Friends

The friends you make during childhood, boyhood and adolescence are the best, and those friendships are the longest lasting. Right? I must be a particularly lucky bloke, because friendship keeps coming my way even in my dotage. In the recent past, not only did I make a new friend, I also renewed contact with one who had been my mate back in 1960, all within a couple of days.

The moment I learnt that the Asian College of Journalism—where I teach Language and Style—was sending one batch of students to Thoothukudi as part of the Covering Deprivation project under which ACJ’s students travel to different parts of the country in some five or six batches, I eagerly volunteered to go there with the students as faculty supervisor. I had been a student of Subbiah Vidyalayam there in the year Flying Sikh Milkha Singh ran a brilliant 400m race at the Rome Olympics, with my father posted there as Agent of the Indian Overseas Bank. That is when I spent my idyll in the sun—literally—with our neighbours’ kids Subash, Nargunam and Ravi. The first two were brothers and Ravi was their cousin, and they were my and my brothers’ constant playmates.

Subash Hall Sargunaraj, for that was his full name, was a somewhat squat, solidly built athlete, around my age, which made him 13 or 14 that year. I came from a cricket family, with father, uncles, cousins and brothers as seriously interested and talented in the game as I was, most of them more gifted than I, though in the long run, I perhaps made better use of my resources.

Subash introduced me to the joys of track and field. For that golden year I learnt to long-jump, high-jump and triple-jump longer and higher than I could ever have imagined. I was still a distant second to Subash, but my distances/ heights were fast becoming respectable. Our house was within walking distance of the famous VOC College, though it was a really long walk, and we spent a vigorous couple of hours every evening on the sands bordering the college’s grounds. We followed the Rome Olympics with passionate interest, and were sorely disappointed when Milkha Singh so narrowly missed a medal at the Games.

The idyll came to a premature end when my father moved to Delhi to start a new job there and all of us went with him. I had to say goodbye to all my friends in Thoothukudi, including Ganesh, my classmate, his brothers and sisters, his parents Delhi Mama and Delhi Mami, Uday Shankar, son of sub-judge Bhavanishankar, another classmate NS Radhakrishnan, and most important of all Subash, his brother and cousins. Radhakrishnan moved to Madras soon afterwards and we remained in touch for a number of years, but I met Subash only once afterwards. It was probably in 1965 or so, when I was playing a match for Presidency College on the Marina grounds. He was in the city on a brief visit and he ran up to me fielding near the boundary and we exchanged a few words. I have yet to meet him since then, but I was able to trace him and he called me from Coimbatore where he lives when I was at Thoothukudi. It was quite easily the high point of the trip.

I also managed to locate the two houses at Chidambaranagar where we lived during our brief Thoothukudi sojourn in 1960-61, stare at Delhi Mami’s house, actually go to Subbiah Vidyalayam’s present school premises and meet the Headmaster and APC Shanmugham, Correspondent of the School—the latter a son of APC Veerabahu who had been my father’s friend—and even catch a glimpse of the old Indian Overseas Bank building on whose first floor my family spent a few days and nights before we moved to our residence at Chidambaranagar back in 1960.

All this was made possible by my new friend—Sriram, perhaps the most successful auditor in Thoothukudi, whose incredible affection and hospitality it was my privilege to enjoy during my visit to the pearl city.I have been in touch with Sriram through email over the past few years—ever since his daughter and my former student Harini told me in class that she was from Thoothukudi. Sriram has a phenomenal memory and appetite for making connections with people, digging into their family histories and bringing people together. Over the years I have known him, he has become an expert on my own family history, with probably a deeper knowledge of the various branches of my family than I have.

Even before I met Sriram—whom I telephoned on the first morning of my weeklong stay at Thoothukudi—he started sending goodies tro my hotel. On that first day, it was two large cakes, which I shared with the whole tour party. The next day, it was an enormous quantity of Tirunelveli halwa, followed on the morrow by some special Thoothukudi mixture, and then by some deilicous macaroons another pearl city special, so on and so forth. On top of all this I also had coffee and snacks at his place and lunch at a nearby mami’s mess as his guest. Thank you, Sriram for an unforgettable experience.

The Thoothukudi trip was also made memorable by a visit to my ancestral village Perunkulam, which happened to be right in our path, as we set out to study the problems faced by farmers depending on Tamraparani water for their irrigation, as a result of diversion to big industries and damage caused by effluents. My students were able to interact with Mr Ramanujam, who was once caretaker of our property, now gone, at Perunkulam and learn about his own experience as a farmer looking to the Tamraprani for water. But Perunkulam is quite another story, for another day.

