Living with differences

I can’t help feeling a little cynical as I pen this down. After all, the only people who would want to read an essay on “Living with differences” would be the ones who are already aware that there is no viable alternative to it. For those who are convinced that standardization-be it on the lines of religion, caste or class is the way out of the entire world’s ills wouldn’t bother making the effort. But in times when a moderate opinion on any issue is panned and reviled by both warring camps, this is an important exercise in self-motivation.

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It’s been over a year since I passed out of Regional Engineering College (REC), Kurukshetra (Now that’s a real place in Haryana, in case you thought it is something on the lines of Rama’s Bridge). It’s been grandly re-christened National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kurukshetra, but we alumni persist with the REC short form rather than the new fangled NIT. RECs represent a unique kind of Institutions where people so markedly different are put together in some kind of weird social experiment. Students from every state have just got to be there, unlike the IITs where only the ‘cream’ shows up (more often than not resulting in states with great competitive environments dominating the numbers). But in RECs, it was a case of state boards, Delhi boards, vernacular medium, English medium, competitive exam based selections and board marks based selections, all tossed together in a mixed salad of sorts. And to the great surprise of everyone involved, manage to function quite well in their own hopelessly complicated sort of way.

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As one would expect, stereotyping was everyone’s favourite pastime. Guys from the North are bruising and crude, the people from the East are pseudo-intellectual snobs, the fellows from Western India- oh, ready to sell their souls if there was any money involved, students from the South never looking beyond syllabus books and their ‘own’ kind and finally the North-east- drunk druggies! And this was just stereotype level 1, the data and pre-conditioning for which our upbringing in our respective domicile states had already groomed us to believe. The next level would crop up when passionate as the youth must be, battle lines would be drawn over a minor argument or scuffle. Regions would blend into temporary coalitions and you would discover that:

# UP-ites were all scheming politicians

# Biharis were vicious fighters ready to plunge into battle at the drop of a hat

# Telugus were basically spineless and wouldn’t ever take a stand

# Tamils were out on a mission to subjugate all other South Indian cultures

# Bengalis were so full of themselves that it was impossible to stand them for more than a minute

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and a million more such previously unstated accusations that were always hiding in a dark corner of the mind waiting for an oppurtune moment to spring out.

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All prejudices and pet hates now out in the open, a tangible bitterness in the air and one would be forgiven for thinking that national integration was a lost cause even after 60 years of Independence. Tense and difficult, moments like these were indeed but in retrospect they bring a smile to my face.

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I smile because there is a fact that drifters like me knew. Being a Bengali schooled in Gujarat, and thereby gaining admission through the Gujarat quota, my domicile state was just one identity. We call them State GTs (Get Togethers) and Gujarat GT was something like a degree which was affixed to my name as and when the situation required. I had the good fortune/misfortune of being termed too Bengali or not Bengali enough by different groups at different times. I knew that despite all the cribbing and finger pointing some things would remain unchanged.

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When mess food in its vile form was served on our plates, all hands would stretch to that extra large jar of spicy South Indian pickle carried by a benevolent soul. When the Telugu guy next room would be really sick, it would be his Haryanvi classmates who would rush him to the hospital. That the common room would be packed to the rafters with every eye on the TV screen whenever “The Matrix” was on or when Australia was on the verge of losing a cricket match, whether the opponent be India or not. That the precious matchbox doing the rounds to light cigarettes had no regional loyalties and neither did a freshly filled bottle of cold water from the cooler, the furious look on its owner’s face notwithstanding. Xeroxed notes on the night before the exam would have a geographical distribution worthy of a thesis and that the look of shock after a particularly tough exam hardly varied from face to face. The dissimilarities between us were far too many to note down, but it was the most unlikely similarities that invited bemused contemplation.

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But of course, not everything was hunky-dory in life at an REC. Some of my fellow students by way of being in the wrong place at the wrong time walked away from 4 years of engineering with regional stereotypes further re-inforced. Some of them gave up the fight to defy the labels of their region, finding it much more convenient to behave the way certain people expected them to, helped in no small measure by constant heckling and jeering. The 50% local strength of the Haryanvi students in our REC frequently saw ‘Us and them’ situations crop up with Haryana-non Haryana tensions simmering. This feeling of insecurity against the majority populace seemed to be a common feature in most RECs if reports from friends in other RECs are anything to go by. Any kind of majority always exerts an unseen and mostly unintentional pressure on the others, and in an atmosphere of distrust, it only requires the proverbial spark to burst into flames.

