The K.S.C.A stadium had materialized magically – almost overnight – in my life. Growing up in South Bangalore, the part of the city it is located in was almost an alternate universe to us back then. Mahatma Gandhi Road only played cameo roles in a child’s mind – Brigade Road, Christmas lights and store window Santas knee-deep in white cotton snow. Visits to movie theatres like Lido, Rex, Plaza and Galaxy – the magical screens that shimmered with epic movies like The Sound of Music, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Guns of Navarone, The Day of the Jackal and Enter the Dragon. These visits culminated – most of the time – in mouth-watering ice-cream specials at Lakeview. Aah, the Cassata, the Merry Widow special…

Those were the wondrous days.

Cricket was just budding in the imagination. Devoid of television imagery, it was embroiled in a web of incomplete stories, myths, rants, theories and smorgasbords of opinion inflicted on us by fathers, uncles and grandfathers. You always found them clustered around giant glowing contraptions that served as radios, faces knotted up in concentration, ears cocked at the crackly signals being beamed in from god knows where. Sometimes, things got scary – people snarled, shouted and bared their teeth. These were divided families – divided by the tactics and strategies they espoused and dispensed to the hapless captain, who was fortunate to escape the cacophony. They stood united in their support of the state and national team, but were willing to disown each other in a flash over a bowling change or field placement.

But in Bangalore, there was no risk of familial bonds fracturing amidst the stress of these cricket matches. None whatsoever. For, peace was always lurking around the corner. When fathers, uncles and grandfathers united; faces softened, understanding and reassuring smiles broke out. Their voices turned gentle and conciliatory. Even the mothers and grandmothers looking on exasperatedly at the hordes in front of the radio would sit back and smile affectionately.

For he was at the crease.

………

……..

The Best of Indian Sports Writing

Authors:

• Anand Philar
• Arindam Basu
• Ayaz Memon
• Clayton Murzello
• Kamesh Srinivasan
• KP Mohan
• Mudar Patherya
• Partha Bhaduri
• Rohit Brijnath
• S Thyagarajan
• Sandeep Nakai
• Shantanu Guha Ray
• Sharda Ugra
• Sriram Dayanand
• Sukhwant Basra
• Suresh Menon

He will always have the very first slot in my collage. It is his for life. For the image he conjured up at the Brabourne Stadium mid-pitch on that day remains etched in the mind like it was yesterday. The joy and affection that had surged gaping at that photograph in the morning papers is still palpable. He had taken the most direct path to a fledgling Bangalore cricket heart that morning – through Viswanath.

Cricket was still hazy and murky in the mind then. But to a kid in Bangalore, one fact was indisputable – cricket was something Viswa did. And did well, we were told. And we heard it everywhere. Family gatherings and dinners – volatile congregations of raised voices and endless arguments – never failed to subside into decorous peace when his name was raised. Post lunch laze-abouts continued the contented and fiercely proud Viswa-speak. Yes, Pataudi was the king. Gavaskar would save lives. But Viswanath was why anyone would even want to play cricket in the first place. It is a fact that Viswa had enveloped the mind long before cricket even had a chance.

Look at that picture. Just look at it. End of story.

Tony Greig now starred in the first image of cricket that I would possess – to this day. Devoid of television imagery, this would be the one that would start it all. With this utterly disarming cradling of the centurion, Tony entered the mind piggy-backing on Viswa. Years later, people would say it was his typical calculated showmanship. A ham-job meticulously staged to endear himself to Indian eyes, they said. Sod that. Only I know how I felt that morning smiling blissfully at that image on the front pages. If this was what showmanship could incite and instill, your snarkiness be damned. I owe Tony deeply for that.

Of course, time would pass. It always does. And it wasn’t much longer before I was rolling on the ground deliriously, reading the very newspapers, now reveling in Viv and Mikey murdering his men. I know that I was utterly oblivious of the “g” word – Tony’s “g” word – that lit the fire in Babylon. But I was tickled pink to no end at the skewering of his Poms. He would turn Meyer Wolfsheim and rip cricket apart later, relegating our cricket watching at stadiums to depressingly depleted teams. For a long time, I would harbor a severe grudge against him – for depriving me the chance to see Lillee, Chappell and Marsh in the flesh. Now I know better.

And then the voice. His 5:30 AM boisterous incantations, accompanied by the more mellifluous Benaud and Lawry, that woke us up to a lifetime of television coverage. The voice that would introduce Sharjah to us. Bring the Ashes home too. And the voice that would be the soundtrack to Sachin. Whaddaplaya, he said. And we rode the roller-coaster with him. “There’s Tendulkar, then there is daylight, then there are the rest’ he categorically announced. It had sounded like music. Brassy, but still music.

His recent diagnosis had muted that boisterous music in our hearts. Cast a pall of silence over the sounds of cricket. If there ever was a man who loved the sound of his cricket-voice more and also reveled in bringing it to us, I don’t know of him. Even as he irritated in latter years with his edgy and undisguised barbs (and relentless descriptions of prawn curries and steaks in Colombo). His voice was too much a part of the fabric. Too integral to our memories. We were now going to dearly miss the chance to dish out our snide asides too. We wanted to yell “Shut up Tony!” at the screen – but couldn’t anymore.

So we lower our eyes in silence today. To a voice prematurely cut short. To the man who stuck his key into the turf while on his haunches and looked us in the eye and spoke garrulously and endlessly.

But I will be eternally grateful to him for what he did that day in Bombay. Forever be in his debt for igniting a lifetime of cricket imagery in the mind. He started it all for me and for that, I owe him. Owe him so much.

Go on, just look at that photograph.

 Is the English way”

Perusing match reports at the end of the first day’s play in Nagpur, it appeared that this tune was suddenly en vogue again. What a coincidence I thought, since my mind had been mulling over a modified version of it. Modified, you know, to reflect the fact that the hapless souls clinging on by their fingernails whilst dangling over the edge of the precipice weren’t the English. Yes, the temptation to sing it aloud having swapped out the identities of the two countries playing out the Test match was strong. But I kept balking at the bit.

It was that word desperation. That didn’t fit.

So I just read on, finding myself in an utterly unfamiliar and unsettling position – of having missed the events of an entire day’s play of a Test match. Willingly. I had looked askance without a conscious or preplanned ambivalence. The telecast had been a click of the remote away, but I never did indulge. Why this Test match, the entirety of the tour had been a perplexing period. And I had struggled with it. Struggled to come to grips with my detachment from it. I could not recollect the last time this had happened. Yes, Pujara. And Cook. Even Joe took root. But it all remained so distant. It certainly wasn’t apathy, but my ambivalence was continually nagging at me.

“This could be a momentousTest match” intoned the first sentence of the match preview on Cricinfo. Momentous! The first word that came to my mind when I saw that was: bollocks. Bollocks, for there were no moments of significance to be had here. All the moments had passed. In fact, they littered the sides of the highway to oblivion the Indian team had ridden to reach Nagpur. The moments were still fluttering to earth from the long and agonizing free-fall the number one team had embarked on. Starting with that running cannonball jump off the balcony of Lords eighteen months ago.

Yes, eighteen months and counting now. Eighteen months of watching it all unravel. Starting with England, where it went belly-up and rigor mortis appeared to have set in at Edgbaston; rendering the rotund R.P Singh’s mad dash from Miami to The Oval a perverse comedic exercise. And then Australia. And it wasn’t long before that tour took on all the gravitas of an extended experiment in proving that it does indeed swirl clockwise in the southern hemisphere too. They weren’t packing as much as a Swiss-army knife in that gunfight.

