What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the name Navin Nischol? I suspect for many people it will be the tv serial Dekh Bhai Dekh; or the famous toe-sucking scene in Aastha; or Raat kali ek khwab mein aayi from countless Chitrahaars; or maybe the uncannily believable theatre actor playing a business tycoon in Khosla Ka Ghosla.
For me, it’s a song sequence from the 1982 Manmohan Desai romp Desh Premee, one of my all-time favourites from the ’80s. This was a movie that Nischol did after he had flopped as a lead actor and fallen on bad times—he got a fair bit of footage and said in an interview that he was truly thankful for the opportunity. Desh Premee had a big star cast, led by Amitabh in a double role (the characters are not named Desh and Prem, in case you were wondering, but Dinanath and Raju). The elder Amitabh is an ex-freedom fighter and upright schoolteacher who comes to live in Bharat Nagar, and keeps the peace among four factions representing the north, south, west and east, led by Shammi Kapoor, Prem Nath, Parikshat Sahni and Uttam Kumar (his last Hindi movie). The younger Amitabh, the son, represents the lax moral values and opportunism of the post-Independence generation—he’s a small-time thief and extortionist.
Now Parveen Babi has some diamonds and Raju lands up at her place disguised as a police inspector, complete with a fake moustache for effect, saying I’ll take care of these, thank you very much. Nischol (Deepak) is the real police inspector from the local thana, and he lands up in plain clothes. Raju recognizes him of course, and Deepak recognizes Raju too. Raju then proceeds to ‘arrest’ Deepak, and takes him away. He un-handcuffs Deepak in the jeep, and the song begins.
Raju: Upar se mein sakth hoon
Andar se naram hoon
Andar se thanda hoon
Upar se garam hoon
Deepak: Arre baap re baap
Raju: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Ja jaldi bhag jaa…
Deepak: Nei baba nei
Raju: Bolta hoon bhag jaa…
Deepak: Nei baba nei
Raju: Seedha jail jayega…
Deepak: Koi baat nei
Raju: Badi maar khayega…
Deepak: Koi baat nei
And so it goes on; by the end of the duet the roles are reversed, and Deepak is chasing Raju. Simple situational comedy, but made memorable by the fact that it’s Kishore Kumar and Amit Kumar singing for Raju and Deepak, it’s a very hummable LP track with typically apt lyrics by Anand Bakshi, and the comic timing of the two actors is fabulous.
For those really into Hindi movies, it’s an interesting outtake on one of Nischol’s early films, Parwana (1971), where he played the ‘chocolate-faced’ hero and Bachchan the villain. Since Nischol was always an actor on the periphery, these ‘recalls’ happened with him at least a couple of times without—I think—anyone really intending it that way. In 1997, twenty-seven years after they debuted together in Sawan Bhadon, Nischol played the middle-aged sensualist who is Rekha’s first client when she decides to have sex for money in Aastha; bare-bodied and vulgarly obese, Nischol seduces Rekha rather than the other way round, awakening her to erotic pleasure. And, a full fourteen years before Khosla Ka Ghosla, in Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992), Nischol played a business tycoon—for real.
Desh Premee was the second time I watched Navin Nischol on the big screen. The first time was in The Burning Train (1980), in which Nischol had a bit role as Hema Malini’s doctor husband, the only person who knows the secret of her amputated leg. I grew up in a fairly typical Bengali middle class family in Calcutta, and one driven by values derived from the 1940s, when my parents would have been young. So you didn’t go to the movies, except to see the latest Ray and the occasional Sound of Music. I therefore missed all of Nischol’s early work as a hero, including Victoria No 203, a classic case of a lead actor putting in a performance worthy of a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. (I also missed all of Amitabh’s seventies’ movies, including Sholay and Deewaar; the first new Amitabh movie I saw was, I think, Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, in the Bengali version.) I went to see The Burning Train with my parents; my father had got it into his head that it was a thriller ‘in the tradition of Douglas Fairbanks’—so we went.
