On Leaving

I've always thought it's a good thing they don't weigh your heart at check-in counters at airports. If they did, mine would almost always be over the limit. Arriving at a new, potentially better, place necessitates a departure from the old, but so often this doesn't make the leaving any easier. 

I do apologise - the efficient but indifferent person at the counter will say in brusque tones - but that is much too heavy, you will need to take some items out. But I can't, I will plead; these are all important things and I must take them all. Yes, sir, they will respond; I do understand (even though they don't), but we cannot allow it. Airline policy, I'm afraid (even though they have nothing to be afraid of). 

Still I protest- Where do you start when it comes to emptying out the heart, I ask. Indeed, the more you try to leave behind, the heavier it gets. Can you not just put a 'Heavy' tag on it and send it on its way? Oh, and while you're at it, could you stick a 'Fragile' one on as well? 

It’s my heart, you see. It’s the only one I’ve got.

Rahul’s Mona Lisa Smile

Is Rahul Gandhi secretly relieved he didn't get picked for a job he didn't want in the first place? 

                                                                                          ©Getty Images 

Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see,
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free... 
               - The Beatles, Blackbird (1968) 

Psychologists and behavioural analysts are likely to find Rahul Gandhi a singularly compelling subject. Many have already attempted to deconstruct the person behind the persona; commenting on his inability to make eye-contact, possible attention deficit disorder, and a generally nervous, stand-offish disposition. 

I am not an expert and therefore don't have a professional opinion. However, going purely by what I've seen on TV (obviously not the best way to judge anyone), coupled with my wife’s empathetic insight, it's hard not to feel that if there's one thing that characterises Rahul Gandhi, it is that he seems trapped. Not just trapped in the sense of being a child trapped in a man's body; but trapped within his own circumstances, a situation he was born into and is ultimately unable to escape from (with or without Jupiter's escape velocity). 

It is impossible for any of us to imagine being Rahul, or any Gandhi for that matter. 'Normal' might be a relative term, but with the sort of relatives Rahul has, there's probably been no such thing for him. Much newsprint is devoted to the aspects of entitlement and privilege, but there is another side to being part of the 'dynasty' that we often ignore. For all its supposed benefits, is it the sort of life any of us would choose for ourselves? Does all the security in the world make you feel safe when your grandmother was gunned down by her own guards? 

History attests to the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru was as canny as they come; Indira Gandhi was his natural political heir. But Rajiv (the diffident, stand-offish one) was neither suited nor primed for politics. The mind wanders now into hypothetical territory- how different would Rahul's life had been if his uncle Sanjay had not been killed in a flying accident in 1980 and his father had never been subsequently coerced into entering the fray? 

Rajiv Gandhi was parachuted in to rescue a party teetering on the brink; within four years he was Prime Minister. Rahul Gandhi has been a Member of Parliament for ten years; after the 2009 elections he steadfastly rejected calls to be part of the cabinet of the UPA government, choosing to stick with his self-appointed role of mobilising the Youth Congress. It may have been the only political decision he made of his own volition. 

Five years later, in 2014, he found himself as the 'unofficial' Prime Ministerial candidate, despite never having actually said so himself. Whether or not he truly wanted the job we may never know; but to his credit, he at least seemed to want to provide a half-decent CV for consideration. 

Somewhere along the way, you feel as though Rahul Gandhi felt compelled to take his rightful place in the tangled web that was his life, like Simba taking up Mufasa's mantle in the Lion King because this is the only purpose for Simba’s existence. (It’s a somewhat facetious analogy, but it does the job, I think). He doesn’t really believe the future of the pride land hinges on him, but anyone who means anything to him does. The question is, is there a really a choice? Is he duty-bound to fulfil both his own destiny and the destiny of those around him or could he walk away and risk seeing everything fall apart? Can someone who has already seen so much fall apart legitimately make that choice? 

I would like to think that at some point, even if only in a remote corner of his mind, Rahul realised that victory in this election was simply impossible. I would also like to think that he understood that his presence at the front and centre of the campaign was doing more than harm than good to the party. I would like to think, I really would, that he tried to tell his partymen this, but they didn't believe him; the fools. And even now, I would like to think that he is really just a sad, slightly damaged man-child, chasing a normalcy that we take for granted but he has never known himself. 