So it has been. For eighteen long months. That which elicited brow-knotted surprise at Lord’s was followed by bewilderment, shock, anger, frustration, morbid fascination and then the inevitable resignation. Endless days spent gritting teeth and silently goading them on to at least plant their feet and take a few swings. Bare their teeth. Futile exhortations that yielded diddly-squat. Rarely providing a semblance of a sustained contest. There were the results, yes. But the results didn’t come close to trumping the vibe emanating from them. Or how painful watching them had been. The spinelessness, listlessness and jadedness had now proven so contagious that I was just willing the current tour on to a rapid denouement.

Was it Kolkata that shut the door behind emphatically? Was that depressing Test match the moment when it all came full circle? Or full clockwise swirl? When the free-fall was arrested with a resounding thud? Was it really the straw that broke the back?

I did give that thought some credence now in Nagpur – albeit briefly. Only briefly, for it just wouldn’t stick. Didn’t add up and tie it all up conveniently. Kolkata was no straw that broke no back. This straw had been chewed up and spat out ceremoniously a while ago. The more I think about it, it was Perth that precipitated my current state. It had crossed a line at the WACA and then in Adelaide, it well and truly jumped the shark.

Seven in a row it was back in Perth. Seven back to back train wrecks that had each careened one way and then another before the pileup of twisted metal. The mind had been numbed by the relentless debacles that out-jostled each other into our living rooms. The wells of disappointment and bewilderment at the team at the pinnacle plumbing the depths had evaporated dry. Adelaide had been rendered completely irrelevant by then.

The only hope remaining was that some introspection, an iota of it, would surface to begin the process of healing. Of beginning to think about starting to commence the process of turning this iceberg around. Even alcoholics have moments of clarity when they fleetingly contemplate and acknowledge the root cause of their condition. Moments that can possibly lead them through the fog towards the light. Alcoholics Anonymous sessions perhaps.

Instead, in Perth, we stumbled upon an Alcoholics Unanimous meeting. Right after train wreck No. 7. And the foul taste from it has lingered and festered ever since. And enveloped the entirety of this tour in multifarious ways. For that was the day we heard the words “Once these people come to India…” I, for one will always look back to that day as the pits of this eighteen month long fiasco.

We had almost given up on asking for a fight by then. Or yearning for a contest. There was certainly no entertaining of turnaround thoughts. We weren’t seeking any acts of contrition either. Or soul baring honesty in utterances. All we could hope to see was a sign. Any sign. On or off the field. A sign that acknowledged the team’s own state and abject performances and fronted up. A sign goes a long way, you know. Instead came the appalling and offensive posturing. The bizarre and shameful defense. Felt like we were now being slapped in the face with a limp noodle.

This dam was always going to be breached at some point and so it was with these words offered in the face of the annihilation “Once these people come to India we should not be hesitant in making turners, and that’s where we would get to know whether they are mentally strong”. Oh, just a knee-jerk act of frustration not to be taken seriously, correct? An act of petulance at a vulnerable moment that brooked nothing more than a snicker? Kohli’s finger in Sydney was an act of petulance. This ran far deeper.  This was when it really stung.

Back home, the big chief, the grand poobah, the big-fat-noodle himself offered this in comfort and solace as he hitched up his suspenders in the face of that defeat: “Next New Zealand is coming to India and it will be followed by England and Australia. We will beat these three teams on our own soil. They cannot beat us here and we will feel very happy.” Between the players’ reactions (or lack of) and their custodians’ preposterous bags of wind lay bare a malaise afflicting Indian cricket. The results should never have been a surprise.

Yes, come to India. Come home to papa. With that the tone for this series against England was set. My tone at least. Match after match in the 8-0 pasting, I had watched incredulously as reactions at post-match interviews and press conferences at the venues and back home took on surreal tones. India just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – playing away from home – it appeared. Just an anomaly. One that would be rectified soon.

And as this series dawned, the chickens from Perth well and truly came home to roost. There cannot have been a cricket series in memory (mine at least) where the topic of home-field advantage and playing conditions reached such cacophonous levels. Even before a ball was bowled in a Test and as England were playing out their practice matches, commenced the relentless swirl of player and media thrashings that soon became unbearable.

Opening any newspaper every morning revealed yet another buffet, another twenty two yards of horse manure laid out for our consumption. Unmanned drones were dispatched to upcoming venues. We even saw pictures of curators. One miffed curator called all of it “immoral”. The board retaliated by flying in a replacement.  Was Dhoni upset with the curators? Or was it the other way round? Always smelling a morsel, leave alone a drop of blood, the sharks from the media thrashed around till it frothed. It did go to eleven and was deafening and relentless.

And I was still looking for just a sign. In the midst of the bedlam. That was all one could ask for given that all was lost. And here, the team abjectly disappointed. Their performances in Mumbai and Kolkata were caricatures of their performances in England and Australia. The trauma of their lame and disgusting threat (“We’ll show them at home) that was now skewered like a kebab appeared to have sunk them into a deeper funk. They looked like they had ODed on quaaludes at Eden Gardens. This lot honestly looked like they couldn’t wait to get it over with.

How did it come to this? Why has the spine and heart to swing their way out of a corner become so alien to this once impressive bunch of cricketers? Why is there such a collective loss of leadership and backbone in this lot? Why do they lose even the veneer of a team and not a rag-tag collection of misfits the moment adversity nudges them in the ribs? And why has Indian cricket descended into such a morass the instant they reached the summit?

In the end, it was still just a sign we sought. A bit of grace, a bit of class in defeat, a little less evasion and obfuscation and a dose of introspection would have made a difference. At any point. Would have erased that surreal halo of entitlement they wore around right through these eighteen months. Sure, the losses would have still stung. The mix of the squad would still need to be addressed. And yes, retirements would still need to be discussed. But just an honest and open inward gaze, that’s all. A blunt look at performance and technique and effort, curator be damned. Catharsis has a funny way of working. Things might even have turned out a bit different.

Today, at the end of it all Dhoni offered: “But there are not many things that will come close to when we lost the 2007 50-over World Cup. This is not even close to that.”

Just telling us how much this one hurt would have sufficed.

This is no ordinary fall. That word desperation never did fit all along.

And coming home to papa can never be bleaker or as empty ever again.

“The time has come

 The song is over

 Thought I’d something more to say”

“I suppose it’s violating some Socratic imperative to know thyself, if that’s who it was, but I’ve always found that examination extremely tedious…. I don’t find it compelling at all.”

We can consider ourselves fortunate that Sylvie Simmons paid no heed to this professed ambivalence and apathy towards self-examination. Perhaps the master of the elliptical and the sly wit was just putting her on. But she didn’t bite.

I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, the new sprawling, generous and ultimately exquisite portrait of the life of the Canadian master of words, is the result of her persistence.

I located the non-descript door squeezed in between the pizzerias and trattorias and climbed the narrow steps leading up to the second floor. The place was just as plain as the door itself. Long and narrow like a caboose with a band-stage at one end. I perched myself at the bar counter at the rear. I was early and the place was almost empty. Yeah, there was nothing too exciting about the joint, but I was a tad stoked. For I was sitting on a bar-stool at the Orbit Room.

And the Orbit Room is owned by Alex Lifeson, guitarist for the band Rush.

I sipped my beer and shot the shit with the friendly frat boy behind the bar. Asked him about the electro-funk band I was there to see: “Wicked stand-up bass player and a mean horn section, man” he informed me. At some point, I must have blurted something out about how crazy it was that I was sitting in a bar owned by someone from a band I had wasted way too much of my time on. “So you like Rush, huh?” he asked. He interrupted the rambling I had launched into after a few minutes and asked, “You are from India? And a Rush fan? Really? Now, that is so cool!” So I blabbered on and on about Rush. Told him of the endless nights I had spent back home in India listening to Rush and the insane Rush fanatics I used to hang out with.

