{"id":315834,"date":"2019-10-23T06:12:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T06:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=315834"},"modified":"2019-10-23T06:12:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T06:12:11","slug":"the-great-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/the-great-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It was inhuman to play cricket at this time of the year, in this heat, but that was precisely what they were doing these days. Moreover, the team was being sent out into that cauldron to pick up something called the Pepsi Cup. You had to feel for them, though they looked like young braves. While others might shop at the airport in Dubai, one would expect them not to glance at the watches and shapely state-of-the-art CD-players, to have nothing but a glass of orange juice at the hotel before going into the nets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among them was Tendulkar, whose name, everyone agreed, sounded like an ancient weapon of destruction, and who carried a one-and-a-half ton bat. He disembarked from the plane with a singleness of purpose, and a sealed, expressionless face. He and the \u2018boys\u2019 (though you wouldn\u2019t ordinarily call Azharuddin a \u2018boy\u2019) were here to deal with the English and the vigorous Pakistanis, mainly the Pakistanis, who came from a country that had sprung troublingly from a gash in the side of their own about fifty years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the spectators was to be Ummar Aziz, who had no place to hide in India and who, rumour had it, had been living around here in a mansion with a swimming-pool for the last three years. He had expertly orchestrated a series of explosions in Bombay in 1993, bombs that had gone off in the Air India Building and in Prabhadevi, not to speak of 11 other places. He strenuously denied it, but from this safe haven; and indeed the charge might be a fiction dreamed up by the police. It was heard that he was coming, not so much because of his love of cricket, which was considerable, or of the Indian or Pakistani teams (the Pakistani side was a depleted one, with its main bowlers discredited and removed), but his fascination with Urmila Deshpande, the star of Ishq and Jaadu, who was also going to be present. Ummar Aziz had been watching Hindi films since he\u2019d been an orphan child of the Bombay streets.<\/span><\/p>\n

The team practised nimbly, without exhausting themselves. Now and then a reporter or a television crew came and asked them questions. When Azharuddin answered the questions, you could see the others in the background, throwing their arms about, Tendulkar doing exercises, his glasses so dark they bore no reflection. When he spoke, you had to look at his mouth, because of the challenge his dark glasses threw you.<\/span><\/p>\n