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This is where I realized the sincere need for just inane conversation. By virtue of my network of friends, I always knew that the rumours and whispers about the ‘rival’ group had minimum basis in truth. Some of the people I talked with hardly had anything in common with me, but just by interacting with them I knew they couldn’t be half as bad as the alarm raisers claimed them to be. Sadly for others who were completely out of touch with them, anything anyone ever said about them was as good as true.

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Having grown up in Gujarat, I wondered even more how much a little mindless banter could have made a difference. During the 2002 riots in Gujarat, a Muslim classmate and I laughed over the fact that identical stories about a Muslim girl/Hindu girl being abducted were doing the rounds simultaneously in the respective communities. But when put in context of the horrifying violence that rumours like these generated, it hardly seems funny any longer. The fact that virtual LOCs between the two communities in most cities still persist, its sadly evident that peace achieved in such conditions is just a makeshift arrangement.

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At the end of the day we are all flawed, emotional beings who have a set of prejudices and dislikes which have evolved out of our immediate environment. Some of these prejudices cannot be shaken off in a lifetime but we can surely do better at preventing them from hardening. Every time one makes a sweeping statement about a community or a caste or a class, its important to rein that in. Situations may yet force them out but keeping those words in for a few seconds more robs them of their sting and in many cases makes one realize the purposelessness of it all.

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It is only human nature that we turn to a group that is closest to our way of living whenever we feel the need for security and identity. But reaching out is so much more important even though mutual agreement may be a distant dream. Just by knowing a person with a set of values which we find odd, comes a revelation that we are similar in some ways however few they may be. This similarity is a surprise and lessens to a great extent all our apprehensions about something completely unknown. And of course the all important fact that for any correction of supposed ‘flaws’ in the other, the kind word of a friend is so much more effective than the hate filled invective of a stranger.

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It’s a strange world that we live in. The rich/privileged seem to hate the poor for not being able to fend for themselves and the poor/disadvantaged hate the rich for purposefully keeping all opportunities to themselves. The religious hate the ‘modern’ for being too flippant about their God, while the ‘modern’ hate the religious for being book-bound bigots. And so on and forth, rage a variety of differences. I am not idealistic enough to see the world join together in a celebration of our differences in the near future, indeed coming together has its fair share of acrimony. But just knowing our differences and accepting them, before pushing for any kind of compromise is the first and inevitable step in the long, arduous path towards a world which is a saner, more livable version of its present sorry self.

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Written by me but originally published on 30th January 2008 at 

http://citizensforpeace.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=130&Itemid=55

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/04/living-with-differences.html]

70

[6th April 2012 - For my Dad's 70th birthday. Happy Birthday, Baba!]

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On the rooftop of an apartment building in a small town in southern Gujarat, two kids, a brother and a sister, both not 10 yet, looked up towards the sky expectantly. We knew, my sister and I, what we were looking for because we had already been shown many a times. A long drawn summer evening was coming to an end and the breeze from the nearby Narmada river was picking up now, chasing out the daytime heat from where it hid. And we waited.

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It is impossible to be objective about the influence of Dad on my life. I am up at 5 in the morning to write this. That's very much Baba. As a child, I had never seen him asleep at the time I woke up in the morning, no matter how early. I nearly started doing the dishes at 5:00 in the morning as I couldn't bear the sight of the stacks of dirty utensils piled up in the kitchen sink from last night's dinner. That's the neat and fastidious side of Baba showing up in me, sometimes to the extreme aggravation of Mom who would much rather have him focus on other things instead. In fact, the only time I have seen unshaven stubble on his face was when my Dadu passed away, a stark indication of how upset he was at the loss of his father. My obsession with cars, engineering, maps and travel? Baba. Baba. Baba. Baba.

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While my friends' fathers discussed competition, careers and finances with their sons, my Dad discussed world history, dogs and his childhood travels. It wasn't surprising that I was the only one in my friend circle who actually looked forward to my Dad coming back from work. While my friends would scurry away to keep out of their Dads' eyesight, my Dad would sit and watch Scooby Doo cartoons on TV alongside me, sometimes laughing harder than I did. A disciplinarian he never was, despite the omnipresent "Baba office thekey aashley Baba ke boley debo [Let Dad come home, I'll let him know]" threat regularly brandished by Mom when the situations were getting out of hand. We kids knew that it would take crossing a lot of lines to get Baba angry and in a way, we ensured that we never crossed those lines in the fear of encountering something totally alien like Angry Baba.