He was visibly intrigued and tickled by all this. I could see that he found it fascinating that I had gotten hooked on Rush while in school in India. Seemed genuinely amazed when I insisted that he had no clue how much of a rabid following the band had back home. “They would sell out stadiums in an instant” I said, as he shook his head at me like I was nuts. Somewhere around this time, he wiped his hand on a towel and extended it to me – and introduced himself as Alex Lifeson’s son. “The old man will get a kick out of our chat” he said.

Later that night the bar was stuffed to the gills and the band was sizzling. Alex Jr. was right – the bass player was wicked and the horn section was indeed kick-ass. I stood in the middle of the thick crowd drinking my beer and soaking in the funk – when I spotted my pal from behind the bar weaving his way through the throng. As he reached me, he turned – to his dad, Alex Lifeson (!) who was trailing right behind him – and said, “There he is! Your fan from India!”

I somehow managed to pick my jaw up from the floor and took the hand extended by a grinning Alex.

Probably grinned back at him like an idiot too.

******

When I moved to Toronto to take up a job, I knew practically no one in the city. Correct that – I did know three people in the whole darned town – their names were Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart. So yeah, I knew that Toronto was home to the Canadian power trio who had a religious following all over the world. They certainly did back in Bangalore, India, as I was a member of the local chapter of the cult there.

It was there that I had first stumbled upon 2112, Fly by Night and Caress of Steel thanks to a friend who had pestered me to listen to them. And I was hooked. Hooked on Geddy’s perplexing voice, a voice trained in a classical banshee choir and the freaky otherworldly drumming of Neil. And Alex – the most conventional of the three musically – who I believed even then was one of the most under-rated guitarists in rock music.

I was now in their hood.

My flight to Toronto from Phoenix, Arizona had provided an omen in itself – when a long lasting mystery got solved. It was an epiphany that hit me like a thump from Neil’s bass drum. My baggage tags had read YYZ and it dawned on me then that the cryptically named number on Moving Pictures was not some weird Ayn Rand shit that Neil had concocted (as he was prone to do) but only the airport code for Toronto! I had spent years scratching my head trying to unravel a non-existent acronym as I listened to that blistering instrumental powered by Neil’s drumming – and it had just been a nod to Toronto after all!

All of a sudden, it seemed like they were everywhere! Just days after landing in town, a walk around the snow blanketed campus of the University of Toronto had suddenly thrown up that oh so familiar sight from the cover of Moving Pictures. There was snow and there were no men lugging big paintings in front of the steps. But there it was, Queen’s Park, the stone structure that is the seat of Ontario’s legislature and more importantly, the backdrop on the cover of that landmark album!

Just a few months later, they were there in front of me in the flesh – on stage in front of their adoring hometown fans at the Maple Leaf Gardens in downtown Toronto. Well, to be more accurate, Alex appeared in the flesh first that night. As the lights dimmed in the stadium, a lone spotlight picked him out as he walked up the edge of the stage and sank to his knees, head bowed. The historic arena was the home of Toronto’s hockey team, the Maple Leafs then (before they moved on to fancier digs) and the team were in San Jose that very night, facing an elimination game in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Alex looked up to the rafters, clasped his hands in front of him and beseeched “Please God, let there be hockey here in two days!” as his city brethren roared in unison. (The Maple Leafs did win that night!)

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

By the time I moved to the US of A for graduate studies, Rush had receded into the closets of my mind – jostled out by ever evolving music tastes. Oh, I owned all their CDs and did play them once in a while, but I had long outgrown my school-days obsessions with the band. In fact had long begun to look at Neil’s lyrics with a bemused smile whenever I listened to Rush. Their mastery of their instruments and their dazzling and intricate arrangements still fascinated, but it was the preachy lyrics that got to me by then in all their egalitarian ruminations and exhortations of the individual versus society.

Or as Chuck Klosterman, with his tongue boring a hole through his cheek, wrote about Rush as the “biggest Christian rock band” in the world:

Aren’t pretty much all their songs about Jesus? It certainly seems like it. At the least, Rush albums promote some sort of bass-heavy Christian value system. “He’s trying to save the world for the Old World man” proclaim the soaring vocals of Canadian spiritualist Geddy Lee. “He’s trying to pave the way for the Third World man”. Isn’t that the entire New Testament encapsulated in two lines? Didn’t Jesus teach us to bid “A Farewell to Kings” and to watch the humble “Working Man” inherit the earth? And I am sure God likes “Trees” and hates racism as much as Neil Peart does.

Not to mention Ayn Rand.

Oh come on! One is supposed to get over any fascination one has for Ms. Rand by the time you are done with high-school. If you are sane, that is. Given Neil’s penchant for her brand of philosophy and worldview (for fuck’s sake, Rush is the only band to dedicate an album to her in their liner notes), I could only suppress my snickers listening to the words of many of the songs. For by then, I was more prone to read Das Kapital and Noam Chomsky than indulge myself in Ms. Rand’s objectivist bollockery. I may not have gone as far as Chomsky in calling her “one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history” but certainly believed that the U.S.A was well and truly buggered since Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, was not only an Ayn Rand nut, but also her protégé.

Ah Neil!

But even now it is hard to muster up any kind of derision or snarkiness towards his songwriting – for he was always so goddamned solemn and earnest in his convictions and theories. There have been endless other lyricists of rock-bands who indulged in proselytizing but he was the one I was always willing to forgive. You would never take Black Sabbath seriously in their tales of foreboding gloom and evil for you knew Ozzie was batshit crazy, knew it and was chuckling to himself all along. Or Iron Maiden, who always had a sardonic smart-assness about them even when singing stupid lyrics like “666-the number of the beast / 666-the number for you and me” and “Bring your daughter… to the slaughter”. These bands knew that their appeal was in their supreme musicianship and seemed to be winking at you all the time even if their fan-base thought otherwise.

Not Neil. Neil don’t wink. The man was always so serious and such a keener when it came to his lyrics that every other song seemed to be a pamphlet distributed for leading a better life or for navigating our horrid societal malaises as individuals. He would point fingers and offer polite advice in his simple style and adolescents and college kids the world over lapped it up like puppies. I can never hear the words “If you choose not to decide / You still have made a choice” on Freewill (“Freewill also implies something about agnostics going to hell.” – CK) without imagining head-banging mullet-heads in their parents’ basements screaming it out convinced they had been levitated onto a higher plane to lead their lives. Teary eyed and choked up in their love for their dream woman Kira Argunova all the while!

Yeah, Rush had settled into that easy familiarity ensconced in nostalgia. The soft corner I had for them would always be a happy place, but a corner it remained.

Then something happened. I saw them live.

*******

From the moment Force Ten thundered out that night in Phoenix to the sellout crowd, something really changed. Though I was intimately familiar with their songs and had even listened to live recordings, I don’t think I was ready for what I witnessed. The first thought that occurred to me was how in hell were three guys creating this mesmerizing wall of sound which was still clinical in its musical virtuosity and expressiveness and loud (goddamned loud), still managing to sound crystal clear? It was spooky how tight they were. I remember spending the entire show in a state of blissful awe at their astonishing musicianship as they ripped through one classic tune after the other – each sounding more dramatic and ominous than they were on record.

