A GUTSY ALL ROUNDER

Jyothiprasad: A Game Changer

By V Ramnarayan

At  25, I was already a veteran of many league seasons, when I first met P Jyothiprasad, a talented teenage all rounder fresh from his successes as an Indian Schoolboys player.  He and MV Narasimha Rao were inseparable those days, both very agile and fit, always full of fun and laughter. It was a case of instant friendship between Joe—as many of us called Jyothi—and me despite the age difference. I found in him a kindred spirit, someone who approached the game with a wholeheartedness that appealed to me as did his unmistakable talent. Bobjee or Narasimha Rao, Vijay Paul, Joe, Dileep Reddy and Hafeez were among the dozen or so players Andhra Bank recruited in the early 1970s to build a strong side that could rock the leading teams of the day like State Bank of India and State Bank of Hyderabad. Other inclusions like Meher Baba, H Ramprasad and Mujtaba Ali Baig added further strength to the eager young team ready to take on the world.

Jyothi used to bowl sometimes in the SBI nets before the Andhra Bank team was formed. I think he actually played a couple of games for us in anticipation of joining SBI, but my memory may be playing tricks here. I found him a naggingly accurate bowler of a sharp medium pace, very nippy off the wicket, and tending to bowl a wicked incutter on a stump line. He had a square, chest-on action in the early days, an action which he gradually modified to be more side on, developing an outswinger for variation as he grew in experience. Rarely could a batsman take liberties with the young Jyothiprasad, and boundaries came mostly off the edge of the bat. He was a brilliant fielder anywhere, with a superb pick and throw, but in time came to specialise in the position of forward short leg. He was in the Eknath Solkar class in that position. I owe many of my wickets, first for Hyderabad, and later for Andhra Bank as well, after I joined them, to Joe’s fearless catching at bat-pad. He stood slightly deep at short leg, preferring to watch the ball all the way and dive forward or sideways, but almost always going for the two-handed catch, with his palms cupping the ball securely from below. Rarely did he miss a catch. He ran out batsmen with a flick of his wrist when they left the crease in defence or attempted attack, and the ball went to him at short leg. An outstanding effort of his was the run out of Rahul Mankad on his Bombay debut when the young man stepped out to the very first ball he faced. It would have been a shattering debut for the young man had he not made a half century in the second innings.

And what a swashbuckling batsman Joe was! His defence was sound, based on a solid technique, but when he hit a ball, it stayed hit. He was also a very good judge of a single. His intent was always positive, no matter what the situation. He was an original lateral thinker, never afraid to disperse a field crowding him menacingly. He once gave me a startlingly simple explanation of his habit of launching a flurry of daring strokes at the start of his innings and then settling down to a more sedate pace. “The outfield is wide open when the close-in cordon is breathing down my neck,” he said. “Even if I mistime a shot or two there’s no one out there to take catches. Once the field is spread out is the time to settle down to picking singles and twos.” An example of the success of this tactic was a spectacular 50 he made against Bengal with Hyderabad in a spot of bother with a rampaging Dilip Doshi threatening to run through our side.

As a tailender, I found it a pleasure to join Joe at the crease. He was quite expert at steering the innings to safety in the company of nine, ten and jack. I was lucky to be involved in a few useful if not substantial partnerships with him. He placed a lot of confidence in you by giving you the strike without overdoing the business of farming it. One particular match I remember in this regard was the final of the Ghulam Ali Trophy at the Osmania ground between Andhra Bank and Syndicate Bank which ended in a tie. It was one of the last matches I played for the bank, and though I took 13 wickets in the match, my partnerships with Joe—who was of course the senior partner—in both innings gave me just as much satisfaction. After that memorable game, both teams landed at my place for a wonderful celebration.

This was around the time Jyothi was making strenuous efforts to regain some of his lost form, the result of a brief period of indifference on his part. Soon afterwards, Joe was dropped from the Hyderabad team along with Vijay Paul, a most unfair exclusion in each case. Both of them staged spectacular comebacks afterwards, serving the team with distinction for a few more seasons. I had left Hyderabad by then, but I watched Joe’s performances with great pleasure from afar.

Joe is a true friend. When I quit State Bank and applied for a senior position in Andhra Bank, I was in an unhappy situation, and mentioned my interest in the position to Joe, who spoke to the late Mr CS Sham Lal, the senior officer overseeing cricket matters there. That intervention certainly played a role in my appointment.

Jyothiprasad was a champion all rounder. I always felt he was India material, at least in the shorter format. He once dropped Sunil Gavaskar on the first ball of a Duleep Trophy match off his own bowling. It was a hard return catch, but who knows how Jyothi’s career might have changed had he held on to that catch (as he so often did)? In today’s scenario, he would have certainly flourished in two if not all formats of the game. It was a pleasure to be his teammate.

OFF SPINNERS: THE FOOT SOLDIERS OF CRICKET

The Southern Flavour

By V Ramnarayan

“Freaking off spinners!” the great Ceylonese cricketer FC de Saram dismissed my whole tribe with a single contemptuous wave of his hand when British journalist and off spinner Robin Marlar interviewed him some 45 years ago. True de Saram was known to be a destroyer of right arm finger spin, but I see a semblance of truth in his scurrilous comment, for I am convinced we are the foot soldiers of cricket, easy meat for right handed batsmen, without even the redeeming pace bowler’s recourse to hurling bouncers when the batsman punishes us, though some of us have tried it without success on rare occasions. . Fingers, hands, arms, legs, trunk and heart and mind have to function in perfect coordination for us to be able to fight the odds stacked against us. Success when it comes, especially on placid tracks, with all these elements of the trade coming together, is sweet music indeed. And on turning tracks or dustbowls, the finger spinner can indeed be king

There are match winners among off spinners on the world stage. I speak, not of them, but of lesser mortals. When my friend N Jagannath Das recently asked me to evaluate some of my peers and seniors who bowled off spin for Hyderabad, I did try to do a sincere job of it, but I have had some time since to ponder the question, and now attempt to present my thoughts on some of the best in the field I have known from the southern states. I am keeping Test and ODI bowlers out of the scope of my survey.

Hailing from Madras, I naturally grew up playing and watching cricket there. The first off-spinner to make an impression on my young mind was R Chandrasekaran, now in his 81^st year. I watched him bowl for the strong State Bank of India team in the Madras league. He was a tall, athletic figure on the field, imparting sharp spin with his big fingers, easy runup and nice side-on delivery action.  He could bat well, too, once scoring 176 in an SBI inter-circle match vs. Bombay Circle, as good as a first class hundred. Chandru comes from a sporting family. His elder brother Nagarajan was a left hand batsman of merit, and younger brother Prabhakar, my classmate in school, was a brilliant all rounder whose heroic display with bat and ball took Madras close to victory over Bombay in a Ranji Trophy final. Another brother, Mohan, was a football goalkeeper for the state. With, first, skipper AG Kripal Singh, and after him, S Venkataraghavan, dominating the scene, Chandru’s chances at a first class career grew dim. His SBI teammate R Raghavan was an all rounder who bowled effective off spin, too. 

