The ATP Comes to Chennai – and Stays

More than twenty years ago, my father would wake me up at the crack of dawn to take me to tennis practice at the Muthukrishnan Memorial Tennis Centre near Valluvar Kottam, while he himself played on a set of sandy courts at the edge of a large open ground in the same neighbourhood. Who could have imagined then that the denizens of Chennai would one day watch, at the very parched spot where my father was playing amateur doubles, the likes of Becker, Rafter, Kafelnikov, Paes, Bhupathi, Moya and Nadal?

Chennai’s annual ATP tournament is now a permanent fixture, one that we have come to take for granted. A decade ago it was a novelty, a treat to be devoured with incredulous glee. Having begun life in Delhi, the tournament had quickly shifted to Chennai, finding a long-term home at the newly-built SDAT stadium in Nungambakkam. It was then sponsored by a cigarette brand, and on the narrow residential streets of Lake Area you could see, alongside the spectators queuing for tickets, anti-smoking demonstrators holding placards. In the early days the excitement among the crowds was palpable, especially when a superstar first arrived in Nungambakkam in the shape of Boris Becker, who played in one of the early editions. I had never expected to see my childhood hero play live, and now here he was, before my eyes, playing barely a couple of kilometres from our home. Becker was at the fag end of his career, and lost early on in the tournament to an unknown Frenchman named Gerard Solves. As the three-time Wimbledon champ’s car pulled out of the complex later on, fans thronged the railings of the spiral walkways leading off the Centre Court stands to ground level, reluctant to let him out of their sight.

Other international players elicited interest too. Pat Rafter won the tournament in his pony-tail-sporting days, while Ivo Karlovic, pushing seven feet, was known to Chennai fans some years before he reached the second week of Wimbledon. Yevgeny Kafelnikov flew in – and out, a few days later – in his private jet. But the spectators really came into their own when India’s most successful doubles pairing first blossomed on the courts of Nungambakkam. ‘Aska lakadi gummava, Bhupathi enna summava?’ wags (and I don’t mean WAGs) in the crowd would chant. If they lost a point, it was ‘Leander, don’t meander! Bhupathi, try homoeopathy!’ The pair’s tournament win in Chennai became the platform for their successful Grand Slam career, including their dream run in 1999, when they reached the finals of all four ‘majors’.

Over the years, the tournament has been shifted from April to January to beat the Chennai heat; its name has changed along with its sponsors, first to Tata Open and now Aircel Chennai Open; and it has attracted its fair share of famous regulars – Carlos Moya kept coming back for a whole decade. Announcers with fancy accents might call it the ‘Che-naaai Open’ and some of the green seats close to court level might be home to an assortment of high-society types, but on the whole the fans have remained resolutely carefree. It is almost as though the stands and crowds from a cricket match had been tacked on to a tennis court. While the spectators at Wimbledon wear sunscreen, eat £2 strawberries and drink £6 Pimms and lemonade, in Chennai you’re more likely to catch a whiff of the cinema-theatre smell of veg puff and samosa, and you will still get the occasional freebie from a company launching a new soft drink. More stalls have sprung up on the strip of grass adjoining the outer courts, and a large screen there shows the action on Centre Court. The grounds continue to wear a relaxed look, and occasionally the larger-than-life players stroll surreally close to the public. My mother once got an autograph from Paradorn Srichaphan – she didn’t recognise him, but thought he looked like a ‘chamathu paiyan’ (good boy).

The early frenzy appears to have abated somewhat in recent years, perhaps due in part to the surfeit of entertainment options and big-name events that have become available in the city: IPL matches, celebrity appearances, ever-larger air-conditioned malls. But it is still a special experience to sit high up in the stands, looking down at the floodlit court as the sea breeze blows across the stadium. The average fan may be somewhat deficient in such niceties as not talking between serves, but the chatter is always fascinating. A couple of years ago, I sat watching a first-round match between Janko Tipsarevic, the Dostoevsky-reading Serbian, and Spain’s Carlos Moya, by some distance the crowd favourite. In the row behind us a pair of teenaged boys dissected the game, mostly in Tamil. One of them was aggressively supporting Moya, while his friend was quietly tipping in Tipsarevic’s direction. As Tipsarevic began to dictate terms, the first boy said in dismay: ‘The naayi is hitting well, da. It’s hitting really well, da!’ Quick serves were greeted with ‘Rocket ra!’ Moya, the boys felt, lacked ‘placement’: ‘He’s getting into position, he’s doing everything, but he’s not placing the ball.’ The commentary carried on during points. Flat, line-hugging forehands were met with ‘Addra sakke!’ or ‘Besh!’ Effective shots from the Serbian elicited shouts of ‘Oh dash! Oh oh dash!’

