Second. Best.

 

Arsenal Manager, Mikel Arteta, on Miracles

Sunday, 19th May, 2024, 16:00 hrs. Indian Standard Time

I am firmly on the spectator side of sports. The physical co-ordination required to direct a bat/ball/racquet like entity while simultaneously twisting/running/jumping has always eluded me. Never particularly angry/frustrated at the player(s) when my chosen player/team fails to win, I know that however poorly they played, they were better than I would have been in the same situation.

Good thing then that I support Arsenal. A North London football club in the Premier League, they seem to float among the elite names of the footballing world without quite making it. In a few hours time, 10 months of an amazing football season by the club is (probably) going to end without a trophy.  Much to the joy of fellow armchair fans of more 'winning-est' clubs, not for the first time. 

Isn't sport, playing or watching, all about winning? A mostly controlled experience of sharpening that competitive edge without slashing around wildly? Looking around, the evidence seems to point in that direction. Unlike me, there are many for whom the primary return from the investment of watching 'their team' on TV is the second-hand joy of their victory or the venting of unfiltered frustrations at their loss.

I make no claims to be completely above such feelings. I cannot recommend losing or mediocrity. At this point, if my total time sunk into watching and cheering for Arsenal were a person, he would be above the legal drinking age of 21 - with only one major season-end occasion for cheer in all that while. I WANT them to win and their success IS my success in that magic mix of marketing, circumstance and choice which professional sport leagues around the world thrive on.

But somewhere tied in with my inability to stitch a series of good passes together is a philosophical acceptance that such is the nature of sport. I feel that sport is a wonderful stand-in for life, where bravery, rising to the occasion and comebacks from the edge of disaster feature frequently but it is important to acknowledge that it is still only a stand-in. While the sportsperson has the additional responsibility of making fans happy or face their judgement in a public arena while in pursuit of personal dreams, being seen and cheered is part of the draw in today's age.

In a near perfect season from August 2023, this young Arsenal team has solidly glided and gritted its way through only to be bettered by the finest of margins by an even better Manchester City team. Arsenal's current manager Mikel Arteta is upbeat and cheerful even now because he knows that in a game where 22 well-trained professionals duel with a sphere, space and gravity, certainties and miracles co-exist. As a distant observer whose only effort is in watching, if the guy in the midst of it all can take it in his stride, so can I.

In real life, the race targets and prizes may vary but we must all run. Sports competitions offer a low(er) consequence re-run of the same. There are rules and limitations aplenty - heroes, villains, fate and redemption. The smoothness of Arsenal's play in the Arsene Wenger years had drawn me in and though the glimpses of genius have been few and far between since, they have been enough for me. As my life and career ran along in parallel streams and eddies, the constant grace of this footballing team gave me a useful alter-ego.

I watch and cheer for this team, drawing on memories of Bergkamp and Henry, sympathizing with Fabregas and Ozil and wishing the best for Saka and Rice with the smile of the art professor Wenger floating all through. In the end, sports offers an infinite sea of stories with their own trajectories. There is no right story or wrong story, only a highly subjective 'your story' where the personal maps with the unscripted nature of the playing arena, projecting meaning and inspiration. In picking Arsenal's story, through all its glorious uncertainties and glimmers of hope, I have picked mine.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2024/05/second-best.html]

Inspirational Horror

 

It is possible to supremely appreciative by looking solely at the scale of what was achieved by Hamida Begum but simultaneously recoil in shock at how it ended. Today's Google Doodle shero has enough to engage both those sentiments [https://doodles.google/doodle/celebrating-hamida-banu/]. All the more reason why it should be featured on the starting screen of many an Indian Internet surfer.

Hamida Begum, a wrestling predecessor to the Phogats and the Maliks, has an incredible story to tell given the times and the society that she grew up in [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65630615]. The accusations of match-fixing reek of the typical attitude of a patriarchal society unable to adjust to the possibility of equal ability, even for a single 'outlier' individual. The reason for her disappearance from the halls of fame is too terrifying not to be true and is best read at the link above without any summarization here. Nothing surprising in what happened because even decades after, such incidents demonstrating deep-set insecurity and malevolent control-seeking when men and women interact continue to feature in the news today.

While it is difficult to be completely celebratory once aware of the full life arc of Hamida Begum, the fact that she existed and is remembered offers some redemption. The journey she set out on may have been cut short brutally but like the proverbial first step of a long long trip, the importance of it cannot be overlooked.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2024/05/inspirational-horror.html]

Countdowns

Countdowns are a useful way to build up tension. Even if it is not a space rocket preparing for launch after years of mathematics and physics nerds adding up numbers. After every Timeout in the Indian Premier League twice every innings, the entire stadium shouts along to the dwindling numbers in expectation of something extraordinary to happen. Usually it is the fall of a wicket with the batsman’s flow, whatever little of it was accomplished in the 6-8 overs before the commercial needs of the sport stepped in, completely destroyed. Ordinary lives need some sprinkling of hope and the reset offered by the beginning or end of a countdown is just that. The anticipation towards the New Year, the official worldwide one, beginning at 12:01 on 1st January is another such event - created more out of denial of boredom than dreams of drastic change.