During the period I was trying to make my mark for Presidency College, K Ganapathi of Vivekananda College was perhaps the best off spinner in the inter-collegiate circuit, besides being a more than useful opening batsman, compact and correct in all he did. It was he who had kept me out of the Viveka team the previous year, and it gave me great pleasure to combine with leg spinner PS Ramesh to bowl Vivekananda out for 121 when we met on the Marina ground at the start of the 1964-65 season. We lost the match by one run, and I think Ganapathi did some damage to our innings. He might have succeeded in first class cricket, but there was no room for him in the Madras state team where Test bowlers VV Kumar and S Venkataraghavan were firmly established. Another high quality off spinner came along a few years later in N Bharathan, who had all the attributes of a genuine spinner—flight, turn and the ability to deceive the batsman in the air and off the wicket. For AC College of Technology and Madras University (not to mention YMA and SPIC in the TNCA league), he was a champion performer with both ball and bat. He played a key role in Madras University’s maiden triumph in the Rohinton Baria trophy in 1970-71. At the under-25 and university level, I remember at least one hundred by him, and a couple of big partnerships he had with that fine batsman PR Ramakrishnan. I rate Bharathan as the best of my tribe of bowlers to emerge in the 1970s. My contemporary P Vijayaraghavan of Salem was another fine off spinner born in the wrong era: of spin bowling riches in this part of the world. Because of my absurd longevity in the game at the competitive TNCA league level, I came to rub shoulders with a few excellent off spinners, in fact, bowling along with Test bowlers M Venkataramana and Aashish Kapoor eventhough I was old enough to be their father. J Randas, like Ramana a Madurai lad, came into the Alwarpet CC the season I quit. A tall, willowy young man with a natural action that did not allow him to bowl a bad ball even if he tried to, Ramdas was also a quality opening batsman, who pulled his weight in the star-studded Jolly Rovers side for many years after he transited from serious cricketer to  finance professional holding a key position in the private sector. In his youth, Ram had the distinction of leading India U-19 to victory over Pakistan U-19 in Pakistan. It was India's first win over Pakistan. 

An off spinner batsmen feared during the 1960s and 70s, especially on matting wickets, was K Bhavanna of Andhra who once had the star studded Hyderabad batting line-up literally on the mat, his prize scalps including those of Jaisimha and Pataudi, if memory serves me right. He delivered the ball from considerable height, obtaining steep bounce, and often hitting batsmen on the knuckles at a sharp pace.

Just as in Tamil Nadu, I am sure the presence of great bowlers like Prasanna and Chandrasekhar in the state team must have blocked the progress of other spinners in Karnataka. MR Sridhar was a competent off spinner who could also bat, and I have heard good things about N Sadashivan as an off spinner-batsman in the 1960s. Much later, Prasannasimha Rao made an impressive debut for Karnataka in the absence of Prasanna, away on an overseas tour, but faded away soon afterwards. At least two off spinners with dubious bowling actions won matches for Karnataka during my period. I think both were noballed by umpires who were empowered to do so then. Karnataka’s shrewd captain Brijesh Patel simply made the bowlers change ends when that happened, and the square leg umpire at the other end would not call, just as Brijesh must have hoped for. This ploy however did not work with umpire Piloo Reporter who never flinched from no-balling a bowler for chucking even from his position as straight umpire. Kamal Tandon was perhaps the outstanding Karnataka off spinner of the 1980s.

The leading off spinner in Hyderabad when I landed there in 1971 was Noshir Mehta, with an impressive track record in the Ranji Trophy. Tall and athletic, Noshir was in the classical mould, and won the respect of batsmen everywhere. He had everything going for him, nice flight, appreciable turn, and a good drifter away from the right hander. He was also a capable bat lower down, and a good fielder. In any other era, he would have probably played for India. As it was, he hardly got into the zone side. Among my juniors, Shivlal Yadav and Arshad Ayub played for India. A young off spinner who impressed one and all in the late 1970s was little Ananta Vatsalya who tended to draw comparisons with Prasanna with his flight and loop, but here was yet another case of being in the wrong place in the wrong time. Vatsalya moved to Bangalore and did play for Karnataka in the early 1980s, but nothing much was heard of him later. He has been a successful racehorse owner for some years, and exhibits an unusual flair for poetry.

I now come to Kanwaljit Singh, the off spinner with a phenomenal record never to be picked for India. One of my knowledgeable friends does not share my enthusiasm for the sardar’s bowling, but I think he watched Kanwal during an abortive attempt he made to turn out for Tamil Nadu, with his entry into the Hyderabad team effectively blocked by the presence of Shivlal and Arshad. Kanwal did not fare too well in Chennai, and I could understand how difficult it was for him to settle down in an alien, not so welcoming atmosphere, as I went through similar pangs myself years earlier. Make no mistake about it, Kanwaljit Singh was a class act as an off spinner, and is promising to be one in a new avatar, as a singer of Hindi film songs, especially Kishore Kumar numbers.   

It was sometime in the mid-to-late 1970s that my bank teammates and I were bowled over by the natural loop, turn and bounce of a Sikh off spinner turning out for Nizam College in a local league match. He did get a couple of wickets against our strong batting line-up, and the memory of that fine performance lingered. I was hardly surprised to see a repeat performance next season, only it was not, strictly speaking, a repeat performance. That had been Gurmeet Singh, and this was Kanwaljit Singh, his younger brother. It is one of those unsolvable conundrums of Indian cricket why Kanwal, with his genuine off spin wares, outstanding career record and fierce determination, never played for India. He came into the Hyderabad squad during my last season there, and I have remained a fan of his bowling ever since.

I have tried to cover the better southern off spinners of my era and a little beyond. I am relatively unfamiliar with those that emerged after the 1980s.

 

 

 

HAAYE RE WO DIN KYUN NA AAYE-LATA (ANURADHA 1960)-SHAILENDRA-PT. RAVI SH...

RAGA JANASAMMOHINI. MUSIC DIRECT PANDIT RAVI SHANKAR.
VOICE LATA MANGESHKAR LYRICS SHAILENDRA

Koi Sagar Dil Ko Behlata Nahi Dil Diya Dard Liya

Kova Rako Vaadito - Valachi - Khanda Chapu

VEENA SARASWATI

The Innovative Traditionalist

By V Ramnarayan

The one word to accurately describe her stage presence would be poise. The very picture of tradition in her attire and  the quiet confidence she exudes, little warning does she give the audience of the intricate, sometimes thrilling raga essays she is capable of sculpting, taking full advantage of the aural majesty of the Saraswati veena. Impeccable as it is, her pedigree is also somewhat unusual. hailing from a family of master violinists but choosing the veena as her instrument as she did, her first veena guru an exponent of the Tanjavur bani and her second, well, S Balachander of the Balachander bani; she did gurukulavasam for over two decades with her aunt-guru, at the same time doing a masters in English literature and learning French.

Three role models seem to have shaped Jayanthi’s musical growth and development, her aesthetics and world view in both similar and different ways. Her relationship as a young child with her celebrity uncle Lalgudi Jayaraman was founded on hero worship and family pride, learning the veena from aunt Padmavathy was an exposure to tough love, a combined package of strict guru and doting aunt, and her discipleship with Balachander an exciting ride of awe at the man’s magnificent obsession with his instrument and the ragas whose depths he sought to plumb with enormous physical and intellectual effort, leavened by mirth at his irreverent, quirky sense of humour. She also learnt the twin values of tradition and innovation, that tradition is not a stagnant pool but a dynamic stream where every ‘addition’ is marked by good taste and avoidance of excess.

Moderation, proportion, appropriateness are qualities obvious in Jayanthi’s veena playing whether in Carnatic music concerts, jugalbandis with the likes of tabla  maestro Zakir Hussain or violinist husband Kumaresh, symphonic music with western orchestras or the ambitious Indian National Orchestra, her brainchild to which top musicians from both Carnatic and Hindustani music backgrounds have responded so positively. The home advantage of being married to another brilliant instrumentalist has produced an exciting on-stage partnership leading to original compositions for their two diverse instruments. Thecouple, as well as the Ganesh-Kumaresh duo firmly believe that there is music beyond lyric-oriented kritis and other compositions for both the veena and the violin and have created different compositions highlighting the strengths and nuances of each instrument.