By the time Desh Premee was released, in 1982, I had passed my school-leaving exams with flying colours and had discovered the charm of movies and movie-going, a charm that hit you full-on if you bunked classes and travelled alone to one of the seedier cinema halls, bought a ticket in black, and sat in the front stalls surrounded by unemployed ne’er-do-wells who had seen the movie umpteen times already. I caught up on Amitabh’s entire filmography in a matter of months. By the time Desh Premee was released, I was a diehard Amitabh and Manmohan Desai fan.
I saw Desh Premee at the morning show on the first Friday (the 1100am show I think) at one of the cinema halls in north Calcutta that had decidedly seen better times and classier clientele. The jute-spewing seats hosted an assortment of vermin—this did not bother me since I always carried a plastic bag to sit on. I was also used to the stale air and the stench of urine. It was a big movie and I had paid five times the price for my seat in the very first row. The theatre wasn’t really equipped for a cinemascope screening, so I often felt like a midget on the shooting set, looking up at towering actors and edifices which were distorted at a curious angle. Before the film was screened, as the audience was filing in, they played some music—a vinyl record on what must have been a vintage mono record player. I still remember they played Dum maro dum and Kanchi re kanchi re from Hare Rama Hare Krishna. There was something about that mono record player and the antiquated speaker system that accentuated the rhythm and the melody. I keep listening to the Hare Rama Hare Krishna soundtrack at all times of day and night on all kinds of equipment, but it never sounds quite the same way it did that morning.
I felt a sense of real dismay when I heard that Navin Nischol had passed away. There are some people you take for granted, without thinking about them too much—you never really think they might be gone one day. When they go, and you feel a sudden sense of loss, you grope in the past trying to figure out what on earth they meant to you, why their passing matters to you at all. Then you realize it’s not the person you’re thinking of at all, but a time in your own past, in which they were a piece.
So this post is not about Navin Nischol at all. (That’s a pretty typical Navin Nischol scenario, isn’t it—he always was rather incidental in the main scheme of things.) His death had a sense of drama though. The day after his sixty-fifth birthday, he sets off with Randhir Kapoor for a trip to Pune. Before they are out of Mumbai, he suffers a fatal heart attack. What was it? Why did his heart decide to give out just at that moment? Did he overdo the celebrations the previous night? And in his final moments, did he think of his wife who committed suicide four years ago, blaming him in the suicide note?
A flicker of interest, but that’s all. Can’t say it’s inspired me enough to delve into the forty-year-long filmography of this FTII gold medalist. I’ve never seen Sawan Bhadon, and I don’t feel like seeing Break Ke Baad either. I’ll watch Khosla Ka Ghosla again when it comes on tv. And once the World Cup is over, I must remember to pull out my dvd of Desh Premee, and immerse myself all over again.
20 March 2011
06 July 2009
Remember the time
Sometimes it's when you have to say goodbye that you realize how something has been a part of your life that you've almost forgotten or, worse, taken for granted as you moved on--'another part of me' . . .
There was a lot of confusion about Michael Jackson. I'm not talking about in his own head. I'm talking about the time when I was barely eighteen, just into college, and Thriller was out. Not in India, of course--no such luck back in those days. Television was doordarshan, and the print media wasn't so into focusing on pop musical sensations either; Musical Bandbox faithfully played Engelbert Humperdink. But nature will find a way--I probably read up on MJ in some magazine at the American Center, and the day the pirated cassette of Thriller hit Free School Street, I grabbed it. It took my breath away (though my favourite MJ song from that era was and still is Say Say Say with Paul McCartney, not from Thriller but from McCartney's Pipes of Peace) and I almost forced MJ on my friends, inviting them over for a game of carrom and amping up the tape deck with Thriller. The beat got to everyone, of course. Problem was, no one could quite figure out what he was saying. I had studied in a 'vernacular' school--I was now studying English Honours at the elite Presidency College, but had retained my old friends group. They surrendered like Madan Lal before a Holding bouncer when confronted with MJ's lyrics. (Not that an 'English medium' student would have fared any better, unless they had had some practice listening to R&B or soul, but an 'English medium' student would have glibly pretended to understand--and probably got away with it.) Days later, one of my friends reported that he had finally decoded The Girl Is Mine. 'What he's saying is, "The girl is mine, the dark brown girl is mine".' (That would be to bring colour to the fore in a way that MJ would probably not have dreamed of--and yet it did sound so very right to us Fair & Lovely types.) I knew that wasn't it--but I couldn't tell what he was saying either. It took a long time, till I got hold of the lyrics from somewhere, to realize it was 'doggone', and a while more to figure out what that meant.
