Harmony came easy in this town. It flowed unimpeded on its sidewalks. He never felt it necessary to exert himself to soak in it. It enveloped. He was a fly trapped in its amber. Preserved in its city records. Enshrined next to its cathedral. On the ground lined with pointy tent tops. Bedouin monuments overlooking his second nomadic visit. Sandwiched between two meanders of insignificance. The last one ending prematurely. Cracked bone, hospital visit, Bradman painting. It hadn’t hurt then. It did now.

He spotted the familiar face at the entrance. No perky Fu Manchu these days. Face weather-beaten like a comfortable glove. He smiled at the busybody bustle leading up to the table. Businesslike as always, like his walk to the middle. He set down his wine glass and stood. The grip of the handshake was expansive. Hope he hasn’t spit on them, they had joked all the time.

“Am I late? Didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Wine, huh?”

The call had come the previous evening. How about we do dinner, he had enquired. A month ago, that could have been Pacino’s offer to De Niro. They would have sparred about taking down scores. But the heist was past now. The heat dissipated. Pockets picked, safe cracked. Loot bolted. He had welcomed the overture. This hiatus was agonizing. The routine was leaking ennui.

“I wonder what’s good in this place.”

He looked at those dark raisin eyes scanning the beer menu. The slash of the mouth, one muscle twitch away from upturning into an impish grin. Or a grim scowl going south. A few more lines and furrows. And probably no nails left. Less hair. Hair is a perceptive indicator. They had seen each other often enough to spot the gray and the encroaching island in the scalp.

Don’t let them get you down, he had said the last time they dined. That was after Bangalore. And Mohali. The gruel was running thin then. Scraping at the bottom. That had made news of all sorts. There had been few other exchanges since – mobile phone touches. They had crossed paths under the cavernous stands before this round started. He was taking throwdowns from his adorable Emmy. Apart from that, they had maintained a decorous distance. Impassive and inscrutable to each other.

“I spoke to Dizzy this morning. He said to say hello. And to remind you that the six to get to your century here was just a fortuitous top edge.”

Aah Dizzy, that hirsute warrior, he laughed. He had been ferocious. A slicer and slasher of the persistent kind. His magnificence had added gravitas. Eight years hence, he could still recall the sweat gushing down as he awaited that awe-inspiring face thundering in at him. He could savour it now.

“We did well in that, didn’t we, you and I?”

“All I remember is scoring nine more than you”, he said with a wink.

“And all I recall is I taking the catch to send you back Ricky”.

On the drive down from Bowral earlier in the week, he had relived it all once again. In its minutiae. It wouldn’t be the last time. It always came in waves. Sweeping comfortingly over his ankles. Sand between his toes. Humming in his ears. Still tingled his fingertips. If you leave only one behind, leave one like that.

“If Tugga hadn’t that day, I would have picked up the ball for you. It will never be about Kolkata for me. It is here. And it will never be my double, Rahul. It is yours”, he said.

He had scrutinized him intently in Sydney. Stretching himself. Digging his heels in. In introspective conversation with himself under that green cap. Had willed him on like in South Africa, even as he plotted his demise with his cohorts. Observed the fighter’s fight. The audacity of tenacity. The old authority trickling back.

He watched him attack his plate now. Just like his batting. The same clipped flourishes. Carve of the knife here. Fork that potato out of the way. Clear a path to the gravy. Straight lines. Leave no crumbs.

This would be the last time. Fly out of here; no cast, yet wounded. It had not ended well. A persistent death rattle behind. The geometry of chance. The mislaid assurance that was in abundance all year. So, it was to remain unconquered. Would remain forever an insect trying to get out of his eye.

“What does it matter anymore Rahul? What else is left? In Adelaide, you have shone like diamonds. This is your ground. Farewells are overrated. This is about comfort. This is you returning to a warm blanket. This is you making your own moment. Like you did at Lord’s. Did what Sachin, Brian, Jacques and I hiccupped on. You left Mohali and Bangalore behind. You made your own year. And what a year.”

What one leaves behind. It is in the eyes of the foe. To look back on. Sixteen years is an eternity. But the duels stick. The battles linger. The glares forgotten. Miniscule details bore in. Like his seagull-sprawl dive at midwicket in Kolkata when Lax whipped one square – in vain. The dinners. Don’t you dare give up, he had said. When he needed it.

The waitress smiled at them as they walked out together. Abdicating their domicile. On Tuesday, one last walk. Terminators on the turf. The chocolate box scoreboard. Bedouin tents. St. Peter’s Cathedral. Before the makeover forever masked its beauty. Ethereal. Calming.

Once more the hum in the ear. The tingle at the fingertips. Soft hands. The geometry of chance. The heat.

And those raisin eyes. The slash of the mouth. Spit on the hands.

“Hang around for a few days when this is done, champ. I’ll take you fishing in Hobart. Emmy loves the boat.”

Fishing. Something I have never tried before, he thought.

(A work of fiction. A figment of an overactive imagination.)

Now you’ve done it, you’ve done it haven’t ya?
Yes, you’ve opened up your addled mind
Squelched out a priceless and noxious beauty
A tracer bullet off your copious behind

Super King my friend, superman you are
Unlike your team which mislaid its pluck
With your brazen words, and your demented gravitas
You’ve now convinced us you don’t give a fuck

He himself must resolve them as well as he knows,
Or else take them with him wherever he goes.
– J. A

The sun shone weakly. It was April and the milieu was cold and bleak in Tilbury. Dark smoke billowing out of her funnels, the Orontes drew away in sombre deliberation and sailed out towards the grey waters of the Atlantic. Out on its deck, there was one last wave before the diminutive and huddled up figure stepped back from the deck rails and turned away. His silhouette dissolved into the mist and fog. And then Harold Larwood was gone.

Out on the quay, a solitary man watched the ship recede into the distance. The irony hung thick in the cold air. Eighteen years earlier, that very ocean-liner had had received a ticker-tape sendoff in comparison. Larwood – albeit then in his muscled prime – had stood on the deck waving back at the throngs wishing him and his team-mates godspeed and good luck in Australia. There were no brass bands this time around. In fact, there was no one else around, but John Arlott. A farewell party of one, lingering at the quay deep in thought. Thoughts tinged with sadness. And a deep-rooted conviction of the betrayal that lay behind the departure.

Larwood had made a memorable entrance into Arlott’s life back in 1926. It was a family vacation in London and a whirlwind of sightseeing in hot summer days had ensued – enough museum walks and tower climbs thrown in to instigate rebellion by a twelve year old nursing sore feet. Then, a fortuitous escape from the tourist’s tedium: down the road from where they were staying was the Kennington Oval, the ground hosting the fifth Test of the Ashes. Voila! Eventually the parents had capitulated as he begged and nagged them into submission.

Dispatched caringly by his mother with a raincoat and a bag of sandwiches, twelve year old John had shown up for his first day ever at a Test match, flushed in awe. Awe that only intensified when his heroes Sutcliffe and Hobbs walked out to open for England. England stuttered and didn’t last the day, but had hit back by the end of it to snaffle four Australian wickets. “W. Bardsley c H. Strudwick b H. Larwood 2” and “TJE Andrews b H. Larwood 3” read the scorecard.

Six years later, he had sat in the stands with his mate as Nottinghamshire played matches against Essex and Glamorgan. Perplexedly staring at the strange bowling tactics of Harold Larwood and Bill Voce: “We couldn’t understand this. We came back so baffled we didn’t even mention it to anybody”. He didn’t know then, but the plot had already been hatched. And was being put on trial before its explosive unveiling. Soon the flames from Bodyline would engulf the country.

Bodyline was to take its toll on cricket and England. But it was nothing compared to the toll it took on Larwood: “the villain-in-chief”, “the monster” and “the bloody murderer”. Feted as a hero on return from Australia, the humble and reticent Larwood would begin a descent and retraction into reclusive exile over the coming years. Injuries he had sustained in Australia dogged him, but what eventually devastated him was the overpowering sense of abandonment by his own cricketing establishment, the MCC.

It was a chilling realization to Larwood of the duplicity of the MCC when he was broached with the suggestion that he apologize for the events of Bodyline. An apology that would serve conveniently as a public absolution of the MCC, appease the irate Australians and pave the way for a smooth conduct of the 1934 Ashes. Larwood was a simple man, a salt-of-the-earth toiler from the coal mines of Nottinghamshire. He had given everything for king and country, but now realized to his abject disillusionment that he was all alone. The betrayal he felt was acute.