The English were the first to wilt. Ganguly hit the winning shot, a six that saw the ball take flight in a way unlike any bird in these surroundings. Then, the desert sun long set, he got the first Man of the Match award of the tour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching him ascend the crowded podium on a small Sony television, and talk with some assurance, Khatau, who\u2019d just returned from a hard day in the tenements in South Bombay, commented to his colleague Mohammed Yusuf that Ummar Aziz didn\u2019t seem to have come to watch the game.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018He certainly wasn\u2019t in the crowd; otherwise they would have shown him.\u2019 Khatau and Mohammed Yusuf were policemen who regretted the way Aziz had, one day, slipped like sand through their fingers. All those explosions; they hadn\u2019t been able to do anything about it. Here they were, four years later, on their sofas, watching Ganguly under the floodlights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Arrey he won\u2019t go to these small-fry games,\u2019 Yusuf said, shaking his head slowly and with great conviction, while looking at an English player waiting tentatively in the background. Ganguly was shaking hands with Ravi Shastri. Yusuf wasn\u2019t looking at them but staring at the screen and thinking. \u2018He\u2019ll come to the big one,\u2019 he concluded; or words to that effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u2018big one\u2019 was still a few days away, however, days and nights away that is, because they were all \u2018day and night\u2019 games, inducing a degree of sleeplessness in the spectator. Before then there was Pakistan versus India, or India versus Pakistan (whichever way you decided to think of it), and Pakistan versus England. After that England would take the first flight out to Heathrow, leaving the battleground open to the warring cousins.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next day Mita Reddy, former Miss India and runner-up, Miss Universe, who had only last year surprised everyone by saying to a panel of judges that her favourite person was Mrs Gandhi \u2014 \u2018Indira Gandhi?\u2019 \u2018No, Kasturbabai Gandhi\u2019, embarrassing all by invoking the Mahatma\u2019s small, self-effacing, long dead wife \u2014 was seen in the stands, sitting next to Marshneill Gavaskar, grinning because she could see herself on television. She smiled; and waved \u2014 at whom, no one, among the millions watching, knew.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the 35th over, by which time 7 wickets had fallen for 126 runs, and an Indian medium-pacer and an all-rounder were putting up an obdurate partnership, there was a spell of inactivity that sometimes occurs in the middle of an over, when members of both teams suddenly forget the thousands in the stadium and the TV cameras, and behave like a family inside a house, unaware they\u2019re being watched. Tony Greig and a minor English ex-bowler were sitting in the commentator\u2019s box and discussing plans and strategies, while the little microphone in one of the stumps, placed there to detect the sound of a nick, eavesdropped on two players conversing:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Lagta hai woh Aziz kal ayegaa.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Greig was too busy composing a litany about Aussie spin-bowling, even if he\u2019d known any Hindi, to register anything; but Khatau, on his sofa, heard the comment, though at first he wasn\u2019t quite sure he had. Yusuf confirmed with a nod that he\u2019d heard it too. They hadn\u2019t realised that they had an informant in the middle-stump microphone on the pitch; but then the game started again. Someone had said Aziz would come tomorrow; they couldn\u2019t be sure if it was one of the Indians, or a Pakistani, or one of the Indians passing on the information to a Pakistani, or vice-versa. Any of these alternatives might be the right one.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Fantastic shot,\u2019 said Yusuf, as Srinath belted an unexpected cover drive.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then the camera moved to a tall and swarthy Ravi Shastri, his cricketing days long over, but finding himself in the midst of a commentary renaissance, a tie knotted round his neck, laughing and talking to Anju Mahindra, who had once almost married Rajesh Khanna, and gone out with Sir Garfield Sobers. She was past her heyday; even the long-distance lens couldn\u2019t conceal the tiredness beneath her eyes; she looked abstracted as she listened to Ravi Shastri.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Is that what they get paid for, yaar?\u2019 asked Khatau, reaching for his beer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018God it must be hot over there,\u2019 said Yusuf.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, contrary to what the microphone in the stump had told them, there was no Aziz the next day, and neither had the more raucous Pakistani supporters, with their shining green flags, come; were they not interested in watching England lose? The Bombay \u2018glitterati\u2019 were there again, dutifully, the executive vice-president of Pepsi sitting next to the chairman of the Board of Cricket Control in his dark glasses, their wives, in their flaming saris which might have received interrogatory looks from passers-by in the streets outside, smiling vacantly at the camera as they stared back at their friends in Bombay, to all appearances unmoved by the hot desert breath. Their children, in striped T-shirts and shorts or jeans, either leaned and lolled against their fathers or revolved like satellites around their parents and parents\u2019 friends, tripping lightly down the steps.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rashid Latif hit the winning runs, and a cry rang out in the stadium. A beautiful woman in a salwaar kameez clapped emphatically.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the \u2018big one\u2019 the stadium was full again. Pakistanis jostled each other; and Indians jostled Pakistanis; and here and there, sheikhs, cellphones in their hands, d\u00e9shabill\u00e9s, in small, male harems, looked around them, listening to the roar. Boycott knelt in his pressed trousers and short-sleeved shirt and felt the pitch with an arcane hesitation again and again. It was like a dry piece of land, a bit of Arabia, that had never been rained on. He patted it one last time and said to the camera: \u2018Yes, Rahvi, the pitch is flat and true, and there will be runs in it\u2019 \u2014 as if \u2018runs\u2019 were some sort of seed that would sprout shortly, and unexpectedly, from the barren soil.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mrs Shweta Kapoor, wife of the relatively recently appointed CEO of Britannia India, was sitting not far from Urmila Deshpande, whom she didn\u2019t know, but whose last film, Jaadu \u2014 \u2018Magic\u2019 \u2014 she\u2019d seen twice already. The Pakistanis won the toss, elected to bat, and every time Saeed Anwar executed the pull shot the camera panned to the celebrating Pakistanis and the studiedly sceptical faces of the Indians, and also to Shweta Kapoor, who\u2019d once been a newsreader, a personality in her own right, and to her husband, whose youthful face was overhung by prematurely greying hair, and then to Urmila Deshpande, who was inscrutable and indecipherable behind her dark glasses. There was a rumour, uncorroborated, that she was seeing Jadeja, who was standing hunched, not far away, at mid-off.<\/span><\/p>\n