Like I was saying, Michael Jackson created confusion.
Thriller was an extraordinary album. It started out with a simple enough dance number--Wanna Be Startin' Something. Followed by the innocuous Baby Be Mine and The Girl Is Mine. Then came Thriller, the last song on side A, and it completely transfixed you. If you managed to get out of the trance of replaying it for long enough to flip the record, you had the mega tracks Beat It and Bille Jean that came at you like twin bazookas, before the album retreated again into the comfortable melody and rhythm of Human Nature, PYT and The Lady in My Life. In those pre-CD days with no go-to-previous-track facility, we got a lot of exercise getting up and manning our turntables and tape decks, listening to our three favourites over and over again.
That wasn't the order in the pirated tape I had procured, of course. The pirates (well, maybe not the ones in Somalia) always seem to want to go one better than the original--so the tape started with Beat It, followed by Billie Jean, Thriller and The Girl Is Mine. You had to flip to side B to hear Wanna Be Startin' Something. You can imagine that we basically listened to side A over and over again. (Also explains why my friend was so bent on decoding The Girl Is Mine--it appeared on side A and was sort of the only gentle medium pacer--the other three were hardcore!)
Then, finally, the album came out. No Planet M and MusicWorld in those days--there was a snooty little place on Chowringhee in the vicinity of Tiger Cinema: I darted in, ignored the looks, flashed my money (obtained by selling off a few kilos of textbooks on College Street) and darted out with the treasure. Ah, the sound! Even on my very basic turntable and amplifier. But, sadly, no lyrics. For some strange reason, the albums published in India would never have lyrics--strange, because, as I was saying, that's where they were needed most. It's only now that Star Movies and HBO show Hollywood movies with English subtitles. How we would have loved it if we had that benefit when we watched Apocalypse Now in a decrepit theatre with a muffled sound system and cracked speakers. (Look on the positive side: made us appreciate the visual art of the film that much more!!)
The thing about (cheaply produced) vinyl records in hot and humid climate is that they warp easily, they develop scratches, and the needle goes completely wonky. Long before the remix age, our turntables treated us to remixes of our most beloved records. Songs would skip lines--a good clean wipe with alcohol could sometimes fix that; but then the needle would sometimes scratch a groove into a song because of the warp, and then when you played the song it would repeat a line a couple of times, before skipping ahead. This happened with my record of Thriller, with Vincent Price's spoken part in the song Thriller, which now went like this:
Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour's close at hand 's close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'all's neighbourhood y'all's neighbourhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell hounds of hell
And rot and rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grisly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to closing in to seal your doom
And though you're fighting to stay alive fighting to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist sist sist
The evil of the thriller
Ha haha haha ha haha haha hahahaha haaaa
It was completely creepy. The sung part would go normally, and then lunacy would break loose. You knew what was coming, like a horror movie you'd seen before, and still you couldn't resist its thrall. The magic of that scare, with the steady orange glow of my turtable in the dark accentuating the wonkiness that was still playing to rhythm, was never there again--when I saw the video, when I owned the song on cd, when I tried to visualize it with all the gore my imagination could muster.
We still hadn't encountered MJ's most famous aspect though: his videos. There was no MTV, no videocassettes available freely yet. Then the metro channel had something called the pre-Grammy show, the night before the Grammies, where they showed videos of the nominated songs--so there was Beat It and Billie Jean. The Billie Jean video had us all transfixed. What dancing, what mood, what perfect sync of music to visual. (Like P.Diddy said, MJ actaully made us see the beat.) But we were confused. What was going on in the video? Was he also the cat? After we had debated this long enough, we came to the larger question: what on earth did the video have to do with the words of the song? After much head-scratching I had to admit: nothing. My 'dark brown girl' friend enlightened me: 'It's actually a love song, see? Unusual, but a love song. "Billie Jean is not my lover / She's just a girl who says that I'm the one / But the child is not my son." He has just met this girl, they are not lovers yet. But she wants him. But he notices this child standing beside her. And she says, no no, he is nothing to do with me.' Again, somehow, I knew that was not it, but it was no less helpful a comment than the one that came from a music reviewer in a newspaper: 'The song has nothing to do with the famous tennis player.'
