India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation (16 page)

Taking it between finger and thumb, he sits back down in front of me and addresses a short monologue to the stark portrait: ‘My mother, I love her so much. I used to sleep in the same bed as her until I was thirteen years old. Every week, we speak on the phone. Each time she is asking me when I come. I say “soon”, “one month”, “two months”. My sister, she has marriage recently. I couldn’t go there. My sister says me, “when come, when come, when come.” I tell her one month. I have two sisters and two brothers. I am the last.’

He rights himself and mournfully returns the photo to its original position, as if laying a private keepsake at the side of his mother’s tomb. Beside the snapshot stands a school notebook. A picture of the monkey god Hanuman adorns the front, majestic with his golden mace and android features. Naval looks at the book, thinks to himself for a second and then removes it from the shelf.

‘Would you like to hear my poem?’ he asks, the suggestion of a smile brightening his tear-ravaged face.

‘Very much,’ I respond, anxious to pursue any avenue that might provide him some cheer.

He sits and opens the pages of the wide-lined children’s notebook. The poem occupies the first page. Several lines are
blackened out with scribbles. He coughs to clear his throat. I take out my Dictaphone. ‘Would you mind?’ Of course not, he replies. He takes the machine and, in a halting voice still stifled by tears, reads out the following verse:

I am hungry from many days but my dream is too much completeful.

I am shorrow but my dream is very pleaser (‘happy, you know, pleaser’).

I am slaver (‘I am slaver, slaver, you know’), but my dream is free like bird.

I am gayle [jail] but my dream is flying in the sky.

I am live in hell, but my dream live in heaven.

I said to dream, what are doing?

Dream tell me, ‘I am right and you are wrong.

‘Don’t fear my dear, you have God.

‘Don’t fear. You are good winner. You are good winner.’

I am good winner.

I take the Dictaphone from his clenched hand and press the ‘stop’ button. It seems a natural point for us to part. I wish him every success and promise to keep his poem on record. It will be worth something when he’s famous, I assure him. He responds to the thought with a credulous grin.

Over the following months, I often find myself thinking what happened to Naval. Is he still in the Projects? Has he landed himself a job? Should I have done more to help him? When I least expect it – sitting on a bus in traffic, waiting for an elevator, watching the talented and talentless fight it out on Fame Gurukul – the last line of this poem comes back to me. ‘I am good winner.’ The words haunt me for reasons I cannot quite understand. Long after they’ve gone, I still feel an unease in my gut. It’s akin to dread, as if I’m the sole insider to a disaster foretold.

Then one day in November (a Tuesday), a short message pops up in my inbox. It’s from Naval. I don’t know how he came to
have my email address. I don’t remember giving it to him. Google perhaps? Anyway, he has news to share.

HI nice and good journlist mr. oliver ji , namste . perhaps u forgetted me .but i cant . your work.i most like it.dear oliver i am working as assistent in new serial.a new chanel hom tv .i am workig free.than u

Working free. It’s not much, but it’s a start. Naval’s script is unfolding. Who knows where it might lead? The Mizapur School of Acting stands an inch closer to reality. Thank God. And Ram, Jesus and Krishna too.

Indian cinema offers The Common Man an opportunity to be transported to another place, a place free of drudgery, a place full of life, love and song. The audience knows what they are watching is a fiction, yet that matters little. Aspirations require the boundaries of truth to be stretched occasionally. The fantastical is a gateway to the possible. Not so with cricket, though. At the crease, dreams are counted in wickets and boundaries. Physical realities, matters of life and death.

The elderly ice-cream seller reaches for the rail to steady himself as Brabourne Stadium erupts around him. Sanath Jayasuriya, the Master Blaster from Sri Lanka, has been given the ball for the seventeenth over. The crowd screams. Horns blast. Whistles shriek. Hands clap. Drums beat. The din is saturating, a cacophonous flood of noise crashing and raging like a storm at sea.

The authorised vendor is the only person with his back to the cricket pitch. Spectators bustle around him, inadvertently pushing and nudging him. He seems not to care. Trade is good. The evening is warm and the Mumbai Indian fans are feeling jubilant and flush. He pulls the Kwality Walls ice-box down from his head and rests it in the aisle of the raised stand.