Music keeps him alive

“Look up the meaning of the Tyagaraja kriti Sangita gnanamu in the book there ,” the frail old man bundled up and blanketed in the chair in front of me said, a minute after I entered his bedroom in his nephew’s house inside Sankarnagar, Tirunelveli, when my friend Sampathkumar and I visited him earlier this month.

Near-nonagenarian and confirmed bachelor Tanjavur Sankara Iyer may be a very sick man today, needing the constant care of a loving nephew, his wife and his daughter, but his musical creativity and devotion to past masters including the Trinity remain undimmed. True to the words of Tyagaraja, he still pursues sangita gnanamu with fervent devotion, still composes his own bhava-rich compositions and still sings and teaches everyday. The object of his love and affection and guru kripa is his 12-year-old granddaughter Aparna, on whom he pins his hopes for the future.

For those unfamiliar with Sankara Iyer’s contribution to Carnatic music, I reproduce below a brief extract from a Sruti (issue 195) profile of the vidwan by Lakshmi Devnath:

Sankara Iyer is a highly respected vaggeyakara. His compositions have been a source of delight both to the vidwans and to the general public, but he himself speaks with great modesty about his works. “I should not be bracketed with the Trinity or other famous composers of the past. But I can say my compositions are rooted in sampradaya, as theirs are, while they cater at the same time to evolving needs without being light. Shall I say, my compositions are a bridge between the old and the new!”

Anyone who has listened to Sankara Iyer’s vocal concerts, lec-dems and his own compositions, will readily agree that he is indeed a bridge between the old and the new.

My planned interview with Sankara Iyer never took place, because, thrilled to meet visitors from Chennai, he was keen to demonstrate his granddaughter’s singing, and more important her ability to absorb his lessons on sruti suddham, raga lakshana, and clear enunciation of sahitya. He stressed the vital importance of the last of these aspects of music, but was quick point out that on his list of priorities, the raga overrode the Bhakti emanating from understanding of the lyrics. “The lyrics could be about Rama, Krishna or Karuppannasami; it’s the musicality that matters.”

We were fortunate to catch glimpses of his highly evolved sense of aesthetics through his profound enjoyment of the beauty of both verse and tune, whether by the Trinity, Sankara Iyer himself or Kalki Krishnamurti, whose Poonkuil koovum pooncholaiyil orunal, he taught Aparna with obvious relish. “What a wonderful poet!” he exclaimed.

When I reminded him about a T Viswanathan concert he had attended more than a decade ago at my Chennai home after which I dropped him home, he instantly recalled, “Muktha was in the audience, wasn’t she, and I remember she joined Viswa in a song whose words he momentarily forgot. In the car, you asked me if I would perform at your residence. What happened to that offer?”

That was indeed a doosra from the veteran. I had no answer to that.

Networked society

Yesterday, I received a phone call from Hyderabad on my mobile phone while having lunch at Maris, next to our office. Hari Mohan Paruvu, former Hyderabad medium pacer and author of a couple of bestsellers, wanted to know why I hadn’t replied to his email of a couple of weeks ago. Though I am rarely guilty of such bad manners, I had not even acknowledged receipt of his message. It was all the more unpardonable, as he had wanted some help from me.

This is what happened. I was travelling on vacation and had deliberately left my laptop behind. Though I did check my email on my phone, I forgot all about Hari’s missive at the end of the vacation. In the days before email, Hari’s handwritten letter would have awaited my arrival back home and I would have probably replied to him at once.

Things have changed, haven’t they? Everyone is so much more accessible, through email and text messages, conference calls and googlegroups. But do we really communicate? Do we remember birthdays, unless Facebook reminds us? Can we cut through the clutter and attend to the really important letters?

When I was a college student, I tried to write letters full of descriptions and anecdotes, humour and human interest. This was a valuable legacy I inherited from a family whose elders prided themselves on writing regularly to their loved ones and investing their letters with warmth and love.

One of the nicest compliments I received came from a friend, then a student at JIPMER, Pondicherry. He said that not only he, but also all his friends in the hostel eagerly awaited my weekly letter full of stories real and apocryphal. This good habit stayed with most of us before the communication revolution towards the end of the last millennium. I lived in Hyderabad and my brother in New Jersey, but my parents at Madras could count on both of us writing them every week.