Confusion, confusion. Of a kind that Shahrukh and Salman with their tumhara anjali mera anjali couldn't even imagine.
Michael Jackson confused me. And therefore intrigued me. And that's what I want to remember him for.
It's been twenty-five years since then, and so much has happened. Now MJ is gone, and it is his music and dance that will live on. But my MJ moments will be forgotten, were forgotten already, till thinking about him brought them back. So I wanted to remember the time.
And now: the great pearly gates. Beyond the gates lies pill heaven. Pill, suitably decomposed to mirror its physical state, knocks.
Saint Pillar: Name?
Pill: Demerol.
Saint Pillar: Claim to fame?
Pill: Are you kidding me? I am the greatest. I have played a decisive role in controlling the life of a human being who had the greatest influence on humankind in recent times.
Saint Pillar: Come off it. That honour goes to the anti-depressants Osama bin Laden took.
Pill: Typical. I'm Demerol, mate. I'm the straw that broke the camel's back. I killed Michael Jackson.
Saint Pillar: Oh, that Demerol. Yes, we've been expecting you. We have a special place reserved for you.
Pill: Good. Now we're getting somewhere. Lead me to it.
Saint Pillar: But it's not here. It's in Oblivion. In the Mythical Beasts and Objects section. I'll help you down. (kicks Pill, Pill tumbles off cloud; as it's shooting down, it hears) There's a space waiting for you right next to The Bullet That Killed JFK.
It don't matter if you're black or white.
There was a lot of confusion about Michael Jackson. I'm not talking about in his own head. I'm talking about the time when I was barely eighteen, just into college, and Thriller was out. Not in India, of course--no such luck back in those days. Television was doordarshan, and the print media wasn't so into focusing on pop musical sensations either; Musical Bandbox faithfully played Engelbert Humperdink. But nature will find a way--I probably read up on MJ in some magazine at the American Center, and the day the pirated cassette of Thriller hit Free School Street, I grabbed it. It took my breath away (though my favourite MJ song from that era was and still is Say Say Say with Paul McCartney, not from Thriller but from McCartney's Pipes of Peace) and I almost forced MJ on my friends, inviting them over for a game of carrom and amping up the tape deck with Thriller. The beat got to everyone, of course. Problem was, no one could quite figure out what he was saying. I had studied in a 'vernacular' school--I was now studying English Honours at the elite Presidency College, but had retained my old friends group. They surrendered like Madan Lal before a Holding bouncer when confronted with MJ's lyrics. (Not that an 'English medium' student would have fared any better, unless they had had some practice listening to R&B or soul, but an 'English medium' student would have glibly pretended to understand--and probably got away with it.) Days later, one of my friends reported that he had finally decoded The Girl Is Mine. 'What he's saying is, "The girl is mine, the dark brown girl is mine".' (That would be to bring colour to the fore in a way that MJ would probably not have dreamed of--and yet it did sound so very right to us Fair & Lovely types.) I knew that wasn't it--but I couldn't tell what he was saying either. It took a long time, till I got hold of the lyrics from somewhere, to realize it was 'doggone', and a while more to figure out what that meant.
Like I was saying, Michael Jackson created confusion.
Thriller was an extraordinary album. It started out with a simple enough dance number--Wanna Be Startin' Something. Followed by the innocuous Baby Be Mine and The Girl Is Mine. Then came Thriller, the last song on side A, and it completely transfixed you. If you managed to get out of the trance of replaying it for long enough to flip the record, you had the mega tracks Beat It and Bille Jean that came at you like twin bazookas, before the album retreated again into the comfortable melody and rhythm of Human Nature, PYT and The Lady in My Life. In those pre-CD days with no go-to-previous-track facility, we got a lot of exercise getting up and manning our turntables and tape decks, listening to our three favourites over and over again.