When Jack Fingleton – his adversary from that fated tour – came calling, Larwood had retreated to Blackpool, leading a monkish existence. With a most touching of gestures, Fingleton extended his hand of support to Larwood; an incredulous offer to help him relocate to Australia! Bitterness and the sense of injustice would prevail and Larwood accepted. And in April, 1950, he boarded the Orontes with his family, headed to the most improbable of futures: a new life in the country which had reviled him.

Arlott found him on the deck that day, a gaunt bespectacled figure, still dignified and upright. Arlott had convinced his newspaper that this departure was newsworthy and shown up at Tilbury, only to be stunned to find that he was the extent of the press corps. His offer of a drink accepted, they relocated, sitting across each other sipping their teas (Larwood having declined the offer of food or beer, keeping the pounding hangover from a night of drinking with Jack Hobbs to himself).

Larwood was wistful, as he reminisced about the glorious sendoff the team had received at that very harbor in 1932 and the euphoric return with the Ashes in 1933. How he looked forward to a new life in Australia. He could camouflage it as much as he wanted, but a perceptive man sat across the table from him. And he could sense sadness in that face. Sense the extent of the torture the MCC’s conduct had inflicted on the man.

He lingered at the harbor after they had shaken hands and Larwood boarded the ship. And stayed quayside even as it pulled away. For he believed in his heart that Larwood deserved a better farewell – not this second abandonment.

He stood there, his lone hand waving in silhouette against the bleak sky.

******************

If blame there be, we share the blame-
Blame not purged by praise of nations
But only by those generations
Who, not needing passports, fly
Unchallenged over common sky.
– J. A

The first letter arrived around 1958. Written in green ink. Polite, courteous and respectful was the young writer: “I daresay this is a minor detail, I presume, compared to your other escapades, but I am sure you will do your best…” Who was he?

The letters kept coming. Soon an undercurrent became obvious amidst the politeness – desperation. An anxious desperation. This was no ordinary fan-boy writing from afar. This was a hand reaching out. Reaching out in desperation from a hopeless situation. Hopelessness that he had experienced first-hand himself.

John Arlott’s first overseas stint as a commentator for the BBC was in 1948. South Africa had dazzled him, coming from bleak post-war England. His voice had preceded him there, and its reputation was already ensconced in warm appreciativeness. The stadiums were radiant and the cricket dazzled. He was feted and dined by adoring folk everywhere he went. It was all magical.

But John was a curious and perceptive man. And one did not need to be very perceptive in South Africa in 1948 to see the sordid underbelly of society and the repressive powers that ruled. It all came out in an impassioned rant on the air after he had returned home: “I speak from personal observation, of course – the existing government in South Africa is predominantly a Nazi one…Anything can happen to a native in South Africa – any form of violence, carrying through as far as murder, and you can rest assured that the person who kills him or ill-treats him won’t suffer in any way at all”

Egalitarian Arlott, reared and nurtured by generations of staunchly liberal folk, had determined that he could never visit South Africa again. It was too abhorrent to his humanity. That rant succeeded in getting relays of BBC newscasts banned by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. It also succeeded in shining a beacon of hope into Cape Town.

Basil D’Oliveira’s batting average was 100.47. Three times, he had taken 100 wickets in a season. He was a legend in the ghettos and the “coloured” leagues. Yet, he couldn’t dare dream of playing for his country. For those were days when his people had to cross over to the other side of the street when they saw a white man approach on the same sidewalk as them. At Newlands, they were crammed into a tiny part of the stands barricaded by high metal fences. D’Oliveira sat in “The Cage”, one in a mosaic of eager dark faces, watching South Africa play against visiting sides – white Australia, England and New Zealand, that is. Watching players with a fraction of the talents he possessed donning the South African cap.

The green ink from his pen sent a distress signal: “Dear Mr. Arlott…” He had picked Arlott for “he was the voice of cricket”. More importantly, for “he was a good man”. With no hope of playing quality competitive cricket in his homeland, he had to try elsewhere. Arlott was sympathetic, but realistic. He knew the difficulties of getting an absolute unknown from abroad into a county side.

But oh, did Arlott try! Every county was written to – even Lord’s. Nothing. But he would not give up. If not the counties, why not the leagues? His friend John Kay in Manchester was plugged into the circuit and was approached. Arlott made clear his feelings to Kay: “I would not give a tuppenny damn if he were just an ordinary cricketer in one of the Test-playing countries, but this would be such a fine thing to do. The last thing I want out of it is credit, but I would love to see it happen”

It certainly was a fine thing to do. And a fine coincidence made it come to fruition. Middleton, in the Lancashire leagues had been left high-and-dry with a last minute pullout by their overseas professional Wesley Hall. Their desperation to fill the slot was to be D’Oliveira’s salvation. Back went a letter to South Africa:”Dear Basil D’Oliviera…” – as in all of them before, a quaint typo in the name – “Now I have an offer for you to play…”

In the spring of 1960, D’Oliveira landed at Heathrow. After being received by Kay, who had to reassure him that he didn’t need to line up separately from white folk anymore, was driven to a flat in London where an ecstatic Arlott opened the door to welcome the nervous young man. The night was spent there, with a fussing Arlott busying himself with arrangements: clothes, kit, money and a place to stay in Middleton. And in discussions with Kay to ensure that D’Oliveira would have a support network to help him settle.

Arlott called each weekend to enquire. To see if the lad needed anything: “…if a fiver would help, I would send it out of the blue”, he wrote to Kay. The D’Oliveira episode would remain the most cherished event in Arlott’s storied life. It gave him more personal joy than any of his other towering achievements.

Arlott shone at his principled best in 1968 when the “D’Oliveira affair” exploded on England. An affair that inadvertently set in motion events that would reverberate from Westminster to Robben Island. The South African government had been Machiavellian, but the MCC, in their single-mindedness to save the tour had left Arlott aghast.

Never one to be sequestered in the MCC’s choir and sing from their hymn sheet, he didn’t hold back:

MCC have never made a more sadder, more dramatic, or potentially more damaging selection than omitting D’Oliveira from their team to tour South Africa.

This may prove, perhaps to the surprise of the MCC, far more than a sporting matter. It could have such repercussions on British relations with the coloured races of the world that the cancellation of a cricket tour would seem a trifling matter compared with an apparent British acceptance of Apartheid. This was a case where justice had to be seen to be done.

The MCC, doyens of self-preservation, were at it again in 1970 with their attempts to go ahead with the tour of the South Africans to England. This appalling move, in the face of rampant resentment in England at the inhuman policies of apartheid, immediately drew out Arlott, as he refused to commentate on the tour for the BBC:

Crucially though, a successful tour would offer comfort and confirmation to a completely evil regime. To my mind, the Cricket Council, acting on behalf of British cricket, has failed fairly to represent those British people – especially cricketers – who genuinely abominate apartheid.

To persist with this tour seems to me a social, political and cricketing error.

And would seal the case shut with his eloquent discourse in the debate that preceded a vote on the tour, leading to a ban on cricketing relations with South Africa that would last decades:

There is a time in the growth of some political beliefs when they so offend against common morals that they are recognizable as evil and obnoxious to right thinking people.

Any man’s political commitment, if it is deep enough, is his personal philosophy, and it governs his way of life, it governs his belief and it governs the people with whom he is prepared to mix. Mr. President, sir, anyone who cares to support this motion will not exclude politics from sport, but in fact be attempting to exclude sport from life.

********************

Larwood and D’Oliveira…

Two simple souls embroiled in extraordinary circumstances. Two talented men trapped in the machinations of higher powers. Two of the biggest scandals that rocked England in the twentieth century. One which threatened to shred the fabric of the Dominion and the other which had an extraordinary impact on the world we live in.

Larwood and D’Oliveira…and Arlott.

A compassionate farewell to one and a heartwarming welcome to another. A caring wave to one at Tilbury and a reassuring handshake to the other at the doorstep of his London flat.

John Arlott, a mighty fine man.

Yes, the DRS is optional now. Use it if you want it. Use it when you want it. Use the parts of it that you like. Use it if you have it. Use it if you can afford it. Or better, use it if you can get someone to “sponsor” it for you – a la Pepsi pitching in to foot the bill in the UAE later this month. Sure, go ahead have the third umpire decked out in a foam Pepsi-can costume in the booth too. Has it really come to this? An aspect of the sport that is at the core of the decision making that dictates the state and conduct of play on the pitch is being handled this way?

Atrocious is what this is.