9 December 1973. I was a 26-year-old bank officer, but still did not have a telephone at home. Suffering an acute toothache all night, I waited impatiently for dawn to break so that I could go out and find a drugstore to buy a painkiller. As I tried to start my Rajdoot motorcycle, the machine decided to punish me for not looking after it well and gave me a violent “kickback”-for want of a better word—opening up the back of my left foot.

Later in the morning, after a quick visit to the dentist, I rode to the Lal Bahadur Stadium where my team, State Bank of India, was playing a match, to inform my captain (he too did not have a telephone connection) that, with my already swelling foot, I could not play that day. Unfortunately, we had only eleven men at the ground, and I was forced to take part in the match. In excruciating pain all the while, I fielded near the boundary (you would have gathered by now that I was not the captain’s pet) all day long.

When I returned to the dressing room, it took me a good half hour of effort to take off my left boot, because my foot had swollen so much. I somehow managed to ride my bike back home, with changing gears proving a most painful exercise. I was furious with the game of cricket, Rajdoot, traffic police, dentists—in fact all of humanity, as I dismounted my steed.

“Congratulations,” the voice of my 2nd floor flat’s neighbour boomed, much to my annoyance. Even as I was mulling a caustic retort like “Thank you for enjoying my misery,” came his next words: “You are the proud father of a little daughter. We opened a telegram meant for you.” I hobbled upstairs, unable to contain my excitement, to a hero’s welcome at my neighbour’s, with his wife and kids greeting me with a delicious cup of payasam that Mami had made on receiving the good news from my in-laws at Bombay, where my wife had gone to deliver our first child.

For at least a couple of decades more, telecommunication continued to be grossly inefficient and inaccessible to most Indian citizens. I had to wait for nearly ten years after applying for a residential telephone connection. I remember the ridiculous scene of two different gangs of Indian Telephones employees descending on my seaside home in the distant suburbs one afternoon in the mid-1990s to install two different phones. One was my humble NOYT (Non Own Your Telephone!) and the other an OYT connection my employer had granted me. This seachange had come about largely as a result of the efforts of the dynamic Sam Pitroda who revolutionized Indian telecommunication.

Sorry, I must leave this story here. I have an urgent message from my next-door neighbour—who lives alone and has a chronic medical condition—asking me if I can get her a hard-to-find drug ASAP. I messaged her back a promise to look for it immediately. At the pharmacy, I will be stumped when the druggist asks me for the patient’s name. I have to text a message asking for her name, because I have it saved on my phone as “Neighbour1.”

Back to basics

Cricinfo

July 25, 2001

The Ranji Trophy has undergone numerous changes since its birth way back in 1934, when it was a knockout tournament all the way with the champion of each zone taking on the other zone winners. There were only 15 teams in the fray in the first season. In the South Zone for instance, there were only three teams, Madras, Hyderabad and Mysore. Teams were added year after year and now we have 27 teams in the competition. The league-cum-knockout format was introduced in 1957-1958 and it continues to this day, except for the brief superleague interlude.

Until 1970-1971, only one team from each zone qualified for the knockout phase. During my playing days, two teams did, and this still ensured a reasonable level of competitiveness, because each zone had at least two good teams. We still faced some very easy opposition in our own zones, though the pursuit of bonus points made for some exciting cricket against the weaker teams. We had to be at our best, however, against the stronger teams to have any chance of appearing on the national scene. For individual players too, this was important, as there was no other way we could catch the selectors' eyes.

I believe the championship was really devalued when the three-team formula was introduced. Even in a zone where there are three quality teams, the intensity of the contests gets reduced considerably when a team knows it had done well enough to enter the second phase of the tournament.

For decades now, concerned cricket observers have been calling for some real reform in the structure of domestic cricket, so that India will stand a better chance of doing well on the world stage. There finally seems to be a very serious intention on the part of the BCCI to pay some attention to this problem. We hear talk of a two-tier system being introduced, with promotions and relegations between the two divisions. The idea is intrinsically sound in that it will make for more competitive cricket in both the first and second divisions, as the teams should be evenly matched. However, for the competition to be really meaningful in the higher division, all Test players must take part.

But aren't we creating a class system in Indian cricket, which may deny opportunities to deserving players, because they belong to teams in the second division? And how do we prevent abuses of the system to engineer promotions and relegations? These are questions some senior cricketers raised when I sought their views.