That wasn't the order in the pirated tape I had procured, of course. The pirates (well, maybe not the ones in Somalia) always seem to want to go one better than the original--so the tape started with Beat It, followed by Billie Jean, Thriller and The Girl Is Mine. You had to flip to side B to hear Wanna Be Startin' Something. You can imagine that we basically listened to side A over and over again. (Also explains why my friend was so bent on decoding The Girl Is Mine--it appeared on side A and was sort of the only gentle medium pacer--the other three were hardcore!)
Then, finally, the album came out. No Planet M and MusicWorld in those days--there was a snooty little place on Chowringhee in the vicinity of Tiger Cinema: I darted in, ignored the looks, flashed my money (obtained by selling off a few kilos of textbooks on College Street) and darted out with the treasure. Ah, the sound! Even on my very basic turntable and amplifier. But, sadly, no lyrics. For some strange reason, the albums published in India would never have lyrics--strange, because, as I was saying, that's where they were needed most. It's only now that Star Movies and HBO show Hollywood movies with English subtitles. How we would have loved it if we had that benefit when we watched Apocalypse Now in a decrepit theatre with a muffled sound system and cracked speakers. (Look on the positive side: made us appreciate the visual art of the film that much more!!)
The thing about (cheaply produced) vinyl records in hot and humid climate is that they warp easily, they develop scratches, and the needle goes completely wonky. Long before the remix age, our turntables treated us to remixes of our most beloved records. Songs would skip lines--a good clean wipe with alcohol could sometimes fix that; but then the needle would sometimes scratch a groove into a song because of the warp, and then when you played the song it would repeat a line a couple of times, before skipping ahead. This happened with my record of Thriller, with Vincent Price's spoken part in the song Thriller, which now went like this:
Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour's close at hand 's close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'all's neighbourhood y'all's neighbourhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell hounds of hell
And rot and rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grisly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to closing in to seal your doom
And though you're fighting to stay alive fighting to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist sist sist
The evil of the thriller
Ha haha haha ha haha haha hahahaha haaaa
It was completely creepy. The sung part would go normally, and then lunacy would break loose. You knew what was coming, like a horror movie you'd seen before, and still you couldn't resist its thrall. The magic of that scare, with the steady orange glow of my turtable in the dark accentuating the wonkiness that was still playing to rhythm, was never there again--when I saw the video, when I owned the song on cd, when I tried to visualize it with all the gore my imagination could muster.
We still hadn't encountered MJ's most famous aspect though: his videos. There was no MTV, no videocassettes available freely yet. Then the metro channel had something called the pre-Grammy show, the night before the Grammies, where they showed videos of the nominated songs--so there was Beat It and Billie Jean. The Billie Jean video had us all transfixed. What dancing, what mood, what perfect sync of music to visual. (Like P.Diddy said, MJ actaully made us see the beat.) But we were confused. What was going on in the video? Was he also the cat? After we had debated this long enough, we came to the larger question: what on earth did the video have to do with the words of the song? After much head-scratching I had to admit: nothing. My 'dark brown girl' friend enlightened me: 'It's actually a love song, see? Unusual, but a love song. "Billie Jean is not my lover / She's just a girl who says that I'm the one / But the child is not my son." He has just met this girl, they are not lovers yet. But she wants him. But he notices this child standing beside her. And she says, no no, he is nothing to do with me.' Again, somehow, I knew that was not it, but it was no less helpful a comment than the one that came from a music reviewer in a newspaper: 'The song has nothing to do with the famous tennis player.'
Confusion, confusion. Of a kind that Shahrukh and Salman with their tumhara anjali mera anjali couldn't even imagine.
Michael Jackson confused me. And therefore intrigued me. And that's what I want to remember him for.