Almost paradoxically, Jayanthi endeavours to exploit the potential of the veena both as a purely solo instrument, which does not require an accompanying instrument and as a majestic centrepiece of instrumental ensembles. At the present stage of her career, she is a youngish veteran of many a summer, poised for take-off into a mature future of even more mature and ripe music. Unafraid to experiment, she has succeeded at the same time, in staying rooted in the Lalgudi tradition.  

 

 

CHAMPION OF THE UNDERDOG

Courage and Moral Fibre

By V Ramnarayan

He is perhaps one of the last defenders of communism outside party manifestos, for rarely has such a staunch champion of the underprivileged been seen for over five decades, much more so perhaps than some of the leading lights in left wing politics. He is a beacon of searing intensity for the rest of us to follow at a time when worldwide events with their ugliness and depravity tend to remind us of the ideals that once burned bright within us before we decided to grow up.  

Raised in a distinctly upper middle class family if not exactly in the lap of luxury, and a product of the elite Scindia School of Gwalior, my cousin Paddu turned his back on a life of comfort in his twenties, if not earlier, though I have never asked him about his moment of epiphany if any. Was it around the time he discontinued studying for his MBBS at the Christian Medical College, Vellore? He entered the world of journalism a few years hence, meanwhile acquiring a bachelor’s degree in journalism by correspondence.

Starting his career at Indian Express, Bombay, Paddu set the benchmark very high for himself in the rigour of his research and his quest for honesty and accuracy. His innate concern for the underdog and compassion for minorities grew even as he worked at perfecting his craft, at achieving the mot juste in his despatches.

“If you’re not a communist at the age of 20, you haven’t got a heart. If you’re still a communist at the age of 30, you haven’t got a brain,” went a famous misquote of the 20^th century. In today’s topsy-turvy global scenario, it may be time to coin a new aphorism which will say, “If you were not a communist at 20, at least redeem yourself by embracing the ideals of equality and social justice before you are seventy.” Paddu is 79 now, and his heart beats stronger than ever for the weak and dispossessed. He retired long ago as a career journalist, but judging by his social media posts, still has enough fire and the power of words in him to make a difference should he choose to write seriously again. 

 I must digress slightly here to speak of my cousins at large. I had 42 first cousins at last count—in the 1960s; I haven’t kept track since then! Quite a few of them are part of the strong support system I have been blessed with, in addition to my parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and if I ever write my autobiography, I will have to devote pages to each of them, but Paddu is the one living cousin I choose to write on now because he came into my life at a critical moment and exerted a huge influence on me, himself probably oblivious to the effect he had on my choices. Of one thing I am sure: Paddu must take the major blame for the way I have turned out, though it was two other cousins Babu and Balu who persuaded me to try my hand at writing.

My parents and their six children were living at Abhiramapuram close to the TUCS outlet on Moubrays (now TTK) Road from 1964 t0 ’67. Paddu came to live with us sometime in ’65, I think, and stayed on for about a year.  I was the oldest at 18 then, in my second year at Presidency College, and the youngest my sister Papu, all of seven years old. Nagan had just joined IIT Madras, Sarada SIET College, Krishnan went to Vidya Mandir, Viji to Adarsh Vidyalaya and Papu to nearby Bon Secours Convent School.

It must have been a challenging time in Paddu’s life following his momentous career decision, but he was quite the hero of the young brood at home, while Appa and Amma showered their affection on him. Appa was some twenty years older than Paddu, but the two got on like a house on fire, constantly pulling each other’s leg.  Paddu was a fitness freak, with rippling muscles to show for it. He was at various stages a follower of different schools of training, from Muller’s My System through Bullworker to yoga learnt from a booklet brought out by Ramtirth Yogashram of Brahmi Oil fame. I was already playing collegiate cricket, and did not need much persuasion to try out these systems. I found yoga in particular very useful.

A prominent feature of Paddu’s daily routine was the length of time each activity occupied. The nine residents had to share one bathroom and one toilet, and Paddu’s shower lasted at least as long as one elaborate raga alapana—Hindustani or Carnatic—and a few songs. He had a strong voice which has in recent years been weakened somewhat by health issues, but back then could crack an oyster at sixty paces, besides adhering perfectly to sruti. You can gauge the impact of that voice from a recent experience of mine. An old schoolmate I was meeting after fifty years, recalled listening to Paddu’s rendition of  the Mukesh number Matwali naar thumak thumak chali jaye, while visiting us in 1965. He does not know Paddu personally, but his voice he still remembers!

The song sessions and Paddu’s yoga practice were not without amusing sidelights, though my father was sometimes not so amused. My cousin lay sprawled on the floor of the master bedroom in glorious savasana after his exertions, eyes closed in oblivion to the external world, with my father skirting around him gingerly to avoid tripping, at the same time desperately searching for shirt, trousers, tie, socks and briefcase, all the while making entirely futile clicking noises that failed to alert Paddu to Appa’s morning emergencies. Sometimes, the routine changed slightly with Appa waiting impatiently for Madhuban mein Radhika nachere to be completed so that he could go in to shower.   But these irritations were confined to the morning when Appa was getting ready to go to work. In the evening, he was back to his normal genial self, and uncle and nephew had a gala time teasing each other.

Paddu was preparing for his BA exams, or ostensibly so anyway, and yet unemployed, used to receive a monthly money order from his parents. The immediate aftermath of the event was a visit to the street corner cigarette shop to settle his monthly account. All the ‘jobless’ boys including sundry cousins and neighbours would go trooping out with him on this important mission followed by a minitreat of snacks and tea or soft drinks. The major treat would be a movie or two at Safire or Anand, leaving Paddu close to broke again within a week. We probably watched My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music during this period, but it was Lawrence of Arabia that tested the genuineness of my hero worship of Paddu the most. I formed much of my reading habit based on Paddu’s preferences, and that included the complete plays and prefaces of George Bernard Shaw and other authors like W Somerset Maugham, Terence Rattigan and AJ Cronin, to name a few. I enjoyed all these brilliant authors, but reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence, the hero of Lawrence of Arabia, was the limit. It was after John Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, a prescribed college text, the most punishing tome I had come across, and I gamely tried to plough through it for the simple reason that my cousin was in the throes of a Lawrence obsession. Our excursions to cinema theatres and the British Council library were undoubtedly the highlights of that Indian summer of our lives.

Our house was a popular meeting place for a small battalion of cousins. Weekends and holidays were filled with indoor games during the day and cricket on the rooftop in the evenings. Paddu was an enthusiastic participant in these games despite his elder statesman status in the group. Clad in baggy trousers rolled up to ankle height and banian or short sleeved shirt –again sleeves folded up stylishly—he was a picture of concentration while he aimed to impart vicious underarm spin on the tennis ball, his face suitably contorted and his grunts an impressive foretaste of the future Ms Monica Seles, to put fear in the batsman’s mind. Every time the ball went over the terrace wall, one of us charged downstairs to retrieve it from our compound or the neighbour’s, vaulting over the fence with the agility of an Olympic hurdler. Poor Appa must have spent a minor fortune on fence repairs, and Amma and the maidservant worked themselves to the bone cleaning up after us. After the day’s physical exertions, Paddu would buy enormous quantities of peanuts from the street vendor to go round our binge-eating mob, to the accompaniment of much singing of songs by almost all concerned. Appa and Amma joined in all the merriment, with Amma singing some kritis in her ringing voice.

