Rahul Dravid the Gunslinger

Note: This is a personal farewell note that I nevertheless want to share around. This is not Journalism, or an Editorial and it is definitely not Balanced. It’s perhaps a little cloying, but I don’t really care since the man who defined cricket to me – and by extension life – has walked away, and things won’t ever be the same again.

Despite that disclaimer, I must begin by stating that it is a relief that Rahul Dravid has chosen to retire from international cricket.

For a long time now I have not cared whether the team won or lost, or if the OneWhoShallNotBeNamed got another hundred or two, because when Dravid came out to bat, everything else faded into the background. The irony is not lost on me that I’m saying this of a man who, more than anybody else, played the game for the team. Dravid himself would not approve, I’m sure, but given what he have seen of him, I’m certain he would be curious to know why that’s the case. I suspect the real reason is that I increasingly identified myself with the man, trying to match his considerable achievements with more modest gains in my own life. And so for some time now the question of whether he made runs or not has been somewhat like whether I have made some of my dreams come true or not. No room in this for the Team or Country.

As a consequence, Dravid impacted me in a very tangible way. This past July, for instance, I tried to channel his performances in England to my own benefit. I had set myself a difficult writing assignment and on certain days I would punctiliously park myself at my desk in the afternoons, at the very same time Dravid would be taking guard thousands of miles away during one of the four winless test matches. Though I was desperate to watch him bat, I had promised myself that I would focus only on Cricinfo commentary, a relatively distraction-free method of tracking his performance ball-by-ball. The only concession I would allow myself was a desktop picture of him driving the ball at full stretch. He ground out three hundreds during that tour, thereby giving me time to pile on word after word myself.

Yes, my desperate need to see Dravid make truckloads of runs each time he batted may have been unreasonable, but he only seemed to validate my belief that with each passing year you only get better. Someone once called Andy Flower the most relentlessly self-improving cricketer ever, but for me, that was Dravid.

It is also no coincidence that Rahul Dravid exploded into my consciousness at a time when I was weaning myself off Westerns (‘cowboy novels)’ that I had been obsessively reading. Here, suddenly, on TV, was a man who seemed to match the very qualities that marked out the best marksmen in the frontier of a country I’ve never been to. His square-jawed countenance and grim watchfulness could have made for a desi Clint Eastwood, but for me, Dravid the squinting gunslinger was closer to the protagonists in the numerous Louis L’amour novels, with names likes Flint, Taggart, Shalako, Chantry and Sackett.

The men who inhabit these novels often value grit over glory, and even when they shoot, they choose accuracy over speed. More often than not, they beat the man who may have been the faster shooter at the final gunfight by just being themselves, steady & solid. Dravid, with his face seemingly carved from granite, seemed to walk, talk and fight just like these childhood heroes of mine. By a coincidence, many of the heroes in these novels come into their own in their 30s, just like Dravid himself, whose best years in cricket arguably were when he was in his late 20s and early 30s. For a late bloomer like myself, this was perfect. Having squandered my early 20s, I decided I would go the Dravid way: simply get better as time went on.

Not that I needed any reasons to worship Dravid. Since this was the Bangalore of the ‘90s, it was a given. It wasn’t that he was above criticism either. An agreed nickname for him in our circles was kutta (with a hard ‘t’ & not the Hindi ‘dog’; and a version of the Kannadakutthaneyirthane which means to ‘tap, tap, tap at the crease, and by extension therefore, never hit a boundary’). It wasn’t a nickname that lasted though, because as we all know, Dravid just kept reinventing himself, and like Jack Reacher (another fictional hero) never seemed to lose.

As a cricket reporter for Headlines Today, a few years later, I had plenty of time to watch him closely.
It is from these years, when he was the best batsmen in the team by a distance, that I’ve kept some fragments of memory: realising with a start upon seeing him in the flesh for the first time that he was quite tall (roughly six feet); that his ludicrously powerful calves seemed at odds with the rest of his willowy frame; that despite being no Jonty Rhodes on the field he was easily one of the fittest men in the team.

Stunningly, I have no memory of his two hundreds in the same test match vs Pakistan at the Eden Gardens in 2005, even though I was there in the press box. Somewhat to my irritation, I do remember that the OneWhoShallNotBeNamed got his 10000th test run in the very same match. Conversely, I remember a sparkling cover drive at a Champions Trophy game in 2004 in Edgbaston, England. Dravid took a long stride to reach for a ball that was not quite drivable length and dispatched it with utter ease into the stands for a six. What’s puzzling about this memory though is that while he did score 67 in that match (in a losing cause to Pakistan), he struck 4 fours, and NO six. Cricinfo cannot be lying about this, so clearly my memory of his on-field exploits is not reliable. But I have retained the essence of his batting style and of the man himself. It is this essence and legacy that Rahul Dravid leaves behind for me, and for the surprising number of those who absolutely worship him.