Getting AI James Joyce to rewrite the same:

Countdowns, my dear reader, those ephemeral markers in the grand tapestry of existence, weave their silent magic. Not merely for the celestial behemoths—those rockets, their fiery trajectories etched by the ink of equations and the fervor of physicists. No, no! Even within the amphitheater of cricket, where the crowd’s roar mingles with the dwindling numerals, a drama unfolds. The batsman, that fleeting maestro of willow and leather, dances upon the precipice. His rhythm, painstakingly spun over six to eight overs, shatters like glass against the commercial tide. Ordinary lives, oh how they yearn! They crave the sprinkle of hope, the reset button pressed at the cusp of beginnings or the brink of endings. And behold, the global New Year, its arrival marked at 12:01 on the first day of January, emerges not from grandiose dreams but from the quiet rebellion against monotony.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2024/04/countdowns.html]

Anda-Curry and Silent Killers

23-Jun-2023, Friday

The crowd gathered at the corner of Lane No. 4 and 5 was an indication that something was afoot. On my way to my anda-curry dinner, it was a situation I would have usually ignored but my neighbour indicated that the hullabaloo was about a snake. The recent rains, the first of the monsoon, meant that it would be the pretty and non-venomous checkered keelback that had the public's attention. Except that it wasn't.

The alternating stripes of black and white curled behind a tile meant that it was the common krait that I was seeing. Considered to be one of the most dangerous snakes in the country, here was a venomous celebrity that I was seeing for the first time in my life. Giving it the minute of appropriate awe, I made a call in the experts. As luck would have it, one of them was at the gym and the other in the shower. Third time lucky, I got through and brought Bittupan in.

The sacks of capture were porous and the sticks of restraint makeshift but the operation of making the snake reconsider its secure position behind the tile and the hedge began. It almost led to disaster for Coco chained to the gate as the reptile made a lunge in his direction, to escape from us it must be added. To my surprise, I lunged towards it with my stick and pinned its head down. The needed reaction of making the snake reverse direction was achieved but in retrospect, it was rather amateur of me to do that. No doubt that it was fuelled by my concern for the chained dog but it was not backed by any actual expertise in handling snakes, let alone venomous ones.

I survived the attempt and the snake found the sack. Put into another sack, it was finally secure from us and us secure from its painless fatal bite. In the darkness of the forest, we opened the sacks again and watched as the creature emerged stunned, shocked by the short journey from our society enclosed in aataa packet and a gunny sack. A few groggy seconds later, it glided away towards the security of the trees for another night of hunting, saved on this instance from violent retribution for just being a snake. On my part, anda-curry at the mess tasted notably of achievement, if only temporarily.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2024/04/anda-curry-and-silent-killers.html]

Of 'Maus' and Men

 

If ever in doubt about how serious a graphic novel can be, pick up a copy of Art Spiegelman's "The Complete Maus". There have been many other visual creations which had much more profanity, violence and explicit acts (so-called adult content) and there will be many more such but none will be able to match the desperate darkness of this straightforwardly told tale of mice, pigs and cats. If the thought of reading yet another Holocaust story induces eye-rolls, still give it a thought because this portrayal of its madness is unlike anything else.

To begin with, there is the author Art Spiegelman's personal trauma borne out of his father's strangeness. In a happy place in a happy time far away from the events, years and lands that scarred his father, it is difficult to comprehend the experiences that made him this way. Not being able to do so renders a distance between father and son which is a different kind of torture and perpetuation of sadness. Even as his father delves into the horrors of his memories, the son's sympathy for him is tempered with the practical realities of handling his Dad's insufferable behavioural quirks. The son understands (now) where they are coming from, that still does not make them easy to put up with.

That by itself is the genius of "Maus". It humanizes through allegories of animals, bats for understanding despite tremendous imperfections of the victim(s) and perpetrator(s). It tells of how easy it is to be manipulated to hate and how we understand this periodically only to forget it once again. Experiences of the desperation to survive whilst ensuring the same for those closest to you and the terror of failing to do so in the face of industrialized in-humaneness would have been too much to take if not told in the form of a 'comic book'. It offers the reader a thin veneer of a story of fantastical talking animals to hang on to, all the while knowing that the skeletons underneath are cold hard facts. Even so, "Maus" is not for the faint-hearted.

Wars burn throughout the globe again - Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Iran-Pakistan to name a few. A rising crescendo of identity politics based on race, ancestry, geography and/or religion encircles it with determination and speed. Innumerable are the number of occasions where history has shown the inevitable failures and tragedies that this leads to. Yet the illusion that all the ills of "I/we" can be blamed by fixing "You/them" continues to sell like hot cakes. In any circumstances, "Maus" is not a joyful read but always a necessary one.

[https://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2024/01/of-maus-and-men.html]