MY CRICKETING YEARS

"MY  CRICKETING YEARS"

The title is somewhat misleading. I was a non-playing cricketer. My cricket career started with a first-ball wicket in my very first match against Govt.Jubilee school. That was also my last wicket  -there was no second wicket ever afterwards!  I faded away from active cricket like Deepak Shodhan, a forgotten IndianTest cricketer.

'My cricketing years' is more of a vicarious memory-clip. It underlines my love affair with Test matches, my addiction to the running commentary and  cricket records.

In my secondary school days someone once tuned in radio Australia in our Tesla radio-set in the unearthly hours one cold morning in january. That was when I first listened to a running commentry! And I got addicted.

Through early years there was more of agony than ecstacy in all those test matches. We were then in the habit of losing practically every match. And that too thoroughly. It was like a Dilip kumar film where the hero always lost the 'match' to the villain.

At Green Park Kanpur I was a mute witness to the doings of that west Indies serial killer called Wes Hall. With a red scarf around his neck he kept repeating his long and ominous run up to the wicket. He butchered all our players. And I sat there, helplessly watching the demolition work and munching roasted peanuts with salt. I could never see the balls leaving Wes Hall's hand. I only heard the sounds of his deliveries hitting the gloves of the wicket keeper (captain)Alexander! I suspect that our players also had the same problem with their eyes!

And a bigger humiliation came in (the then) calcutta where it looked like a match between "W.Indies  and school boys XI". Here is the score card of that Calcutta match:

West Indies 614 for 5 wickets declared.
India 1st innings
(all out) 124
2nd innings
(all out)154

West Indies won by an innings and 336 runs.

Next year I was reluctant to return to Kanpur for the 2nd test match against  Richie Benaud's Australia (19 December - 24 December 1959). That was the month when "Punja Maar", a psycopatïc serial killer was  "taking wickets" regularly in Lucknow and Kanpur. It was safer inside the house than in Punjamaar's working area!

But I eventually did go to Green Park Kanpur.  'Punja Maar' was caught. And so were Australians with their pants down as Jasu Patel returned an inning's magic spell of 9 wickets for 69, (and 14 wickets in the match) to turn the table on the kangaroos. The invincible Australians were beaten - skittled out at 105 runs!! That was in the days before Gavaskar and kapil Dev got us into the habit of  winning matches. and that impossibe wish-come-true put the whole nation on an LSD-high for a long time.

Talking about Gavasker of the early days is like talking about a maneater tiger let loose in a village. In his debut series in the West Indies he destroyed the home team. In Trinidad in the fifth Test he scored 124 and 220 and India had its first ever series victory over the West Indies - that too in their home terrain!. He was the second player in the world to score a century and double century in a test match and the first Indian to make four centuries in one Test series (his debut series at that!). He was the first Indian to aggregate more than 700 runs in a series, and this 774 runs at 154.80 remains, to this day, the most runs scored in a debut series by ANY batsman.

But the most  heart-stopping moment came much later, in 1990, in India vs.England at Lord’s. The date was July 30, 1990. India was in shambles requiring 24 runs to save the follow-on, with nine wickets down and that hopeless comic figure of Narendra Hirwani standing there to preside over the liquidation. Kapil Dev, at the batting end had just six balls. And he rose to the occasion in his inimitable style !  In those incredible few minutes he clubbed  Eddie Hemmings, dispatching the last four balls of that over to four successive glorious sixes and saved the follow-on! All the four red balls soared deep into the heavens, into the blue sky, four straight drives hit with the savage force of Kapil Dev's strong wrists, high over the head of the umpire. Lords had not seen this spectacle before, it may never see it again! As we say KAPIL . . DEV. .  KA. .  JAWAB. .  NAHI. .  (no one can be like Kapil Dev !!).

Times then changed. I lost interest in test matches after some cricketers spilled the beans about Match Fixing - that in a certain test match the players and the umpire joined hands with the betting syndicate and followed a written script  (just as film stars do in making films), and the whole match was totally pre-scripted for big money. What was the point in watching a pre-decided match? The element of 'glorious uncertainties' became a mockery.  I hung up my proverbial boots and started watching "Animal Planet".