It's been twenty-five years since then, and so much has happened. Now MJ is gone, and it is his music and dance that will live on. But my MJ moments will be forgotten, were forgotten already, till thinking about him brought them back. So I wanted to remember the time.
And now: the great pearly gates. Beyond the gates lies pill heaven. Pill, suitably decomposed to mirror its physical state, knocks.
Saint Pillar: Name?
Pill: Demerol.
Saint Pillar: Claim to fame?
Pill: Are you kidding me? I am the greatest. I have played a decisive role in controlling the life of a human being who had the greatest influence on humankind in recent times.
Saint Pillar: Come off it. That honour goes to the anti-depressants Osama bin Laden took.
Pill: Typical. I'm Demerol, mate. I'm the straw that broke the camel's back. I killed Michael Jackson.
Saint Pillar: Oh, that Demerol. Yes, we've been expecting you. We have a special place reserved for you.
Pill: Good. Now we're getting somewhere. Lead me to it.
Saint Pillar: But it's not here. It's in Oblivion. In the Mythical Beasts and Objects section. I'll help you down. (kicks Pill, Pill tumbles off cloud; as it's shooting down, it hears) There's a space waiting for you right next to The Bullet That Killed JFK.
It don't matter if you're black or white.
28 October 2007
What's so magical about thirteen?
So, now it's official--Shoaib Akhtar has been picked for the India tour. The Pakistan Cricket Board says it's his last chance to prove himself. In terms of discipline of course, not as a player.
Hah.
'Hah' is what I had said to myself, quietly, when I heard of the punishment that was handed out to Shoaib by the PCB for his indiscipline which saw him miss the Twenty20 World Cup. The incident, mind, had occured BEFORE the Twenty20 World Cup started. The punishment was handed out AFTER IT FINISHED, though Shoaib was taken off the Pakistan Twenty20 team after the incident. And Shoaib was banned for thirteen matches, retroactive from the beginning of the Twenty20 tourney.
It doesn't take a calculator to do the math. Seven matches in the Twenty20 tourney. Two Tests against South Africa. Four one-dayers against South Africa. That's what he's missed. He'll be back for the final one-dayer against South Africa--and for the India tour. Having served out his sentence.
Hah.
Hah--because: why thirteen matches? What about that magical figure is just right as a number when you're banning somebody? Why not ten? Or fifteen? And isn't it a little strange to count five-day Test matches, seven-hour ODIs and three-hour Twenty20 matches as one match each when you're counting up to thirteen?
Hah--because: what's the logic in banning him retroactively from the beginning of the Twenty20 tournament after the end of the tournament? Very conveniently, he's banned for seven Twenty20 matches in the World Cup that he didn't play. The point is, no one knew Pakistan was going to reach the final and therefore play seven matches. Thay may have played only two, if they had got knocked out in the first round. In that case, would Shoaib have had to sit out five more matches, till the end of the India ODI series? Oh no. Because the calculations were done AFTER the Twenty20 tourney ended, you see. Hindsight is such a useful thing.
For let's face it: everyone's itching to see Shoaib tear in from the top of his mark and bowl at 97 mph to Sachin, and maybe beat him for speed and uproot his stumps like he did that time in Kolkata. It's a spectator sport and people pay good money for this stuff. No point having the man sit out even a game in the India series. And to get him warmed up, better get him to play the last South Africa game as well.
Pakistan can't afford to tour India without Shoaib. The PCB knows that, and so does Shoaib. That's why this disciplining business just rings so hollow. It's like the Kauravas giving Karna a curtain lecture, isn't it, no payasam for you tonight bad boy, that'll teach you to go hitting Asif bhaiya with that gada--and then expect him to go hammer and tongs at Arjuna and Bhima and Yudhisthir next morning.
I've been wondering about that thirteen. Twelve years of vanvas and one year of agyatavas, was it? In the agyatavas you can take it out on the South Africa Keechak a bit.
Hah.
Hah.
'Hah' is what I had said to myself, quietly, when I heard of the punishment that was handed out to Shoaib by the PCB for his indiscipline which saw him miss the Twenty20 World Cup. The incident, mind, had occured BEFORE the Twenty20 World Cup started. The punishment was handed out AFTER IT FINISHED, though Shoaib was taken off the Pakistan Twenty20 team after the incident. And Shoaib was banned for thirteen matches, retroactive from the beginning of the Twenty20 tourney.
