Waugh was highly respected as a leader and an ambassador for the game but would he qualify as a great batsman. For me, Waugh was someone who primarily thrived on scoring off short pitched balls outside his off-stump. That he scored so many runs is a testament to his hardiness and resilience. But while those are adjectives which fit well with Waugh, words such as brilliant, genius and great might elude him. Sehwag, I sometimes suspect might end up as a great batsman especially after performances like the one in the 2^nd Test in Sri Lanka a few days ago but he has some way to go before a debate on the same is required. Some time in the first half of this decade, Dravid looked as if he would cement his place as a truly great batsman. This was the golden phase of Ganguly’s captaincy and it wasn’t Sachin who led the way as the most shining star amongst the Indian batsman but Dravid. Be it ensuring we did not lose the test series in the West Indies in 2002 or his double hundreds in England, Australia and Pakistan, Dravid was the chief architect almost every time India won a Test match overseas.

But, then came the downfall. As a captain, he tried to lead by example in the first half of his tenure. He didn’t shy from opening the innings in Pakistan and almost set a record breaking partnership with Sehwag. He was for a while, out most consistent performer in both forms of the game. Then, came the downfall. The failure of his team started showing in his form, too. His image suffered a lot when it was felt he wasn’t assertive enough and let his coach run things. By the time, he quit, he was a burdened man who did not seem to enjoy his cricket. He even had to bear humiliation at the hands of his franchise owner, a shameful tale which was ignored by the cricket fraternity and media. In an age, where a new order threatens the old school, Dravid should have been seen as the harbinger of that change. It was he, along with Chappel who advocated a change in Indian cricket. Ironically, he represents the old school in the public eye and is the most vulnerable of our heroes in the last leg of their careers, to be slighted by the Chief selector and the new age private franchise owners.

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to suck all the marrow of life! To rout on all that was not life. And not, when it came to die, discover that I had not lived."

- Henry David Thoreau