The Gandhi brand is to the Congress party what Hindutva is to the BJP; each is both a calling-card and a crutch. Neither party has had a vision (at least until now) that truly extends beyond these core identities. As a result, many found it strange when Rahul himself seemed to undermine the dynasty; questioning its relevance and underplaying its significance. It was roundly dismissed as empty rhetoric. 

But a niggling doubt, long suppressed, now bubbles up to the surface- was he on to something? Was this his way of saying that he was in fact the wrong guy, that we were making a mistake? At several points in what we now know was an utterly ill-fated campaign, he seemed to take a sledgehammer not just to himself, but to the office of the Prime Minister and the party as a whole. We decided he was either a charlatan or a moron. We jeered at the cheesy sloganeering, derided the prime-time interview debacle. 

And yet, and yet, the mind still wonders...could it be? This might have been the only way to prove what he knew all along: the days of The Family were long gone. A new India needed a new vision, a new direction, and he was not the one to provide it. The Congress party needed to reform itself to stay relevant; the crutch had to go for it to grow stronger in the long run. Perhaps a Congress minus the Gandhis might even eventually result in a BJP minus the Hindutva because, in a sense, the latter exists as a counter to the former. 

Fast-forward to the 16th of May when he appears in front of the clamouring press to cap off what has been the party's worst-ever election performance; and another thought crosses your mind, just for the briefest moment. While the vast majority appeared to celebrate India’s freedom from the Gandhi family, was Rahul celebrating a freedom (however small) of his own? You look for signs in the rueful smile; you wonder whether even in the face of staggering defeat, he realises there could have been one thing that was even worse- he could have won. 

But no, this is crazy talk. It involves attributing qualities like intelligence and political nous to someone who possesses these in very limited quantities, if at all. This is simply your mind playing tricks on you, lost as it is in a hazy, post-election fog. It is an attempt to justify, defend, and rationalise the past. And so you switch instead to the future- to what lies ahead. 

In the UK, when a leader of a political party fails to secure an election victory, it is more or less a given he or she will not lead the party again. This means if you are unsuccessful in your first attempt to become Prime Minister, you don't have a second attempt. It is done. 

We are talking about India, however; the land of seemingly endless re-incarnation and re-invention, where some things are always changing and other things stay the same. We are also talking about a Gandhi, and a grand old party that’s on its knees. 

When all the Modi-fication is over and done with, what becomes of Rahul and the Congress? Will lessons be learned, or will we be saying the same things about a different Gandhi five years from now? We can only wait and see.

10 (yikes!) days to go...

Why, hello there. It's been a while, hasn't it? I'd like to explain the silence by saying I've been training like a beast, completely cut off from all technology and other distractions of modern life, all in preparation for this most physically demanding challenge of my adult life. But, of course this would be mostly (ok, fine, completely) untrue. 

In reality, I have been so busy recovering from a flu whilst simultaneously tweeting about the Indian elections that I haven't even noticed that we are already half-way through May. (yikes!)  And so, for a quick update: 

The offical London 10k race-pack has now arrived in the post, just as my six-pack has disappeared. (All that post-Lent meat has not helped; it swiftly took up residence around my waist- seemingly on a long-term contract.) 

Just when I thought things couldn't worse, the situation took an ominous turn when I came across this line in aforementioned race-pack: 

'Please remember that is very foolish to run if you have had any sort of virus or fever in the past four weeks...' 

So now I must weigh up my desire to complete this epic run against my equally strong desire to keep living. (I realise this is slightly dramatic on my part- but this side of me should come as no surprise to anyone who has read more than one post on this blog) 

Having taken the wise counsel of my family on board, we have now decided that I will do a trial run in the next day or two, and if I have not started frothing at the mouth after a few minutes, I will gradually build it up towards 10k until raceday- 25th May. (yikes!) 

In the meantime, if you haven't yet donated to one of the two very worthy causes I will be representing, please would you take a few minutes to do so now. Come on now, we're talking life-and-death stuff here. And not just my own. Link to donate is here.

Thank you so much if you already have donated. See you all on the other side.

The story of the little dot

There was once a little dot. 
“I'm no ordinary dot”, it said. 
“I will not stand in one spot, 
I am going to try and get ahead.” 