Of course, the idyll had to end. The day came when Paddu had to take his BA exam and return to Bombay where he joined Indian Express. I am not very sure of my facts here, but I think he was with Express still when I went to Bombay to play a Ranji Trophy quarterfinal match in early 1976.  At this distance of time, I find it hard to believe that the morning  after we reached Bombay travelling by train, I went all the way from Wankhede Stadium to Mulund where Paddu took me by suburban train to his brother Raja’s house. When I returned just in time for net practice in the afternoon, my skipper ML Jaisimha was very annoyed with me and gave me an earful for my foolish exertions the day before the match. I think I redeemed myself by bowling my team into a strong position at the end of the first day’s play, but we contrived to lose the match after gaining a decent first innings lead. I had played at the Brabourne Stadium as a 17-year old, and this was my first appearance at Wankhede. It was exciting to play there watched by many great cricketers past and present, before a sizeable crowd. Paddu’s was a comforting presence. We spent the evenings together either in my room or going for a walk enjoying the cool seabreeze. Unfortunately, I blotted my copybook and Paddu’s trousers somewhat, vomiting all over him as a result of strong medication for a tummy upset and dehydration bowling 35 overs on the trot in humid conditions. While Paddu showed great patience in cleaning the mess, my roommate Prahlad was convinced I had been drinking!

The next time I met Paddu was in Calcutta the same year, when I went to play my last match for SBI Hyderabad vs. SBI Calcutta. He had joined the Economic Times there, and was staying at the YMCA. For my team, our stay at Broadway Hotel, a modest, clean lodge, was an unusual experience. My roommate D Govindraj was a fast bowler with a beautiful action. I watched open-mouthed as he set about rearranging the furniture in our room just as wicket keeper P Krishnamurti had predicted. That, however, was not the highlight of our stay there, but being refused entry to the hotel at 10 pm by an overzealous security guard who believed good boys should not stay out late!

The match was on paper an even contest between two strong teams, but we lost it in the very first session of play, when Subroto Guha showed us with his superlative swing bowling why he was regarded as one of the best of his kind. We were bundled out for about 120, with Guha claiming eight wickets, and though we tried to make a fight of it mainly through excellent pace bowling by VS Patel with some help from me, we lost the match. Once again, it was a case of some personal success for me with ten wickets in the two innings, but to no avail for the team. The evenings were enjoyably spent in the company of my teammates and Paddu.

Little did any of us in the family know of what lay in store for Paddu. In addition to his duties as a subeditor at ET Calcutta, Paddu was also the secretary of the workers’ union, named by an elected executive committee of 15 members. Being the upright person he is, he took the responsibility seriously and this meant that he might sooner or later run afoul of the management. He stood his ground in the face of pressure from the editor on a news item on which they did not see eye to eye, Paddu refusing to toe the line purely on the basis of the correctness of his stand and as he was well within his rights to decide on the issue.

This act of defiance was enough to earn Paddu the wrath of the management and lead to his eventual dismissal from service on the grounds of insubordination. The union protested, joining the all India unions of the TOI group on a strike that lasted two months, with the strike by the Calcutta unit going on for five months in all.

Though Paddu had been dismissed, he continued to be an office bearer of the union, and with the management dragging a domestic inquiry endlessly, and appealing to the high court after a labour tribunal ordered Paddu’s reinstatement, he stayed on in Calcutta for eleven long years doing freelance writing, what he describes as “off the record employment as a subeditor,” and with help from friends.  Anyone who has been there and done that will know what a tough struggle that must have been. Paddu stuck it out because he “was bound by union discipline” as the union was fighting his case.   

Fortunately, there is a happy ending to this story. The time came when some friends persuaded Paddu to look for a more stable arrangement for his livelihood. As the union president too advised him to look for a job, Paddu relented, and sent in a letter to The Hindu, seeking a freelance column opportunity. His record as a trade unionist must have impressed the editor N Ram—who once led a strike in the newspaper whose editor his father was—as much as his journalistic credentials. Paddu was offered full time appointment as a Special Correspondent of the group’s magazine Frontline and posted in Bombay. Thus began the most successful phase of his career, during which period he did some brilliant  reporting with his rigorous research ensuring the credibility of his stories. Though much of Frontline’s coverage was political, Paddu also got to interview personalities from fields like sport and the arts. I vividly remember his pieces on Medha Patkar, Prof. DB Deodhar and Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, for instance.   

At Frontline, too, Paddu never stopped taking a principled stand on issues he felt strongly about. His family and friends continue to admire him. I was deeply influenced by him growing up, and I am grateful for that, even if our lives have followed different trajectories.

(Concluded).  

CHAMPION OF THE UNDERDOG

My Teenage Hero

By V Ramnarayan

He is perhaps one of the last defenders of communism outside party manifestos, for rarely has such a staunch champion of the underprivileged been seen for over five decades, much more so perhaps than some of the leading lights in left wing politics. He is a beacon of searing intensity for the rest of us to follow at a time when worldwide events with their ugliness and depravity tend to remind us of the ideals that once burned bright within us before we decided to grow up.  

Raised in a distinctly upper middle class family if not exactly in the lap of luxury, and a product of the elite Scindia School of Gwalior, my cousin Paddu turned his back on a life of comfort in his twenties, if not earlier, though I have never asked him about his moment of epiphany if any. Was it around the time he discontinued studying for his MBBS at the Christian Medical College, Vellore? He entered the world of journalism a few years hence, meanwhile acquiring a bachelor’s degree in journalism by correspondence.

Starting his career at Indian Express, Bombay, Paddu set the benchmark very high for himself in the rigour of his research and his quest for honesty and accuracy. His innate concern for the underdog and compassion for minorities grew even as he worked at perfecting his craft, at achieving the mot juste in his despatches.

“If you’re not a communist at the age of 20, you haven’t got a heart. If you’re still a communist at the age of 30, you haven’t got a brain,” went a famous misquote of the 20^th century. In today’s topsy-turvy global scenario, it may be time to coin a new aphorism which will say, “If you were not a communist at 20, at least redeem yourself by embracing the ideals of equality and social justice before you are seventy.” Paddu is 78 now, and his heart beats stronger than ever for the weak and dispossessed. He retired long ago as a career journalist, but judging by his social media posts, still has enough fire and the power of words in him to make a difference should he choose to write seriously again. 

 I must digress slightly here to speak of my cousins at large. I had 42 first cousins at last count—in the 1960s; I haven’t kept track since then! Quite a few of them are part of the strong support system I have been blessed with, in addition to my parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and if I ever write my autobiography, I will have to devote pages to each of them, but Paddu is the one living cousin I choose to write on now because he came into my life at a critical moment and exerted a huge influence on me, himself probably oblivious to the effect he had on my choices. Of one thing I am sure: Paddu must take the major blame for the way I have turned out, though it was two other cousins Babu and Balu who persuaded me to try my hand at writing.

My parents and their six children were living at Abhiramapuram close to the TUCS outlet on Moubrays (now TTK) Road from 1964 t0 ’67. Paddu came to live with us sometime in ’65, I think, and stayed on for about a year.  I was the oldest at 18 then, in my second year at Presidency College, and the youngest my sister Papu, all of seven years old. Nagan had just joined IIT Madras, Sarada SIET College, Krishnan went to Vidya Mandir, Viji to Adarsh Vidyalaya and Papu to nearby Bon Secours Convent School.

It must have been a challenging time in Paddu’s life following his momentous career decision, but he was quite the hero of the young brood at home, while Appa and Amma showered their affection on him. Appa was some twenty years older than Paddu, but the two got on like a house on fire, constantly pulling each other’s leg.  Paddu was a fitness freak, with rippling muscles to show for it. He was at various stages a follower of different schools of training, from Muller’s My System through Bullworker to yoga learnt from a booklet brought out by Ramtirth Yogashram of Brahmi Oil fame. I was already playing collegiate cricket, and did not need much persuasion to try out these systems. I found yoga in particular very useful.

