The One Eyed Tiger

                          The audacious straight drive.

My first introduction to this game was when I was in the fourth standard at the convent. The neighborhood friend of mine who was doing his 6 th standard in the then famous school in the town revealed one evening a new game. A strange game in which you hold a stick with broad blade and was called bat (the makeshift bat was the coconut palm leaf stem). And another fellow throws a tennis ball from his hand held high and involves a bit of twist, turn and dancing motion. The fellow with the “bat” swings it violently and sends the ball to distant corners, more often to the compound of the neighbor. He does this to avoid the ball hitting three thin bamboo sticks behind him. He hits the ball and runs to the far end as if his life was depending on his reaching there as quick as he can. Then some arithmetic was involved and bingo, after exchanging swinging of bat and throwing the ball the winner is declared. Again based on some weird arithmetic calculations. A subject that was my bête noire.

I was not at all fascinated with the introduction to this new game. And was angry with my friend more because I could not figure out the strange acts and then math that is vital part of playing that game. I could not imagine and understand the raison d'être in involving math in fun and while at play. Ridiculous!

One year down the line I was sent to the very same school my friend was in. I was into the middle school and in the 5 th standard. New environs, bigger boys, no girls, strange angry words exchanged when boys fought, and menacing looking men as teachers. And most of all the strange game of three sticks a bat, ball, excited players and onlookers. The game was seen played in a many groups at the same time on all the play grounds, strips and corners. My first hand initiation into cricket. A fascination that stayed in me for the next many years as an avid player and follower of the game. Until belligerent opposition and disapproval from home muffled out that life from me.

Fascination metamorphosed into obsession and in a short while I began to play and listen to the running commentary on AIR, read avidly the Sports page in The Hindu. Often I cornered clandestinely a few paise from home to by sports magazines, Sport & Pastimes” and the “Sports Week’. My father used to buy the "Illustrated Weekly" regularly and those days it was “the news magazine”. And they brought out great articles on cricket and with beautiful colour photos of action. The little breaks in school and any available daylight time, I was playing the game.

And then India won the first ever test match and series overseas in New Zealand. Along with that I heard for the first time the name Pataudi. My father was an avid follower of the game and he had with him cricket books and coaching manuals written by Sir Len Hutton, Ted Dexter and so on. He used to listen to the commentary on AIR. And strange indeed, he did not frown upon me following the game.

Later that year sitting in the sidelines of the cricket matches to decide the best House before the annual Day celebrations, I heard of Pataudi who was the school captain. He was a senior in the final class. And strangely except for the darker complexion he was Nawab Pataudi’s look alike- be it appearance, hair-styling, gaze or swagger. And he was a good batsman. He was mobbed by the rest of the school. And because of him being the name sake of the Nawab, he was an icon.

My father in some rare moments of interaction that we ever had, used to tell me about how he and  a few of his colleagues ferried Pataudi from Hyderabad to Madras  once in the Air Force aircraft and then the Test matches that he witnessed Pataudi in action. He also told me why Pataudi was a Tiger. He was not named Tiger Pataudi, he said for his ferocity, (he in fact was a decent man), but for the tenacity and spirit of never say die. It was then I understood that Pataudi lost an eye in a road accident and was handicapped that way. My father told me that he had great difficulty in sighting and he always saw a ball being bowled as two. And because of his impaired vision he had to use his senses to know which was illusion and which was real. No ordinary man can adjust like he did and mock illusion and fate.

There were two means of conveying the period and time in films that had the plot taking place in the 1960’s. One was the signing on theme music of the AIR and the other was the running commentary on a cricket Test match on the AIR. And the commentator can be heard saying animatedly and in excitement that Pataudi has executed another glamorous stroke.

I met the prince at close quarters, that I could almost touch him. That was sometime in the early 1970’s during the three day Hyderabad-Kerala ,Ranji Trophy match at the University stadium in Trivandrum. M.L.Jaisimha was the captain. And there was besides Pataudi, another handsome player, his cousin Abas Ali Baig, Abid Ali and many others.

