Tendulkar and a Billion Hopes

To Tendulkar. And to his art that gives a Nation the reason to believe in miracles.
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The crafts of the greatest of the greats have found brilliance in the light of the tragedies and madness that they lived with. Sachin Tendulkar is no exception.

For what would Vincent Van Gogh be without his string of tragedies and a lost ear? His paintings, will not have been the masterpieces had it not been drawn with the colors of his tragedy. History has it that Van Gogh had a very disturbing personal life. He and Gauguin forged a deep friendship during the two years they lived and painted as neighbors in Arles, in the south of France. The two had built the town's reputation as an artistic colony. That dream ended in an angry exchange between the painters on the evening of Dec. 23, 1888. As that story goes, van Gogh cut off part of his own ear with a straight razor after he and Gauguin parted. Bleeding heavily, van Gogh then wrapped it in cloth, walked to a nearby bordello and presented the severed ear to a prostitute, who fainted when he handed it to her.

Then there was Beethoven. When he was ten, Beethoven had gained fame for his work throught Europe. That is when tragedy struck: he began to lose his hearing. At first, he was only slightly deaf. Later however, the whole realm of sound was completely lost. Most people would have given up. What good is a musician with no sense of hearing? But Beethoven did not let that stop him. Although he closed himself off people, his connections with music were truly unbreakable. He was in a sense of close denial, taking walks in the woods to get away from people and to get closer to nature. Now was a point when Beethoven composed for his own love, rather than for a career. He heard music with his inner ear now. Instead of halting Beethoven’s thoughts of musical creation, it allowed him to discover new dimensions of music, to see music as a necessity of life, not as an ornament. One of the most amazing pieces of his works, his nine symphonies, is like a timeline of his life and a timeline of music.

Closer home, even though Mirza Ghalib spread love, beauty and happiness all around, his own life was filled with moments of despair and tragedy. His most beautiful works were written when he was at his lowest ebb - at the loss of a loved adopted child. He suffered from a drinking problem; financial difficulties as well as pains of old age – some of the ingredients that led to his great couplets.

The list would go on and on, but it would all bring us to one single fact. These people without compare stood on the unscalable pedestal only because of their tragedies. Tendulkar’s tragedy lies in his passion to win a game and standing tall amidst the ruins when all the warriors have failed. Like the story of Troy, where Hector stands tall against the might of Archilles, it was Tendulkar who stood against the might of the opponents. And in the resulting defeat, we have seen the fallen rise above the victorious.

Going a few years back to the test match in Chennai where on the verge of defeat, India found a partnership going in the fourth innings in Nayan Mongia and Tendulkar. India, by then had almost lost the match against Pakistan, and people were slowly moving out of the stadium. In the hours that followed, we saw a game that seemed scripted by God with Tendulkar in the lead. India, riding on his century, was just 18 runs from victory when he got out. The rest, you might recollect, was a tension filled 20 minutes when India finally surrendered. Wasim Akram said, there was Pakistan and there was Tendulkar standing before their victory. And although, Pakistan won, it was actually Tendulkar, who, history would remember as the hero of the day.

Tendulkar cried that night, and did not come to the presentation ceremony to take his Man of the Match award. His agony in this loss was to come out in a masterful display of batting in the time to come.

2008 – 15th Dec: Just three weeks after the deadly attacks on Mumbai which rocked India and put the England tour of India in doubt, Tendulkar scored an unbeaten century to give the hosts a historic victory over England. Tendulkar, in his 19th year in Test cricket, played perhaps his greatest innings as India completed the fourth-highest run chase of all time. And he did that by ensuring that he remained at the crease till the very end. That was perhaps a lesson that he had learned from the Chennai test match, to see India through.

Yesterday’s loss was yet another drama which had a climax that lasted the entire second innings. And the architect of that climax was Tendulkar alone. He kept an entire billion glued to their seats with hope and awe. Everyone, from children who go to sleep at 8.30 PM, to housewives who have a habit of watching the 9 PM soaps, to the chaat-wala at Juhu chowpatty, to the guy trying to catch a night flight were keeping a tab on the score. And it was not even a world cup match. Such is the admiration and belief that a country holds in that diminutive man. And yet, when India lost, the emotions on the face of this man were that of a child who has lost his favorite marbles. The equations in the end were simple. Australia won. India lost. But the match was glorified by the innings of Tendulkar. The tragedy of his glory amidst the ruins of a shattered billion hopes would be etched in history. And from this tragedy will be born a billion more hopes, and an innings of a greater victory where India wins. Let’s hope it comes in the final of the 2011 World Cup.

To Tendulkar. And to his art that gives a Nation the reason to believe in miracles.