There isn’t much more to say except one last thing. As I contemplate cricket without him, I’m reminded of Simon & Garfunkel’s iconic song Mrs Robinson. With a little bit of jugglery, and by replacing baseball legend Joe DiMaggio’s name with Rahul Dravid’s, you get an appropriate lament:

Where have you gone Rahul Dravid?

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you

(Boo hoo hoo)

(Originally published here)

‘A Free Man’ by Aman Sethi, a book review

I don’t normally review books because it takes time to be fair to the author. I made an exception for A Free Man. First published here. It was hard work writing it, but not I think, as hard as it would working as a mazdoor!

‘A Free Man’ by Aman Sethi is smallish and compact, much like its protagonist Mohammed Ashraf. The book comes encased in an elegant white dust jacket that to me cried out to be picked up. And once I turned a few pages, I found I couldn’t put it down easily, for ‘A Free Man’ is big, both on form and substance, and is easily among 2011′s more rewarding reads.

Mohammed Ashraf is a mazdoor. He lives and works with his friends on a roadside by Bara Tooti Chowk in Sadar Bazar, one of Delhi’s oldest and busiest markets. Since it doesn’t have the ‘poverty tourism’ allure of next-door Chandni Chowk with its crumbling havelis and monuments, Sadar Bazar lies off the beaten track.

Ashraf has a sly sense of humour and a taste for absurd conspiracy theories: “If you had studied psychology, you would know that if you sleep without washing your feet, you get nightmares.” Very much the untypical mazdoor, you’d think.

But wait. If Ashraf is untypical, what then is a typical mazdoor like? Nobody who isn’t one knows. And Ashraf, it turns out, is not really a mazdoor or casual labourer at all. He turns to mazdoori when he doesn’t have the job he is skilled at, which is to be a safediwallah, or painter. And his friends Laloo and Rehan are not typical mazdoors either, and they all have distinct & fascinating back-stories.

It is thus that Sethi peels away layer after layer in a bid to get to the core of what constitutes Ashraf and his friends. Sethi chooses to tell his tale through colloquialisms. He is himself described by Laloo as “a nice angrezi murgi” and as Rehaan adds, “an AC-type murgi”. This may be problematic for non-Hindi-speaking people to understand, be they Indian or foreign. But Sethi doesn’t compromise, refusing even to italicize words like mazdoor, dehadi, lafunter, etc. Not being a native Hindi speaker myself, there were some words I didn’t understand, but the book itself doesn’t suffer for it, and if anything, the language lifts ‘A Free Man’. Take for instance, Ashraf’s story of how he quit a particular job: ‘A slap like that, Aman bhai, that’s a full stop. Once you get slapped like that in front of everyone, you can’t work in there again. Your izzat is gone…’

Sethi’s style has been described as the ‘new journalism’ in at least one review. Yes, Sethi is conspicuous in his presence in large parts of the book, though he doesn’t distract from the narrative. Somewhat incongruously (and delightfully) you find that he is one of Ashraf’s friends.

So much for the language. Despite its narrative style, or perhaps because of it, you are never in doubt as to where the heart of the book lies, which is in presenting a snapshot of the life of the mazdoor to people who may never come close to understanding how life treats them, and how they in turn treat life. There are no attempt to pronounce judgements on Ashraf and his ilk. Is Ashraf happy? Has he found fulfillment? Do we even dare to conceive a scenario in which to apply such questions? Consider then, Ashraf’s approach to the ideal job: “‘The ideal job,’ Ashraf once said…”has the perfect balance of kamai and azadi.’ Through the course of his life, a working man may experiment with as many combinations as he can before discovering the point where these counteracting forces offset each other to arrive at a solitary moment of serenity – a point when he is both free and fortunate…Alas, it is bliss that few, like Ashraf, attain.”

So Ashraf finds bliss only occasionally, a point that might even be made about the well-off. Does this mean then, that there is not much difference between Ashraf eking out a living out of hard labour, and a white-collar employee sipping cappuccino in his cubicle? To his credit, Sethi makes no attempts to answer such questions, but by the end of the book, the answer is obvious.

‘A Free Man’ presents other gripping vignettes as well. There’s Sharmaji, a man tasked with catching beggars; who is both proud that he has a computer with Beggar Information System (BIS) loaded on to it, and ashamed that it doesn’t work. There’s Satish, an itinerant labourer who is consumed by TB, and who is taken from hospital to hospital by Sethi. There’s Rehan, who wants to raise pigs because they’re easy money, but can’t anyway since his father is a pious Muslim.