Long before Neil’s drum solo that night, as he hovered over the stage like the spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind emanating his other-worldly rhythms, one thing was clear: this was one incredibly hard-working band and they were laying it all out bare in front of us. And their virtuosity over their instruments came screaming through – even on songs I didn’t give a rat’s ass about. I was in awe at Roll the bones, a song I have never cared for (“Why are we here? / Because we’re here” – what was Neil smoking?) which was astonishing live as Alex just shredded his guitar and Neil his skins.  And I even bobbed my head to Freewill, a tacit salute to those basement mullet-heads, as Geddy snarled out the lyrics.

Every Rush concert since then has just reinforced this in my mind – they are an incredible band to see live. I haven’t bought an album of theirs since Roll the Bones, but six concerts later, they have essentially turned into just a live band in my mind. And I just take it for granted now that they will never disappoint – and they never have. Especially when they reach far back into their catalog. The 2010 tour (where they performed Moving Pictures in its entirety) provided some exceptional moments – a 10 minute blast through La Villa Strangiato (la moniker very strangiato, Neil) that was just exhilarating. Now I know why Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich  go incoherent talking about how obsessed they were with that song and still are. It is vicious when you hear it performed live!

And the ubiquitous Neil solo. To be honest, I have completely gotten over any awe I had over his solos – sometimes extending to 15 minutes long. The man’s sick talent on the drums is obvious but I’ll commit Rush sacrilege and admit that his solos leave me cold. Maybe it is just his drum kit – with enough drums and metal in it to equip fifty bands. Maybe it is just me and my preference for more of an in-your-face approach of say, John Bonham on a minimal kit. Perhaps it is just the religious awe that descends over the arena when he starts that turns me off – I almost expect 20,000 people to kneel down for communion every time I see it.

I just lap up his uncanny rhythms and time signatures on other tunes, but I spend the entire time during his solos looking at thousands of people playing air-drums in a frenzy. Just give me YYZ, Neil – which is just awe inspiring when Alex and you rip into it. It never fails to get me. Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater (if there ever was a real Rush tribute band – that’s the one) admits that it was the song that actually inspired him and his friends to start a band and Majestic, the name they chose for it, was from the adjective they always used to describe YYZ. I just call it bewildering. If you see it live, you’ll know why.

******

It had been a few years since I moved to Toronto when I got the biggest Rush surprise my city could have offered. A close friend and a colleague at work – an ex- musician of a pretty darned well-known Canadian band of the 70s – gave me a shout asking if I wanted to join him and his pal for a drink after work. And that was the day I had walked down to the lobby of my office and saw him waiting there for me with Terry Brown.

Terry Brown! In a way the George Martin for Rush! The man who produced nine of their albums, from Fly by Night all the way to Subdivisions. All their classics! A man who has also worked on the music of a glittering list of musicians – including the Rolling Stones, The Who and Hendrix. There I was, shaking hands with the man who was behind the console even for Freewill – that Terry!

It is surreal when you meet someone like Terry in real life. After having seen his name in the liner notes of all those albums that had been so big in my life back in India, sitting at a pub and shooting the shit with him should have been unnerving. But Terry turned out to be one of the most down to earth, unassuming and friendly guys you could hope to know. Just a terrific bloke, who over the last ten years has become a just a good friend. We rarely even speak about Rush whenever we meet and any discussions of music with him usually are about the bands and musicians he is currently working with.

Yeah, Toronto is Rush country, all right. Toronto is also a pretty unassuming city in its character and seems like a perfect match for the boys of Rush. For they do lead a completely invisible existence here. Years go by sometimes without a peep from them or about them in the press or media. Oh, there was that time Alex got busted by the cops in Florida after a bar-brawl and the time Geddy, an avid collector of baseball memorabilia, donated his entire collection of rare artifacts of the Negro Baseball League to a museum. But they were exceptions. We know they are around (and we do hear of the odd sighting at a restaurant or theater) but they have always relished their privacy and anonymity. Other than spotting Geddy at pretty much every home game of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, and the odd sighting of Alex at his bar, the city just considers them regular guys who have a normal life outside of their music.

They have always had this laid-back forthrightness to their demeanors right through their career. On the odd occasions when they do surface (perhaps when they have a new album out, like now), they present a refreshing sight with their cultured normalcy. And an air of not taking themselves or the cult of celebrity even remotely seriously. The media and the music world at large have never been able to figure out how they feel about Rush and have never come to grips with the mammoth successes of the band. Metal fans have always pooh-poohed them as just a rock band while rock fans have always discarded them into the heavy metal bin – both groups scratching their heads all the while about the tens of millions in album sales worldwide. But the band has always dealt with this with a great deal of equanimity and assuredness. Geddy, the talker and the frontman of the trio seems to have a perpetually bemused expression on his face during interviews – all the while remaining articulate and thoughtful in his responses. And Alex always sports a lopsided grin on his genial face which makes you think the first words out of his mouth are surely going to be “Get outta here…”. And Neil, the shy and quiet one is flat out invisible.

I have always admired them in how they have conducted themselves, for there has been something classy in it. This was most evident in the aftermath of the back-to-back tragedies in Neil’s family in 1997 and 1998 that devastated the man and sent him into seclusion on the road on his motorcycle for years. Geddy and Alex, feeling for their mate, just receded into the background to allow him to grieve and I distinctly remember them not saying a word in public about the future of the band. Geddy did busy himself after a few years and put out a solo album called My favorite Headache and perhaps the title was as far as he would go to express his feelings about the band in hiatus – but that was it. Silence. And when Neil did come back, ready to make music with them again, Geddy and Alex dealt with it with great sensitivity and care. On their Vapor Trails tour in 2002, they religiously shielded Neil from the press and the media to allow him the time to ease back into the music scene again.

*****

Now they are back in town again. Back in their YYZ where it all started. The city whose suburbs they grew up in and started playing at high school dances at an age when they weren’t old enough to be served alcohol. Where Geddy and Alex recruited Neil (“He is strange, he reads books” they had observed). The city they call home.

I’ll hop onto the subway on Sunday, October 14 and head to downtown YYZ for yet another get together with them. This will be the seventh time. Terry will be there to check on his old pals. And I fully expect to come back with an Alex-like grin on my face. And my ears ringing.

Neil’s spaceship will descend, the faithful may even kneel during his solo and Geddy, like in the past, may prance around in a Toronto Blue Jays shirt singing “One likes to believe in the freedom of baseball” as they belt out The Spirit of Radio.

I just hope they play Xanadu. It has been a while.

The earth splatters off their feet like chunks of dark chocolate. Their dirt-stained shoes and legs pumping, they glide into view; lungs straining against the prim white garments encasing their heaving chests, faces contorted with effort. Right at the edge of the cinder track, the milieu is startlingly bucolic. Green grass, heather and bramble adorned countryside stretches into the distance behind the dainty ladies and distinguished looking gentlemen lining the ropes. Grey clouds complete the picture, as if rendered meticulously by an artist’s brush than by nature. The runners advance languidly and loom larger, a pulsating symphony of strained muscles, limbs and torsos in cinematic slow motion. And oh, the music….

“I’m sorry to tell you this has no validity at all in the American marketplace because of the style and tone as well as the subject matter”, had read the curt letter David Puttnam received from Columbia Pictures in 1979. But Puttnam was a legendary hard case (as Columbia would discover during his brief, eventful and acrimonious tenure as the head of that very studio years later). He knew they were wrong. And in 1981, he was proven emphatically right. Chariots of Fire, his labor of love, would go on to universal acclaim and accolades, capturing the imagination of connoisseurs of good cinema across the globe.