I keep reminding myself that all the matches are not fixed, that Gavaskar stole the thunder on debut, that Tendulkar was as genuine as Bradman, and so was the record-breaking- sixteen-wicket  Hirwani. I tell myself that Kapil dev's four succesive sixes at lords were his own and not that of the betting-syndicate. But somehow it does not work. I have simply lost interest and got stuck in "Animal Planet".I don't watch test matches anymore. It is FINITO - in capital letters !!

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THE MAGIC MIRROR

THE MAGIC MIRROR

"Mirror mirror on the wall. who is the most beautiful of all?" asks the lady and pat comes the reply from the magic mirror,"you are, my dear lady".

Then one day SNOW WHITE spoils the fun and  usurps  that number one position. And the plot thickens!

That is, ofcourse, the evergreen tale of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS from your own childhood days.

The speaking-mirror is
everywhere. The desire for one-upmanship remains through life. It is in the nature of most people to  seek to be a cut above the rest. That explains the propensity to draw attention to such of your possessions as are out of reach for most others.

So there was the bizarre home refrigerator in (of all places!) the drawing room in early twentieth century crying to be noticed. So there was that huge radio in the forties in your drawing room noisily announcing its presence to your viditors and a crude but working T.V.  soon afterwards.. And lately there was, in late 1990s,  that small cellphone, always  in your hand !! 

The message was, " Look, I have got something you cannot afford".

Chetan Bhagat, a Punjabi, marries a Tambrahm and the earthshaking run up to their marriage is scripted in the book TWO STATES, a study of two cultures. Thus, as he maintains, a big house with shining marble floor is the dream of most Punjabi people and high scores in mathematics that of a Tambrahm. The wish-list varies from society to society. A big battle scar running across the face would be more of a status-symbol in people who place valour and honour above everything else. In many tribes even to this day it is so. And in some people it would just be a big shining gold tooth in the mouth!

Money, in our time, is a symbol of success and a manifestation of status. Riches, in whatever form, become a popular craze and an indicator of social success. In a lavish marriage that I attended a long time back, the groom's father exulted thus : "Very few can afford  lavishness of MY level".

So you get into a splurging spree if you have a surfeit of lucre. Second generation Indian diaspora in USA is doing exactly this by scripting bizarre events. Elephants have lately been in use in marriage procession there ! Deep-pocket diaspora has gone crazy! Read this:

"A few calls to the wedding planner and Minnie, a 3,175kg (7,000 pounds) grey Asian elephant, is on her way to Washington DC from Connecticut.

"Elephants are the latest
trend - and because there are not many around, the demand is always high,'' says Sonal Shah, who runs an event planning agency  'The Date'.

The cost of hiring an
elephant can go up to $
30,000 depending on
distance - but people still
seem to have the money to pay for it."
(BBC News.1 July 2008 ).

The ONE-UPMANSHIP cannot be done away.The magic mirror continues to be there. Only the context has changed. The question has been updated: "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the richest of us all" asks the  filthy-rich person to the mirror and the mirror drawls, "Its a pretty long list buddy. You continue to be still at number fortysix in the secret swiss bank accounts."

And then suddenly the mirror clouds up
even as the witches  gather around a bubbling cauldron underneath it, chanting, casting spells, conjuring visions of the future, and goading Men and women into 'foul'. And then the witches throw up their hands and scream in unison:

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and
filthy air."

The cauldron keeps bubbling even as Duncan turns in his grave. . . !

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FOLLOW THE STAR

"FOLLOW THE STAR"

When he could not control the urge to smoke, he got up and proceeded to  the smoking compartment at the rear of the aeroplane. Lighting up a cigarette he inhaled deeply. . .!

Smoking could kill him. He was fighting to give it up He wanted to live. . . .

It was while he was brooding and smoking at the tail of the aircraft  that the plane went down and crashed. The tail broke away before the rest of the plane caught fire. He was the lone survivor !! Ironically everyone except the smoker died! Read this:

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-08-14/news/mn-2731_1_smoking-section

He was destined to live!

So you believe in destiny? If you do, you are trapped in superstitions. You are not progressive. To be called PROGRESSIVE you have to be in a constantly denying mode. Deny the existence of Destiny. Deny God. Anything that is not proven by science is wrong. If science says a thing does not exist, it does not exist. Plain and simple.

But there is a problem. Science is not infallible! Way back in 1904 when Yogi Ram Charak wrote in his "FOURTEEN LESSONS IN YOGI PHILOSOPHY"
( http://manybooks.net/titles/ramacharakayother06yogi.html )
( http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Ramacharaka%2C%20Yogi%2C%201862-1932 )
that human body had a magnetic field, SCIENCE was clueless about it. It has since been "discovered" that the human body does have its magnetic field!

