The Blessed Sachin

Many years back I had to wait at a motor-cycle repair shop near my house as my mobike was being repaired.  The owner of the repair shop was a large-built Muslim who seemed quite adept at his job. That day, at his shop, there was a lad of seven or eight - also a Muslim who had a closely cropped pate assisting the main mechanic.

    "Aslam, woh dus number spanner laa rey!"  the Mechanic ordered his young assistant (Get me the 10 number spanner)

The boy fetched a spanner and handed it over. The Master took it, briefly considered it, and rapped the boys skull with the heavy tool cursing :

   "Arrey ullu! Mein 10 waala poocha aur tum 8 waala dey rahe ho !!"

It would have hurt the boy, but barely wincing, he proceeded to fetch the right instrument. A little later the Master asked for another tool. The poor boy, I'm sure totally self-absorbed, thinking about his distant family - perhaps his mother or his playmates from another town - again fetched a wrong tool and was rapped on the knuckles with that instrument with fluent expletives spewing from the Master's mouth in rage.

I tried to intervene weakly in support of the boy, trying to explain that he was perhaps too young for the job. The Mechanic brushed off my comments saying "With this sort of training under me, in three years he'll be ready to take on any job and the world too!"

The boy was wearing a grease-blotched faded and dirty pale yellow T-shirt printed with the letters :

"Don't Ask Me to Think.  I was hired for my looks !"

Perhaps the T-shirt being given away in some rich western country as charity which once belonged to a rich boy and had found its way to this lad in the mechanics shop in Jayanagar, Bangalore.

These lads would work a 11 or 12 hour shift from 8:30 a.m till 9:00 p.m., perhaps staying in some slum under the roof of a distant uncle who had migrated to the city from some distant part of the state. Not for him any of his mother's delicacies. Not for him any medicines if he caught a cold or flu. No one would care if he were happy or sad. He was just being used without any compensations of any significant sort. The cursed of the world!

                                                 xxx


Then there is the other end of the spectrum. A lad from middle-class circumstances who is gifted in a different sort of way. He can connect a bat to a swiftly moving or suddenly spinning ball in various talented ways that are effective in a human-created game called cricket that we all, like him, would love to keep on playing throughout our lives and for 24 hours a day. He was fortunate to be born in a family that allowed him that luxury and in a country with a large-enough, somewhat idle middle-class population, who spread the notion around, that his efforts can define the self-image of the country. He may or may not have been good in studies, but to his luck, he is encouraged to play on. Life is just one big game for him at which, talented as he is, he excels. He is not forced to master complicated differential equations that seem incomprehensible to us. No need to learn Fourier Series or Laplace Transforms. No need to decipher the complex phase diagrams of silicate systems either with or without some god-forsaken parameters like PCO2 or PH2O nor the need to understand what in the world does the knowing  REDOX Potentials have to do to enable one to marry one's girlfriend! I remember the admonition I was given by my father as a 13 year old in Kannada:

"SAYANKAALA, AAR-AARUVAREY AADETGE, BEEDHI DEEPA HACHCHDETGE, KAYYI-KAALU, MUKHA TOLAKONDU BENNU BAGGISI KOOTHUKONDU ODABEKU! GOTTHAYATHA!!

Translated into English, and without the imperious rasping voice, it sounds so polished - almost coaxing and cajoling!

"As soon as it strikes 6 or 6:30 in the evening, after the streetlights are switched on, you better wash your face, hands and feet and bend your back even as you sit for studies with intense efforts! Understood?"

The cricketer becomes a hero of the masses at an age as young as sixteen years. He makes millions of Rupees. He creates records of various sorts. He is praised to the heavens, adulated and venerated. To make matters worse, he even has his head firmly placed on his shoulders and is down-to-earth! He has a wisdom beyond his years that helps him retain his humility and has an impeccable conduct. He falls in love with a woman and is even able to marry her! Not only is the woman quite attractive, she is also a doctor. And to cap it off they are a happy family !!

He is made an honorary member of the Parliament. Given various State honors and even the highest civilian award of the nation. His name earns, both to him and his sponsors, millions in advertisement promotions. He is felicitated by the world and is considered equal to God!

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country, farmers hoping to keep their hearths alive would have raised loans at interest rates that would make Shylock weep - rains having failed and crops destroyed and bereft of all hopes several of them would have hung themselves. Other much more fortunate ones would have roamed the forests of Arunachal and Chhattisgarh and Orissa separated from their wives just to balance the account books. Many would have quit service early due to sickness and in some sort of shame at not being able to handle the contempt of their colleagues. Ignored by friends and rejected by colleagues they would have retreated into their rooms to be busy with what the modern world has to offer in electronic technology.

These losers marvel at the workings of the universe even as they sit in front of their computers browsing the internet and they see the exhortation in websites to "Show your love for Sachin Tendulkar !" and invite your comments as contributions.

                     xxx