Of course, there’s Ashraf himself, as Sethi tracks his life over the roughly 5 years it took to write the book. You’re worried about what will happen to him as the pages hurtle by, and in the end, you’re disappointed that it got over so quickly.

Title: A Free Man; Author: Aman Sethi; Publisher: Random House India; Genre: Non-Fiction; Pages: 226

The scent of (middle class) revolution

Anna Hazare’s & ‘Team Anna’s’ first humungous fast in New Delhi. I was there! This was first posted here.

“Is there even one person here who is not going home tonight to sleep within four walls and a fan?” The young man is almost shouting amidst all the singing and chanting. “Is there even one person here who cannot afford to catch an auto [rickshaw] home?” he asks. The sweat on his face is at odds with the coolness of the night at Jantar Mantar on Day 4 of Anna Hazare’s hunger strike. He is angry, but not at us. He is angry at the irony that almost every ‘satyagrahi’ here – me included – isn’t really a victim of the crushing corruption that is crippling this country.

I’m only half-listening since there is so much to see. Close to me, a TV correspondent is preparing for a live link. Or to be more precise, he is ‘standing by’, sweat oozing out of the collars of his shirt, a tie hanging preposterously from his shirt, hand fussing about with his earpiece. Within the next 10 seconds, or perhaps in the next 10 minutes he will begin his link, but for the moment he is just standing, neither talking nor looking at anyone but staring vacantly into the camera lens, as if he has done this a hundred times. Clustered tightly around him are people, mostly wearing placards or waving the Indian tricolour.

Beyond him, with their backs to us is a wall of people standing on a wide semicircle of benches. Contained within that wide semicircle are hundreds of people sitting down all around a stage on which Anna Hazare sits with several people for company. A huge Indian flag is being waved about his head, as if it were a fan intended to cool him. Also on the stage is a collection of speech-makers, Dilliwallas, and musicians. A song is being sung: Hum Honge Kamiyaab (We Shall Overcome), and several people are singing along – even the seemingly thousands that are milling about outside the semicircle.

Back to the young man. From the snatches of conversation I manage to catch between him and the mini-group that has formed loosely around us are references to Bolsheviks and Marxism. Everything about him screams JNU, or Jawaharlal Nehru University, which is shorthand for ‘leftist’ in Delhi. “I’m not a Maoist”, he says vehemently at some point, but the context of the conversation is lost on me. The larger point that is being argued there is whether Anna Hazare and his fellow-agitators, chief among whom are RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and former supercop Kiran Bedi, are correct in demanding a Jan Lokpal Bill.

When I’m asked for my opinion, I serve up what I have been reading in various media – that the agitation, despite its moral force, is dangerous in asking for a bill that will confer upon a body legislative, judicial AND executive powers. It is dangerous for democracy I say, amidst some more head-nodding. It is a conversation that I am mainly having with people I don’t know. It’s just that our being here together has conjured up a kinship, a kind of temporary ‘brother from another mother’ sort of feeling.

A few hundred feet away, a group of people with placards around their necks is posing for pictures. One of the placards says, System = India, OS = Indians, Virus = Politician, Antivirus = Anna Hazare. Every few seconds someone bursts out, Bharat Mata Ki Jai! And people respond. I wonder, as I wander around, if what the young man is saying is true. It mostly is. Many of the people walking about with candles wouldn’t look out of place in a mall, and it seems like some of them are wearing FabIndia. To be fair, most people here aren’t really upper middle class, but not too many people look impoverished either.

Our group gets into a conversation with two elderly gentlemen. One of them is a Sikh, and somewhat bizarrely the conversation turns into the art of how to tie a proper pagadi. The other gentleman says he was a government officer who had to serve under a corrupt man. They are both here for the same reason as I am. I have been drawn in, despite my scepticism, by the prospect of being part of a true revolution.

At some point in the evening, I realise that for many people, tonight isn’t really about whether Anna Hazare and his few good men are going to create a saviour or a monster. Or if it matters that the people here are those who can mostly live without needing to bribe someone. Or whether a new legislation will really be able to rub out corruption. This is no Tahrir square, but the symbolism, this feeling of being part of something that may just change India is a drug all by itself. As we chant our songs, we have fused into one.

But we aren’t fools. We know things are not going to change so easily. Tomorrow will be the same as yesterday. Unless we can bottle the essence of his evening and take it back with us, and change our lives. As the angry young man says exasperatedly when asked if he has any answers, “mein khudi rasta dhoond raha hoon yaar”.

Yes, I too am looking for the way out man.

CWG and that (un)patriotic feeling

Chances are that most consumers of mainstream and alternate media did not have an unwavering stance in the frenzied debate over whether India did a commendable job of hosting the Commonwealth Games or not. I believe most people felt what I felt: anger, shame, fury, and pride by turns.