Science has yet to discover the relationship between the human and the stars. It draws a blank here.  Science denies it and calls it a hoax. But Einstein had this to say :

“I do not know what I may
appear to the world, but to
myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary,
whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Einstein was not being modest. He was speaking the truth. Science has to cover lots of ground, miles to go. There are Truths beyond its comprehension - to be "discovered" later  as science evolves.

I do not know WHY the planets affect our lives.  But I  know that they do. There is definitely some connection between you and the heavenly bodies. Saturn in  your house number twelve can create a very bad spell when time comes. Full moon or jupiter in the fourth does the opposite. That is elementary Dr. Watson. Precision is difficult - what exactly will happen is  bit of a fine-tuning. Your horoscope in the hands of a REAL astrologer is your Time-Table on planet Earth. It is all there, pre-recorded. Whether you would be the CEO of a corporate entity or a lorry driver of a municipal corporation was already decided when you were born!

A horoscope (Vedic horoscope) is a frozen snapshot of the planets and constellations at the moment of your birth. It is time and place specific.  The making of such a horoscope is a simple excercise, the reading part is NOT. You cannot read a hororcope if your peneal gland is calcified ! That is where you connect with the divine.
( http://www.crystalinks.com/thirdeyepineal.html )

Almost everyone has a calcified Pineal gland by the time he/she is ten year old.And yet the world is full of commercial 'astrologers'.  These  dream-merchants claim that they can change your destiny, have your wish fulfilled. They are everywhere - you see them in magazines, Bill-boards, TV , internet. They are trying to earn a livelihood. It is pure business.  They are in a hurry to get rich.There is nothing divine there. So while the script of your life is available, you cannot find the real one who has a gift for prophecy, who is 'trikālajňa’. And when you find one, he is not inclined to tell you all. It is a catch-22 situation ! Your whole life-story, pre-recorded, is available, but  not available to you !

As recently as the middle of the twentieth century YOGA was ridiculed. It is now accepted as very scientific. The time is coming for astrology too. Astrology is going to be "discovered" by science. It will be then that it will be taken out of the hands of the carpetbaggers and placed in the hands of the 'scientists' - like the ones who created astrology in the first place - in the time before the biblical DELUGE, in the time of Mayan, Egyptian and ancient Indian civilizations.
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DOWN THE MEMORY LANE

DOWN THE MEMORY LANE

The mind is very fickle. You cannot just keep thoughts out of your mind. They keep appearing and disappearing. The older you are the more the onslaught of memories - the more the time-travel into the past. One moment you are a KG student occupying a tiny chair in the class room of the pretty miss Rachael in St. Mary's Convent school

and the next moment you recall your retirement party in the last office - garland and all. You have a group- photo too.

Many a time I have  found myself sitting in the verandah of my cousin's house in Allahabad. For whatever reason, the scene keeps coming back. He phoned me that his dad had come from Moradabad. I hopped into a cycle-rikshaw and came rushing to meet him. And there he was, sitting in the verandah with that relaxed reassurance, with that inimitable disarming smile.

He was a professor - knowledge, character,discipline,compassion and quite a few other attributes all rolled into one. Rare to find men of his calibre now. He was in England when Queen Elizabeth's coronation took place in early fifties and as a kid I had avidly read his letters to my father from England on pale blue onion paper. The handwriting reflected his character. My father maintained that nobody had a more beautiful handwriting and he was right. I am still to see a better one. Both the father and the son had removed the word FEAR from their dictionaries. Fearlessness and honesty make a dangerous cocktail. It invites trouble. And he had ample measures of it all his life.

And then the scene changes. A huge railway engine comes rushing noisily towards me

as I stand on platform no.1 holding my father's finger and it rattles me completely. But, then, I was only a kid - four year old.

Khalkhalji was not a kid !! He was twenty three when the railway engine drove daylight out of him. He had never seen a railway engine all his life up there in khantoli village in the kumaon hills and was for the first time ever on a railway platform.. And the irony is that he would find a job in the railways one week after that engine-fright.