The previous day, both Mrs Kapoor and Urmila Deshpande had had their hair done at the Hilton; Urmila had acquired the permanent curls she\u2019d need for a film once she got back. Mrs Kapoor had bought a portable CD-player, with a three-CD-changer, for her son. The camera now discovered a group of men in the cheaper stalls who were holding up a placard: HI URMILA YOU HAVE DONE JAADU TO OUR HEARTS. The moment they realised they were on television the sign began to vibrate as if it were alive in their hands. The next minute Ijaz Ahmed was out to a catch at gully held by Azharuddin. The camera showed Mrs Kapoor smiling and saying something to a beautiful woman next to her, as if exchanging a particularly unworthy piece of gossip; and then it showed a young man clapping, fair, with blond hair, colourless eyes, who could have passed for a European but for the fullness of his lips.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018They\u2019re all there,\u2019 said Inspector Khatau, sucking in his stomach.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Who\u2019s he \u2013 never heard of him?\u2019 Yusuf asked with justifiable irritation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Raghav Chopra had displayed his latest collection only two weeks ago at the Taj; cholis, 21st-century ghagras; \u2018Clothes are a language that changes before other languages do,\u2019 he\u2019d said in an interview. Mita Reddy had been one of the models. In her column, Mita Reddy had been christened \u2018a dark Kate Moss\u2019 by Shobha De, a \u2018will o\u2019 the wisp\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Where is Sharjah?\u2019 asked Khatau finally.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 said Yusuf, looking blank. \u2018Near Du-Dubai.\u2019 He added, \u2018That guy doesn\u2019t look Indian, yaar!\u2019 he protested.<\/span><\/p>\n

As far as everyone knew, though, Raghav Chopra was a real blond. How he\u2019d come to be one was a mystery no one enquired into. The colour of the hair had changed probably as the universe had changed temperature; just as orange frogs were found recently in English gardens.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Three hundred and five,\u2019 said Khatau, rising suddenly. \u2018Phew!\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

All out, 305 runs. Boycott proclaimed that defeat was at hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s a known fact,\u2019 he said, \u2018that Eendiuns are no good at chasing!\u2019 He shook his head and seemed to smile in bewilderment at his words. Floodlights had been switched on about an hour ago, night had come and brought with it a school of dragonflies cruising through the field. The saris were lit up, and the women moved uncomfortably. The desert sky was like a great, empty theatre around them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Twenty minutes later, Tendulkar came out with his heavy bat in one hand, followed by the taller, shuffling Ganguly. The camera noted two people in deep conversation, but it was impossible to hear what they were saying.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Sachin\u2019s our secret weapon,\u2019 observed one of them, a gentlewoman who lived on Malabar Hill in a flat overlooking Kamala Nehru Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018And not Trishul or any of the other warheads?\u2019 said her husband\u2019s colleague. She smiled politely and refused to indicate that she\u2019d understood; then fanned herself gently with a magazine.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Aquib Javed bowled the first ball, the crowd\u2019s voice swelled in a hum and then subsided again. On the television screen, Tendulkar\u2019s bat, its face as remorseless as its staunch owner\u2019s, descended straight on the ball and hit it onto the ground. A deep thud, magnified by the microphone in the stump, accompanied this event.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Hey! Hey!\u2019 said Khatau. \u2018Look, bhai.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The camera had come to rest, in innocence, on the face of a man scratching his cheek.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s our man, bhai! It\u2019s our bridegroom, who left at the wedding!\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The camera now withdrew prudently to a safer place, a minor and timid crook in a nasty area. Then, panning from a group of agitated men holding up a sign saying \u2018TON-dulkar\u2019, it framed the man who\u2019d been scratching his cheek thoughtfully moments earlier, sitting next to the Chairman of the Board of Cricket Control and his wife, and, a few seats to the right, Urmila Deshpande, who seemed absorbed in the course of the match.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Saala!\u2019 said Yusuf; and his mouth remained open.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t abuse your brother-in-law,\u2019 said Khatau, but didn\u2019t feel like laughing.<\/span><\/p>\n

The man who\u2019d almost blown up Bombay, who\u2019d had bombs placed in Nariman Point and Dadar and 11 other places, had taken care to wear a pale, pressed green shirt, and had probably had a haircut; he now took out a cellphone. With excessive politeness, he spoke a few words into the receiver. His face, when in close-up, revealed a ravaged and uneven skin.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were 60 runs on the board, 46 of them made by Tendulkar off 50 balls, when the sky darkened. The weather reports had made no predictions; the batsmen looked up at what little they could see of the sky. The floodlights dimmed:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Oh dear, oh dear, it seems like a doost-storm,\u2019 said Boycott.<\/span><\/p>\n