A prominent feature of Paddu’s daily routine was the length of time each activity occupied. The nine residents had to share one bathroom and one toilet, and Paddu’s shower lasted at least as long as one elaborate raga alapana—Hindustani or Carnatic—and a few songs. He had a strong voice which has in recent years been weakened somewhat by health issues, but back then could crack an oyster at sixty paces, besides adhering perfectly to sruti. You can gauge the impact of that voice from a recent experience of mine. An old schoolmate I was meeting after fifty years, recalled listening to Paddu’s rendition of  the Mukesh number Matwali naar thumak thumak chali jaye, while visiting us in 1965. He does not know Paddu personally, but his voice he still remembers!

The song sessions and Paddu’s yoga practice were not without amusing sidelights, though my father was sometimes not so amused. My cousin lay sprawled on the floor of the master bedroom in glorious savasana after his exertions, eyes closed in oblivion to the external world, with my father skirting around him gingerly to avoid tripping, at the same time desperately searching for shirt, trousers, tie, socks and briefcase, all the while making entirely futile clicking noises that failed to alert Paddu to Appa’s morning emergencies. Sometimes, the routine changed slightly with Appa waiting impatiently for Madhuban mein Radhika nachere to be completed so that he could go in to shower.   But these irritations were confined to the morning when Appa was getting ready to go to work. In the evening, he was back to his normal genial self, and uncle and nephew had a gala time teasing each other.

Paddu was preparing for his BA exams, or ostensibly so anyway, and yet unemployed, used to receive a monthly money order from his parents. The immediate aftermath of the event was a visit to the street corner cigarette shop to settle his monthly account. All the ‘jobless’ boys including sundry cousins and neighbours would go trooping out with him on this important mission followed by a minitreat of snacks and tea or soft drinks. The major treat would be a movie or two at Safire or Anand, leaving Paddu close to broke again within a week. We probably watched My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music during this period, but it was Lawrence of Arabia that tested the genuineness of my hero worship of Paddu the most. I formed much of my reading habit based on Paddu’s preferences, and that included the complete plays and prefaces of George Bernard Shaw and other authors like W Somerset Maugham, Terence Rattigan and AJ Cronin, to name a few. I enjoyed all these brilliant authors, but reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence, the hero of Lawrence of Arabia, was the limit. It was after John Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, a prescribed college text, the most punishing tome I had come across, and I gamely tried to plough through it for the simple reason that my cousin was in the throes of a Lawrence obsession. Our excursions to cinema theatres and the British Council library were undoubtedly the highlights of that Indian summer of our lives.

Key to names: Paddu: R Padmanabhan; Balu: G Balachandran; Babu: S Subramaniam; Appa: PN Venkatraman; Amma: Rukmini Venkatraman; Nagan: Nagan Raman; Sarada: Sarada Nataraj; Krishnan: V Sivaramakrishnan; Viji: Vijayalakshmi Prabhakar; Papu: Dr Sarojini Parameswaran.                                                                                                 (To be continued)

 

A GENTLE ALL ROUNDER

Remembering Kannan

By V Ramnarayan

Lakshmi and my cousin PS Narayanan—Kannan to the family and Nari to the cricket community—should have celebrated their golden wedding anniversary today, had Kannan not succumbed to cancer three years ago. Their children, son Sundar and daughter Abhi, live with their spouses and children live in the US.  The eldest son of well known sports journalist PN Sundaresan, and predeceased by his younger siblings Raman and Sarada, Kannan is survived by youngest sister Alamelu.

If you live long enough, you will inevitably lose loved ones and cherished friends. I count the loss of Kannan among the more grievous blows I have sustained. He was a dear anna to me and my siblings. My parents cared deeply for him, and he for them. We are not a particularly demonstrative clan, but I believe Kannan knew how special he was to all of us. Most memorable was the way he took charge of the conduct of my sister Sarada’s wedding back in February 1973, on the job practically 24 x 7 for a whole month. I was one of the small army of helpers that reported to him as he managed a complex operation with minimum fuss and great responsibility. It was also back-breaking work as we had not transitioned to the now common system of outsourcing weddings to contractors on a turnkey basis. Finance, purchase, inventory management, scheduling of the various numerous sub-events in coordination with the priests, F&B management, receiving guests and hospitality, all had to be monitored with utmost care, and Kannan was on top of it all.  We had all grown up together. Kannan was perhaps the most talented all round sportsman of the extended family, good at not only quite a few ball games besides cricket, but also at gilli-danda, marbles, tops, nondi, pandi, I Spy and carrom. In cricket, he was a natural—a stylish batsman and clever off spinner. Like his brother Raman the leg spinner-batsman, Kannan, too, must have been successful playing for PS High School, Mylapore, but I am not familiar with the details of his exploits there. He did his BCom at Vivekananda College, and played cricket for the college, but I think he really came into his own as an attractive opening batsman as a student of the Madras Law College. There, he was a junior of K Radhakrishnan, another consistent performer, an Ayurvedic doctor whose other claim to fame is that he is the father of cricketer-turned musician Parakkal Unnikrishnan.

It was after Kannan joined the India Cements Limited that his cricket struck a purple patch that lasted quite a few seasons. ICL went on an impressive cricketer recruitment campaign, hiring players from within the state and outside it. Playing in the senior division of the Tamil Nadu (then Madras) Cricket Association’s league under the banner of Jolly Rovers Cricket Club, the team swept everything before it and provided high quality entertainment year after year. In a side that contributed almost the entire state team, Narayanan performed a stellar role in many a triumph, without being rewarded by the state selectors except for a solitary match in which he did not get to bat or bowl. The Jolly Rovers batting was opened quite spectacularly by two outstanding wicket keeper-batsmen  PK Belliappa and KR Rajagopal, while Narayanan followed them at no. 3. Though theirs was a tough act to follow, he was rarely found wanting. With his innocuous looking off spin bowling, he tended to engineer collapses and win matches for his side. In a star-studded side, he was often the surprise package.

Narayanan was an enthusiastic tennis player at the club level, and for a few years maintained a couple of courts for the use of recreational tennis players in the Alwarpet area. His son Sundarraman showed promise in both tennis and cricket, eventually migrating to the US, where a university tennis scholarship took him.

Narayanan succeeded his father Mr Sundaresan on his demise as publisher of Sruti, a performing arts monthly. At a crucial phase in the life of the magazine, Narayanan made strenuous efforts to keep it afloat. He then played a key part in handing it over to the reconstituted  Sruti Foundation helmed by Mr N Sankar, the chairman of the Sanmar Group.         

 Narayanan, Nari or Kannan was something of a touch artist, not given to sledgehammer blows—whether in cricket, tennis or life.  

AMAR (Continued)

(A SHORT STORY)

(DISCLAIMER: This is pure fiction. The persons and incidents featured have no connection with real persons living or dead, or real life occurrences)

My embargo on transactions of all kinds with Amar lasted exactly three months. Diplomatic relations were restored—despite my strenuous efforts to the contrary—after he caught me napping by calling a direct number in my division of the bank. I answered the call as there was no one else around at the time. He was calling me from Vijayawada where he had been posted. He told me that he was coming to Hyderabad on long leave for health reasons. “Please come home next weekend. I would love to catch up with you,” he said. He just would not take no for an answer. He decided to play the sympathy card, and told me his wife had left him taking their son with her; and for once, he was speaking the truth. I don’t think they ever got back together again. “I have stopped drinking,” he continued, not so truthfully, as I was to discover soon afterwards.”Doctor’s orders. I will call you when I am back in Hyderabad. Please, please do come home.” He was pleading, begging by now. I wasn’t impressed and told him in no uncertain terms that his emotional blackmail tactics were not working with me.