The atrociousness here pertains not as much to the actual merits or lack of in the DRS system itself. It is not about the fallibility of the technology employed in the review system either. Neither is it buried in the snide and acerbic comments that this decision is eliciting as being a cop-out by the ICC to strong arm tactics from powerful boards. And yes, there are many who are firmly against using the system for LBW decisions and catches specifically lest the game get de-humanized further. But again, that is not the issue here. The insanity of this decision cuts much deeper. The waffling over the DRS is just a symptom of a deeper malaise.

Yes, there is much larger issue staring at us in the face here.

For our game is being well and truly jerked around recklessly. How has it come to be that the very core of the rules that govern the play on the pitch are modified and revised so rashly, flippantly and with scant regard for the solidity of the decisions or their enforceability? Why is cricket so trigger happy with its tweaking of the rules and playing conditions? Why are so many of these ill-thought out changes being handed down to us condescendingly as being implemented for the sake of “our” increased enjoyment of the sport? And why is this tinkering so incessant?

It is a sad state of affairs that cricket – a wonderful and beautiful sport that has captured the imagination for centuries – appears to be in a perpetual twitchy feverish state about the mechanics and rules of the game. Searching desperately for that elusive rush – like a crack addict who has misplaced his stash. All in the name of ratcheting up the excitement level in the game.

Having oversold its soul to unsustainable television revenues and forced into supporting an insanely overcrowded worldwide schedule, the sport finds itself careening down towards the inevitable crash. Context has been rendered irrelevant and contests much more so with the unabashed neutering of conditions. With a constant blur of cricket matches that unfold, the ennui and mental fatigue that this creates is taking its toll. Now faced with the prospect of dwindling eyeballs for its product (already happening increasingly), all that is left is to resort to mess with the game itself?

So the rules, laws and playing conditions of the game are fair game. They are now the panacea to the sorry state of the union. Platitudes about big money, advances in television coverage, innovation, keeping up with the technology of the times and injecting excitement into the game are just that. In fact they are more than that – just a load of horseshit. Since when did endless tweaking constitute progressiveness in itself? For all that this is achieving is to leave us in a perpetually unsettled condition. Complicating the conduct of play relentlessly and intruding on our basic enjoyment of the beauty of the game itself.

Limited overs cricket, the traditional cesspool of tweaks, innovations and progressive thinking has taken the brunt of the latest round of rule changes. ODI cricket has now been made over with more nose-jobs, botox injections and silicone implants than Pamela Anderson. All for the sake of “our” excitement, we have been informed. To prevent us from slitting our wrists out of boredom during the meandering middle overs. No, let us not even bring up T20s – the Paris Hilton of cricket – right now.

Yet we have overdone it with the latest innovations to the Power-plays. A contrived and forcibly implanted concept in the first place, Power-plays had already been pushed to the limits in the last edition of changes. But would you believe it? More room for excitement has been unearthed – somewhere between overs 16 and 40! This constant tinkering with the twenty (cricket’s lotto winning number) overs of fielding restrictions has me convinced now that this will end only when cricket eventually discovers the perfect T20 game embedded in those fifty overs.

And now the use of two balls – one at either end – in ODIs. Shahid Afridi’s teeth better be in good shape if he ever comes out of retirement. Dew and discoloration? Bollocks. Are we trying to say that it is beyond the realm of possibility that the quality of cricket balls can be improved so that they would last for 50 overs? Hardly an intractable problem is it? Having throttled the format with boundary ropes creeping in around its neck and castrating pitches to the hilt, we had to go further to ensure that the poor batsmen copped an additional break?

All this does is to tilt the game even further in favour of the batsmen. With pitch conditions being numbingly benign worldwide and the quality of bowling attacks in terminal decline, we can only brace ourselves for more ferocious bludgeoning of the hapless bowlers. Not to mention that it sneers at and spits on one of the most unique aspects of the sport itself – the management of the degradation of the ball during the course of a match. And spinners be damned – they are going extinct anyways.

It is quite disheartening these days to talk to fellow cricket followers and realize to what extent our day to day conversations have been tainted by all of this. So inured we are to the blur of cricket and the constant fiascos of the game’s management that cricket conversations are surreal – caught up the minutiae of these srewups and in the chaotic nature of the cricketing calendar. And when respected players start spewing the “increased excitement” mantra too, you know the disease has really taken root. Like when Kumar Sangakkara (in the panel discussion following his MCC Spirit of Cricket lecture this summer) claimed that having players invoke the DRS in the course of the match instead of the umpires “added excitement” to proceedings.

The last time a rule change and its immediate revocation caused as much anguish was when the ICC implemented the concept of the “Super-sub” in 2005. Again, purportedly done for the benefit of our increased excitement, this was a grievous mistake that went against a basic tenet of the sport – of the sanctity of the list of eleven names exchanged at the toss. Adopted flippantly by the same exalted Cricket Committee of the ICC, this came with the jarring image of a gleeful Sunil Gavaskar announcing the decision like an excited poodle. Of course it was scrapped the next year, by when opposing captains were hatching agreements at the toss to not even deploy it.

But we have truly crossed a line with the DRS.

Television reviews to support or replace human decision making is nothing special to cricket. Even as recently as in the FIFA World Cup in 2010, football went through a throe of navel-gazing about the application of television replays after Frank Lampard’s no-goal in England’s game against Germany. This was not anything new to football and debates and discussions raged about whether it was time to employ cameras to monitor the goal line in football matches.

Without getting into the issue of whether football should resort to replays or not, the point to stress is that no rash decision has been taken regarding it. While most football fans are not enamoured by FIFA as an organization or its leadership, they still understand that this is a decision not to be taken lightly. But football has resisted till now. And there is something very reassuring that the rules and playing conditions at say, el Clasico in Madrid or Barcelona, are identical to those at my kid’s house-league game at a neighbourhood park.

In 2008, baseball, that most American of sports implemented a “limited instant replay” (in the words of Major League Baseball) to eliminate errors caused by parallax in determining the legality of hits along the first and third base sidelines in the outfield. Again, this was a decision that was taken after lengthy deliberation and cricket could learn a few things from it. Firstly, it was a blanket decision. As of August 29th, 2008, all baseball games were to be played with the replay in effect. Secondly, they chose to carefully limit the scope of the replay and also ensured that it relied on bare-bones television cameras for its implementation. Baseball as a sport has resolutely resisted any changes to the playing conditions with the last rule change before this being the introduction of the designated hitter in the American League in 1973 – a decision which is debated even to this day.

Ironically, baseball is one sport where a primary mode of dismissal at the plate can be automated flawlessly. For the technology to pin-point a virtual strike-zone and track the trajectory of pitches with respect to it has existed for a long time. Television viewers have been provided the precise point of entry of the ball into the strike zone through instant replays on every single pitch. Forever. But I am yet to hear a single baseball fan advocate the use of technology for calling strikes once in my lifetime. Ranting and cursing at umpires and their individual interpretations of the strike-zone is oh-so common, but even a kid in the little leagues would be appalled at the suggestion of making it “flawless” using cameras.

Cricket was managing fine with runouts, stumpings and border-line catches being judged with the aid of replays since the 90s. All done with the aid of simple television cameras. The DRS arrived as problematic – with its multiple technological aspects, some of them quite advanced and unproven yet. Not to mention the costs and the difficult logistics of deploying these technologies.

Regardless, the primary issue here is its introduction before ensuring the uniformity of its enforcement in all international matches. For there is something unnerving about looking back over the scorecards of a year recently passed and knowing that some of them were judged using a significantly different decision making process. And not knowing which ones.

Uniformity is absolutely important in this matter. Uniformity should matter to anyone who really cares about the game and its evolution and history. Compromising it is absolutely preposterous. And now allow teams and boards to decide when they choose to implement it and also choose the parts they prefer? Cricket will be better served if the DRS were scrapped instantly till a policy that applies it in a blanket manner in all international matches can be ratified.

India has just commenced their ODI series against England at home. This “return” series, which follows barely a month after the Indian team flew back from London after their tour (where they already played five ODIs), encapsulates all that is wrong with the sport at this point.

The sheer meaninglessness of it – other than to feed the coffers and fuel the jingoistic urges of Indian fans hankering for revenge after the abject performance of their team in England – is staggering. It will also unfold with the latest handiwork of the ICC Cricket Committee in full bloom – with no DRS (I think) and a Rubik’s cube of Power-plays. Oh yes – and two balls.

One can only sit back and rejoice that cricket has finally grown a pair.

Oh well…there was still the cricket to look forward to. At least that’s what I thought then…until…oh, you know what happened.

I do tend to forget to take photographs when I am preoccupied, but here are a few of the cricket and in and around the stadiums taken with my crippled camera.

"Look daddy, those green thingies at the Oval!"