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All this unconventionality with regard to life and parenting had to be made up for with an extra effort to keep the boat from tipping over completely, a role perfectly essayed by a woman who has stood by this unconventional man for 40 years now. At various points in his life, Baba ignored the significance of things like landline telephones, colour TV, washing machines and vacuum cleaners. He has an inexplicable tendency, especially post retirement, to take hot noon-time walks to the bazaar and back as if this were a luxurious outing second to none. If it hadn't been for Mom the importance of NOT being ridiculously unconventional wouldn't have been drilled into us. Maa, while being a very unconventional woman herself, had and still has (most of the times, she is very vocal about that wish too) conventional expectations of how a husband should be. Baba being Baba refuses to conform. Needless to say, there are a lot of fireworks. All that we children, the three siblings can say that it worked out great for us despite the frequent bursts of emotional light & sound.

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There it was! Riding the wind, yet magically stationary, this bird which hovered high above us and we kids pointed excitedly. "Helicopter paakhi! Helicopter paakhi! [Helicopter bird! Helicopter bird!]" We were beside ourselves with joy as we ran around in crazy circles. Baba had first seen the bird on one of the evenings we spent on the roof and he had named it too. I don't know if anyone else in the town we were growing up in and the world we were growing up in even knew of this daily avian visitor of ours or cared for it. But my Dad did. He made us realize the beauty of little things tucked into the corners, often missed in the rush to keep up with everything everyone else was doing. To most people, life's purpose means the pursuit of happiness. The most important of all the lessons that Baba taught me, always relevant, not in so many words, but through his attitude to life, is that essentially happiness cannot be pursued. It is already here, all around us, for those who choose to see it.

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/04/influence.html ]

Ideally

Ideally, I wouldn't even be writing this. I would be living in a little hill-top house overlooking a tropical sea. Having already written about everything I wanted to give my opinion on, having travelled the world & having done my best to save it, having learnt (the current list) Spanish, Mandarin & playing the guitar, I would have rid myself of the restlessness that comes with having unrealized ideas and wishes jostling to come out, on paper, on screen, wherever. 

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My old motorcycle parked outside my door would be a worthy enough chariot whenever I felt the need for human company, taking me on an half hour ride to the nearest town, cutting through swooping roads and the sea breeze. Financially, if my writing past could pay the rent for my house and the running costs of my motorcycle, I would consider myself a success. Being as egocentric that most authors usually are, I would still want people to read and appreciate my work long after I have stopped writing but please readers, stay away from my isolated house. 

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Actually, I will head to work in an hour's time. Working on engineering assignments which on good days do inspire, on bad days cause despair and on most days are an interesting unpredictable mix. Don't get me wrong, I am not the "I am here for the money. If you want loyalty, get yourself a dog" kind of an office person. Quite the opposite. Nothing makes me happier than a busy day because everything in the world feels equally important. The design which I am supposed to be finishing ASAP, every article on Google News, all casual conversations at the water cooler, the temptation to take a post-lunch walk outside on a nice afternoon, the friend who calls me on my cellphone because he is having an low intensity workday - all so critical simultaneously and I have time enough for none. 

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The universe, I remind myself over and over again, is a cakewalk for the disciplined and organized. If only I could stop daydreaming and focus on getting my 'work' work done at the right time, my life would be so much more fulfilling. My G-Mail Inbox is filled with snippets of ideas I e-mail myself as reminders for future blog posts; my fingers and hands are possibly the most sworn at ones in the entire world as once again I fail to produce any publicly displayable tune out of my guitar and my list of must-go travel destinations continues to balloon without the addition of any check marks. Past Spanish and Mandarin efforts are very soon going to be reduced to 'Hola' and 'Ni hao' inside my fickle memory.

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Here's the deal. My version of the ideal life may seem like an uninspiring one to most people but hey, it's MY PERSONALIZED VERSION so shut up! As much as I want that life, the actual life with its twists and its turns, its risks and its burns is fertile ground for wild ideas and happy accidents to sprout up, unexpectedly and irreverently. Wise men have said, very correctly, that the grass is always greener on the other side. So I stand, on this bridge between the actual to the ideal. I look left, I look right, then I look left again. I know... I know that this is from where the view is best.