“It’s an exceptional film, about some exceptional people” the New York Times was to marvel in their review of the film. And it was. The intimate story of Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell that it narrated on an epic scale with a breathtaking mélange of poetic imagery, haunting music and superb acting would make it one of the most cherished motion pictures of all time. Yes, the story it told was extraordinary in itself and the images of the runners on the beach it burned onto the retina of movie watchers were memorable. But at its heart, it was a vignette of the power of human conviction and belief in a time of overt and covert bigotry. Unfolding in the most unlikely of settings for a film – the sprinter’s track – it chronicled the now celebrated story of the events leading up to the climactic finale on the track at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris.

What is really interesting about the film is that it’s about the power of saying no. Every one of us, at some point in our lives, has wanted to say, or wished we had said, no to something and in a sense Eric does it for us.

If you want to take it further, and the reason it still resonates today, is that most of us are disturbed by the way the world’s going, the way in which we live, the way in which we’re encouraged to think… we all want to say no. And the film in a sense does it for us, and we walk out of the cinema feeling better about ourselves because someone said no on our behalf.
-David Puttnam, 2012

The devout Liddell’s refusal to run on the holy day of the Sabbath would cost him the chance to compete in the 100 meters final at the Olympic Stadium of Colmbes in Paris against Abrahams, his fierce rival and compatriot from Great Britain. And on July 7, 1924, Abrahams would sprint to Olympic glory, beating American star Jackson Scholz. The resolute Liddell would get his chance to run the following day, defeating Abrahams in the 200 meters and winning a bronze. And to top it all off, he would emerge victorious a few days later in an event he had never specialized in – the 400 meters – in record time.

Thus, the 100 meters sprint – the glamour event of the Olympics even back in 1924 – unfolded with the overwhelming favorite Liddell watching and cheering on his teammate from the stands. The stadium in Colombes was an impressive one, with a seating capacity of 45,000 and was brimming with spectators for the race. I have spent a lot of time thinking about that crowd. Almost as much as that race.

For in the midst of the screaming and shouting throng of spectators that day, his eyes intently focused on the runners and soaking up every inch of the track mastered by Abrahams in his push for victory was a very special man. The extraordinary events of Chariots of Fire had an extraordinary pair of eyes on them that day. The delicious coincidence of his presence has been a source of endless fascination to me forever now. Him being there seems very serendipitous. Almost karmic in a way.

I find that beyond all the brilliance and scholarship, when that fades, still as a man, he was shining. He was radiant, the aliveness of the world came through him. The vividness, the vivacity of it, the immediacy and warmth of him. The way the universe was alive for him, he could transmit that.
-Lynne Kaufman

Scholar, writer, teacher, linguist, author, philosopher, mythologist, teller of stories, exceptional interpreter of stories, authority on comparative religions and medieval studies, Joycean and Jungian scholar – none or all of these descriptions collectively can do justice to aptly capture the essence of the man. Or the vastness of his reach. One of the most dazzling and original minds of the twentieth century whose intelligence, charm, warmth, erudition and radiant personality captured the imagination of millions of people across the globe, he was a true renaissance man. And behind his presence that day at Colombes lies another fascinating and less widely known aspect of his life.

Joseph Campbell was a sophomore at Columbia University in 1924. On holiday in Europe with his family, his trip to Paris had been carefully planned to coincide with the Olympic Games. This was his first trip to Europe and the experience would have far reaching impact on his life in the coming years. At Columbia, Campbell had been busy, immersed in his studies of Latin, French, Spanish, philosophy, literature, art and the sciences. He was an excellent saxophone and banjo player in addition to being very good at the piano and was a regular in bands that played in around the campus regularly. He was a superb swimmer, had dabbled with success in football before deciding to give it a pass after a broken nose.

Joseph Campbell is the most perfect embodiment of everything beautiful, fine and lovable in youth that I have ever known. Physically a perfect example of the youthful Anglo-Saxon – six feet in height, one hundred and eighty pounds of bone and muscle so perfectly distributed that he does not seem “big”; a splendid head crowned by thick, wavy, dark chestnut hair, eyes as blue as periwinkle; a fresh out-of-door complexion; the most perfect teeth ever seen – and a smile that would melt ice on the hardest rock! A personality that radiates health, physical and moral, intelligence and beauty. One of those rare beings on whom Nature bestowed every good gift – and then smiled at her handiwork.
-Herbert King Stone

And then, there was his running.

Campbell had caught the eye of the track coaches at Columbia who had immediately spotted a natural in the young man running just to stay in shape. The supremely athletic Campbell turned out be a gifted runner (“never did like to have anyone in front” he would confess) and it was not long before he was the star of the university track team. Columbia, which had long languished in the lower rungs of the inter-collegiate athletic competitions, now turned it around and would proceed to be a major force with Campbell in their midst. The Columbian, the university newspaper now regularly featured headlines gushing over his exploits in individual and relay races (which he always anchored).

Campbell was just beginning to hit his stride as an athlete. But even then, he seemed to be possessed by a wonder and joy at just the magnificence of the occasions when he competed.

The handling of the body in combat or in competition is a function really of a psychological posture. There has to be a ‘still’ place in there and the movement has to take place around it. I can remember some of the races; two races that I lost that were to me very important races. I lost because I lost the ‘still’ place. The race was so important I put myself out there to win the race instead of to run the race. And the whole thing got thrown off.
-Joseph Campbell

By the summer of 1924, there was a lot of talk in American track and field circles about the possibility of Campbell figuring in the track team in future international events; the Olympics in Amsterdam in 1928 in particular. Sitting in the crowd that day in Colombes, Campbell was well aware of these discussions. And over the two days, Campbell would witness all the races so vividly captured in Chariots of Fire. Even decades later, he would fondly remember how hoarse his voice was from all the yelling and shouting he did during the games – barracking for Scholz, the American.

The rise of Campbell’s star as an athlete would be meteoric on his return to university that fall. The events he began to participate in took on a whole different level of competitiveness. In the winter of 1925, he would figure in the Finnish American games – the very first time the legendary Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi ran on American soil. Campbell never forgot the experience of sharing the dressing room with Nurmi (“a beautiful man, he could just run and run and run”) that night at Madison Square Garden.

Nurmi was in the dressing room with our crowd, quietly sitting in a corner pulling on his black sweat clothes. Before his race, he ran about a mile and a half at a stiff clip – then he came in and had a rub-down.
-Joseph Campbell

He would soon be running for the venerated New York Athletic Club. And in the summer after his graduation from Columbia in 1926 (with honors in scholastic and athletic achievement), he would be selected to the team that would tour the west coast participating in the Amateur Athletic Union track meets. The team would cross America by train and for the trip, Campbell would have for his travelling partner and roommate Jackson Scholz – the very man who had been beaten by Abrahams in the 100 meters in Paris in 1924 and also won the 200 meters there by defeating both Liddell and Abrahams.

Scholz and Campbell would develop real bonds of friendship on the trip and after the team had utterly dominated the marquee meet in San Francisco, Scholz would convince Campbell to head to Hawaii and stay with him as a guest in the island paradise. Campbell would have a wonderful time in Hawaii with Scholz, marveling at the natural beauty of the islands; of course, the natural athletic streak in him would ensure that he did his best to master board surfing the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

Upon graduation, while his exploits on the track were still soaring, Campbell was a young man with a dilemma. Graduate studies at Columbia or elsewhere seemed natural, but he was in a lot of turmoil – searching for his “center”, his calling. He would make the move to Paris to explore studies in the ancient languages of vulgate Latin, old French and Provençal, the ancient Occitan dialect of south east France. Still searching, he would move on to Munich in Germany – mastering German and immersing himself in university life there. Germany would settle him down and give him his inner peace; his “center”. And as he buried himself in his studies of Jung, Schopenhauer, philosophy, English literature and Sanskrit – all being taught now in German – the track would finally begin to recede into the background.