Next week the stands will fill up once more. Will Somdev Devvarman’s dream run of 2009 be replicated by an Indian – by Devvarman himself or perhaps by Yuki Bhambri? Or will the best non-Federer Swiss in tennis, Stan Wawrinka, retain the trophy? Whatever happens, there’ll be no shortage of addra sakes ringing out in the stands.

Cricket bats: too heavy!

A short version of this article appeared under the title ‘Need to Prune Thickness of Bats’ in the New Indian Express, 25.10.2011, page 14.

—

The ICC has just made a batch of rule changes in cricket, addressing Powerplays, runners, obstruction of the field and suchlike. Bully for them, but there’s one other section of the rules I wish they’d had a look at. I’m talking about the weight and thickness of cricket bats.

I know I’m only pointing out the obvious when I say the tools of the trade have become massive in recent years, but I was reminded of the full import of it recently when I was watching the Champions League T20 semi-finals on TV, as first David Warner and then Chris Gayle acquainted the cricket ball with all sections of the stadium’s roof.

I wish to take nothing away from these men’s obvious talent or the hours of ‘range-hitting’ practice they must have put in. But this supposedly thrilling, pulsating exhibition of modern-day cricket left me cold. Something is surely wrong when mishits and shots hit from unbalanced positions sail not just over the boundary rope but several rows into the stands. The wily spinner who has induced a leading edge, the hardworking pacer who has made the batsman hurry into a pull must feel extremely hard done by.

John Arlott once famously described a Clive Lloyd pull as ‘the stroke of a man knocking a thistle top off with a walking stick.’ Had the celebrated commentator watched Lloyd’s compatriot at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, he’d have been put in mind not of thistle tops and walking sticks but of fortress gates and battering rams. And with good reason. During the broadcast an interesting clip was shown from a pre-match practice session. It showed Warner going over to Gayle, chatting with him, one friendly competitor to another, and clasping his hand. He then tried to lift Gayle’s bat, miming his astonishment as he realised how heavy it was. Now Warner is no stripling, and from all accounts wields a chunky piece of willow himself, so this one must have been pretty substantial.

I remember reading one of those ‘weird but true’ stories in a cricket book when I was a boy. Apparently a batsman in the days of yore –- possibly sometime in the nineteenth century –- turned up for a match with a bat as wide as the stumps, and proceeded to position it exactly in front of them in a quite literal exhibition of stonewalling. The cartoon accompanying the story showed some exasperated fielders approaching the pitch with knives to whittle the bat down to a decent size.

Since then, of course, rules have been framed to limit the width of the cricket bat – but not, it appears, its thickness. As far as I can make out from the MCC’s rather complex laws of the game (available at lords.org), there’s a maximum length for the cricket bat (38 inches) and a maximum width (4.25 inches), but no maximum thickness and no maximum weight (Law 6, Appendix E). How can this be the case when the ball is of a standard size and weight?

Bats have certainly evolved in the direction of heftiness. Tendulkar, no slogger, has graduated from the thin bat (in the days of the Power label) to his current muscle-flexers. Even Rahul Dravid’s bat, one of the thinner ones around, is noticeably thicker than his preferred blade at the time of his Test debut. But in the absence of any clear regulation, bats are becoming more and more like Hanuman’s mace (this was especially true of the Mongoose -– it is perhaps no coincidence that some of Matt Hayden’s CSK teammates nicknamed him ‘Namakkal Anjaneyar’, in a reference to the giant Hanuman statue in Namakkal).

It is all very well to say that the game is evolving, that players and spectators must keep up with it. But it does not evolve of its own accord: the cricket establishment must take responsibility for the direction in which it changes. Tennis saw it fit to make the balls fluffier and heavier in the Nineties when it was felt that the game was becoming too boring, the points too short. Cricket is now introducing new balls from either end in ODIs, and several other innovations have been touted as making the contest between bat and ball more even. For that reason, and to preserve the aesthetic value of the game, perhaps it is time to make a more fundamental change. It’s time to prune the bats.

The Fauna of our Flat

I’m beginning to think that life in a flat in the heart of a bustling city is not necessarily a life divorced from nature. The trees around our home have, over the years, been the source of plenty of visiting birds and animals.