View of the lights at the Oval from the sidewalk outside

The Alec Stewart gate at The Oval

At the grounds around Lord's

The bat fixers' workshop near the Nursery end

If he wasn't 6ft 8in tall, the crowd would have prevented me from getting this shot.

Heading back after a very, very special net session

Followed by this other guy who also had a hit at the nets.

When HE lorded over at Lord's

And again...

Entrance to the W.G Grace pavillion, with the Lord's stewards manning the door

At last...

Gulp!

This was to become a familiar sight in the weeks to come

He had the bowling and the hair going at Lord's

Bye bye Cook...

..and hello, Pietersen!

Another shot of the pavillion...

Raina signs one...

That turf...perfection...

Gambhir is all smiles.

Wall-E

Wall-E from afar

Random shot of Lord's scoreboard

"Tendooooooooooooooo !!!"

VVS in the outfield???

Bat making demonstration by Gray Nicolls

Dravid...poetry.

Where is that headed? Covers? Midwicket? Only he knows

Ooops...wrong stadium...

And the entrance to this beautiful ground

Cozy...intimate...Trent Bridge.

The scoreboard at Trent Bridge

Bell, listening to advice from the crowd about how to walk off for tea

Larwood and Voce (gulp!)...and Randall (smile)

Trent Bridge with the lights turned on

Sitting out on the patio at Hemingway’s, a cozy restaurant-pub in the upscale Yorkville hood of Toronto, I was having lunch. Right across the table in front of me sat Dustin Hoffman, flipping through a newspaper, nursing a drink. I had my eye on the NY Times Tootsie was reading, since the city seemed to have sold out every copy of every newspaper that morning. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Dustin stand up with a broad smile and start chatting with two ladies across the railing of the patio. I glanced, and it was Kathy Bates and a jaw-droppingly ravishing Marisa Tomei. Right there on the sidewalk.

It was a weekday afternoon, but I was sitting there for a reason. I had tickets to a screening of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding but I was there to get a refund as it had been cancelled – for reasons obvious to everyone from the date by now. Mira had brought her pulsating ensemble piece to the annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) but I was to miss out. The festival was on hold, and with all flights in and out of the city grounded, roaming the streets in a daze was all that was left. Even for Dustin and Marisa.

It was dark and solemn in the gorgeous sunshine and the import of what had happened to the other city that was so close to my heart the previous day weighed heavy, as I sat there ogling at Marisa Tomei on the sidewalk.

Now, my city’s sidewalks are an integral part of the TIFF. So are its subways, buses and streetcars. Sure, the festival is now considered the hottest ticket in the industry for a multitude of reasons. But at its heart, it remains my festival. In my city. And to the day, no one can take that away from me.

For the TIFF, for all its high glamour, glitz and glitterati quotient remains very much a people’s festival. Ordinary people. Like you and I. And unlike the two other biggies on the festival circuit Cannes and Sundance, Toronto doesn’t stop for the TIFF. Downtown Toronto is no gilt-edged beach resort or a trendy ski haven. It all unfolds in the busiest part of the city core and co-exists comfortably with the hustle and bustle of the city. Spills over onto the sidewalks, and in fact relies on them.

From the time of its inception, a key aspect of the TIFF has been its diligence in ensuring that the viewing public is kept as the central focus by reserving the bulk of the festival tickets for them. An annual ritual unfolds in September, on subways and buses, in restaurants and cafes – frazzled film-nuts poring over the festival’s program, devouring the brief synopses of the plots, scribbling notes to themselves as they hatch out their plans for the festival. Plans to cram in as many films as possible, rushing from one theater to the next, from work, from school – biking, rollerblading, on the subway or plain rushing along the sidewalks.

The simple act of lining up has yielded endless surprises over the years. From the first time I lined up at midnight (on the sidewalk) for a screening of Welcome to Sarajevo. To being greeted by a radiant Nandita Das and director Deepa Mehta at the door for Fire, listening to the eloquent Eytan Fox (of Walk on Water fame) from Israel after a showing of The Bubble, speechless after a showing of Matteo Garrone’s Neapolitan crime syndicate saga Gomorra, a completely insane Sacha Baron Cohen in full Kazakh regalia regaling a massive crowd in a downtown parking lot after a projector failed at a showing of Borat, a bizarre and melodramatic “protest” by some high-society desi yuppies during Amol Palekar’s post-screening Q&A of Daayraa. And on and on.

And the attendees – including the stars – appear to love the very same streets and sidewalks. Taking advantage of the laid back and non-intrusive nature of the city they roam freely, kids and dogs in tow (As photographs clicked I am sure by paparazzi hiding in garbage cans attest to every morning in the newspapers). Yeah – there’s Sean Penn wandering around cigarette hanging out of his mouth, a bagged Nick Nolte – the Keith Richards of Hollywood – falling out of a cab pissed drunk at midnight. Sitting out on a patio in the evening and realizing after an hour that the dude at the next table with his back to us was Alec Baldwin. “F**king Colin Ferrell standing on this very table serenading Catherine Zeta-Jones and yelling at the top of his voice was all I needed” said an irate waiter to us once as we sat down for dinner at a restaurant.

Its timing in September has been a boon and hopefully not a future curse to the festival. For it presents the perfect opportunity for the PR juggernauts of Hollywood to put their buns in the oven for the Oscar party in March. Generating Oscar “buzz” is a mantra now for producers and the machinery kicks into overdrive during the festival. Like Slumdog Millionaire in 2008, the list of films that ratcheted up their Oscar hype in Toronto is endless (It was Amelie, in 2001).

Directors and producers from across the globe, teeming in the warm and inclusive nature of the festival’s programming find it a fertile ground to catch the eye and ergo distribution rights in the lucrative North American market. With no emphasis whatsoever on awards and gongs in various categories, the focus at the TIFF is solely on generating buzz amongst the people thronging the screenings.

The festival is huge now and influential. So big that what used to be said in hushed whispers years ago is out in the open – it is the industry’s biggest annual event.

Writing in TIME, Rebecca Winters Keegan likened the TIFF and Toronto to a “supportive low maintenance girlfriend”. “Unlike its major festival sisters – that sexy cougar Cannes, 60, and parka-clad hipster Sundance, 29 – Toronto, 32, is inclusive, friendly and even prettier once you get to know her”, she wrote.

Yeah, she sure is pretty. And it is the friendliness of my city and the inclusiveness of the programming that makes the TIFF special. Especially to the plebes who throng the festival with just one thing on their minds – to watch the films.

Toronto International Film Festival 2011, September 8-18, 300+ films from 60+ countries, 300,000 tickets, 40 screens.

Raina’s six balls of right-arm orthodox irrelevance should have been just that. But his very first delivery proved to be the last twist of the knife on that depressing day. Morgan’s apologetic grope outside off-stump lobbed off the outside edge to Rahul Dravid, the lone slip – who grassed it. It was illustrative of India’s abject performance all day, but the immediate aftermath of the dropped catch was to provide an image that will haunt for a long time.

Dravid knelt there motionless, looking down in horror at the ball, till Dhoni picked it up impassively and returned it to Raina. Just five more to endure, would have been Dhoni’s thought. But what about Dravid? What was he thinking?

One look at him revealed multitudes. That familiar visage of serene intensity was about to be interrupted by emotions seldom displayed overtly on the field – first disgust and trailing it, rage.

When Dravid ripped the India cap off his head and flung it down in front of him in anger, the raw emotion was visible for all to see. It was painful to watch his expression of self-accusatory disgust. On a day riddled with mistakes, failings, disaster and capitulation, the last blunder had triggered an emotional response and breached the thick layer of vapid resignation on view all day. The raw feeling in his eyes and actions seared momentarily. He was back in position soon after, frustration still writ large on his face. Eyes glowering.

December 16, 2003. When Dravid pounced on a tired and misdirected leg-break from Stuart McGill and slashed it to the cover point boundary, all of India had exulted in unison. The hard fought victory in the second Test match at Adelaide was to instantly take its place in the pantheon of defining moments in Indian cricket history. He had clenched his fist over his head as the ball rocketed off the meat of his blade and let out a roar. Then as he set off joyfully towards his partner Agarkar came the defining image of that Test match.

Dravid stripped the India cap off his head – interrupting his roar of delight – and kissed its crest before being enveloped in a bear-hug by Agarkar.

Adelaide and Edgbaston. Dravid and his India cap – two moments, doppelgangers of each other. Bound by a common thread – the sheer force of his emotions that initiated them.