Anger, at the alleged corruption and greed of those who could have completed preparations well in advance but who chose instead to line their pockets. Shame, because we could not put our house in order before throwing it open to our foreign guests. Embarrassment, that the world saw and fury, that the world judged. Pride, that when things worked (and they mostly did), they worked so smoothly that we felt that funny and familiar choking emotion in our throats. I know because I felt it all too. I swore in several languages at the ticket queue in Connaught Place when they botched up what should have been a simple job of selling tickets. And I clapped in relief at the facilities at the aquatic centre and the smooth execution of the swimming heats for which I had managed to buy tickets.

Some of us who had participated in the public trial of the CWG organisers and the government executed 180 degree turns and said really we should be so proud, the media is the beast that brought disrepute to the games, it wasn’t so bad, no?

But I’m willing to bet that our position was in some way influenced by how we think the world perceives us. How we think. That the world perceives us. The fact remains that several Indians – especially those that belong to the urban salaried class – measure themselves by how the world measures them. This tendency might specifically affect those Indians who have lived abroad or who have had relatives settled abroad, but it is by no means exclusive to them.

To paraphrase Amartya Sen, our self-image can be influenced by ‘external identity’ or how the world perceives us, and the world does so in one of three distinct ways.* One, it looks upon India as an exotic land with a great spiritual legacy. Two, as a backward nation with no emphasis on individual liberty or collective responsibility. The former approach sometimes leads to disillusionment, and the latter does not take into account India’s massive achievements and diversity. According to Sen, it is the third approach that works best: to approach India with neither inflated opinion nor a critical eye, but with a curiosity that is free of preconceived notions.

This Western-influenced self-image** is there for everybody to see, even if it is an aspect of our identity that is difficult to isolate. It lies in the urban class’ hysterical reaction to the CWG mess and it lies in the nationalistic feeling of ‘we showed em’. Even when we try to overcome this tendency by developing a shrill anti-Western bias, we are reacting to this external influence on our self-image.

The point I have tried to make in a roundabout fashion is that there is no need to be hyper-critical of India’s handling of the games, nor is there any need to take overt pride (this is separate from the need, however, for unbiased criticism and praise where it is due). Finally, if there is more awareness of our self-image’s tendency to be influenced by the external world’s perceptions, there is more room for a reasoned and balanced response to India’s handling of the Commonwealth Games.

P Sainath takes this theme further in his superb piece on corruption and the Indian elite’s concerns about self-image.

* Amartya Sen speaks of the three aspects in his essay ‘Indian Traditions and the Western Imagination’ in The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity.

** It is important to clarify here that self-image is influenced by several factors. The external world’s perception of India and our reaction to that perception is just one of them.

Kaminey and the Unsteadycam

I went in to watch Kaminey wanting to like it very much, since Vishal Bhardwaj is one of my favourite directors. In the end, Kaminey did not disappoint. It is in fact the standout Bollywood film of the year. But that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it immensely.

The number one irritant in the film, for me, was the hand held camera work. There is a thin line between achieving gritty realism on the one hand, and disorientating the film audience on the other. In film craft, they say, never put in an effect until it is absolutely necessary. Hence, don’t use ‘dissolves’ or ‘wipes’ unless the scene absolutely demands it. I thought the usage of hand held camera was over the top in Kaminey.

Often, shaky camera work hides flaws in action sequences or acting. Don’t look at me. Read this. David Bordwell argues convincingly against the use of shaky camerawork by taking apart, frame by frame, The Bourne Ultimatum. Awesome cinematic lesson. He starts by saying, “A spectre is haunting contemporary cinema: the shaky shot.”

Back to Kaminey. I thought the first half of the film was incoherent, and the end didn’t really come together with a satisfying click. But what I did enjoy were these: the acting, which was uniformly good, Shahid Kapoor’s, particularly so. Characterisation was stand out and dialogue, cracking.

I wouldn’t have bothered writing all this down, had Kaminey been directed by any one else. But I’ve come to expect the earth, the moon and the stars from Bhardwaj, and we all know what happens when heroes disappoint fans, don’t we?!

Etiquette at Wimbledon

The setting: the Gentlemen’s quarterfinal between Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt, which the former wins in an exciting 5-setter. Somewhere in the third set, Hewitt misses an easy shot:

Hewitt: “Fuck!” [heard easily on TV]

Commentator 1: “We apologise for the langauge.”

Commentator 2: [after a pause] “What langauge?”

Commentator 1: “Australian.”

Thank god for grand slam tennis. Beats watching cricket commentary with its zillion commercial breaks.