The man beside me cups his hand and yells an order. ‘Three Cornettos.’ It’s no good. We’re sat mid-row. His request is lost, swallowed up by the clamour. Resolving that the ice cream is worth the fight, he leaves his seat and enters the scrum of spectators. I watch him struggle through. He treads on toes, trips on bags, blocks the view. No one scowls. The crowd is too elated. Life is too sweet. The Indian Premier League, the IPL, is back. The magic of cricket is upon us.

Jayasuriya is pacing back for his second ball, his first having
been driven towards mid-off by the determined Paras Dogra for a single. The huge scoreboard to the right of the main pavilion reveals the runs required.

58 RUNS, 23 BALLS

Batting first, the home team of Mumbai Indians scored an aggressive total of 212. Jaipur-based Rajasthan Royals, who won the inaugural IPL tournament in 2008, are giving chase admirably. Time is against them, however. Of their twenty overs, fewer than four remain.

Jayasuriya begins another run-up towards the wicket. He bowls a full toss, which is top-edged towards a fielder at long-off. The batsmen run quickly between the wickets, collecting a single.

Rajasthan Royals desperately need boundaries. Fortunately for them, burly Yusuf Pathan is still at the crease. The big hitter from Gujarat is on song. Eighty-three runs off thirty-four deliveries so far. It’s a slogfest for the broad-shouldered Test player; precisely the kind of combative, untamed performance for which the IPL was invented.

‘Come on, Mumbai Indianssss!!!!’

The tannoy screeches into life. The snippet of a popular Hindi soundtrack booms across the field. Over the loudspeaker system, the game’s over-excited compère begins a countdown.

‘Five, four, three, two, one . . .’

The words are mirrored in numerical form on the big screen. Jutting exclamation marks accompany each number. The sound and shape of Zero sends twenty thousand sets of arms thrusting into the air. The crazed screech of ‘In-di-anssss’ courses across the city.

This is entertainment in the raw, exhilarating and unencumbered. I sit in my seat, ears ringing, enjoying the ride.

The batsman on strike drives the ball to mid-on. A fielder collects it cleanly. Another single for the Royals.

Outside, the crimson sun is sinking into the Arabian Sea. Beautiful, broad brushstrokes of mottled purple light up the wispy evening clouds, which swirl and sway like feathered petals in a field of lavender. Nature’s visual evensong is wasted on us. Pressed close in the cavernous hold of the stadium oval embrace, all eyes are focused forward, not up. Never once do they waver from the rectangular stretch of buzz-cut grass, twenty-two yards in length and bathed in the stark white of the floodlights.

The bald head of Jayasuriya bobs towards the stumps. Pathan lifts his bat in anticipation. Another full toss. Dispatched back over the bowler’s head. The ball scorches through the illuminated night sky, re-entering orbit well over the ropes.

SIX!! SIX!!

A band of musicians, elegantly attired in long-trained turbans and starch-white kurtas, jump to their feet and thrash out a tune from beside the boundary rope. The celebrations are universal. The IPL is too young to have built up strong fan allegiances. There are no grudge-ridden derby games as yet. Pathan is first and foremost an Indian hero. Rajasthanis and Mumbaikers join in applauding him.

Next ball. Pathan swipes. Edge. Scuttles off behind to the boundary for four. More uproar in the stands. The next. Full toss. No mercy from Pathan, The Beast, The Lethal Weapon, The Steeler. Up over long-on.

SIX RUNS!! SIX RUNS!!

The consecutive boundary brings his hundred up, the fastest century (off thirty-seven balls) in IPL history.

The entertainment machine shifts immediately into action. Music. Fog horns. 100!!!! in gigantic font, yelling from the screen. TV footage of Pathan close up, helmet off, bat aloft, saluting the crowd. He’s a modern-day gladiator, clad in his armour of pads and encircled by a squadron of vanquished fielders.

A commotion follows, off to the left. Wolf whistles and clamouring. Balanced on a small stage, right in front of the cheap seats, three cheerleaders are launching into an energetic routine. Pompoms thrust. Hips wiggle. Legs kick. Men everywhere are screaming and stomping their feet.

