i in CAPITALS Please

I refuse to apologise for lethargies these days. As in earlier days, writers had poetic license for anything amusingly imaginative. For people like me, the ready reckoner easily these days seem to be, “well I was saving my job, my writing anyways doesn’t bring me any bread.” So here I am again at my office desk with my masquerading cap on, trying to bring about that air of working hard, when I seriously seemed to think, about time that I write again. Thoughts of writing about my exchanges with my consultant friend floated mid air and as I tried plucking them most of them just disappeared, pat!

And then I suddenly seemed to feel, why do I always turn to him for all kinds of inspirations in whatever I write. The fact that I may lean on his existence too much for inspiration, might create that air of dubiousness in those wistful readers (well I like to imagine that there are really some) who might think, “Does he really exist?” (much to his chagrin, but that’s not of much relevance). The second point might be his own life, conversations; people around him are more participative and inspirational in nature, to which I run the risk that the paltry set of readers which I like to imagine that I have, would turn into trinklets by the snap of a finger, should my friend start writing on his own (although I agree that plates of nachos strictly without cheese, this is surely the un-Punju effect coming and that is definitely another story, and couple of pitchers a week, might help dissuade).

To which I seemed to zero in on the real inference. Munching on Bingo and watching on the television set a character being carried out on two shoulders out of a platform, green and serene. The character perched on the shoulders of two delinquents handpicked by his own self, waving to the maddening millions, as calm as ever – as we tried to find the past, present and the future juxtapose in a physical and metaphorical sense. The character – Saurav Ganguly and at the cost of sounding cliché, India’s most successful cricket captain, the agent of metamorphosis from Indian team to Team India, a melee of contrasts – Dada and Maharaja, but the point of concern in what I write today, a Bengali heart and mind at work?

The last question mark seems to emphasize the frenzy behind one character and the why. Let me sum my confusions and the bouquet of emotions that generally surround Ganguly and the reason why it remains quixotic for me:

Sympathy: Hard to fathom why. I do not doubt the fact that he has remained an element of scrutiny, unceremoniously and at times may be unfairly sidelined, but he is not the only one. In fact the comic theme does not seem to fade away when a certain Greg seems to claim that he wants to remain captain for the lucre and the gliteratti. (My friend had commented, that had Greg seen his net worth statement – one of the largest Asian printing press, a colossal catering service, a copious ancestral property in Kolkata, one of the trendiest restaurant, a resplendant fleet of cars – he could well have said, sir would you mind a majority stake in my cricket academy?)

Confidence: A turn around character who has supreme confidence in his abilities and those of the people he backs. But again is he the only confident character to have trodden a cricket field? There have been others and loads of them. A broken jawed performance from Kumble, a sand storm at Sharjah from Sachin are legends of folklore but there have been blitzkriegs like Kambli with back to back double centuries against England or of Pravin Amre or Subroto Banerjee, Hirwani etc etc

Galvanising and transformation agent: The benefit of the doubt here can be given to him since he took charge at a time when Indian cricket was really growing through a gruesome time. Days after we saw Kapil Dev weeping on Hard Talk came a new skipper like a roll of dice who if succeeds is good for cricket and if does not is good fodder. In such a scenario I, at least feel that you could ascribe him to be plain lucky, that he did succeed, lucky that his own compatriots were in pinnacle form, lucky that he just chanced to be at the right time, at the right place for the right job, fortuitous in the people he backed as flickers turned to flames.

The fact that he was audacious enough to have kept the great Waugh waiting at the toss could well be credits for the chef serving dinner, the previous night or that he did show off his bare torso at the havens of modern cricket could well have been a topic of much mirth had there not been a moderate contribution of 60 in that historic chase and a initiation to the momentum.

During the days he reached the echelons of leadership, his form seemed to wane away in a slow degenerative process and he really had to devise new ways of arithmetic to rationalize his position in the team.

All this seldom really seemed to be convincing enough to be what Ganguly really came to be signified as. But the fervor involving the Bengali diaspora for Ganguly seemed to be stemmed in something else. The emergence seemed to be the infusion of a new dimension of character in the stereotyped Bengali image to the world. In that regard my problems and the problems of people where I come from seems to be so akin, a problem of crisis in identity. In most circuits, Bengalis have been famed to be aesthetic but spineless people. Reminscent of the fact, say we take Rabindranath Tagore, someone whom we famously quote at all points of time, in all wakes of life – from births, funerals, thread ceremonies, weddings, political meets, bandhs, traffic signals, theaters in an omnivalent presence, more owing to the lack of anything else, who showed ‘spirit’ to stand up and decline the knighthood in the wake of the Jalianwallabagh killings and whose very own Nobel medallion could well be in the picturesque adornments of some rich or wealthy in far flung Texas. So much for Bengali grit, might and spirit.

Here is where Ganguly added a dimension, a point that well doormats do bite at times, if you do not read the handle with care tag on its packet well enough. He helped present to the world a changing face from melancholy to exuberance, bucolic, pent up anger to venting jingoism, muted pride to sworn honor and that too aloud. And although he had his limitations, he created that magical stimulus to be contagious to people around him who learned to give back as much they had got and hence although he awkwardly ducked to bouncers, handpicked protégés continued to squat such bouncers at over 150 kphs effortlessly over point for six. And when oppositions bamboozled his own colleagues with their web of wily spin, he would step up and hoist them way over long on, just to drive home the point – well this is my territory, so don’t you dare mess with us, US being the operative word.

In times to come, Ganguly, I hope bring back a vernal way of thinking, a way that Bengalis are not supposed to be, not crude but unaesthetic, not belligerently rebellious but uncalm and unsatiated, not awkwardly forcive but un-Coffee House intellectual, not blatantly capitalistic but un-red and to syrup the same a condiments of huge pride in whatever WE, collectively do and a simulation of competition within yourself which in the words of the legendary Lion King would be slimy yet satisfying, in the context of the existing bias in Indian cricket, along with a profound reliance in each other's abilities.

Ganguly is not just cricket, it is about an alternative way of Bengali thinking and living, like clearing a bush in the neighborhood just to show that there’s another way. Ironical is the fact that he came at a time when Bengal was more mired under the parochialism of inter-neighborhood mediocrities in football and jerked the nation and at first requested and then kicked them to believe in themselves.

As he quietened into the mellow curtains of retirement and cradles of wealth, he just seemed to point that aliter to the Bengali way of life there are two more. Be a Maharaja by fortune or show some dadagiri on your own!