On Saturday morning, he came to my office, looking reasonably healthy. He said he had quit both drinking and smoking; and it was, indeed, showing. He had lost some weight, and his eyes were clear, and cheeks less puffy than usual. His conversation too was kind of sober, pun intended, and he spent an hour chatting with me and my colleagues without offending anyone even once. He insisted before he left that I join him at home that evening for dinner. His sister, a neighbour, sent him meals every day, and he would ask her to cook enough to feed me as well. I grunted non-committally, but I was determined not to fall for his theatrics.

My wife was away in Bombay, now in the last trimester of her pregnancy. Those were pre-TV days, and I was enjoying a quiet cigarette in the evening book in hand, and Vivid Bharati on in my radio, when someone rang the doorbell. Standing there was a young Garhwali lad, the domestic help I had seen at Amar’s house during my last visit.   “Saab wants you to come home,” he said. “I have brought an autorickshaw to take you home.” I was annoyed, but reluctantly got ready and went down with Bahadur. The auto rickshaw ride was quiet and uneventful despite crazier than usual traffic all the way. Amar’s house was not too far, and we reached there in ten minutes.

Bahadur left Amar’s house as soon as we reached there. It was his weekend off.  I should have fled then and there, as being closeted alone with Amar wasn’t exactly the weekend entertainment I needed. I sat down waiting for Amar to emerge from his shower. He come out beaming, and gave me a warm welcome, strong handshake and all. “Sober as a judge,” he declared as untruthfully as only he could be. I could clearly see he had already been drinking.  Soon came out a rum bottle with about three quarters of it left. I sat there like a man possessed. Kundan Lal Saigal was playing out on his tape recorder. I earlier mentioned Amar’s pretence of hating classical music. It was a reaction to what he considered snobbery and affectation on the part of his large extended family. He liked old Hindi songs. He adored Saigal’s voice so much that he heard him every evening (and no other music), partly because his voice had that poignant quality that created a convivial atmosphere for someone brooding in self pity over drinks. The evening was long and wearying as my host decided to educate me on a wide variety of subjects including my off spin bowling, which he thought I needed to improve considerably, banking, at which I was useless, and music, in which I was a toddler. I had heard Girija Devi in a recent concert and told Amar how much I had enjoyed her jhoola song, her tappa and her Babul mora at the tailend of the concert.  “Nonsense!” Amar thundered. “Nobody can sing that song like Saigal!” His face was red, eyes were bloodshot and nostrils flaring. He went on to play Saigal’s Babul mora some five times in succession.

Amar then asked me to fetch a book from the bookshelf next to me. Even as I leaned over to pick it up, he exclaimed, “Don’t touch that envelope next to it.” As I turned to listen to him, I accidentally knocked the envelope down to the floor, spilling its contents. By now, Amar was supremely inebriated and his speech more and more slurred. I thought I heard him wrong when he said, “Don’t touch them, they are letters from Anjali Roy, the film star.” I laughed out loud, because this was surely the biggest fib I had yet heard from him. “Go ahead, read a few of them. You will know.”  He was for once speaking the truth. They were all letters from Anjali Roy, written in a schoolgirlish hand, on proper letterpads, pages torn from school note books, post cards, on one-side paper saved by her journalist mother, and so on. In them she declared her profound love for this superman Amar, and beseeching him to reciprocate, apparently to no avail. It was all so private and I felt like an awful peeping Tom, but it was all so riveting.

“The Roys were my neighbours in Defence Colony, where I was staying in a PG accommodation during my newspaper days,” Amar explained suddenly shocked out of his drunken stupor. “My family knew them, and the Roys welcomed me with open arms when they knew I was Lalaji’s son. And this girl took a shine to me because I must have reminded her of some star. She was crazy about acting and did plenty of it at school plays. I think she went to NSD, later becoming a star in Bombay’s Hindi film industry after her debut film became a huge box office success.”

“How come you didn’t encourage her?” I asked, incredulous that Amar could have resisted the overtures of a beautiful, talented young girl.

“She was too young, still in her pigtails. Moreover, I was going steady with a Punjabi girl then.”

“What happened to that immortal love affair?”

“It came to an abrupt end, even forcing me to leave Delhi in a hurry.”

By now, Amar was almost sober and I was all agog.

“Her father was a tough Sardar who came after me with a loaded shotgun when I was in her bedroom, thinking her parents were out of town. I panicked and leapt out through a French window, forgetting we were on the first floor. I managed to limp to my scooter and escaped in the nick of time even as Mr Singh was taking aim. Hanging around in Delhi wasn’t safe, and as soon as the cast came off my fractured leg, I came here and joined Osmania University to do my MA.”

It was time for me to leave, and I got up to go. “You must eat,” Amar said, and opened a small tiffin box, in which there was some rice with dal and curd. “This is your dinner,” I protested. “I have some food at home. I’ll be fine.”

‘No way, Ram.” Amar was by now almost belligerent. He insisted on my finishing the food his sister had sent him; he had obviously forgotten to inform her about my joining him for dinner. “As soon as you finish eating we’ll go to Garden Restaurant. I want to eat tandoori chicken,” he said, dropping a new bombshell, for I had known him to be a strict vegetarian who did not eat onion and garlic even. So off we went to Garden Restaurant—or so, I thought. We actually made a pit stop at Moti Bar next to the restaurant, where Amar ordered more drinks, having polished off the bottle of rum he had opened at home. He became quite unmanageable soon, even puking all over a waiter. I was all along a mute spectator, my strongest drink a stiff mango juice. After getting abused and very nearly kicked out, I found a taxi—Amar was too far gone for me to manage his giant frame in an autorickshaw—dropped him at his bungalow, and went home in the same taxi, with not enough money to pay the fare, having spent all my money at Moti Bar. It was close to 2 am, but I had no option but to wake up my neighbour, luckily my batchmate at the bank and a close friend, and borrow from him at that unearthly hour. End of saga, no more Amar Sharma in my life.

Was I wrong, and how! For quite a while it seemed Amar was well and truly out of my life. I completely lost touch with him, but two years later, he turned up again at my doorstep like a bad coin. It was past midnight. He was accompanied by an auto driver intent on ensuring that he was not exiting through some backdoor without paying him. I asked the driver to wait downstairs as I knew we might not get another vehicle at that hour.

Did I mention Amar’s perfect manners with women? He was genuinely chivalrous, full of old world courtesies, getting up to greet women, opening car doors for them, exuding charm when sober, not at all the truculent bastard he could be with men. He was profusely apologetic to my wife for having disturbed us at such a late hour, but he was going away to Bombay on transfer the next day, and he could not forgive himself if he didn’t see our daughter, for it could be a long time before he returned. I had not been in touch with him, and he must have known about our daughter through our bank colleagues. He then insisted on going into the bedroom to see the baby. He stood there looking at her adoringly, though he was tottering. Was he capable of such love? Did I see tears welling up in his eyes?

Amar then bent and patted my daughter’s cheeks, put his hand in his pocket, took out a sheaf of currency notes, and tried to thrust them into my sleeping daughter’s hands. “Bye, darling. God bless you, “ he said, and tottered out. I escorted him downstairs, put him in the auto, and gave the driver directions and enough money to cover the fare home.

That was the last time I saw Amar Sharma. In the years that followed, I heard rumours floating around that he was leading a life of sheer debauchery. He was said to have been forced to leave the bank job as a consequence of some misdemeanour, and also lose the house he had inherited from his late parents to repay gambling debts. It was a horror story.

I completely lost touch with him, and none of my friends seemed to know his whereabouts. Two years later, I learnt of his death through a brief news item in a daily. He had been found dead in a train compartment, like Devdas in the movie. They found on him a pocket diary with his name and address and the phone numbers of some friends. Next to him was a small cassette recorder with a Saigal album. Amar was 33.