The scene changes again. A stately elderly gentleman, our guest, is eating breakfast in our dining room. He has a  white towel tied to his neck covering his shirt-front and the lap. With each movement of his jaws a bit of water drips from somewhere under his chin - a  medical condition. He is A.D.P.  the cane commissioner - a master of riddles and playing-card tricks. He taught me to make stunning designs with a deck of playing cards with just some flicks of the wrists.

The kaledscope of memory flits to the FIRSTS - the first time I burnt a hole in a paper with a magnifying glass, the first time I had found continued balance while learning Cycling, the first time I made soap bubbles with the help of my mother, the first time I made a pinhole camera in the company of Teemal, our mali's(gardener's) son, the first time I made a matchbox telephone with fifty feet cord and talked to my sister.

And then I see the finality of it all - that last scene in the film ROMAN HOLIDAY where Gregory Peck is standing all alone in the empty Palace Hall , princess Anne (Audrey Hepburn) having gone back into the Palace after the press conference.

That more or less sums up life !!

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THOSE DAYS

'THOSE DAYS'

The world has changed. It was an altogether different world in those days!!

There was a time when you sent an ordinary telegram home from another city after a journey : "ARRIVED SAFELY". This would be delivered some twelve hours or even later at the cost of the then ONE rupee (over 100 rupees in today's value).

A long distance telephone call was called TRUNK CALL and had to be booked through the telephone exchange. These calls were very expensive, got connected after a long wait and there was so much noise over the telephone line that half the time was lost in high-pitched shouts of HELLO HELLO, CAN YOU HEAR ME!

Affluent people, then, kept huge radio sets prominently in their drawing rooms. The news at night was usually read by Melvill de Mello in his baritone voice after the time-beeps of nine O'clock. And there was that man with a golden voice, Ameen Sayani, who had just introduced the BINACA GEET MALA (the hit parade) in radio - at 8 pm every wednesday. People gathered round huge radio sets at 8 pm sharp and roads were deserted.

Radio, then, connected you to live cricket too as there was no TV. And Vizzi, the usual commentator, was more interested in his own stories and less in the ongoing match so after hearing loud background uproar when he indulged in his story-telling, you did not know what had happened out there on the cricket ground!

There were no inter-connected train compartments then. Each compartment was separate and there were four classes for a railway journey. The big First class coach had two cosy, wide, well cushioned lower berths and one upper. Other classes were Second, Inter and third classes. The third class was aweful and had not improved from what Mahatma Gandhi had found, much earlier. He had this to say:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24461/24461-h/24461-h.htm

Only the rich had cars and there were no scooters except in the film ROMAN HOLIDAY. Middle class people went about the town in a comfotable horse-drawn  TANGA and the poor in a bone-shaker EKKA. Kids always sat in the front side of the tanga as it was safe there but had to brave the horse's unending farts.

City roads were well made and lasted for long years without any pot holes. The one in front of our house was smooth and never needed repairs in my father's entire stay of eighteen years !

At four rupees a kilogram Ghee was the popular medium for cooking. Poor people generally used mustard oil for cooking in north India. DALDA had just arrived in its famous yellow tin. Pasturised butter was yet to come - fresh butter and tinned butter were available in Polson, kaventers brands but the most sought after fresh butter was Aligarh's C.D.F. (abbreviation of Government's Central Dairy Farm) butter.

A donkey with a load of clothes, followed by the washerman, was a common sight on the roads. Clothes were collected from homes for washing and delivered back, mercilessly washed and ironed, after a week.It was usual to find some buttons missing after each wash.Detergent powder and Lalita ji came later and washing machines later still. The most famous washing soap-cake for home-wash, in bright yellow wrapper, was SUNLIGHT SOAP at five annas for a big cake.

The (now ubiquitous) cooking-gas in red cylinders came much later and one had to choose between coal or firewood for cooking. Firewood was used in a home-made chulha made of bricks and clay. Every kitchen had a chimney on the roof to let out the bellowing smoke.

Khaki half pants with suspenders (called GALLICE then) were still there though not very common and in my childhood I had seen some decent visitors sitting in half pants and gallice in our drawing room. Suspenders (gallice) were used to hold trousers as well .

Those were the days when the world believed in the adage "spare the rod and spoil the child". All senior citizens reading this must have had their share of suffering at the hands of the master-sahebs (mas'sab in short). That was, then, a part of the growing up exercise.

There were other things too in THOSE DAYS such as the Blotting paper, copying pencils, holder pens with pure copper pink colour G nibs, manual ceiling fans, gramophones , candlestick telephones and so on.