The Olympics in Amsterdam in 1928 would come and go – as Campbell was developing the initial strains of his great contributions to the world of mythology and comparative religions. His thesis of the “monomyth” or “the hero’s journey”, elucidating the idea that the human race could be seen as reliving the experience of a single story of great spiritual importance spanning across Eastern and Western religions would be wonderfully captured in his book A Hero with a Thousand Faces. The book stands even today as one of the landmark publishing events of the twentieth century – for its dazzling originality, breadth and depth of its intellect and the typical approachable manner in which Campbell always presented his ideas.

It was in the final stages of his life that Campbell would cast his glow over a whole new audience due to the reach of television. To this day, I am eternally grateful to film-maker George Lucas – not for his Star Wars films – but for the role he played in the creation of one of the most watched and repeated programs in the history of American television – The Power of Myth. A huge fan and student of Campbell’s theories and books, Lucas would be instrumental in arranging for the now legendary interview of Campbell by Bill Moyers of PBS.

And millions were to be transfixed watching the personable, radiant and charming Campbell elaborate in his typical lucid manner the intertwining images and stories of the world’s myths and religions. He would give the world a whole new language and way of looking at their own personal experiences with the symbols and stories of their religions, faiths and ancient histories.

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives becomes dissolved.
-Joseph Campbell

Even in his later years, Campbell would repeatedly refer back to his days as an athlete fondly and inquisitively. In its own way – and he would admit this later – his life as an athlete was probably the time in which his ideas of the hero’s journey germinated in his mind only to blossom out in full glory much later.

The peak experience refers to actual moments of your life when you experience your relationship to the harmony of being. My own peak experiences, the ones that I knew were peak experiences after I had them, all came in athletics.

When I was running at Columbia, I ran a couple of races that were just beautiful. During the second race, I knew I was going to win even though there was no reason for me to know this, because I was touched off as anchor in the relay with the leading runner thirty yards ahead of me. But I just knew, and it was my peak experience. Nobody could beat me that day. That’s being in full form and really knowing it.

I don’t think I have ever done anything in my life as competently as I ran those two races — it was the experience of really being at my full and doing a perfect job.
-Joseph Campbell in conversation with Bill Moyers

The 100 meter finals at the Olympics, Chariots of Fire, Liddell and Abrahams.

And Joseph Campbell.

Yes, a truly extraordinary story of some really extraordinary people.

Odd, but harmless.

“When you wield power, you need to exude class. The Blackberry was class. Not pansy, like a shit phone. Especially in boardrooms. Fat cats sit up straight when you walk up to a table and line them up in front of you before sitting down. Nowadays, even puny runts working in shit jobs try the stunt in bars. But when I picked up two phones and talked into both, one in each hand, I knew the fuckers were watching. In my Gieves and Hawkes or Armani, I commanded attention. That is the key to power. You need to lock up attention. That is like having them by the balls.”

He was looking at me, his hand held out, clenched around a handful of peanuts from the bowl I had been replenishing. He had a wild look in his eyes. Let me tell you, it wasn’t the look of someone holding just roasted peanuts in his hand. Like I said, he was an odd one.

Earlier that evening, he had come barreling in through the doors in his green suit looking like a demented little leprechaun. He stood there, breathless, eyes darting around. He had walked up and demanded a table by the window. “Whithky with thoda” he said climbing onto a stool. I watched him down it in one gulp. “One more whithky”, he lisped at me with a hiss. He sat there, fidgeting, checking his phone relentlessly, glaring around and through the window at passersby. The second scotch must have hit the spot. Mellowed him out. He had wandered over eventually and perched himself at the bar. He sat there. Spinning his phone.

“Yeah, it is sad to see a valued brand like the Blacberry die a painful death. To watch a corporation descend into the sewers. Lose its edge. The killer’s mentality. Have you seen the documentary The Corporation, my friend? Highly recommend it. Corporations by definition are pathological entities, it theorizes. Now people read that and writhe around in sanctimonious self-righteousness. They turn preachy. Point fingers. En-fucking-ron, they say. Hali-friggin-burton, they fume. But not me. I firmly believe in that theory. I am fascinated by it. In fact endorse it. A successful organization should be pathological. Unless you are in it for lily-livered non-profit reasons. Success comes only with the killer’s mentality. If one shies away from the kill, one shouldn’t be dreaming of conquering. I have never been shy.”

I had seen the type. The recession had driven them into watering holes by the droves. They were a sorry sight during those days. Dark-suited and bleary-eyed, they congregated like penguins. Bellicose and angry when they entered, they snarled, ranted and spat out corporate gobbledygook that dripped off their tables and formed puddles at their feet. But their mood sank with every drink quaffed. By nightfall, you couldn’t have happened upon a more depressing bunch. Not this one. I couldn’t grasp it, but he didn’t look like he was going home to stick a loaded shotgun in his mouth.

“Every revolution needs to shed blood to succeed. And you don’t need to be a commie Che Guevara to believe that. Works in corporate glass towers too. One must be ready to do a O-Ren-Ishii, jump onto the boardroom table and chop off a few heads. Let the others see the blood. Be a Marcellus Wallace and throw the pesky competition out of the window. Keeps the clientele and competition twisting in their knickers. As I said, I never shied away from it. Fair play and healthy competition is for wimps in this day and age. And who’s got the time for that shit?”

I looked at him. Well, if he was a revolutionary, then Genghis Khan was my uncle. I would’ve slotted him at best as a used car salesman. Who was he kidding? The only time this sorry green penguin had shed blood was when he nicked himself shaving. But I do patronize my patrons. It’s good for business. I nodded, poured out another scotch and pushed the glass over to him. He took a long sip.

“But even a O-Ren-Ishii ended up being skewered by her ex-partner’s hattori hanzo. Even a Marcellus Wallace couldn’t escape medieval buggery. It is not destined to end well for everyone, you know? As I said, every organization should be pathological to some extent. But if it turns inward and starts attacking its own innards, gangrene results. Amputation naturally follows. And I sit before you now, living proof of that. “I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion” said Alexander the Great. Brother, I am the lion who got fucked by the sheep. I am the pimp the whores ganged up on and drove out of town. I am the pusher the junkies stabbed with their needles. Felled in a coup, brother.”

He pronounced it like soup. So that was it? Backstabbed by his cohorts? Lost the car dealership to his feuding partners? But I had to hand it to him. Even amidst his delusional aggrandizement, there was desperate earnestness. And he knew his films. Knew how to milk them for metaphoric excess. I braced myself for the obligatory Godfather reference. Or would he go the way of Patton?

“I have always idolized Alexander the Great, you know? One can’t pick a better role model for a conqueror. Genghis Khan was bat-shit crazy. Not Alexander. If he had only dispensed with the pompous twat Aristotle. What he needed was a Machiavelli. Think of that. Think of that combination. Machiavelli’s theories get a bad rap unfairly. I read The Prince. And I ended up king. But a king can underestimate his cabinet. Underestimate the damage a spineless bunch can inflict collectively. I was their conqueror. I even crossed oceans to plant the flag in far-off lands. I swung the machete to clear out the underbrush. They were happy to follow, set up their lemonade stands and collect taxes from the natives. The end justifies the means, said Machiavelli. And they smiled as I dispensed with the machete and resorted to napalm. I hatched deals with the chieftains for us. I picked and chose the fat cats to fleece. And the coin rolled in. The coffers burst at the seams. They were too busy counting their minds silly. They were good at that. The only thing they could be relied upon to do. I was everywhere. Here a deal, there a deal. Slept in taxis, brushed my teeth at the hotel and changed suits in parking lots. While they sat back at HQ – count, count, count!”