His memorable post match interview on that day in Adelaide is burnt into my eyes. Drained and exhausted, he had stood there in his sweaty whites and India cap, struggling to string together coherent sentences. For a man who exemplifies the cultured and perfectly judged thoughts and words in any situation, this was unusual. His words were astonishingly raw and revelatory. Waves of emotion swept across and his eyes gleamed as he tried to articulate the immense satisfaction he felt about finishing the job – India having blown opportunities of a similar nature in South Africa and the West Indies in the past.

His match-winning knocks in that Test had been transcendent and epic, but here he was, searching for words to describe why he valued the win and the gravitas it carried. More than satisfaction about his own staggering performance, the acute awareness and pride about his team’s place now in the history of Indian cricket radiated from his eyes. Sport – a trifling exercise we tend to attach way too much importance to in our lives – rarely throws up moments that truly validate the emotional investment fans make in it. I had looked at his eyes that day in admiration and thanked him silently.

Six weeks of torture is what the current tour has been to Indian cricket watchers. Even to neutrals, who had waited, licking their chops at the prospect of an epic tussle. But what unfolded was not a contest, but a bludgeoning. With one team humming on all eleven cylinders and the other creaking tunelessly, offering up their noses for the bloody treatment. And in the midst of all this, there was Dravid.

It wasn’t so much the three superb hundreds he scored in four Tests. It wasn’t the extenuating circumstances in which he composed those gems either. Nor was it his willingness to don the wicket-keeping gloves or open the innings. It was much simpler than any of that.

It was in his intent. It was in the message he radiated for the entirety of the tour that he was keenly aware of how high the stakes were. It was in the unwavering stance he presented to the opposition that he had come prepared for the epic tussle and intended to play his part in it. It was also in his polite, articulate and straight forward responses to questions from the media where he did not shun the reality of his team’s situation. Looked them in the eye and unfailingly conveyed how much this was hurting and why it was worth fighting for to the very end.

And how it showed on the field.

“Dravid denies”, “Dravid defies” screamed the headlines. Denial and defiance – words that are so inadequate for the beauty of his art. Words that do no justice to the intricate angles and delicacy of his batting. For his batting was bathed in a glow for the entire series. His shots shimmered with grace against a bowling attack that was laying low his team mates at the other end of the pitch.

And that nickname that has grated for the entirety of his career. One for the metaphorically challenged. Comparing him to a lifeless edifice whose sole purpose is to prop up and keep out intruders always misses the point. For there is nothing inhuman about his art. There has never been. Right from 1996 – as telecasts repeatedly reminded us with footage from his debut – the same angles, soft touch and dancing feet. He had shone then, like now – a beacon.

Yes, it was how human he was that was evident on the field. Human in forgetting that his shoe had laces. Human in the dropped catches – ones he used to routinely snaffle in years past. Human in the raw emotion of that moment at Edgbaston when his frustration and anger was laid bare for all to see. Just human, in how much he cared.

Yes…Adelaide and Edgbaston…Dravid and his India cap. Some things never change.

*******

July 28, 2011. It was the evening before the second Test at Trent Bridge. Dinner beckoned and we had strolled through central Nottingham in search of a restaurant. Strolled past clumps of Indian fans armed with autograph books and cameras. “I just saw Eoin Morgan on the street and got his autograph” – “Dhoni loves this Moroccan restaurant. He’s been here twice in the past few days” – they told us. We settled on a South Indian eatery, ordered our food and sat there speculating on what could unfold the next morning.

Still amused and curiosity piqued by the autograph hunters, I stepped out after a while to see what was going on. And walked straight into umpire Asad Rauf outside the door of the restaurant. I immediately went back inside to fetch my son, who I knew would be tickled pink to see that familiar face from television in the flesh. We had walked up to Asad and said hello, chatting briefly with the charmingly friendly man.

Celebrity sighting done for the day, we had walked back, my son still hopping about in excitement from the unexpected meeting with the umpire. Not paying attention to a small crowd outside peering through the windows, I had pulled opened the door of the restaurant – and frozen. For I was looking right into the eyes of Rahul Dravid, seated at the table next to the entrance.

Commonsense whispered in my ear and etiquette kicked me in the shin, urging me to let him be and walk on without disturbing him. The eve of a Test match and given what had transpired at Lord’s, one with a lot riding on it – this was not the time to disturb someone whose mind was bound to be preoccupied by it. Yes, the decision was to walk past quietly, till I turned around and saw my kid’s face.

He was always Wahul Dwavid to him. A player he was fiercely protective of, someone he adored and looked at with great affection. “They should just call it Rahulpindi, daddy” he had declared, watching a DVD of Dravid’s 270 in 2004. “Why? Why can’t they learn from just watching him?” he had asked exasperatedly watching the Rainas and the Yuvrajs contort themselves into inhuman knots trying to fend off rising deliveries. “No one, no one can play that better” he would say proudly whenever Dravid rocked back to cut a fast bowler to the point boundary.

I took one look at that incredulous face and fearing for my sanity if I didn’t do what I was about to, leaned over and interrupted Rahul conversing with his dinner companions for the night. Apologized profusely and explained the situation to him. He looked around me at the googly-eyed creature bouncing up and down like on a pogo-stick, just said “Absolutely”, got up from the table and walked over and took my son’s outstretched hand.

I stood quietly, watching that friendly and caring face talk to my son – whose normal exuberance was suddenly replaced by shyness. Watched him enquire about our trip from Toronto. About what grade he was in school. Watched my son’s face glowing as he shook his hand the whole time. Watched him thanking my son warmly for his best wishes for Trent Bridge.

Charles Barkley, the NBA superstar was a legend – for his bullish and aggressive play which also had a silken touch to it. Barkley was also famous for some of the most shocking displays of boorish inanity on the court. And in 1991, he plumbed the depths. Playing in New Jersey and harassed throughout the game with racist abuse from a man in the crowd, Barkley snapped. Muscled through, got close to the heckler and spat on him. And missed – but found a little girl in the path of his mouthy projectile.

The scandal was instantaneous and Barkley was skewered and roasted in the national media for his atrocious act. Soon after, all hell broke loose as Barkley was taken to task in a zillion editorials and talk shows across the country for not being a “good role model” for children. The Republican Party waded in opportunistically, and as is their wont of shrouding revisionist conservative ideology under motherhood and apple-pie theories, took him to task for not upholding “family values”.

Now, there was another significant aspect to Barkley’s personality. He was funny – in fact very funny and extremely witty at times. Added to this, he had the ingenious knack of dispensing nuggets of prescient wisdom amidst his goofy banter (“Just what America needs. Another unemployed black man” he said on retirement). He now lashed out at all the criticism being poured on him, at “all the deadbeat dads who want me to raise their kids for them”.

Barkley had long argued that it was parents and teachers who should be role models, not over-paid professional athletes. “A million guys can dunk a basketball in jail, should they be role models?” he had asked. And he was to stoke the fire further when he made his famous Nike commercial that was titled “I am not a role model”.

I had always sided with Sir Charles on this issue. Firmly believed that it was not prudent for parents to even consider athletes on television as role models for their children. And found the right-wing tirades against Barkley reprehensive and misleading.

Now I stood there in the Nottingham restaurant, looking at those friendly eyes trained on my son’s face as he held his hand.

And like every single time I had looked at those very eyes behind the visor of his helmet or in the shadow of the brim of the India cap, I found my resolve in siding with Barkley being tested to the limit.

-“Weird Fishes”, Radiohead

It told us volumes about what was to happen over the span of the last three days of the third Test match at Edgbaston. And doesn’t bode well for the Oval either. On day two in Birmingham, India descended to the depths, laid siege to the nadir and comprehensively conquered the pits. For if there ever was a truly disheartening and depressing day for an Indian cricket fan, this was it and it brooks no competition whatsoever.

It wasn’t so much the 372 run shellacking they got (and if not for the somnolence in Cook’s mammoth knock, this number could have been higher). Neither was it the meager 3 wickets they struggled to pick up all day, every wicket coming as a surprise since they hadn’t looked like they were capable of prying one out. Neither of these were enough to make Indian fans tear out clumps of hair watching their television screens in disbelief.

It was them. It was the glazed look in their eyes, their shuffling feet and their drooping shoulders. It was in their insipid flatness. A pint of Tetley’s Bitter left out in the backyard for a month would have packed more fizz. Yes, they looked done. Like toast. This on the second day of a Test match which offered them a chance at redemption, mind you.

Weird.

But the warning signs were there even in the first Test at Lord’s. As Prior and Broad started to fight back after Ishant had pushed England into a corner with a burst of wickets, I had watched the Indians in complete bewilderment on the field. Watched them lose all focus and shuffle around listlessly. Raina buzzed around for a while trying to perk up the bowlers and anyone within shoulder slapping distance and then pulled down the shutters too. The change in the field between overs seemed torturous as eleven sad puppies moped their way into fielding positions. It was surreal.