Its friends called as they saw it go,
“Come, come and join us they said.” 
“What? And be an ellipsis? No,no! 
I am going it alone instead.” 

“I can't be stuck being one of three, 
because I’m no ordinary dot. 
I was born to be wiiild and freeee, 
so i'll be off now, thanks a lot.” 

Its friends were sad, but didn't say a lot, 
they'd all been there before- 
Alone though they were only little dots, 
They knew together they were so much more. 

So off they went, chasing unfinished thoughts, 
and other stories that lay in wait; 
the possibilities were oh so endless, 
they were masters of their fate. 

As for the little dot, it was in a spot, 
for little did it know, 
Alone it was just a dot; full stop. 
And there was nowhere left to go. 

...

This was how the little dot clocked, 
that things weren't quite as they seemed- 
Punctuation, like life, only really works, 
if you're one part of a team. 

So off it went, in search of friends, 
colons, commas, and question marks too! 
With so much work and so little time, 
being a solitary dot just wouldn't do. 

At last, the dot had found its spot, 
in the larger scheme of things; 
and so one story comes to an end, 
while another one begins...

The strange case of Shanthakumaran Sreesanth: Part 2

A friend of mine recently asked me what I thought would be a good caption for the photo below. 

I thought of a few, but narrowed it down to two: 
It's all about me. 
It went to my head. 

I'm not sure whether either really works as a caption, but that's beside the point. Thinking about the captions made me think about the cricketer, hence this piece. 

The intention is not to pretend to know the mind of someone I've never met, or even to kick a man when he's down. Indeed, some might say we should all just leave him in peace and let him enjoy a relatively normal, (newly-married) life away from the spotlight. 

The reason I’m writing this anyway, is not just because it makes for an interesting character study of a complex personality. The story of Sreesanth is a cautionary tale; a parable for this topsy-turvy modern world we live in. 

Shantakumaran Sreesanth was born on February 6th 1983, which makes him (at the time of writing) 31 years and 91 days old. After a rapid rise through the domestic circuit, he made his senior team debut in October 2005, a few months shy of his 23rd birthday. With a boyhood dream fulfilled while still barely out his teens, Sreesanth appeared poised at the start of a long, glittering career ahead. 

What followed was a more like a train wreck in slow motion, interspersed with the all-too-rare moment of brilliance (including that ball to Jacques Kallis). The wickets still came, but so did the drama, the sledging, dancing, taunting, snarling, crying and swearing. Slowly but surely, Sreesanth was turning into a caricature of himself; he was going from occasional joker to perpetual clown. 

Injuries didn't help his cause, but his temperament always seemed the bigger concern. Eventually, after somehow managing to find the wrong side of nearly all his team-mates, selectors, and even, most memorably, 'Captain Cool' Dhoni, he found himself at the very edge of relevance, from where you felt there was nowhere left to go. 

But this is Sree we are talking about. Just as he could find a 'wonder ball' from nowhere, you could be sure he would find a way to fall even further. And so, on a night in May almost exactly one year ago, he was arrested on charges of 'spot-fixing', a charge he allegedly confessed to during the course of the police investigation. Hooded, hand-cuffed and paraded through the streets like a convicted criminal; he would have felt his world fade to black. A career that had once promised so much had finally reached its nadir. 

It is important to note here that Sreesanth has not been found guilty in a court of law; rumours of vendettas and set-ups are still dutifully doing the rounds, and the man himself has continued to maintain his innocence. 

Incidentally, over the course of his short but tumultuous career, each time he was either dropped or 'rested', he would return claiming things had changed; assuring the fans they would see a 'different' Sreesanth. In reality, however, it seemed like another mask and it would be only a matter of time before it slipped again. So, it should come as no surprise to him that most people are a little sceptical about his denials of any wrong-doing. It’s also somewhat ironic that someone who so often broke his promises to everyone around him eventually went down for keeping his promises to a bookie. 

His arrest sent shockwaves through a cricketing establishment already fairly indifferent to shocks. This was, after all, a double World Cup-winning player, with ability beyond doubt. Why, then, should he have been anywhere near being tainted even by association? In the aftermath of the event, it was a question repeated often; borne out of both puzzlement and profound disappointment at seeing such an opportunity spurned. 