I stared at him. He was some piece of work, this leprechaun. I have heard them all in my line of work, but this was up a notch. The suits were a perpetual yawn when sauced, but he was spinning me a technicolor yarn. I was tickled to find myself captivated by his tale of treachery. A Shakespearean romp in a car dealership!

“Lemmy, of Motörhead once said “I was fired for doing the wrong drugs” about his ouster from the band Hawkwind. Story of my life, brother. I was their ace of spades. But some time during the delirious counting, they developed a nervous tic. Some always had the evil eye. The poison tongue. So we went from orgies to the coup almost overnight. But I should have seen it coming. We had cut every corner as a team. Razed entire neighborhoods in remote air-strikes. Reveled in the smell of napalm in the morning. But when the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, the coterie had done their homework. The caucus had their pistols cocked. They were prepared. I was the lightning rod and they shoved the rod right up my arse. I was under the bus, off the cliff-edge, hung out to dry. A ritual beheading at a christening and I was sacrificial lamb curry. It didn’t take a Woodward and a Bernstein to bring down this Nixon. This Republican party fell over themselves to expedite the impeachment.”

The bitterness was now forming puddles on the countertop. But I didn’t want him to stop now. This was not the drudgery I usually bore with a painted smile. This was gold. I gave the countertop a once-over with a towel and filled up his bowl with peanuts. And waited.

“Yeah brother, I had always wanted to be Alexander. But I have ended up as Napoleon. London is my Elba. Solitary confinement. The lion now cools his heels in this cooler. And the sheep have Versailles to themselves. The orgies are unabated. The counting continues. Count, count, count! But I can only stand outside the gates now and peer through the bars at the lights shining bright in the palace I built, music wafting out of the windows. Watch them ravaging my wine collection, smoking my dope and fornicating with my wenches. Makes my eyes burn and my skin crawl. And they know I am watching. Yeah brother, they do. All they can dare to do is to slam another lock on the gates and post a few more guards. And avoid eye contact. Pretend I do not exist.”

He looked up at me. The eyes were red. I passed him a box of tissues. He took off his glasses and blew his nose. The night had entered the alcoholic’s melancholy phase. To a bartender, this is the excruciating time of the night. There isn’t a more ridiculous sight than a lineup of teary emotional wrecks warbling into their gins and vodkas. But this penguin was melodramatically intriguing. If it was a performance, I was in the presence of a thespian. You could sell tickets to this.

“Elba has allowed me to think. And I am still able. And I don’t forget easily. And they know it too. Nixon had his tapes and the tapes eventually strangled him. That makes them nervous. They fear their Deep Throat in a London parking lot. Follow the money trail, he had said. This trail is a labyrinth. But even the Pentagon keeps minutes of operations being orchestrated from NORAD. And they know too well that the worms will crawl out of the can eventually. Facades will crumble. Dams can be breached. V is for vendetta. I am an impatient man, but this solitude has been my valium. I am a vulture on valium and I smell a carcass. My time to swoop will come. My turn to soar cannot be denied. My craving for the smell of napalm is back.”

He slugged back his scotch and slammed his glass down. His eyes were glinting now. The wide-eyed look was back. I watched him stumble off the stool. He snatched at his Blackberry and stuffed it into his pocket. For an instant, he was no longer leprechaun. With his hand stuck under the lapel of his suit, he was a green Napoleon. He stood there swaying unsteadily.

“I better get going” he said.

“You alright mate? Do you want me to call for a taxi?” I asked.

“Hell no brother, I’ll take the tube to St. John’s Wood” he lisped. “I love public transportation” he added with a cackle as he turned away.

“St. John’s Wood? That’s near the cricket ground, right?” I called as he stuttered across towards the doorway.

He stopped and turned around.

“You follow cricket?” he slurred.

I watched him, as he started to stumble his way back to the bar.

The cricket helmet will never be a purveyor of epic imagery that its siblings the floppy hat and the traditional cap specialize in. Not for it the heart-stopping freeze frame of Richards cork-screwed, nostrils flared as he hooked at Thommo; his maroon cap blown off and suspended in mid-air. Nor the laconic cool of the bent brim of a floppy white, golden locks of Gower peeking out, back arched in a silken backfoot cover-drive. Anodyne by nature, functional at best it remains. The grill, conspiring with the shadow cast by the peak completes the obfuscation job. Except for the eyes. The eyes it has always accentuated.

Especially your eyes, Rahul.

Jumbo had the jaw. You, the eyes. For sixteen years, I have gazed into them; peered at them, focused on them and locked sight with them. And through those years, your eyes, in that half-squint of purposefulness have shone back at me from the shadow of your helmet, with its strap hanging. Shimmered back at me from above your sweat tinged cheekbones. That gaze – nary a moment when it lost its forthrightness – conveyed multitudes. And accompanied narratives that are entwined and will last for life.

His jaw and your eyes, lingering visuals of an era that now comes to past.

Dada had the blink; that confused blink of surprise, like he had stepped on a thumb-tack. Tendu, his look of impervious bubble-of-silence calm. Viru, a poker-faced bodhisattva, eyes half-closed in meditative nirvana. I have tried to pigeon-hole your gaze into a convenient bucket, but you have always eluded me. Impassive, people have said. Expressionless commentators painted it as. Very convenient. They probably loved that nickname too.

Ball after ball, from atop the classical profile of your stance, your eyes focused on the approaching bowler and past him through the television screen locking with mine. And I could never look away from them. Till they triggered your limbs into a kaleidoscope of delicate angles as the ball arrived.

You would be courteous, lifting your bat and letting it pass, watching it thoughtfully. Levitate momentarily, feet together, toes pointed downwards, shoulders rising and falling in gorgeous symmetry, dropping the ball down at your feet. Your bat ending up horizontal, parallel to the pitch. Head bent, looking down at the still ball respectfully. Or arched back, lips pursed, as you caressed it to cover point; eyes squinting to confirm that it reached that precise spot.

And then, they would be back. Shining through the television screen.

Yes, sixteen years. It seems like yesterday, yet an eternity. And now the images flit across. This collage is expansive. So much has happened in these years. So much time spent looking into those eyes. Locking sight with them.

They scorched themselves in Adelaide. On that day, they had laid bare more than you ever imagined. In the space of minutes during the post-match interview, your eyes had run through the gamut. It was an emotional day. Cathartic. For us too, you know. As I watched you in your sweaty whites struggling for words to describe the feeling, I just couldn’t take my eyes off them. They flashed, flickered and glimmered as they cycled through pride, joy and satisfaction incessantly. They, more than anything, screamed out the gravitas of that moment. I had looked into them in awe that day, Rahul. And affection.

Three years earlier, in Kolkata, you had startled. Fleetingly. It was during that match. And it was during your moment. Lax was trotting up to you, arms outstretched in a bear hug, when you ripped off your helmet and gesticulated emphatically towards your mates in the pavilion. Almost in anger. It was so not you. Your arms complied with you in that action almost awkwardly. But your eyes, your eyes. They were shooting sparks. The lead-up had undeservedly focused on you and you were bristling. The frustration had built up. It seemed justified.

The shellacking in Mumbai had led to it. Oh wait, Mumbai. The Don had passed away on the morning of the first day, hadn’t he? As the two teams lined up to pay homage to the great man, the television camera panned slowly across them standing in silence, staring into space. I remember your eyes: they were shut. Head bowed. Later, very much open now, they would be trained in a stern glare at Slater. He was trying to get close to you, jawing at you in frustration at what he thought was a clean catch. You just stood your ground and looked him in the eye. Head still and upright. Looked him down. Many have seen that look up close. Alan Donald too.