That will be for another time !

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SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

2.11.14  6 pm.
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Long ago I was transferred from the mega-city Delhi to a smaller city Nagpur . My friends in Delhi maintained that I was going to a worse place where I would be miserable.  As it turned out, it was very enjoyable to live in Nagpur!

I discovered that small was beautiful!

To start with, for the same monthly rent that I had been paying for a  two rooms set in a multistorey building in Delhi, I had, in Nagpur, a single storey spacious accommodation with a backyard where I could do a bit of early morning gardening and grow some vegetables ! And the air was so clean and the surroundings so green that I started going on morning walks too!

Unless you are very rich, you will be far happier living in a small city.

While I lived in Delhi, there were emormous distances to cover and a  personalised transport was very expensive for me. I had  to travel by bus (there was no metro-rail in those days- even the metro is now getting too congested for comfort!). Regular use of a car or a taxi would mean heavy drain on personal budget. And what a bad experience it was to travel in a Delhi city bus!! It was not for nothing that the Delhi city bus service (named D.T.U in those days.- Delhi Transport Undertaking) was famously known as "Don't Trust Us" !! There were endless waits at the bus stops, unmanageable crowds in buses and unpredictable and unreliable bus timings.

In Nagpur the distances were short. One could save so much on time and petrol! And, besides, driving on uncongested Nagpur roads was enjoyable. In Delhi you had to drive through  mad traffic and heavy smog - which was sheer nightmare!

There was an efficent bus-service in Nagpur on a few routes. But more popular was a cycle-rikshaw - it was always there to take you anywhere and it was  cheap and pollution free. The city was full of big leafy trees, a variety of birds and butterflies! And the sky was real blue unlike the  smog-ridden pale sky of Delhi. On a cloudless dark night I could see the arc of the MILKY WAY stretching from the northern skies to the south. In Delhi you are not even aware that there is somethng called a "Milky Way" up there in the sky!!

We waste long hours in mega cities in travelling. When living in a small city we save this time and can utilise it for reading books, socialising and in indulging in a hobby! Yes one has so much more time in hand in a small city.Life there moves on leisurely - at a slow, relaxed pace. I became a member of a good public-library within days of arriving in Nagpur.

In those days Mr. Nayyar, the old silver-haired  proprietor, ran a popular south-indian restaurant near the Liberty cinema in Nagpur. He always greeted me with a radiant welcome smile as I entered the restaurant. I had made it a point to start the day by having a tall glass of  Nilgiri tea there before entering my office nearby. That was the only place where I could get high quality hot tea in those days. And his idli and Upama were also delicious !

I have always liked south indian restaurants. The stuff prepared there is wholesome, tasty and digestable. My favourite is steaming hot idli with an ample measure of coconut-greenchilli chutney.

A little later in Allahabad too I managed to discover a nice little south Indian cafe near the Lakshmi cinema in the university area. The manager was a lanky Tamil young man who seemed to like me. To reciprocate his warmth I bought a LEARN SPOKEN TAMIL primer and picked up a good deal of daily-use tamil sentences. It surprised him! How I enjoyed it!! Could I have done this in fast-paced impersonal Delhi ?

Smaller cities have family-run general stores (popularly known as mom-and-pop stores in USA). Unlike the super markets and mega stores, these small stores,not far from your house, have a relaxed personalised atmosphere . And they believe in good relationship with customers. Let me recount an interesting incident relating to one such store.

It so happened that once I  forgot my new scooter-helmet somewhere in the market. I could  not recollect where I had left it and had given up hope of finding it.  One day, as I walked down the main market road, a teenage boy came  running from behind and breathlessly said that a particular shopkeeper far back in the road was calling me. I was tired and reluctant to go back but he managed to take me back to a shop. When I reached there, the owner greeted me warmly and handed me over my helmet which I had left in his shop a long time back!

So that is the way you enjoy living in a small city. You have more time in hand, you do not keep wasting time in waiting for a bus or in endless travel. There are no traffic jams, no constant high-decible honking of horns, no traffic lights to beat ! And people care for you.

So small Is Beautiful indeed so far as  living in a city is concerned. If you want to live life King-size on a small budget you must opt for a small city. You have so much to gain there. And the only thing you leave behind is a TENSE, MAD, FAST-PACED, NOISY, POLLUTED WORLD  !!