It doesn't take a calculator to do the math. Seven matches in the Twenty20 tourney. Two Tests against South Africa. Four one-dayers against South Africa. That's what he's missed. He'll be back for the final one-dayer against South Africa--and for the India tour. Having served out his sentence.
Hah.
Hah--because: why thirteen matches? What about that magical figure is just right as a number when you're banning somebody? Why not ten? Or fifteen? And isn't it a little strange to count five-day Test matches, seven-hour ODIs and three-hour Twenty20 matches as one match each when you're counting up to thirteen?
Hah--because: what's the logic in banning him retroactively from the beginning of the Twenty20 tournament after the end of the tournament? Very conveniently, he's banned for seven Twenty20 matches in the World Cup that he didn't play. The point is, no one knew Pakistan was going to reach the final and therefore play seven matches. Thay may have played only two, if they had got knocked out in the first round. In that case, would Shoaib have had to sit out five more matches, till the end of the India ODI series? Oh no. Because the calculations were done AFTER the Twenty20 tourney ended, you see. Hindsight is such a useful thing.
For let's face it: everyone's itching to see Shoaib tear in from the top of his mark and bowl at 97 mph to Sachin, and maybe beat him for speed and uproot his stumps like he did that time in Kolkata. It's a spectator sport and people pay good money for this stuff. No point having the man sit out even a game in the India series. And to get him warmed up, better get him to play the last South Africa game as well.
Pakistan can't afford to tour India without Shoaib. The PCB knows that, and so does Shoaib. That's why this disciplining business just rings so hollow. It's like the Kauravas giving Karna a curtain lecture, isn't it, no payasam for you tonight bad boy, that'll teach you to go hitting Asif bhaiya with that gada--and then expect him to go hammer and tongs at Arjuna and Bhima and Yudhisthir next morning.
I've been wondering about that thirteen. Twelve years of vanvas and one year of agyatavas, was it? In the agyatavas you can take it out on the South Africa Keechak a bit.
Hah.
02 October 2007
It's Not Cricket
Soon after becoming the new world chess champion, Viswanathan Anand, in an interview given from Mexico City, said in a semi-jocular, semi-wistful tone that he had heard about the stupendous welcome that had been given to the T20 world cup winning Indian team that had just returned home, and he would be interested in seeing what kind of reception he got when he came back.
We all know Anand won't generate even one-fifteenth of the mass hysteria that the Indian team generated, and yet he is a world champion in his own right, having beaten (or drawn with) the best in the world, and having performed consistently in the international sports arena over the years with excellence. Surely he is worth as much as Piyush Chawla or Dinesh Karthik. But he won't get his "due". We know chess or billiards (yes thank you Pankaj Advani) or hockey don't get one-hundredth of the attention that cricket gets.
And the reason is not that cricket has sponsorships and hype going for it like no other sport has. Those are there because cricket has something going for it that no other sport in India has. It's a team game that makes spectators proud to be an Indian. "I proud to be Indian" you can say at the end of a game well won. Can you say that as--with all due respect--Anand's bishop takes unpronounceable Russin's rook, or whatever?
Yes you can say it all right when you watch Chak De India. But when was the last time you danced with joy watching India play hockey? Yes they might have beaten South Korea and lifted (heinyoo) the Asia Cup (now only if our weightlifters would stop doping they would be allowed to lift something too) par is kahani mein drama kahan hai, emotion kahan hai? A few years back Jugraj Singh was able to set our hearts on fire with his penalty corners and his penalty corner blocks, and we beat Pakistan, and for a brief moment, the box office crackled--but then he took somebody's good luck wish too literally and well, went and broke a leg. (These Jats!)