At the scoring of every boundary, the fall of every wicket and the end of every over, the foreign girls flaunt and the Indian audience froths. It’s a perverse rehearsal for an impossible tryst. Even so, introducing fair-skinned blondes
in skimpy outfits to the game of cricket is marketing genius. It triggers all the right buttons for your average red-blooded, sofa-sitting Indian sports viewer.

Naturally, Old India took immediate umbrage. Calls quickly came for the gyrating cheerleaders to be banned. ‘It goes against our culture.’ ‘It will corrupt our children.’ As long as the ratings rocket, however, the girls will stay.

Sexing up cricket is what the IPL is all about. The organisers – a for-profit consortium headed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India – have employed every trick in the book to turn their six-week tournament into one of the most watched sporting events on the planet. Over twenty million households tuned in to watch the opening game of this series. Shopping malls register a twenty per cent drop in footfall on match days. Nor is the appeal just in India. IPL games play out to huge prime-time audiences in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Further afield, millions tune in via satellite. This year, Google is even streaming matches on YouTube.

At the core of the IPL’s appeal is the game’s revamped format. The new league strips the game down to its essentials and repackages it for the mass-market. In a sport in which matches can last for days, the IPL squeezes everything into an evening’s viewing. Keeping the games short means more action, faster runs and closer finishes – perfect TV fodder.

Viewers love it. So too do advertisers. The IPL can count nearly one hundred corporate sponsorships, most of which run into millions of dollars. As for the broadcasting rights, they were snapped up by Sony. The ten-year deal cost the Japanese firm a cool $1.93 billion.

The team owners themselves are not blind to the IPL’s promotional potential. Film actors are first in line. B-Town celebrity Shah Rukh Khan never misses an opportunity to be photographed in the colours of the Kolkata Knight Riders, a team he part-owns. Likewise, C-list actress Shilpa Shetty – whose career rebounded after the
Big Brother
race row – uses her stake in the Rajasthan Royals to keep herself in the spotlight.

Back in the stadium, the ball disappears into the crowd over mid-off as Dogra belts right-armer Rajagopal Santish for six. It’s a stinging riposte to the dismissal of Pathan, unluckily run out a few balls earlier.

The umpire, whose shirt and broad-brimmed hat are plastered with the injunction to ‘Fly Kingfisher’ (part of a $23 million tie-in with the airline), points two fingers to the darkening sky. The camera hones in on the batsman. He too is a walking billboard. The cement brand ‘Ultratech’ splays across his chest, while analgesic pain ointment (and Rajasthan Royals’ ‘Official Fitness Partner’) Moov covers his top pocket. The rest of his outfit is similarly bedecked. Puma owns his trousers, HDFC his back and Kingfisher his arms.

19 RUNS, 12 BALLS

Rajasthan Royals are back in the game.

The diminutive figure of Sachin Tendulkar, India’s undisputed King of Cricket, stands idly in the covers. Everyone loves Tendulkar. His name is stitched onto the back of every Mumbai Indians shirt. A teenage prodigy with the bat, Tendulkar’s illustrious international career spans two decades. No one in the history of the game has scored more runs either in Test cricket or the sport’s one-day format. He’s a living legend, as close as any human can come to being an incarnate deity. ‘Cricket is my religion’, many Indian fans will even say, ‘and Sachin is my God.’

The IPL has not let his fame go to waste. He is one of five players to be accredited with ‘icon’ status. In the inaugural auction, securing his services cost Mumbai Indians twenty-five per cent more than any other player. The thirty-six-year-old veteran would not let his employer down. In this, the IPL’s third season, the home-grown Mumbaiker would go on to score 618 runs in fourteen innings – more than any other player before or since. He went on to win the season’s award for Best Batsman and Best Captain.

For decades, it was the glory of the game that lit the desire in every young boy’s heart to one day become a cricketer. Names like Azharuddin, Dravid, Gavaskar, Laxman, Hazare and Mankad
draw a smile wherever you go in India. These are the men who, with bat or ball, stuck one in the eye of the English or smote the Pakistanis in Lahore. To mention them is to demonstrate goodwill, to open a conversation, to cross a barrier.

In the public mind, India’s cricket stars compare with the pin-up paladins of Bollywood. When the legendry Sourav Ganguly was dropped as the national captain, riots broke out in his home city of Kolkata. Politicians would have to reach deep into their pockets for such a show of popular support. Cricketers’ motives are perceived as purer, their hearts more patriotic. ‘A Proud Indian’ reads Tendulkar’s strapline on Twitter. No political leader could write that and be taken seriously.