Yes, England have hunted them relentlessly in a pack – a pack of eleven. Their bowling has been glorious and frankly spectacular. England’s batsmen have produced gems all through the tour with everyone starring at absolutely critical match moments. In the face of this, India’s batting has been miserable, failing to reach 300 in 6 attempts – barring two superb knocks by Dravid. The wafer-thin bowling attack was hung out to dry on the very first day of the tour. Nothing has gone right.

There is no shame in admitting that they have been out-thought, out-planned and out-played in every department of the game. It is even possible to stomach the result while admitting that they really came up against it this time, causing them to unravel irreparably.

But it is the manner, demeanor and body-language of their capitulation that is going to rankle for a long time. The bad taste from this tour that will be impossible to rinse away lies not as much in the result, but in the lasting image of the collective shoulder droop and aimlessness that has afflicted this team from the first day of the tour. They have looked miserable and defeated before they were defeated or any misery was heaped on them. How did this come to be?

They have painted a depressing and insipid picture on the field right through the tour – barring one session at Lord’s (Ishant) and one at Trent Bridge (Sreesanth). And for a team notorious for its sloppy fielding, they have outdone themselves with a spectacularly lackadaisical display this time. They have been atrocious.

Only Raina has looked like he understood his responsibility as a fielder out there. Dravid and Tendulkar have given it their earnest best in spite of the former grassing a bunch in the slips. But the rest have been appalling. Dhoni’s gloves have chomped furiously at routine navel-high deliveries like a dog maneuvering a biscuit towards its molars. Harbhajan just drove me insane for two Tests as he went through the motions like he really couldn’t be bothered. And I could not bear to look at Yuvraj as he lorded over some remote part of the field in slow-motion, swaggering like an overlord condescendingly mingling with the serfs. Yes, Viru is Viru – but watching him putter around laughing and smiling as it all collapsed on day two was disconcerting.

The frustrating experience of sitting in the stands and watching them go through the motions every time England dug in or lashed out is going to hurt for a long time. I had even developed an irrational and morbid fascination of watching Laxman in the slips, as he stood there looking all genteel, posing like a suave model in his flannels, hands delicately placed in his pockets, liberating them coyly for two seconds well after he was into his crouch in the slips – only to slip them back in before straightening up. Ball after ball.

Praveen Kumar, the most inexperienced player in the side was the lone beacon of light in the grim darkness. Suddenly thrust into the role of the spear-head of the bowling, the lad was a revelation. For he never flagged, even as he toiled relentlessly, throwing every bit of his limited repertoire at the batsmen in long and lonely spells. Even more heartening was his attitude, his willingness to throw down the gauntlet and get into it when the heat rose. He has rapidly risen to the level of a cult-figure in the eyes of the public and the press here in England. For as a spearhead with no wood backing it, his willingness to fight his way out of trouble endeared him to one and all.

This is not the time to single out anyone, bring up the scheduling, the issue of preparedness or technical flaws. Or pride – for there is no reason to doubt the abundance of that in this Indian dressing room. But it is the collective deflation of a side and their utter inability to drag themselves off the mat time and again that is distressing.

In the end, the result aside, all we wished was for them to stand their ground, plant their feet, straighten their back – and just swing and lash out when the chips were down. Bare their teeth. Once.

But sadly, we were left with the image of the No.1 team in the world wandering around listlessly, despondent, staring at their shoe-laces and into space as eleven determined English hands made a furious lunge for the trophy.

All that remains is the fourth and final Test match at the Oval. And now Indian cricket fans face the prospect of awaiting it with a resigned trepidation. For the only thing left now is to see if the rubble in this ruin can crumble any further. A puff of powdery dust would be an apt remnant of this depressing tour.

And unlike at the Oval in 2007, the one Indian player whose entire career stands as an anti-thesis to the abject capitulation that the team has portrayed on this tour isn’t around anymore. For he was one who never contemplated, considered or even knew the meaning of giving up. And he tended to bat quite well too at the Oval, scoring a century the last time around, dazzling an entire nation with that endearing grin of delight. Hell, India could desperately do with just that batting this time around.

Or just the glare of those intense eyes, just the profile of that legendary uncompromising jaw.

The kid was about 10 years old. There he sat in his white three-lions shirt, with a look of intense concentration, all his attention on the shiny new Dukes ball in his little hand. The father gently positioned his son’s index and middle fingers across the seam, whispering into his ear. Whispering stories and anecdotes, I imagined, about the magic that the grip could impart to that red, shiny object, larger than life in the child’s imagination.

I stood alongside looking down at this age-old ritual, holding on to an overhead hand-rail as the train clattered on. The car was packed to the point of suffocation but no one seemed to notice. The air of expectation and excitement was palpable, and faces were bright, smiling and animated all around. At St John’s Wood, as the doors slid open, the train emptied out, and the platform turned into a sea of the backpack- and hamper-laden, purposefully shuffling towards the escalators. I spotted the kid and his father ahead of us. The father was wearing an England ODI shirt with “Flintoff” on the back. The kid’s pants, too, were white.

There are moments when hyperbole and overwrought emotion invade one’s thoughts and all attempts to resist turn futile. Walking around Lord’s that morning, gazing at all the history that had been imprinted on the mind over decades of watching and following cricket, it was impossible to not let them run amok. The moment I walked up the steps leading to the Tavern Concourse and that hallowed pristine turf burst into view for the first time in my life – with that oh-so-familiar Victorian pavilion on one side and the benevolent and watchful Wall-E eye of the media centre at the other – I am not ashamed to admit that it was overwhelming.

In all honesty, can a setting for Test cricket be any more picture-perfect? How can a venue be so disarming in its intimacy and coziness, dazzling in its beauty, and yet be enveloped in an aura of wonder, majesty and history? Arlott’s descriptions of the village green intermingled with a blurred collage of indelible moments from the ground: Bradman, Miller, Compton, Sobers, Viv, Lloyd, Greenidge, Vengsarkar, Azharuddin, Lillee, McGrath, Botham, Gooch, Akram, Younis, Mahela, Ganguly, Dravid, and of course, a radiant Kapil on the balcony of the glorious pavilion.

I have done my share of ranting about the grandiosity of the MCC and their pig-headedness of not allowing women into that very pavilion during a women’s World Cup final. But all of that was forgotten now in the gorgeous aesthetics of cricket in whites in this wonderful setting. Lord’s lay bathed in sunshine, three slips and two gullies crouching, Anderson steaming in, Dravid stretching, airborne, feet together like a ballerina, toes pointing pitch-ward, dropping the ball rearing at his ribcage down softly at his feet. Poetry.

“The future belongs to crowds” wrote Don DeLillo in Mao II. Reaching Lord’s early on the morning of the fifth day and seeing lines stretch for miles around the stadium, one would think he was taking about Test cricket. My anxiety about procuring tickets aside, there was something wonderful about that morning; just to see thousands of anxious faces in line to watch Test cricket. Five sold-out days made the match at Lord’s an intoxicating experience. One basked in it – joining in happily to boo the stuffy members in the pavilion as they played hiccup to the roaring Mexican waves that went around Lord’s repeatedly. Basked in it with the TMS commentary in your ear as the match stood poised on a knife edge for an eternity.

Trent Bridge should have been underwhelming after the dazzling setting for the first Test, but it wasn’t. On the contrary, it had an even more picturesque intimacy. And while Lord’s had felt like a home game for India, with every other person in the crowd an Indian, it seemed, it was an interesting experience in Nottingham to be surrounded mainly by locals.

We had some wonderful (and knowledgeable) company on each of the days in the stands. A Notts member who was seated with us in the Radcliffe Stand took to my son and spent the day chatting with him about Test cricket on day four. I overheard them discuss and dissect the match in detail all day, and the gentleman bid us a very fond farewell at the end of the match.

I myself had an elderly gent and his family for company next to me. He swooned over Tendulkar’s little gem of an innings that day: “Magical…Perfection and class personified,” he said to me as the flawless strokes brought the crowd to their feet repeatedly. The beer concessions emptied out in a mad rush as people tried to get back into the stands – for Tendulkar was at the crease.

Nine days – not 10 as it should have been – enveloped by Test cricket, in a country that unabashedly loves the five-day game. On the streets, in the bars, and all over the newspapers – the England team’s white shirt was ubiquitous. Especially on children. I tried to find at least one India fan in the team’s white replica shirt in the sea of the ODI blue – and failed.