My own view is that every step should be taken to make domestic cricket more competitive and raise standards. A two-tier system may be an inevitable outcome of such an attempt, but more important is the need to prepare sporting wickets all over India and inculcate proper cricket values in our youngsters. Unless greater attention is paid by our coaches to basics like good running between the wickets, improving fitness and fielding levels, batting technique that can stand up to international conditions, and positive thinking in the team's cause, our domestic cricket is unlikely to throw up world class players.

If you can't get them, beam them!

Sunday Express

January 27 2006

Curse, crib, chatter, chuck, claim for everything — that seems to be the order of the day in international cricket. Cricket, that game of infinite complexity, heroism and high drama, power, precision and artistry can slide into ugly gamesmanship, downright cheating and abysmal behaviour if the protagonists forget the unwritten tenets of the game. When misplaced machismo becomes more important than achieving excellence on the field, it degenerates into a crude circus. The Australians, for instance, set new records in aggressive appealing in their recent Test series against South Africa. The South Africans, needless to say, retaliated in kind.

It was hardly a couple of years ago that Australia made a conscious effort, under new captain Ricky Ponting, to improve their image. The Ashes defeat suffered at the hands of a rejuvenated England changed all that pretty rapidly, even if the series itself was fought in the best of spirits — until Ponting stormed off after being brilliantly run out by a substitute fielder. He made a hue and cry about England seeking undue advantage by resting tired bowlers and replacing them with athletic substitute fielders. Former Australia captain Bobby Simpson describes his compatriots' on-field behaviour thus: ‘‘It’s exactly how toddlers behave in an effort to tide over their shortcomings.’’

There are more recent examples closer to home. In the Lahore Test, Pakistani pace bowler Rana Naved sent down three bouncers in a row, and Virender Sehwag followed each like a mesmerised victim of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Third time round, wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal went up in celebration, the bowler died a mini war-dance, and the rest of the Pakistani fielders joined in the frenzied celebrations.

At that time, a Rip van Winkle who slept through the first four days of the Lahore Test might be forgiven for imagining that Sehwag had made next to nothing or that India was off to a poor start. But a look at the scoreboard would have had him rubbing his eyes in disbelief. It read: India 410 for 1, Sehwag out for 254, Rahul Dravid 128 not out. This is in reply to an imposing total of 679 for 7 declared, no doubt, but the Pakistani bowlers had been put to the sword, subjugated in a manner unknown to them, not even when Sehwag made 309 on the last Indian tour of Pakistan.

Sehwag toyed with Pakistani pace as though he were playing tennis-ball cricket in a gali back in his hometown Najafgarh. The Rawalpindi Express hardly posed any danger to him, while Mohammad Sami and Rana Naved were made to look rather silly ball after ball, as three boundaries per over became a constant refrain through his rollicking innings. Sami and Akhtar looked ludicrous when they tried to unsettle Dravid and Sehwag with some crude aggro, the Indian skipper choosing to ignore their taunts with disdain and his partner imperiously waving away the offending pacemen.

And what of the hype that preceded the ongoing series? ‘‘Beware of Shoaib’’, screamed the headlines. ‘‘He has this deadly new slower one that rang the death knell for England’s Ashes-conquering batsmen.’’ ‘‘Pakistan are favourites at this time of the year,’’ warned the pundits. ‘‘The ball will dart around and the wickets will be fast and bouncy.’’ Danish Kaneria was a potent new threat, according to others, and he would prove a handful for the Indians. Commentator after commentator pontificated that genuine pace could work wonders where seam and swing might struggle. ‘‘Shoaib’s explosive pace will be the difference between the two teams,’’ they confidently predicted.

And what happened? Shoaib, unfortunately, has at the time of writing taken exactly one wicket in the series, at a cost of nearly 200 runs. The wickets have been sleeping beauties, and the Indian batsmen have made merry, undaunted by the hype surrounding Shoaib and Co., and the huge totals Pakistan have posted.

Almost the first thing Bob Woolmer did on arrival as Pakistan’s coach a little over a year ago was to take steps to tame Shoaib. Soon he had the spoilt brat transformed into a disciplined soldier who, in a couple of bursts of fast bowling, turned the England-Pakistan series on its head. The ICC’s new ruling on chucking made it easy for Shoaib, whose action is now legally above board, thanks to what Pakistani cricket writer Osman Samiuddin calls an inherent kink in his body, as in the case of Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan. Samiuddin, in fact, demands to know why Shabbir Ahmed, another Pakistani quick now banished for a year for the third time by the ICC for chucking, should be penalised for not suffering from such an inherent kink in his body.