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/01/ideally.html ]

Nice

Nice wasn't in. Nice wasn't cool. Our heroes weren't nice. They were tough talking, over-muscled, ready-to-punch-at-a-drop-of-a-hat meanies; macho men who wouldn't sit around waiting for justice. We were just old enough to begin realizing that pro-wrestling wasn't 'real' wrestling but that didn't stop us from idolizing the way Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H or The Rock of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) behaved.

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The early teens were an age like that. Newly learnt swear words were like a nuclear weapon to be launched at the strategically right time during a quarrel or a fight thereby finishing your opponent into shocked submission and earning the respect of your peers. English swear words were precious but Hindi expletives were platinum. Good behaviour was good enough only for the less ambitious. If you needed to be noticed and be something significant in life, rude was the attitude. 

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This rebellion towards civility was apparent only outside the watchful gaze of parents and teachers though. We weren't quite man enough to be 'rebel' rebels yet and this was reflected in our quick transformation when the teacher left the classroom in between classes. A quick check at the door to ensure that the teacher was really gone and then it was WWF simulation time on the departed teacher's stage. The words, the antics, the moves - all on display, each trying to outdo the others in badness and foul-mouthery.

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Prayer assemblies were times where the jokes were to be played; pranks and eating of lunches during the class was the norm to be aspired to; neatly knotted ties and pressed clothes were passe, the looser and more careless look was to be the real show of character. Teenage years were full of uncertainties and questions but there was only one thing for sure - whatever your parents, teachers or any one in authority said was good for you, that was where cool came to die.

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It was in this climate of abrasiveness that one day my Mom came to me and said "I am going to the Juvenile Detention Home on Sunday to distribute some food and clothes. I would like you to go." My first reaction to that was a internal "What? Do I look like some sort of Mother Teresa to you?" which may have shown up in my expression of contempt because my Mom added "It's your Grandma's first death anniversary." Then came "You should come. This might change your life."

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I rolled my eyes up in disgust. Leave it to Mom to dig up a cliched filmy dialogue. I must say that I was rather fond of my grandmother though it didn't stop me from thoughtlessly teasing her almost uptil the day she passed away. I didn't cry when my grandmother passed away but I had always carried that guilt of not behaving maturely enough during her final illness. My grandma was another one of those filmy persons, actually scolding scheming evil characters as they appeared on TV soap operas and vocally cheering when like in all 'morally' scripted storylines, they got their due punishment. I thought that the kindly old lady deserved at least this much. I decided to go along.

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The Juvenile Boys' Detention Home was located in an old bungalow on the outskirts of the little town we lived in. The detainees here were handed over to the state authorities for minor offences like petty theft on trains, loitering and other things that kids raised on the street without the benefit of a permanent roof over their head found themselves embroiled in. A quick tour of their spartan and clean living quarters by the Home's caretakers later, we went out to the sizable backyard of the bungalow to meet the kids themselves who were winding up their distributed household chores.

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They came trooping in to where we sat on our chairs, in orderly lines and an air of general cheerfulness about them, even if not all of them were smiling. The oldest amongst them I noticed were as old as me and were the ones in charge. The younger they were, the more thrilled they seemed to see us and at the other end of the age spectrum, we were regarded with polite interest. We were shown artwork soaked in bright and cheerful colours, poetry recited to us and devotional numbers sung out in chorus. The old clothes that we had brought along were accepted with a glee that made us re-evaluate their worth and the food we had served, a change in diet from their regular fare, couldn't possibly have found more appreciation. 

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One of the boys was a particularly talented singer, only about 8 years old and with the Home for about 5 years now. They had found him travelling on the Awadh Express, a 3 year old then, singing and stealing simultaneously. He said he was from Lucknow, across on the other side of the country where the train originated from and despite the authorities' best efforts his parents could not be located and he himself was too young to know which part of Lucknow his house was in. The chirpiest of the lot, his words frequently broke into cackles of genuine laughter as my Mom and a few of her colleagues engaged their group in dialogue.

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Much more than the little happiness that our arrival and gifts had given to them, the perspective that they gifted me was invaluable. Not the usual "How very little of our time/money can make a huge difference to their lives" philosophy, which to me was sort of self-evident even before I had made this trip. But the fact that they were revelling in, relishing every moment of what we took for granted in our lives. Not the clothes and not the food, but the real comfort to be found in being treated with politeness.