I couldn’t begrudge the English media – notorious vacillators between gloating and pathological navel-gazing – their delight at the unravelling of the Indian team. Yes, the defeats stung – painfully, but you could only admire Strauss and gang for repeatedly punching their way out of trouble and turning the tables on Dhoni’s men.

As I walked out of Trent Bridge on day four, I could only echo the words of the American writer Mike Marqusee: “I was enchanted by the sheer visual beauty of the game: the vast green fields adorned with immaculate white-clad figures moving in obscure, complex patterns as if in keeping with an ancient ritual”. And I really do not give a damn if there ever is another match in coloured clothing at either of these gorgeous venues.

The evening after the fifth day’s play at Lord’s, I headed off on the tube to catch up with an old friend from Toronto, who now lives in London. The day’s play and the result were front and centre in the mind on the train as I replayed the match and its moments in my head endlessly. My mate was, thankfully, not into cricket. Apart from a “So they lost, huh?”, he denied me the opportunity to inflict a smorgasbord of opinions, criticism and lethally incisive analysis on him. A pub crawl, laughs and chat later, past midnight I bid him goodbye and hopped onto the tube at King’s Cross. The feeling by now was contentment, happiness, melancholy even. Possibly just inebriation.

I got into what I thought was an empty subway car, relieved I hadn’t missed the last train. As the doors slid shut, I heard loud singing, looked around and realised to my horror that my sole co-passengers were six loopy men in England cricket paraphernalia, more inebriated than I was. Heading home after what seemed like a heady night of celebration, they were singing and laughing their faces off.

As I furiously plotted hopping out at the next stop and switching cars, one of them, in a Pietersen shirt and floppy hat, spotted me and shouted, “You Indian, mate?” I did contemplate lying and co-opting instant citizenship of one of India’s subcontinental neighbours for the night, but I nodded back in the affirmative.

Now I was surrounded. I conceded to them that, yes, I did know the result of the match. Congratulated them, got a couple of good-natured slaps on the shoulder and taunts of “One more to go for No. 1″. Their demeanour was so happy and cheerful that I volunteered the bit of information that was to seal my fate – that I had been at the cricket myself, like them.

That did it. Pietersen sat himself next to me, arm around my shoulder as the other five formed a chorus line in front. They swayed, sang, chanted and taunted. Goaded me to join them in their chant: “Who are we?” “Severely overrated,” they proclaimed India. “Bollocks” I said to them, unconvincingly.

The only concession I got was when they all swore earnestly that the only thing that would have made them as happy on the day was a Tendulkar century. “Class. Sheer class, mate,” they said.

At Vauxhall station, I bid goodbye. Handshakes, bear hugs and grins all around. I stepped out of the train as they continued to sing and shout away behind me. I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked down the platform. This was no melancholy caused by inebriation.

Just contentment.

Published in Popmatters on July 5, 2011

“No Alcohol or Firearms” read a perplexing but ominous sign near the entrance. Then I remembered, we were in Arizona.

The jostling to get through to the turnstiles was rowdy, but the mood still had a tone of booze-soaked cheeriness about it. Surrounded on all sides by what looked like Hell’s Angels with their leather-clad vixens, we waited in the long line as it inched forward. An uncomfortably thorough full body search later, we were in. By this time the looks we were getting were making us uneasy.

Clinging to our plastic cups of beer we gingerly made our way through throngs of sprawled bodies, grinning uncomfortably at the stares from our fellow concert goers. The damned Arizona sun took its own sweet time setting. After what seemed like an eternity the lights went out and it was in the comfort and anonymity of darkness that we finally found our voices.

Lacking a mullet and tattoos had meant bucking the fashion trend that night, but being the only three Indians dressed like nerdy graduate students (which we were) we had stuck out like…like three church ladies at a biker convention. Yes, the darkness was our friend.

At that time Ted Nugent was still a ways off from the right-wing nut job he eventually morphed into. He was yet to take his U.S Army sanctioned celebratory crap in Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad (“I shat in his bidet” he proclaimed), call Obama a “piece of shit” and evangelize the recreational hunting of baby deer with assault rifles. Here he was, fronting an attempt at resurrection by forming the pompously touted super-group Damn Yankees. Alongside him was Tommy Shaw, who had inflicted on us the aural enema of Styx’s Too Much Time on My Hands. Too much time indeed!

And Bad Company. Little did we know then that Paul Rodgers would eventually blaspheme his way into rock and roll hell by fronting a reincarnation of Queen concocted by a delusional Brian May. His over-earnest voice, famous for crooning limp arena anthems, was to end up playing to busloads of Japanese tourists politely nodding their heads to Another One Bites the Dust. Roll over Freddie!

So, that night in Arizona it was a double-bill of two bands well past their expiry date. But desperation born out of deprivation is seldom a bulwark of good taste. It was desperation that had led to our nabbing tickets the day the concert was announced. A desperation born out of growing up in the cooler. In solitary confinement. In complete sensory deprivation.

I grew up in Bangalore, India and Bangalore (or anywhere in India) in the 1980s was not exactly frothing at the edges with concerts of the cream of the world’s best bands. It was a black hole of live music – no one toured India those days.

In fact the black hole ran deeper. Coca-Cola and IBM were the iconic outcasts of India’s perverted economic policies in the 80s. Protectionism ran rampant, with astronomical import duties being heaped on anything and everything manufactured abroad. I hated the taste of Coke and had no use for computers (yet), but the fallout of India’s policy delusion hit closer: music got caught in the crossfire.

It made it virtually impossible to walk into a record store and buy an album of a band you cared about. No major record company had a presence in India and a visit to HMV (our version of Tower Records) would yield nuggets fit only for a retirement home. An entire generation got shafted by the hanky-panky of bigger powers – something I resent even to this day. For it left the nurturing of musical tastes to chance and the musical pedigree of one’s social circle.

But it was also a time when Indians were zealously setting roots in universities across the United States. At any point in time everyone knew someone who was heading off to a Stanford or Notre Dame. It wasn’t just the higher echelon of American academia that got infiltrated, we had brothers available to browse and scrounge around for music even in Butthole, Arkansas. Screw Silicon Valley, we now had access to CCR and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

You just had to know the right people. Or the people who knew the right people. It was an elaborate dance of procurement. You classified your friends into dealers, pushers, hoarders, misers and philanthropists. Sucked up to the dork you would normally sneer at only to get your paws on his Black Sabbath tapes. Tolerated the dude who was obsessed with the Moody Blues just because he knew a guy who had Rush tapes. Rode your motorcycle across town when the phone call came that a new recording of Metallica had just arrived from Texas. Hung out with the idiot who couldn’t get enough of Foreigner, for his brother had good quality Bowie and Cream recordings.

Yes, these “procurers” were your life and proceeded to set your music tastes in stone. In those days it went like this: if you attended engineering school in India, it automatically consigned you to a life of Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Black Sabbath, Dire Straits, Jethro Tull and of course, Pink Floyd. The rest of the kids were classified into: the smart-asses who dug Dylan, The Clash and Lou Reed; the nancy-boys who listened to Duran Duran and George Michael; bottom feeders who moaned over bilge like Journey and REO Speedwagon and the enlightened ones who were into Kraftwerk and Frank Zappa.

I attended engineering school and was surrounded by the rest. And I begged, borrowed, copied, stole from and traded with every one of them. But, I had never met anyone in my life who had attended a concert of any of these bands. It is vicious when you can’t even live vicariously. Occasionally, a tattered copy of Rolling Stone would materialize (airport purchase of a vacationing brother from MIT probably) and we would pore over reviews of concerts in it. Bruce Springsteen’s four hour shows were already legendary in our minds.

The closest I had come to a watershed moment was when Shakti – the fusion band with John McLaughlin and three Indian classical music gods – played a show in Bangalore. It was a brilliant night, but it just heaped more evidence on our heads that there was voodoo and some seriously bad mojo at work. Mahavishnu showed up in Bangalore with his guitar picking hand in a cast, having broken it in Bombay in a freak accident! Soon after I would arrive in Arizona for grad school. Yes, there was the small matter of a PhD to contend with but I had no inkling of what would happen next.

Just months after landing in Tempe, an acquaintance – another Indian graduate student, a nice enough guy who always looked at me with pity (possibly disdain) at what he considered a pagan lifestyle – let drop that he knew a girl who worked as an event coordinator at the ASU Activity Center (now the Wells Fargo Arena), the Arizona State University basketball stadium that doubled as a concert venue! I was on my knees in an instant, begging for an introduction. And to my utter surprise (bless his geeky little heart) he obliged.