AMAR

(A SHORT STORY)

DISCLAIMER: This is pure fiction. The persons and incidents featured have no connection with real persons living or dead, or real life occurrences)

Amar went through my department like a hurricane, sweeping people and reputations away with ghoulish glee. He spent a month with me as my trainee, but behaved as if our roles were the very reverse. He liked to give the impression that he knew more banking and finance, more cricket and music than you. I was a bank officer. And a cricketer. And a serious music enthusiast. Amar never missed an opportunity to flaunt his superior knowledge in all these areas. He knew that his behaviour annoyed me, and he loved it. Over a period of about six months, he had to spend a month each with me and some of my colleagues, and he managed to irritate each and every one of us. At least two officers of the bank were reduced to nervous wrecks by his antics.

Amarnath Sharma—for that was Amar’s given name at birth—had been his father’s biggest disappointment. Rajendra Sharma, his father was a good cricketer, and a diehard fan of Lala Amarnath, and made it his life’s mission to make his son a cricketer. The senior Sharma had been a good all rounder in his day, and narrowly missed representing his state in the Ranji Trophy after being named in the squad for a whole season. Lala Amarnath was Rajendra’s hero. He wore his handkerchief roguishly around his neck, bowled medium pace with an action similar to Lala’s and batted and fielded aggressively. He was so impressive that he came to be known as Lalaji in cricket and social circles. Lalaji constantly dreamed of Amar fulfilling his own unfulfilled dreams of cricketing stardom.

Unfortunately, Amar was a physical coward and over-fond of sweets and starchy food. He was also a lazy bum, and the most strenuous activity he indulged in was running away towards the square leg umpire while facing even slow bowling. For Lalaji, this deadly combination meant that calling Amar by his full name would be an insult to the great Lala Amarnath. Rajendra Sharma loved his son, but revered the former India captain and all rounder, his childhood hero. Amarnath Sharma, therefore became Amar Sharma, the change legitimised by a gazette notification by the time he was ready to enter college.

Though the Amar I met was mostly bluff and empty bragging, he usually cast a spell on his listeners with his aggressive, bullying style of communication backed by a wicked, often malicious sense of humour and repartee. In his crazy arguments, he bullied us into submission, no matter that most of us were his seniors. He was actually my senior agewise as he had spent a couple of years as a journalist at Delhi before appearing for the bank's entrance exam for probationary officers just as I had done three years before him. He belonged to the 1973 batch of officer recruits, now reporting to me and my colleagues for training.

Amar belonged to a wealthy, orthodox UP brahmin family of Secunderabad. In addition to Lalaji, the clan boasted a number of decent cricketers, at least one of whom toured the West Indies once without playing a single Test match. Amar was certainly the black sheep of the family, in that he not only did not play cricket, in fact, despised the game, but showed an elaborately put on distaste for classical music, which the Sharmas of Secunderabad patronised in a substantial manner, often billeting visiting musicians in their homes. He also stood out as a big drinker in the midst of mostly teetotal relatives. He was a rebel, in short.

As you have guessed, I came to know Amar rather more closely than our mentor-mentee relationship at the office demanded, rather more closely than in fact I wanted to know him, such was the irresistible force of his personality. If he invited you home, he refused to take 'No' for an answer and virtually carried you home. With his 6'3" height, massive shoulders, and ever widening girth, he looked formidable, and had a nasty habit of making embarrassing personal remarks in a voice loud enough for the whole department to hear. You meekly surrendered and accepted his invitation.

For all his dominance in conversations after hours, I made sure that I was the boss where work was concerned. He had to complete the small tasks I gave him, and I did not allow him to lecture me about how to read a balance sheet, how to derive the break-even point of a manufacturing unit, based on the data it furnished and reading between the lines, or how to analyse inventory statements and assess the working capital needs of a client, so on and so forth. I somehow managed to shut him up and get some work done by him for the department in return for time spent training him. After he moved on to the other officers in the division, I noticed that some of the most overtly domineering of our senior officers were so overawed by Amar's in-your face braggadocio that he was getting away with making token appearances at the desk and spending most of his time in the canteen, smoking and drinking endless cups of tea while entertaining junior colleagues with his droll, even obscene jokes. All this made the canteen a noisy, smoke-filled den constantly inviting trouble in the event of the chief manager or one of his senior aides walking in for a surprise inspection..

One warm June evening, Amar invited me home for a drink, knowing of my temporary bachelor status with wife away to have our first baby at her parents’ place in Bombay. At that time, I was ignorant of two key Amar Sharma facts: 1. He was hurtling towards an alcoholic abyss; 2. he had the nasty habit of spiking his unsuspecting guests and watching the fun. It was a fairly pleasant evening, slightly dampened by the cold reception Amar’s Tamil wife Janaki gave me. I consoled myself with the thought that there was nothing personal in her attitude to me; it was standard practice among the unhappy wives of drunkard husbands to view these male visitors with suspicion, as if we were responsible for their husbands’ dissipation. Their little son tried to cuddle up to his father, but Amar almost rudely pushed him away. That was the moment I realised that my host was already drunk.

After a nice, light snack and a literary conversation with which I managed to win Janaki over—Janaki was a commissioning editor with a leading publisher—Amar took me to the terrace of his massive colonial bungalow, where we continued to talk about books (I was still a big reader despite long days at my mundane job) and politics (the one subject of which Amar had real knowledge). He had been a student leader during the Telangana agitation, and that is when he met Janaki and impressed her enough for her to agree to spend her life with him. I had seen a couple of photographs of Amar in his college days, and he was a striking figure then, quite trim and athletic looking.

The weather was pleasant and a huge pedestal fan on the terrace made the experience pleasanter. Amar told me stories from his agitation years, and his rather tumultuous courtship of Janaki, made so by the united opposition of every member of Janaki’s family to their marriage plans. I had been refusing a drink all evening as I was a bit unwell, but finally relented as Amar virtually forced a beer on me. It was cool and delicious, and the breeze was soothing, and I passed out after barely a glass of beer. I woke up at 3 am! There was no sign of Amar on the terrace. I don’t remember how I found my way downstairs and let myself out without waking anyone, but I did. I started my motorcycle and rode home enjoying the lovely morning air. I was grateful for my wife’s absence. She would have worried herself sick had she been home, and we did not have a telephone at home.

It was at the bank next morning, mercifully with no hangover, that Amar let the cat out of the bag. He had spiked my beer with God knows what, and seemed to be hugely amused by his own cleverness. That was the moment I decided to have nothing to do with him any more. I did not talk to him at work or afterwards. As he was no longer my trainee, I just cut him off. His were no playful pranks. I saw a couple of colleagues face serious embarrassment caused by Amar’s dirty tricks. I had had enough. Soon he was transferred out of Hyderabad, and I never opened the many letters he wrote me, did not answer his phone calls. I was determined never to have anything to do with him. (To be continued)

KVN Varugalamo

KVN Varugalamo

Nandanar-- Varugalamo--M.M.Dhandapani Desikar

allah tero naam...

MOSTLY LEFT HANDERS

I was inspired to write this piece on lefthand batsmen by something my friend Rajesh Ramaswamy wrote on the casual elegance of David Gower and Mark Waugh. I was struck by this comparison, as one of them is a right hander, and I  do not believe the truism that left handers are naturally graceful is true at all. I was a big fan of Gower’s batting, which created the illusion that cricket is an easy game. Ditto VVS Laxman. All the same, it is nice to remember some great lefthanders I have watched, played with or known personally.

The first time I saw David Gower in action, I happened to bowl to him. I was touring Australia as a member of the Deccan Blues cricket team led by ML Jaisimha. Young Gower was the pleasant surprise awaiting us when we played a club called Claremont Cottesloe in Perth, Western Australia. 