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These were kids who had seen the hard life, the tough life where the next meal was a question mark. For them, the swearing we practised with casual ease in our plush school classrooms and the physical possibility of that happening with them were harsh everyday realities. While we shoved each other in mock fights and laughed afterwards, their encounters of a similar nature did not end in laughter. At school, we teased those who were religiously inclined but here being absorbed in a simple hymn took their minds away from the horrors that they had experienced and from which we had been so well shielded all our lives.

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Be nice. Be nice because not everyone in the world has the luxury to be.

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/01/nice.html ]

Snow

It was very hard to feel disappointed. It was hard to feel disappointed even though I was quite frankly bringing up the tail amongst the 10 competitors that had taken the stage last evening. In the basement of a building right on Harvard Square, I had had an opportunity to speak on the same stage where, frequently in the early 1960s, an up and coming musician named Bob Dylan played as a filler in between musical performances by Joan Baez to 'try' and make a name for himself.

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So this was Club Passim, formerly known as Club 47 annd Passim before adopting a name reflecting both, a performance arena with only 100 odd seats and its' place in history sealed by the fact that Dylan had laboured here in his struggling artist days. A story-telling competition was on, an event whose existence was recently introduced to me, as recently as this past New Year's Eve. The tellers were intense, the room was tuned in and the real life incidents they talked about sprang to animated life in those few lighted square feet around the performer. 

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I thought that since I was going to present a story very close to my heart, it would all be smooth sailing but in the true nature of all taken-for-granteds, I was up-ended. By my own abrupty concluded monologue when I realized I was running short of time and by the possessed competition that was to follow. Roundly and soundly beaten, I was still shamelessly happy to be at least in that same room. A public radio legend, Tony Kahn was the stand-in story-teller and guest of honour. He seemed to have set the tone and quality of stories for the night. The others flew in that stratosphere of higher speaking talent with him that night while I stood below and clapped.

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It was 10:30 by the time all the good-byes, congratulations and advice were wrapped up, and I stepped out of that underground treasury of personal experiences. Stepped out and for the second time that night, slipped, this time literally. While Club Passim had kept us engaged in the warm glow of significant incidents in some strangers' lives who would thereby cease to be strangers, Mother Nature was having a cold fit. So she gave her ol' skirt a rustle and down came the snowflakes fluttering onto the ground not to mention under my shoes.

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I narrowly managed to avoid horizontal disaster and from the lack of uproarious laughter behind me, judged with relief that my impromptu circus had missed the attention it deserved. I stepped with cautious deliberation now, making sure one foot was secure before sending the other one on an adventurous game of "Does friction exist or not?" I was taking it easy, as one should when one is out walking on a city road and the snow is coming down. Or for that matter rain.

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It's a city after all and shelter, should such an unlikely emergency need for it arise, is only a storefront away. When on your way home, there is nothing quite so relishing as a walk in the snow or rain. Snow hadn't been visiting these parts for quite some time, a real anomaly for cold cold Boston weather in early January. A lot of people would get around to grumbling about all the shovelling that awaited them the next morning but not right now.

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It was really light snowfall and the snow was already melting as it fell, most likely to washed away by rains that would follow. A trio of Asian students made the most of this moment though, squealing in excitement as they clicked pictures of themselves in white-cloaked Harvard Square. A group of tough-looking young men hung around a street-light, looking not-so-tough as they smiled involuntarily at the previously mentioned trio's shrieks. On the Red Line back to Quincy Adams where my car is parked, I saw the whole spectrum of human expressions play out on my co-passengers' faces as they look out of the glass windows.

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When the heavens open up to let down their payload of water, those bound by the restrictions of gravity do take a moment to look skyward. Satisfied or searching or somewhere in between one may be - but leave it to impartial Nature to give us, now and then, a one-size fits all.

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/01/snow.html ]

Influence

My family nickname I share with a dog. I really do. Satyajit Ray, the legendary film director also translated Herge's Tintin comic book series into Bengali, my native language, during his stint as a magazine editor and he named Tintin's white terrier Kutush (Snowy in English, Milou in the original French). That's what my folks call me at home. Kutush. I once met an aging white pomeranian named Kutush at someone's house. I am sure there might be a lot of Bengali household dogs named Kutush yet I feel un-insulted. Incredibly!

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At this point, readers may be forgiven if they think of me as someone with some serious low self-esteem issues but I assure you that this is not the case. The name Kutush is also indicative of the youngest, which I am in my big group of first cousins, but I never feel burdened by the canine connection. If anyone ever needed proof of how much of a fan of Herge's comics I am, here's my calling card. I share my nickname with the Bengali translated name for Tintin's dog and I don't mind!