The job of an usher at the stadium was as follows: armed with a flashlight, you directed concert goers to their seats. Once the show started, you kept watch on the crowd in your section (ergo, you stood with your back to the stage) looking for lowlife lighting up spliffs surreptitiously. I instinctively knew I was over-qualified for this and proceeded to make an ass of myself, aggressively convincing Susan (the event coordinator chick) about my dexterity with flashlights and commitment to eradicate the use of weed for recreational purposes. Maybe it was pity again, but I had walked out delirious with my first (non-paying, mind you) job in the US of A.

I almost got fired on my very first night on the job. When Robert Plant launched into Black Dog I must have completely lost it. Lost it badly, for Susan was livid at the end of the night. Dereliction of duty was the accusation. But do you know how hard it is to look up at rows of seats stretching into oblivion in darkness and pin-point where the tell-tale flash of a lighter came from? I had dished out the odd “Hide it man, don’t get caught” advice but did she really understand what it meant to stand there in the presence (the freakin’ flesh!) of Led Zeppelin? Did she know of the years spent conjuring up visions of Dazed and Confused and The Immigrant Song lying in bed back home in Bangalore?

Turn my back to the stage and look at the crowd? You gotta be shitting me.

Crosby, Stills and Nash followed a few weeks later but I could muster up only a tepid interest in it; would have been a completely different matter had it been CSNY. Or just the Y. There were a few oddball events. Hank Williams Jr. turned out to be a hoot – I knew squat about country music, but could not believe how insane the crowd was! Yes, the levee was well and truly broken.

Susan read the riot act to us one night: “Those planning to break a leg, come down with chicken pox or attend a funeral next Saturday are warned. Anyone skipping that show is scratched off the list automatically for AC/DC that follows.” Gulp!

I had shown up early for Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minnelli and it turned out to be a surreal night. The security was astonishing: Men In Black style dark suited secret-service men with earpieces combed the empty stands. They were everywhere, jogging in front of the arriving limos like Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire. Mob hit fears for Ol’ Blue Eyes, I had reminded myself. My dad would have enjoyed the show.

The sellout crowd was in some kind of religious frenzy when someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned my flashlight on a sweating and quivering face in the throes of panic. “You better come with me,” he said, grabbing my arm and dragging me up the steps. We stopped mid-row in the nose-bleeds, and I shone my flashlight on another sweating face – as she leaned back in her seat, almost horizontal, her legs apart. She looked unconscious. “Her water has broken and she seems to be in a lot of pain. Do something!” yelled sweaty face No. 1 in my ear. “Go. Make yourself useful,” trumpeted a smart-ass elderly gentleman behind her.

I ran breathlessly through the empty concourses under the stands like Dustin Hoffman in The Marathon Man. I hadn’t signed up for this shit. What kind of lunatic brings his pregnant wife – one who is ready to pop at any moment – to a stadium show? I spotted a paramedics station and minutes later we were back. I smirked proudly at the elderly smart-ass, until the paramedic turned to me and said, “We need your help to get her out. Grab one end of the stretcher.” Oh really? Just two emergency personnel for 12,000 people?

I had never gone down a flight of stairs that gingerly in my life. I was on the verge of panic myself: “Don’t let me drop her…please…please…please.” The Rat Pack were holding court out in the middle of the arena – a live orchestra (conducted by Sinatra’s son) was wailing away – and the crowd was screaming as I edged down those endless steps. I needed oxygen when we made it out. The husband gave me a bear-hug (and sent a thank you note later). AC/DC played the following week.

Cock-rock was all the rage on MTV then, but I wasn’t even remotely arsed about Poison, Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi or Whitesnake. My tastes and opinions were too hardened (courtesy of those procurers back in India) by the time I arrived in America. Hardened enough to get into violent arguments and bar fights with American friends:

“Yes, Phil Collins is an idiot who has ruined Genesis…just like Ronnie James Dio with Black Sabbath…Eddie Van Halen is a severely over-rated guitarist and Stevie Ray Vaughan can kick his ass in his sleep…The Eagles are just a mediocre band, driven only by Don Henley’s insecurities and need to prove himself…Neil Peart is not human…Metallica have sold out to crass commercialization…Page and Plant are cheap assholes for trying to brazenly rip-off blues artists like Willie Dixon…Duran Duran are just a bunch of wannabe porn-stars…and no, I will not take sides in the Roger Waters vs. David Gilmour debate.”

The only thing that shut me up was when they started discussing and comparing concerts they had been to. The longing and obsession to see live concerts was still intense. The usher’s gig had finally let the monkey into the mango orchard. Then the sudden realization that there was more fruit to be picked – and right outside my university.

The jolt came one early morning with a full page advertisement in the Arizona Republic announcing the local stop on Roger Waters’ American tour. My reaction was speechlessness and a faint feeling of disbelief that this had to be a dream. The nagging anxiety persisted up to the moment when the stadium lights dimmed to the ominous strains of Welcome to the Machine as my eyes misted over, blurring Gerald Scarfe’s animated beast thundering out from the projection screen.

Somebody up above must have attended engineering school too, for Jethro Tull followed right in Waters’ wake. The chill in the air that night reduced a hilariously garrulous Ian Anderson’s voice to a croak, forcing him to blast through the last hour of the show as instrumentals. And you could only thank your good fortune as they ripped into extended versions of Cross-eyed Mary and Locomotive Breath. And I was the proud owner of my first tour shirt that night!

A lot has changed since my Ph.D. days. It seems like it was yesterday that I walked into a Tower Records in Tempe, Arizona and felt like the desperate Viggo Mortensen in The Road stumbling upon a bunker full of food supplies in the middle of a barren landscape; felt like Adrian Brody in The Pianist holding onto a precious tin of fruit when fingering the magical artwork of a vinyl copy of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti.

My musical tastes began to evolve and undergo radical changes. That which was brewing when boarding a flight to the USA from India grew into an obsession with Chicago and Mississippi Delta blues. At some point I stumbled upon Alan Lomax and a lot changed. New Orleans jazz, funk, Brooklyn punk and more edgier music also took over. Mammoth arena concerts took a backseat to smaller venues, clubs and more intimate shows. I began to feel more at home at Tipitinas and Kingston Mines.

But the expulsion of the pent up desperation of those days made me a slave to the live performance. New releases still bring forth an immediate conjuring of the possibilities of live versions of a song. I’m always searching for the epiphany when things fall into place and the moment is lived in the hands of the creators of the music.

Yes, those days did a number on the mind. And left behind a collage of indelible moments that still tingles the spine:

…Carlos Santana, days after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, walking up to the microphone: “This one’s for you Mandela,” and proceeding to play a gorgeous twenty minute solo to start the concert.

…Sun Devil stadium in Tempe, shivering with a high fever in the Arizona heat as 80,000 voices sang every line of every song along with Paul McCartney for two hours.

…Peter Gabriel’s excruciatingly beautiful versions of Solsbury Hill and Games Without Frontiers that were so beautiful I can’t bring myself to hear the album versions any more.

…trying to muscle in through mobs and running through pitch darkness into the stadium just as Richard Wright’s keyboard and David Gilmour’s exquisite guitar strains opened up with Shine On You Crazy Diamond (and arguing with my brother, the usher, that I had no intentions of moving and finding my seat till the song was over).

…battling a hangover on the flight back and studying for a final exam after being talked into flying to Detroit for twenty four hours by a mate to see the Rolling Stones at the Pontiac Silverdome.

…Bob Dylan, alone on stage with a spotlight on him, strumming to Blowin’ in the Wind. A night when my room-mate (another deprivation survivor from India) and I drove straight from the show to a record store and bought up the entire Dylan catalog on CD.

Nowadays, it is a world of stifling abundance and Google is the only procurer you need to befriend. But some scars never heal, some itches can never be scratched enough. Even after a zillion shows that familiar panic still sets in when browsing a local rag and happening upon a concert advertisement. Sucks you right in and without thinking you are back in line again, lest you miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime gig.

Roger Waters wants to tear down The Wall and you show up to see it demolished. Steely Dan want to preach the gospel of the Bodhisattva and you turn pious all over again. Rush, your brothers from Toronto, invite you over for the evening. Surely you’re not going to decline that? And you have no choice but to show up for Motörhead, just to yell back in the affirmative when Lemmy asks, “Oi, you alright?”

It had been threatening rain all day in Toronto and it came in sheets as we entered the amphitheater. Being right next to the grey and frothing lake lashed by lightning made the situation more desperate. It was twilight and it wasn’t looking promising.

So it continues…