My Diary Entries: Thoughts on Distance and Gravity of Emotions

To the soot in my hearth, and the simplicity of its being
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Have you ever paused to think of the life that you have lived? Not an introspection but of the myriad moments and actions that went on to define the moment you are standing at. Of the countless misses in your life. Of the small things which you did or did not do that lead to the misses. Of what was always yours but still you lost it. Of the irony that you seem to repeat the same again. Wisdom is so insignificant and so is experience. It just hinges upon the emotional strength of a person to let wisdom or experience hold root. And we all know how mercurial emotions are. Put it in a cup, and you have a cup of tea to warm you. Put it on the floor and they’ll try to cling together in a few droplets like the scared slaves of the Pharaohs. Try to put a rein on it, and it’ll always slip off. Caress it gently, and it’ll dance for you.

My emotions have always been like this – a few grams of mercury that played as it wished. Made me to wonder, if I was its slave. One day the tempo chord will strike and I’ll be the funniest guy around. Everything would seem funny and sans sarcasm. On another day the melancholy chord will strike and I’ll sit in my balcony and let it rain inside me. It is during these lonely balcony sessions do I discover all the losses in my life.

Of it all, I ponder most on the love that has always been with me like the North Star. The seasons have changed, the clouds have come and gone, the tiny sapling to the east of my balcony has grown in to a small tree, and yet her presence has remained the same. Still, she is as insignificant as the soot frittering away from the charcoal in the hearth. So why am I giving significance to the soot and cleaning the hearth everyday? What pulls me to her? I call it the gravity of emotions that threads an invisible chord between the emotions of two persons. It sounds stupid but perhaps a Galileo or a Newton would discover it in the years to come. Whatever the new gravity theory is, I still wait for the day when we’d obey its law and fall into each other. Until then, I’d keep looking at the void from my balcony, in an attempt to sculpt her somewhere in the cloud’s kingdom.

My Diary Entries:Seeding love again 16th Aug 2009

Thought I’d write something about you last night. And let the writings sleep beside me. Many thoughts passed me when I sat thinking about you. What would I dress you in? What would I make you to speak? Should you sing to me? I let my pen decide, but it failed me. I ended up sleeping with some blank notes beside my pillow. Perhaps that was the best that could have described your presence in my life – omnipresent and yet without a load to weigh me down.

In the morning, I had to prepare a grocery checklist. I took the still-sleeping blank notes from my bedside, and jotted down my list – potatoes, toothpaste, onions, lentils, dishwasher, soybeans…

The other night, I had looked out from my balcony into the nascent lights of the nearby slum. There was a sense of orderliness in the unorganized setup of incandescence that glowed in the dark. Each blob of light seemed to borrow a glow from the other blobs that it itself radiated out.

That was a sight of what love is.

Far in distance, I saw a forlorn light. At that moment when I looked at it, I knew exactly how it felt, maybe because I could relate to it.

I asked myself: deeply scarred and stained in love, can a man lose his ability to find love again within himself? After something slays the very seed of love in him, making him incapable of seeing love in others… I did not find an answer to that, but just some directions that pointed at my vain trials to let this seed grow into my life.

When I bought my groceries today, I checked the note with the ticks and the crosses. I still have to buy the dishwasher and also the lentils. I looked at the note for a long time; if I could erase the writings, it’d just be you in the blank note who gave me company last night.

Folding the note carefully, I kept it in underneath my pillow. That should warm me, I thought
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You’d forgive me, perhaps, for the feelings that disown me when I chase them, and sleep in my shadow when I tire down in their pursuit.

You

You befriended Nonchalance when
You met me,
Through the song in a conversation
That had run into my cadence’s amalgam.

I wonder, I seethe, and I smile
At your refusal to see me through
My knit of words.
And that, through which you see me,
I refuse to accept.

Yet when the music dies in
The pitch of the night, and the
Cold desert wind sets in, I see
Your words warming me.
I open my knitted world
And let you in.

The Call Within

Ephemeral are the moments of extreme joy. With the experience slowly becoming one of memory’s many folds, the story just remains as a faint smile between our closed lips with an invisible thread to our heart. That thread lets the echo of the moment reverberate through age.

I do not remember the last time I was at the peak of such an encounter. Of late, I’ve been living on a plateau of emotions, with a balanced house built on a picturesque landscape. But that thread to my heart pulls me towards north, makes me to dream of a higher, narrower plateau, and still up above towards a peak of virgin emotions. To touch matter that does not exist, to swim in a surge of an upward cascade and keep floating like a driftwood waiting to be discovered by my own discovery…

Setting forth towards this call, I step out of the doors towards the gate when a whip of cold wind beats my face. I turn back and think of the balanced house’s warm hearth and comfortable cushions, the table full of food, and the drapes that dictates terms to the light.
……..
….
..
.
A few yards on, the ajar gate remains motionless to my stationary figure.