And this moment at the Centurion in 2003. This time, in your blues. After that astonishing start to the chase, things had turned tense when Tendu was felled by a brute. On an edge, we were. But you calmed things down. Kept Yuvi calm too till he started stroking the ball delectably. As the target dwindled to a mere few – I can still see it now. Like it was yesterday. Frozen, like a painting.

The crowd in the backdrop was an impressionist’s daubing of a million brush-strokes. You stood at the non-strikers end. Motionless, with your head turned towards the sea of screaming faces. It was a wall of sound, but it seemed like the sound had been muted for you. For me too. All I hear even now in that moment is silence. Your neck at an angle. And your eyes, half closed. And that look. Melancholy? Contemplative? No, it was more. But I still can’t categorize it. You still elude.

Moments…so many of them…too many. Lord’s, Wanderers, Headingly, Rawalpindi…

I had flown to England last summer. Was somehow convinced that you would make the call there. I was braced for it to be the denouement. I owed myself one last look in the flesh, I told myself. Unfortunately, things turned sour. Went belly up in fact. All around you, as you stood amidst the ruins. Right through the tour, your eyes had almost a tired and perplexed look to them. As you wove one masterpiece after another. By its end, they had looked laden. Yes, there was Australia, but I thought I saw it in your eyes at the Oval itself.

Three days ago, it was a time to celebrate and wish the King warmly on his sixtieth. Now, he used to have a thing with his eyes too, you know. Very different, but similar in what they did to me. And not since his adieu to cricket has a retirement created such turmoil. Irrational turmoil. But this is hardly the time to be selfish.

Go well, Rahul. Happy trails, wherever you choose to ride off on to.

As I close my eyes in gratitude, I see you at the crease. Between deliveries. Your hands making their final adjustments to the grip on the handle. Your eyes trained on a spot in space – somewhere near extra cover. Sweat glistening below them on your cheekbones. Now that classical stance again. The clipped tapping of your bat commences. Your head rises as you look up to the bowler and your eyes focus on him. Then past him, through the television screen. Locking onto mine again.

This is going to be hard. Very hard.

Sixty.

That would be around the time the opposition shook themselves out of their discombobulated stupor and contemplated the reality of their situation. Or the hopelessness. You blazed up to and past that number nonchalantly oh so often. You were never one for the numbers, were you?

Sixty today. In the theatre of life. Sixty candles to blow out. Hope you remember to lose the gum you’ve been chewing before you do. The gum that accompanied the swagger. The swagger that spooked out teams; that prefaced the gaze you trained on the bowler at the top of his run-up. Looking into his eyes as you patted down random spots on the pitch, having just taken guard. Sending chills down the spines of all who were watching. Starting with that day in Bangalore.

It wasn’t just your debut, it was mine too. I had never watched a cricket match in the flesh till then. It would be the day scrambled myths in an impressionable mind met reality – the sea of faces, the green grass and the magical figures in whites. I still cannot believe my luck that you were one of the first cricketers I set eyes upon. On my very first day of watching cricket! Yes, we were veritably blessed in Bangalore. Also four years later, when I watched Macko bowl his first ball in Test cricket.

I grew up with you. Ventured forth into cricket with your shadow over me. “De cricket is dead man. Wake myself up when Smokey start to bat,” was Big Bird’s purported request in the pavilion before dozing off. You sure did wake me up to cricket, and for that I owe you. After Bangalore, you widened my eyes a week later in Delhi and then grabbed me around the shoulders and took me on the journey of my life.

I never dreamt of batting like you in street-side cricket matches, you know. Your feats seemed so out of reach. But I did try to chew gum like you. Even wanted to sweat like you. Beads of sweat that clung to the brow and forearms like drops of oil. Sweat that made those muscular shoulder blades sheen through your white shirt. Lillee had his one-finger windshield wiper to flick the sweat off his brow. You deployed your biceps and forearms. But you did flick Lillee right off your brow, into the stands, with your Slazenger. Thommo and Lenny too.

Ah, Lenny. Who once stopped inches from your face after sending one whizzing past the regal nose – and traced out a crucifix on your forehead. And you followed him all the way back to the top of his endless run-up. To brandish your fist in his face, glowering. Then walked briskly back to the crease to smash him straight for six the very next ball. “He destroyed you physically, mentally and emotionally,” Lenny was to say later. You were all deeds; words and theatrics you dispensed with. “My bat is my sword,” you said.

Antigua, I missed out on. And Old Trafford too. I went mad reading the match reports. It was agonising that I had not lived them as they occurred. I was intensely jealous of those who were fortunate to be there. I felt cheated. For I had a stake in you that entitled me, I thought. Proceeded to wear out a VHS tape of that innings – watching you plant your foot three feet outside the leg stump as you bludgeoned Willis and Beefy into the stands at cover. Lord’s 1983; again the fates conspired. The TV signal blacked out nationwide during your manhandling of Madan Lal. But I do admit, that was probably the only time in my life I prayed that you failed miserably.

You were to become the “you” in YouTube. I turned scavenger when it arrived. Was there a backlog or what. Endless nights spent searching for imagery to accompany your music in my head. You had unfurled mainly in crackly sound when it all happened. Television was non-existent in Bangalore then. It was the BBC, the ABC and good old All India Radio we had to cope with. Late nights, Cozier, Arlott, Johnston, Benaud and McGilvray.

“Huccha, huccha,” (“Lunatic, lunatic” in Kannada) my grandfather would splutter as I sat grasping the antenna on that shortwave radio way past bedtime, cajoling out an audible signal. But he always sat down to listen, didn’t he? Eyes closed. Awaiting.

To this day, I look for the scores of Somerset during the season. Still get a kick out of them beating up on any other county. You did that to me. Not Sunny. Beefy and you (and Big Bird too) together as teenagers there. Rabble rousers, the two of you, especially out in the middle. Ah, Beefy. The times he got into dust-ups in pubs, trying to take out everyone in sight after hearing a racial epithet hurled in your direction. Even tried to climb into the stands seething at a yobbo with a coloured mouth once.

You even made me a fan of Jeffrey Archer. Not for his books, just for siring a son who would make a memorable observation about you during the Brixton race riots. Much later I would read Lester Bird, your prime minister, say, “Richards represented that touchstone: he was the embodiment of an opportunity for a whole nation to be galvanised for a single purpose… he personified what we perceived ourselves to be: young dynamic and talented, but yet unrecognised in the world.”

I would read Michael Manley too. And Hilary Beckles. Lap up Bunny Wailer’s tales. Bristle and sneer at David Frith for haranguing on about your Rastafari wrist-band. The one Bob Marley gave you. And oh, Bob! You were intertwined in his music irretrievably for me. You were Burnin’. Your every rumble was a Rastaman Vibration. You even shot the sheriff, and his deputies, in 1976.

I spot you now and then these days behind the glass in some pavilion out yonder – hands clasped behind back, the same smouldering eyes – watching your team impassively. Legacy is an oft-misused word in sport. But what you left behind and is being tarnished now is much more than a legacy. If only they would take an iota of it to heart, wonders could ensue.

Enough of that. This is a special day.

It may be mighty presumptuous of me as I say these words. But I still do feel like I am entitled, can still claim to have a stake in you. That first ball you faced in Bangalore under my gaze validates my right to say this. Sixties are nothing to you, Viv. A number you never really cared for. You just go on, you emperor.

Shine on.

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 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.)