Shoaib can offer no such kinky explanation for his tendency to let loose beamers at innocent batsmen. Ask Ian Bell of England, Jacques Kallis of South Africa or Ramesh Powar of India how it feels to have a ball right directed at their heads. The answer can be no different from that of one of Brett Lee’s victims. At least the Australian has apologised every time he has come close to decapitating a batsman. New Zealand coach John Bracewell said, ‘‘It’s very hard to pick Brett Lee’s bouncer. It’s even harder to pick his beamer. It’s the fourth time this season (after Lee nearly guillotined Brendon McCullum) that he has beamed one of our guys, and he’s been apologetic every time he has done it. That’s a lot of apologies.’’

Shoaib has no such qualms. After hitting Bell, thankfully not on the head with a beamer, he went down to the crease and calmly inspected the damage, not showing the slightest remorse. The Pakistanis claimed it was a slower delivery that slipped out of his hand, and the media lapped it up, conveniently forgetting earlier occasions when the ball had ‘‘slipped out’’ of Akhtar’s hand — just as it did out of Waqar Younis’ during the 2003 World Cup, whizzing past Andrew Symonds’ head.

Under the present law, what we used to call chucking is legal — well, it is no longer chucking by the ICC’s definition, as long as the bowler has a congenital or acquired physical defect, or flexes his arm below an ICC-approved angle. Firing head-high full tosses is legitimate too, as long as you can imply to the world that the ball slipped out of your hand.

Of course, it is also perfectly acceptable for you to question a batsman’s parentage, insult his ancestors or girlfriend or wife, run down the wicket and glare at him, curse, point the way to the pavilion — if you can manage to do all that unnoticed by the umpire, TV cameras or the match referee, or if you happen to be Australian, to go by reports from their rivals on the field. To celebrate a dismissal in a manner that would shame a primitive reveller at a human sacrifice seems to be the birthright of every bowler, even if the scoreboard reads 500 for 3. Holding a half-volley and appealing for a catch is perfectly normal; just remember to add a touch of drama by running up to the batsman and waggle your finger at him. Demand that he walk on the strength of your word, as Michael Slater did to Dravid, and follow up that exhibition of arrogance with histrionics directed at the umpire. Make a desperate dive at the boundary line and wait for the third umpire to adjudicate on whether it was a boundary or not, even if you know for sure it is one.

Bad behaviour can be curbed by statute. Better still, selection committees the world over can pick men of character to be captains and role models. Rahul Dravid and Inzamam-ul Haq are examples of nice guys who don’t finish last. They set great personal examples, both in terms of their conduct on and off the field and the consistent excellence of their performance. They are also firm with their men, without crushing individuality. Michael Vaughan is another excellent man manager who has inspired his team to great eights of performance as well as sportsmanship.

Such traits can be infectious and spread around the cricket world. But the greater menace is the tampering with rules that has sought to change the very nature of the game. If dubious bowling actions are allowed to flourish and dangerous offences such as the bowling of head-high full tosses at velocities approaching 150 kph are overlooked, cricket will undergo a transformation in its fundamental nature. It will no longer be the spectator sport that generations of lovers of the game have enjoyed watching. It will became a gladiatorial contest, bereft of finesse and beauty. It just won’t be cricket any more.

The one bright spot in the ongoing chucking controversy is that bowlers with suspect actions, who have been handed reprieves under the new ICC rule, seem to be becoming less and less successful as batsmen learn to cope better with their bowling or as age catches up with the bowlers. Captains around the world tend to support such bowlers as long as they tend to win matches with them, but not a moment longer.

You don’t have to be a statistical expert, then, to come to the conclusion that the bowlers under the microscope over the last few seasons are no longer the match-winners they used to be. Maybe this is the time for all parties concerned to come together to review the whole situation without nationalistic fervour clouding the issue and come up with a definition of throwing that makes sense.

The present law does not. Beamers, intentional or otherwise, have no place in the game. Bowlers should be mercilessly outlawed if they indulge in that vile practice. And as for bad behaviour on the field, it will die a natural death if the cricket-lovers of a country come down heavily on their heroes, as Australian spectators have in the recent past. They have made their protest vocal and strong, and the administration is finally sitting up and taking notice.