I must say that I have never met another handsome, charming and captivating person. He was absolutely gold like in pallor and had the elegance of the lineage, education and stature. Unfortunately he was bruised all over his elbows after some fascinating fielding. I do not remember taking his autograph, for I was bewitched and amazed at having got to see the man himself.

There were college girls in plenty shouting, shrieking and howling. They were kept at bay by the police, for they would have shred him. He was, at that time already married to Sharmila Tagore. The gossip went around that a boisterous college lass who was obsessed with him, gate crashed into the Mascot hotel where the team stayed. And she pleaded that she wanted to sleep with Pataudi. Pataudi was irritated by the lass and her tantrums that he closed himself in his room and got her evicted from the hotel. The grape vine has it that another player Mumtazr Hussain dated her during the duration of the match.

“No, don’t call me sir, call me tiger”. This was Pataudi himself when another player of later years tried to pick up a conversation with him.

In the 1960’s there were a few Indians who provoked ones imagination, they were Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Vikram Sarabhai and the other was Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi.

Crime & Punishment

Premeditating a crime outweighs by great extent the enacting of the crime itself. The actor is a mere instrument, a tool. While I ‘m an accomplice, a co-conspirator and culpable murder, because I have been part of many premeditated murders. Murder most foul!

Kalliappan  an old dying man in the former Central Travancore is one illustration of a man destroyed by remorse and guilt. He finds transient solace in alcohol. And hence he consumes more and more…! He is aged and emaciated. Bidding his time when he will cease to have any days remaining in this world. For he has killed many! And it now dawns more in him, how often there were innocents sent to the gallows by his very hands. This young man now standing at the gallows is innocent. The jailor told him so in no uncertain words and as another instance of egregious application of the law and evidence in court. But his son who accompanied him to the execution takes up the job when he stumbles, does it more out of revulsion and anger for what he feels is his father’s false piety.( the plot of Adoor Gopalakrishan Movie- Nizhal kuthu)

Now wake up, wake up from your blissful, nay forced slumber. It was I and you, the ones who premeditated and did murders most foul. And we continue to clamour for more. More blood that may even put to pale oblivion the insatiable thirst for blood of the merchant of death or even as old timers say of the Goddess Kali.

Mohammed Sadd- al Beshi is far younger and in his mid forties. When he came on television, he looked ordinary and I would pass him on the street without a second glance at his unassuming countenance. In fact the butcher who I remember from my childhood when I used to be sent to the local abattoir, had blood shot eyes, dark complexion massive chest, broad shoulders, prominent cheek bones and muscular biceps. He also sported frightening whiskers. And I can remember him vividly, though it was many years ago, on the whole he generated a fearsome visage.

“Despite the fact that I despise violence against women, I happily undertake my job as it is decreed by the one and only almighty God.” He expresses without batting an eyelid and in a calm voice. He continues, "I must say that women are strong kneed than men. Men cannot stand straight on the execution platform. I have not seen a weak kneed woman in my 400 plus beheadings willed by God.” He had a mocking tone in his voice, derision towards men and their infirmity before the sword he wields and send their head cart wheeling on the dusty sand, with the trunk shuddering spasmodically on the ground. Blood gushing out of the gaping hole in the trunk at the neck where the head was. He is the official executioner of the custodians of Islam, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

These are two faces of men who are by lineage and profession employed to murder, to kill, to enforce execution or capital punishment as called in jurisprudence. These are people from two distinct cultures and our contemporaries.

The first in a society that dares to call itself “democratic and civilised”! The second in a society that is teetering still in medieval barbaric practices. The former presumes that man has to be made aware to think of death penalty when he sets out to murder and hence must be operatively deterrent. The latter quotes the rash and archaic unveiling of eye for an eye from institutions found during a different age. Those laws may have been suitable for a clan of tribal barbarians wandering along the deserts of Arabia , Palestine and Egypt  and are absolutely ill for a generation that claim to be civilised and enlightened .

Now let us leave aside countries like Saudi Arabia and some other Islamic States who have refused to sign the United Nations Declarations of Human Rights, that calls for abolition of death penalty and that everyone has the right to protection from deprivation of life. Capital punishment is still given down in signatory countries like India and the USA for instance. Two nations who clamour for being more democratic and upholding human rights than the other! But are derisive and averse to the watch dog Amnesty.