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It's next to impossible to have grown up in an urban Bengali family and not know about Tintin. I didn't even grow up in Bengal, have extremely limited acquaintance with Bengali culture despite my parents' sincere efforts and have hilariously inept Bengali reading abilities. Yet the boy reporter of a Belgian comic book series, written in French, then translated into English, the version familiar to me would exert an overpowering influence on me. In fact, I would so far as to say that it would define my life, at least the life I hope to live.

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Mom and Dad used to buy a beautifully drawn and coloured Tintin comic, ostensibly for my elder brother and then play sneaky hide-and-seek games with it to be the first one to finish it. My first memories of 'reading' are those of browsing through the spectacular imagery of my brother's and by default my parents' well binded Tintin collection with my sister, both of us significantly younger than our elder brother. My first knowledge of world geography, history and culture in exotic places like South America and China were through these comics. A lifelong interest in science & technology, travel, and as-yet-beyond-science phenomena like UFOs & yetis were concretized by the various adventures that Tintin and his friends found themselves in.

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I have read them all many times over and at one point had all their plots memorized too. Beautiful mansions, ancient mysteries, fascinating global locations, glamourous vintage cars, ridiculously funny jokes & situations, potent social messages on racism & corruption lived side by side effortlessly on those immersive pages. Even as I go to watch the 'movie' on the big screen today, I am mentally prepared to be disappointed. The only reason I do go to watch is that Steven Spielberg is involved, the person behind the single most memorable childhood movie of my lifetime, "Jurassic Park". Something may just come of it but even if does not, as seems likely, given the impossible standards I'll put the movie up against, it may provide a glimpse, a fleeting glimpse of that adventurous world.

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2011/12/influence.html ]

Denial

There was the slouch and there was the swagger. The open top button of his cricket playing uniform be it Tests or ODIs, the amulet around his neck he let hang out to watch his 'supple wrists' come into play. The TV commentators' repeated use of the words 'soft hands' when he was batting and 'sharp catch' when he was on the field. The all-white helmet he wore and the routine "The boys played really well today..." nature of his post-match presentation talk irrespective of the match's outcome. My first clear memories of watching Indian cricket sometime back in the early 90s didn't feature victory too much. Yet they have staying power as if bound to my psyche with strings of silk.

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Then came that dreadful night of 1996. Why? Why would anyone choose to chase under lights at the Eden Gardens, notorious for being the wrong place to chase runs under the lights? Why in the World Cup semi-final? The whispers grew louder. Psssttt... do you know what happens in the Sharjah matches? Psssttt... did you not wonder why so-and-so played in such-and-such manner? The accusations were horrifying, the crimes were unspeakable. Whether that particular match had any undue influences exerted in its sad result will remain a debate quite irresolveable, rearing its head up even recently but the fact was our way of looking at and investing real emotions in Indian cricket would change forever in the next few years to follow.  

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I refused to believe. No, no. Not him. I thought of the reluctant ease with which the bat was held, almost unwillingly and the casual flash it took to reach the ball. The unlikely angles created when a fullish delivery outside off stump was dispatched to any of the leg-side boundary boards. I remembered the time when, on his favourite ground of the Eden Gardens, Lance Klusener, taken for five consecutive Hyderabadi fours in the first over after lunch, looked flabbergasted. How he walked up to the youngster  immediately after the over to tousle his hair, smiling and offering his commiserations to the beleagured debutant. Once when he didn't catch Curtly Ambrose cleanly in the slips, even though the batsman had walked, he called him back to the batting crease. He the ever cheerful sportsman, a gentleman cricketer, supremely and dominantly competitive in the arcs traced by his bat but never a trace of ugliness in his on-field behaviour.

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Children are creatures of instinct. Swinging conditions or sharp bounce or footwork were fancy terms too much for an immature brain to process. The appreciation of those handling such conditions via technique would come as I grew older. All I understood and appreciated in the beginning was the flair. And that, he had plenty of. Our heroes, sporting and otherwise tend to be put up on high pedestals, especially the ones that drew us in our formative years, aiding the belief that they were not subject to other worldly human flaws. To the unbiased logical mind, the facts of the match-fixing enquiry were clear-cut and so was the decision. But in a place where there should be searing anger, there is only a dull pain and a lasting refusal to accept reality. No, no. Not him.

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2011/12/denial.html ]