The women in the expensive seats looked uneasy; their husbands laughed in their suits and belligerently talked business with each other. A man leaned forward and said something in Ummar Aziz\u2019s ear. Tony Greig and Gavaskar initiated a detailed discussion of the match so far, and replays of a brighter time, when batsmen had played their shots in the light of day, began to be shown.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Chai lau?\u2019 said a ten-year-old boy in shorts.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018No, idiot,\u2019 said Khatau. \u2018What, tea at this time of the night?\u2019 Reprimanded, the boy sat down quietly, and gratefully, on the floor before the television.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every time the camera returned to the ground, it showed the dust swirling in minute particles across it. Tendulkar was still wearing his protective headgear, boiling in the dressing-room, staring back hard at the night; yet, in the prolific commercial breaks, there he was again, leaning against a van and drinking Pepsi Cola, or wearing a striped T-shirt and flashing a Visa card. Meanwhile, the Bombay housewives pressed saris against their faces, and looked for a moment like local Muslim women; but Urmila Deshpande\u2019s face remained composed, as if nothing had happened. Again and again, the commentators scrutinised a slow-motion almost-run-out from the afternoon, Saeed Anwar raising his bat and setting out infinitesimally slowly on his long odyssey, while Ijaz Ahmed, too, in agonising protractedness, lunged towards the white line.<\/span><\/p>\n

When play resumed an hour later, Tendulkar came back looking intent; at the other end, Ganguly began to prod the ball gently and sent it to somewhere near the boundary. Raghav Chopra ran his hand through his hair; it looked absolutely white in the floodlights. The women from Bombay self-consciously dusted their saris.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018If there\u2019s anyone who can win India the match,\u2019 said Ravi Shastri in his oratorial voice, \u2018it\u2019s that man out there.\u2019 For no one referred to Tendulkar by name any more.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018He\u2019s gone,\u2019 said Khatau, despondent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ummar Aziz had disappeared; Khatau had been absorbing this fact for the last five minutes. Urmila had gone as well, probably to a different destination; but he couldn\u2019t help noticing it. The one nondescript and ageing; the other resplendent. \u2018Beauty and the Beast,\u2019 thought Khatau in bold letters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost immediately, Tendulkar, on 61, was bowled by an in-swinger. One large section of the crowd \u2014 the Indians \u2014 stared into the distance, as if a film they\u2019d been watching had been stopped midway. The others danced festively, as if a country separated them from the Indians.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018How did that happen,\u2019 enquired Boycott, \u2018to the little master?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The executive vice-president of Pepsi moved impatiently in his seat; he\u2019d been talking to his companion about a rival bid from Coke at that moment. Tendulkar, his head bowed beneath his visor, strode heavily towards the pavilion; but, almost immediately, he was drinking Pepsi, leaning against a van, and flashing a Visa card (\u2018Now You Go Get It\u2019), indifferent to his debacle.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018But how did you know, yaar?\u2019 said Yusuf, curving the palm of his hand in a question.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018What?\u2019 asked Khatau, straightening his shirt.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018You said just now, \u201cHe\u2019s gone.\u201d How did you know he\u2019s going to be out?\u2019 Yusuf smiled. \u2018You\u2019re a clairvoyant or what?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

The dismissal was shown twice from the point of view of the stump-camera; the ball rising from near the batsman\u2019s feet, so quickly as almost to hit Khatau\u2019s and Yusuf\u2019s faces, and then the lens falling backwards and staring lidlessly at the sky, a dead eye gazing at space.<\/span><\/p>\n

In spite of the floodlights, the Indians in the stadium could see only darkness about them. It was left to Ganguly and Jadeja, throwing huge and fluent shadows, to build up a partnership of 200 runs and steer the side to an unlikely victory. Anju Mahindra, who half an hour ago had been exhausted, now looked rejuvenated and fifteen years younger, and waved at someone who was presumably still awake in Bombay. Jadeja leaned forward and hit the winning four; on another channel Urmila Deshpande, her hair long and with no curls in it, sang sweet, tuneless words to Salmaan Khan upon a beach.<\/span><\/p>\n

At one o\u2019clock in the morning, a loud celebratory firecracker went off in Bandra. Khatau shuddered at the noise of the explosion, and thought of Ummar Aziz, small, nondescript, scratching his cheek thoughtfully.<\/span><\/p>\n

letters@tehelka.com<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was inhuman to play cricket at this time of the year, in this heat, but that was precisely what they were doing these days. Moreover, the team was being sent out into that cauldron to pick up something called the Pepsi Cup. You had to feel for them, though they looked like young braves. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":315842,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,2205],"tags":[11896,8559],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315834"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315921,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315834\/revisions\/315921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/315842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}