Death penalty has proved that it is not an effective deterrent against crime. As long as premeditated killings are supported by money and political power crime in various forms and intensity will continue to be perpetrated. To assume that society should dispense with certain elements as they are considered unfit for life is another theory that keeps capital punishment on the statute. A flawed and bedeviled theory from the very society that is responsible for an evolution of a felon. The very society who shuns him like a pariah and incorrigible!  The only difference is that he or she is not banished to a remote island- a penal colony, but left in the lurch emotionally and socially, branded as a curse, a scourge to mankind and the very society in which he was born, born not by his volition! And in some cases exterminated!

If a felony is penalised by elimination of the felon, by what law and philosophy is the very murder what we call penalty not a more heinous crime? It is the whole society, the mob against a solitary individual who is branded as unfit to live. The rarest of rare cases as the Supreme Court of India observed   is a contradiction and a unenlightened observation. It means that in rare and strange cases the society can indulge in crime, in mobocracy.

The lust for blood is mans twin .A very dangerous trait that only man has and exercise against his own. I was a pro death penalty criminal all these years. But life has finally given me a realisation that smothering out a life in the name of penalty, as an individual perpetrator or as the silent acqusiser are both the same. And no law can redress or reverse both as the former is a crime and the later uncivilised and barbaric.

There is nothing human in the mode of killing or  be it by the individual or the State. Both are lust, lust for blood and vengeance of perverted and heinous minds.

Requiem

Some people are fortunate to read their own obituary. Well , is  there  something fortunate in getting to read that? It may also turn to  be a painful reminder, a late realization that you are or were a damn fool. How about being present at your memorial service? The white pallor of you, dressed in immaculate  white traditional uniform of the dead? You would come to know what the world- the friends who you loved , the relatives who you thought loved you, the acquaintances who nod while you pass them on the street ,all would subscribe to the requiem.

The eulogy they may read and it may blush your cheeks even though you are dead.

The ones who disparaged you and hounded you to the end of the world while you were alive, or even did the eerie black magic to summon Lucifer and numb your senses, all would in unionism orate in praise  of the magnificent  person you were. You will wonder why your mother , your wife or husband did not notice these  conspicuous qualities  while you were walking around in flesh and blood. And now once you were  interned in the inescapable underground vault the whole world conspire to  bring forth  grand orations about what you were. You may for a moment  pinch your cheek to  know if all is real. But then the dead cannot pinch, they pinch through!

This was what I felt whenever I  have been at the sidelines listening to a few memorial services . After you are gone, you will be eulogised for things that you did not do, and would not have done either. Hallo and saint hood is thrust upon you . And for that to happen, you need not have to be patient and bring forth three miracles like the Vatican insist. You  only just have to pass away. Scoundrel or saint when alive, you will be baptised after death and given a clean chit that you could not have dreamt when alive.

The mother of all jokes  would be a primate throwing tributes to the departed. The closest liaison he must have ever had with  the deceased would be at a  sumptuous meal complimented with exotic spirits, at the home of the departed. But the words and phrases that flow from him in tribute will flatter even Alcapone lying in his grave.

Eulogies have a queer sense. What they really mean one may not understand because it is neigh impossible to enter the mind of the speaker and decipher what he or she  really means  when he says, “I loved him”. By far that is the fact. Exceptions to the rule are not to be forgotten!

Here  are a few tributes to the departed-

-By a husband who excelled in  infidelity  towards  his wife had this to say at the memorial service.”If  tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, I’d walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.”

-By the Bishop who lead the memorial service to a young woman of the laity who was raped and killed. “If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, it comes from the hand of the same master.”

-A politician’s requiem  at the funeral of his bête noire. “say not in grief he is no more , but live in thankfulness that he was ( is no more).”

-A friend’s eulogy .”The mystery of his love is greater than the mystery of death.”

How  I wish I could speak at the memorial service of at least a few people I know. Remind them of their lives and more ,which that they thought people pretermitted