The blond left hander who opened the innings was immediately recognised by my teammates as the bright young England prospect gaining some off-season professional experience they had read and heard about. And indeed he proved to be as impressive as advertised, scoring some thirty quick runs effortlessly off our new ball bowlers. The skipper and I came on and were immediately able to apply the brakes, thanks to the surprising amount of turn the wicket was yielding. Gower was still probably relatively underexposed to spin bowling then, and struggled a bit before Jaisimha had him caught behind. I enjoyed my spell on a spin friendly track and finished with a bag of five wickets. That evening, over a convivial beer or three, I foolishly declined an invitation to take Gower’s place in the Cottesloe side the next season, since he was not returning, as I did not want to miss the first class season back in India, one of the few regrets of my career. Happily, David and I have remained in touch on and off through the decades. It has been as much a privilege to interact with the man as watch him bat or listen to him commentate.  

Who among my generation of cricketers has not day-dreamt of playing against Garfield Sobers? With the exception of those good enough to play for India, we have all had to be content with watching him play. 

We in Chennai first caught a glimpse of him when he toured India with Gerry Alexander’s men in 1958-59. At the Corporation Stadium, he created quite a flutter as he walked out jauntily with his collar upturned. Though he scored only 29 and 4 in the Test, he impressed one and all with his every action. His bosom pal Collie Smith proved to be the crowd’s favourite, with his ‘donkey drops’ and antics near the boundary line.

Not long afterwards, Smith was to be killed in a car accident, with Sobers at the wheel—something that scarred Sobers for life and made sleep impossible for him during match nights. The more he tried to get his eight hours on the eve of a match, the more he tossed and turned, haunted by the memory of his friend and what might have been.

“I never went to bed before the small hours of the morning during Test matches, but it did not affect my cricket,” Sir Garry told a small gathering of cricket lovers and former cricketers around him at the Madras Cricket Club, Chepauk, late one evening some 15  years ago. ‘Don’t you dare follow my example!’ he told a young player in the audience.

I was one of those privileged to be present that evening, as the great all rounder spun a web of cricket tales, real and apocryphal in about equal measure. One particularly diverting tale had it that the West Indies manager Berkeley Gaskin caught him returning to his Karachi hotel room at 5 a.m. and nodded approvingly believing that like him, Sobers was going for a morning constitutional.

Talk turned to his superb 95 and 74 not out in the 1967 Pongal match that brought Test cricket back to Chepauk, and Sobers agreed with us that, fooled by the length and additional bounce of a BS Chandrasekhar special, he had changed his shot in the last nanosecond to send the ball sailing over the sight screen in that game. This was reminiscent of a similar straight six in the Brisbane Test in 1961, when the bowler to suffer had been Richie Benaud, in the course of Sobers’s 132 in 125 minutes.

As the stories flowed thick and fast, Sobers remembered how one of his teammates was constantly barracked by the Brisbane crowd as he was patrolling the ropes. “You are the ugliest cricketer I ever saw, mate,” one spectator cried out. The fielder’s instant response was: “Wait till you see my brother back in Jamaica.”

The Chepauk Test match was the first time in a long while that India had come close to defeating West Indies, with a new Prasanna-Chandrasekhar-Bedi spin combination in place. Sobers famously drew the game with a fighting unbeaten 74 in the company of tailenders Hall and Griffith, after his team had been perilously close to defeat on the last day. Sobers’s fertile imagination was evidently at work as he related the behind-the-scenes happenings of that long-ago evening. Here’s his version of a conversation as soon as Wes Hall came in to bat.

Hall: ‘Skip, I promise I’ll stay with you till the end. I have one problem, though. This Chandrasekhar, I can’t read him.”

Sobers: “What's new, Wes? Seymour Nurse, he can’t read Chandrasekhar. Rohan Kanhai, he can’t read him. Basil Butcher, he couldn’t read no Chandrasekhar, either.”

Hall: “Come now skip, be serious. Show me when he bowl tha googly, and when tha leg break.”

The two batsmen quickly agreed Sobers would stand a foot behind the umpire at the non-striker’s end, and put his right hand out every time Chandra bowled a googly, and Hall would faithfully follow the signal. A healthy partnership developed and Hall was the toast of the team at teatime. Seymour Nurse was particularly impressed. “How did you do it maan, when all of us batsmen struggled?” he asked Hall. “Oh, that’s simple Seymour old maan,” Hall replied in his best conspiratorial manner. “You know I watch the ball in the air, maan. Poor Garry, he can’t tell tha googly from tha leg break sometimes. Coz poor chap, he tries to read Chandrasekhar’s hand.”

Unfortunately for Hall, Sobers was standing just behind him overhearing the conversation. The first ball after tea, Chandrasekhar bowls a googly, and Sobers has his right hand firmly in his pocket. Exit Wesley Hall.

One of my friends has rightly pointed out that Wes Hall did not get to bat in the second innings of the Madras Test in 1967, while in the first innings he was out to Prasanna. I did my homework too and found out that Sobers was telling us a tall story. (I even checked the scorecards of the other two Tests of the series, but the facts did not match). I decided to keep the story anyway because it was such a delightful one, especially when Garry told it in his inimitable Barbadian singsong. 

The ten or so of us who had gathered at the MCC for cocktails that evening were there, thanks to SP Sathappan, Saucy to everyone (sitting next to Sobers in the photograph), the club’s president who drew up the guest list. There were bigger names in Madras cricket, but we were the ones who got invited—my brother Sivaramakrishnan, TE Srinivasan, my tennis mate Bandhu Chandhok, and, among others, the unforgettable Mahidhar Reddy, the diehard Sobers fan who fell at his feet that night and wouldn’t let go of them for quite a while. I naturally did not mention that in my story, partly because it might draw attention to the quantum of Mahidhar’s lubrication, thinking he would be embarrassed by the story. Mahidhar was extremely offended that I ignored his part in the story and here goes: I have put the record straight once and for all.

Besides his infinite capacity for tall stories, we found another aspect of Sobers’s personality striking. He treated all of us as his equals, sharing his views on men and matters with utmost candour. 

Sometime during the evening, Sobers waxed eloquent over the great bowling ability of Subhash Gupte whom he rated higher than Shane Warne as the best leg spinner of all time (I wonder if Sir Garry still holds the same view now that Warne has gone on to achieve greater heights in cricket). He then turned to me and asked me who I thought was the best orthodox leg spinner in India after Subhash Gupte. Was it Baloo Gupte, Subhash’s younger brother, he asked. I told him that many Indians agreed that Tamil Nadu’s VV Kumar was India's best leg spinner after Subhash Gupte. When he asked me why I thought so, I said that VV had this ability to make the ball hang in the air, had two different types of googly, and was the most economical wrist spinner I knew. Sobers nodded his head. He was in Chennai to assist Kumar at the MAC Spin Academy. “Yes, I can see what you mean. He still shows glimpses of those qualities when he has a bowl in the nets,” Sobers said, thoughtfully.

Reluctant to talk about his own cricket, Sobers revealed when pressed that no bowler troubled him, certainly no Indian bowler, not even Chandrasekhar. That is when he told us the story of how Sir Donald Bradman said, “Don’t worry Garry, you will sort him out,” pointing to Richie Benaud, when he thought Sobers was in a pensive mood. Sobers was puzzled and wondered what gave the Don the impression that he worried about Benaud’s bowling. His reply was the brilliant 132 in the Brisbane Test, which ended in a tie. Sobers also had a good laugh when reminded of his statement on the last morning of the Bombay Test in 1967 that he would finish the game in time to go to the Mahalaxmi races that afternoon. And he did, despite a rampaging Chandrasekhar who took all four West Indies wickets to fall.