However, when youngsters look at their cricketing heroes today, they see something other than glory. They see money, bucketloads of it. The IPL has turned India’s top-flight cricketers from quasi-amateurs into business professionals. In the inaugural auction, mouths dropped when Chennai Super Kings parted with one and a half million dollars for Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. On a pro rata basis, colossal salaries such as these make the IPL the most lucrative league in the world after America’s National Basketball Association.

Little wonder then that foreign players have come sniffing. England’s Kevin Pietersen, Australia’s Adam Gilchrist and Graeme Smith of South Africa are among some of the world-class cricketers whose bank balances have grown prodigiously thanks to the IPL. Even the incredible – though very much retired – West Indian batsman Brian Lara tried brushing down his pads to win a piece of the IPL pie.

‘Say Malinga, Mummm-baiiiii!!’ The compère’s booming voice is back, zapping the audience with a verbal cattle prod.

We’re down to the last over. Not a single spectator remains seated. Not a mouth stays closed. The two Royals batsmen confer in the middle of the pitch. Then they punch fists and walk nervously back to their respective ends. Sri Lankan Lasith Malinga, brushing back his dyed, curly lion’s mane, rocks on his heels.

12 RUNS, 6 BALLS

Malinga the Slinga prepares to bowl. First ball. A classic yorker. The batsman, desperately digging it out from under his toes. The ball, squirting forward, not far enough. Dogra, sprinting from the other end. Malinga, out ahead. The bowler bending, scooping, diving, throwing. The bails, flying off. Dogra, lunging. Too late. Malinga, spread-eagled, thumbs pointing up. The umpire, finger raised.

OUT! RUN OUT!

Pandemonium ensues. Spectators dance and shout, jump and twist, scream and holler. Pounding music pumps, manna to the mayhem. Even the stand itself is celebrating, its metal struts reverberating to the thunder of a thousand thumping feet.

The new batsman walks out to the centre, whirling his bat like the sail of a windmill.

12 RUNS, 5 BALLS

Amit ‘Mitu’ Uniyal takes his mark, assesses the field, watches Malinga running in, raises his bat, prepares to strike and . . . OUT! The ball careers off his inside edge and clatters into the stumps. The middle stump catapults out of its moorings, pitching through the air in graceful, luckless cartwheels.

Australia’s Shane Warne enters the throng. Hostile jeers rain down on the Royals’ player-coach. He strides towards the wicket, acting impervious.

12 RUNS, 4 BALLS

He scrapes over Uniyal’s freshly made mark with a gravedigger’s detachment for the dead. Malinga steamrollers in, arm crooked, gold chain glinting. A blistering ball. Warne manages to get bat on ball. The fielder at square leg is on to it like a shot. The batsmen try returning for a second, but are forced to settle for a single.

‘Ma-lin-ga! Ma-lin-ga! Ma-lin-ga!’ The bowler’s name resounds around the ground, a war cry in all but name.

11 RUNS, 3 BALLS

The ball is driven through mid-on. The batsmen scamper for two. The fielder throws. The bails come off. ‘Howzat?!’ The home team screams for a run-out. Over to the third umpire. A pause.
Suspense. The big screen flits to the cheerleaders, then to the dug-out, then to Shilpa Shetty, then to a Royals supporter yanking at her hair. The verdict flashes up.

NOT OUT

A reprieve.

9 RUNS, 2 BALLS

Malinga bowls. Down leg side it darts. A wide, bringing an extra run. The crowd is chanting, champing, choking the game of its final fix. Malinga the Slinga bowls again. He’s hit into the covers. The batsmen gallop down the pitch, adding a further one, then two, to the score.

The tannoy bursts into life. ‘Six runs to win!’ Any pretence of non-partisanship on the compère’s part is long gone. ‘Mumbai winning!!’ A bugle fanfare sounds. From the terraces, ‘Ma-lin-ga! Malinga!’ The last play of the dice, the final volt in the charger. ‘Ma-lin-ga! Malinga!’ Again and again, the cry goes up – five, ten, twenty times. The stadium shudders and sparks, racing its way towards a final crescendo.