In a sport with cricket’s popularity, in a country of India’s size, it doesn't take a maths whiz to work out that the chances of making it to the very top are exceedingly small. We are literally talking lottery odds. Millions of boys either dream the dream themselves or have it dreamt for them by parents. School teams, private coaching, cricket camps, junior tournaments, State, Zone, Under-19s, 21s,... the road is as long as the list of those who fall by the wayside. 

Talent alone is almost never enough; often a healthy dose of good, old-fashioned luck is required to go alongside hard work and dedication in a far-from-meritocratic system. Oh, and some connections won’t do you any harm. To make it through all this and walk on to a cricket field as one of 11 men representing Team India is to complete a journey of epic proportions. 

I’d have thought that what most people would do next (once they have fully come to terms with the position they find themselves in) is make sure they make the most of it. It is a wonderful thing to be paid (a lot of) money to do the one thing you would gladly do just for the fun of it. Add up the fringe benefits (travel, film-star status, endorsements, etc...) and it beggars belief that anyone would actively seek to jeopardise this. 

So, why do it? It is impossible to try and understand the motivations that drive these decisions without being inside the head of the one making them, but I would venture that at very least, it is a cocktail of pride, selfishness and greed; each chasing the other's tail, each of them a side of a (metaphorical) three-sided coin. It's all about me. It went to my head. 

Jose Mourinho, the master footballing tactician, is known to always outline his belief to new teams that in a collective endeavour, each individual has to subsume his personal ambition to the team mission. This requires sacrifice; a lowering of 'self' to help the team as a whole reach greater heights. It is a simple principle at the heart of every great team's success, sporting or otherwise. And yet, in an increasingly ruthless, get-rich-quick, celebrity-driven culture, it is often the hardest thing for a professional sportsman to do. Sreesanth wasn't the first, and is unlikely to be the last. 

To watch Sreesanth in full flow was to watch a thing of beauty. Classical side-on action, perfect seam position, movement in the air, and healthy pace. Each delivery was like a little symphony, a coming together of science and art; a blend of god-given talent and tireless pursuit of perfection. To hear the sound of timber at the end of it only made it that much sweeter. For a brief moment in time, he was in the top five quick bowlers in the world. But it seemed it wasn’t enough. 

As a fellow Malayali, Sreesanth's rise from a relatively small cricketing state was a source of pride too. A new generation of youngsters in Kerala grew up chasing both his speed and fame. 'Nammude Sree', in the World Cup team. Everything was possible, for him and for us. 

And yet, here we are now; resigned, like him, to watching YouTube clips of the rippers that got Sarwan and Lara in successive overs in Antigua. This is how a dream ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. 

Years from now, regardless of the outcome of legal proceedings, Sreesanth will most likely be a mere footnote in the story of Indian cricket. The tragedy is that he could have been so much more. The reality is that whatever our field, whatever our game, it could have been any one of us.

A little Thought Experiment

Step 1 

Try and recreate in your mind that precise moment (and I'm sure we've all been there) when you realise some 'thing' of value has been either lost or stolen. Your heart skips a few beats, then begins to thump like crazy. You frantically replay your most recent memories of it in your head; while simultaneously wishing so deeply, desperately, that you still had it, this thing you didn't even realise you loved so much. But it's too late, it's gone. 

Step 2 

At this point, different people react differently.You might go the textbook route and experience the five stages of grief, or you might just go and punch something. Either way, you begin to slowly imagine your new life without this 'thing'. You rationalise, convince yourself that you will somehow make it through this. You have to, it's not like you have a choice anyway. This annoys you even more, the realisation that you may have had little or no control over the chain of events that has brought you to this point. 

Step 3 

Suddenly, miraculously, the 'thing' is found. A wave of elation washes over you; a weight is lifted. Your hearts thumps again, but this time from excitement. You hold it in your hand; this beautiful thing that was once lost and is now found. You promise to make sure it is never lost again, and are determined to make the most of owning it because you've imagined your life without and it wasn't fun. Everything is possible once more, and all is right with the universe. 

Step 4 

Now, replace that valuable 'thing' with 'Time'.
Yes, you have less of it than you did a few minutes ago, but there's a good chance you may have more of it than you think. It's also possible that for now, you have that precious, fleeting thing: a choice.
So, what's your new Step 3 going to be?