It's been done in India before in sports other than cricket, you know, and you don't have to be 96 years old and go back to Mohun Bagan beating Yorkshire Regiment in the IFA Shield final in 1911. (Bagan apparently played barefoot; was that why they refused India a game in the Olympics decades later when the players said they couldn't afford boots and would play barefoot? These Indian dervishes, you can't trust them and their bare feet.) In 1978, Bagan beat the fancied Ararat Sports Club in--ahem, again--the IFA Shield. If you are more than thirty-five and a Bengali you will remember that day--or rather, night (Ararat sedin sararat kendenchey--Ararat that night cried and cried). It felt like we had won ourselves independence anew.
It's a country that likes grandstanding. We are driven by mass hysteria. That's how we got our independence. Not through planning or politics--but by a chappie making salt from sea water, and going on fasts, and walking about in loincloth that would do Sherawat proud. Much as Om Puri might fume in Maachis, azaadi isi ne la ke diya, bhai.
We want to see Misbah down on his knees, felled just one stroke away from victory. There's a ring of destiny here--it reminds you of Karan and Indrajit and so on. Bishop takes rook just doesn't swing it, man.
So, Vishy, don't go expecting the reception that the India team got. You ain't gonna get it, baby.
And why do you want it? If the Other wants for itself the privileges of the Self, we are going to go around in colonized - postcolonial circles, aren't we? You aren't the cricket team, but you are a world champion. Why not make your own space? Be eklavya. (Ok oscar debate not this post.)
We all know Anand won't generate even one-fifteenth of the mass hysteria that the Indian team generated, and yet he is a world champion in his own right, having beaten (or drawn with) the best in the world, and having performed consistently in the international sports arena over the years with excellence. Surely he is worth as much as Piyush Chawla or Dinesh Karthik. But he won't get his "due". We know chess or billiards (yes thank you Pankaj Advani) or hockey don't get one-hundredth of the attention that cricket gets.
And the reason is not that cricket has sponsorships and hype going for it like no other sport has. Those are there because cricket has something going for it that no other sport in India has. It's a team game that makes spectators proud to be an Indian. "I proud to be Indian" you can say at the end of a game well won. Can you say that as--with all due respect--Anand's bishop takes unpronounceable Russin's rook, or whatever?
Yes you can say it all right when you watch Chak De India. But when was the last time you danced with joy watching India play hockey? Yes they might have beaten South Korea and lifted (heinyoo) the Asia Cup (now only if our weightlifters would stop doping they would be allowed to lift something too) par is kahani mein drama kahan hai, emotion kahan hai? A few years back Jugraj Singh was able to set our hearts on fire with his penalty corners and his penalty corner blocks, and we beat Pakistan, and for a brief moment, the box office crackled--but then he took somebody's good luck wish too literally and well, went and broke a leg. (These Jats!)
It's been done in India before in sports other than cricket, you know, and you don't have to be 96 years old and go back to Mohun Bagan beating Yorkshire Regiment in the IFA Shield final in 1911. (Bagan apparently played barefoot; was that why they refused India a game in the Olympics decades later when the players said they couldn't afford boots and would play barefoot? These Indian dervishes, you can't trust them and their bare feet.) In 1978, Bagan beat the fancied Ararat Sports Club in--ahem, again--the IFA Shield. If you are more than thirty-five and a Bengali you will remember that day--or rather, night (Ararat sedin sararat kendenchey--Ararat that night cried and cried). It felt like we had won ourselves independence anew.
It's a country that likes grandstanding. We are driven by mass hysteria. That's how we got our independence. Not through planning or politics--but by a chappie making salt from sea water, and going on fasts, and walking about in loincloth that would do Sherawat proud. Much as Om Puri might fume in Maachis, azaadi isi ne la ke diya, bhai.
We want to see Misbah down on his knees, felled just one stroke away from victory. There's a ring of destiny here--it reminds you of Karan and Indrajit and so on. Bishop takes rook just doesn't swing it, man.
So, Vishy, don't go expecting the reception that the India team got. You ain't gonna get it, baby.
And why do you want it? If the Other wants for itself the privileges of the Self, we are going to go around in colonized - postcolonial circles, aren't we? You aren't the cricket team, but you are a world champion. Why not make your own space? Be eklavya. (Ok oscar debate not this post.)
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