At noon today, just as the current returned after its daily hour off and the fan came on, two crows just outside my window began to caw in unison. I can’t say if they have an in-built clock, or whether a gust of wind from the fan in my room somehow made its way out. The crows sat on their perches, beaks slightly open as if in mild surprise, little tufts of black on their heads, glancing suspiciously from side to side. A while later they had hopped on to an adjoining branch, and were joined by one or two of their brethren, looking now like a group of acquaintances lounging in the reading room of a gentlemen’s club. Then all of a sudden they seemed to be talking at the tops of their voices, and they flew off together.

On a lower branch sat a pigeon, mostly grey, but with a slight hint of shiny blue at its neck. Its red-rimmed eye was like a bead, looking more like a decoration than an instrument of sight. The pigeon began scratching the side of its neck with its beak, now its tail, now under its right wing. For the most part it sat peacefully, its bright orange claws curled around the surface of the branch.

Chennai Summers: A Refresher Course

There’s a large Corporation playground next door to us, about 200m x 100m. Now this can be a bit of a nuisance, because your elders are bound to muse from time to time that it’s probably there to be used for some exercise. After many little hints (including some rather direct references to my paunch at recent family get-togethers), I decided to give it a go. After all I was playing cricket in the nets not that long ago  (although admittedly that doesn’t involve much locomotion). But I forgot that this was summer in Chennai, a season whose full glory I had escaped for the past several years.

I managed one round around the ground, and there was a hammering in my chest. I walked the second round, and felt I might live after all. I jogged the third, wheezing and staggering home through the gate with my last breath. ‘I felt terribly out of shape,’ I told a friend later (if those IPL chaps can be interviewed after every run, why can’t I?). ‘That’s because you are,’ he replied helpfully. Very well. But I insist that the heat played its part.

It’s the time of year when the temperature crosses forty regularly, and the sun’s beating down in all seriousness by eight and positively hammering down by ten. Air conditioners huff and puff and drip water by the puddleful on the outside. Piles of yellow mangoes on the streets tempt you, but with all those reports you don’t know which of them have been ripened with the help of sulphur fumes, so you’re better off sticking to the green ones that are still on the trees. (There’s one such tree outside our third-floor apartment window. As kids we’d pick up the raw mangoes that fell off it and eat them with salt. By a stroke of genius, the compound wall had been built so that the trunk was wedged right in it, thereby providing us endless entertaining arguments with the neighbours, who insisted the tree was theirs. Mending Wall and all that, but no chance of any Frost in Chennai.)

Then there’s the load-shedding, which isn’t nearly as bad as it seems at first — provided it’s done at scheduled times. So those who are at home sit fanless, AC-less and listless from two to three in the afternoon. Those of us who have the good fortune to work by ourselves can read and write through the night. That way you can experience the coolest part of the day, between around four-thirty and five-thirty, as the sky begins to lighten, the crows begin to caw, and the coconut trees stand in the quiet that precedes the six o’ clock sound of water pumps and half-filled plastic buckets. It also has the added advantage of making you feel too tired and sleepy by dawn to consider going on that jog around the park. So you can stay awake just long enough to hear the start of the hundred and one cricket matches taking place inside it, pick up the newspaper and the milk packets from outside the door (assuming a wandering cat hasn’t torn the latter open), and go to sleep.

Midnight Polyglot

कल रात मैं ट्यूब पर घर लौट रहा था तो अचानक ट्रेन पर तीन आदमी चढ़े, जिनमें से एक कुछ पचास- साठ साल का हुआ होगा, और बाकी दो युवा थे. पहले व्यक्ति दिखने में अंग्रेज थे लेकिन बोल हिंदी में रहे थे, बड़ी दिलचस्पी से और चेहरे पे बड़ी दिलदार मुस्कान के साथ.

‘आप लोग कहाँ से हैं, बांगलादेश से?’

‘नहीं, इंडिया से.’

‘अच्छा, इंडिया में कहाँ से?’

‘कलकत्ता.’

तब बुज़ुर्ग को मैं भी नज़र आया. मैं देख सकता था की वे अनुमान लगाना चाहते थे कि मैं भी भारतीय हूँ या नहीं. तब घोषणा सुनाई दी कि ट्रेन १२.२० तक रुकी रहेगी. मेरी तरफ़ देखते हुए उन्होंने बड़े आश्चर्य-भरी आवाज़ में कहा, ‘बारह बीस!’ मुझे समय का अंदाजा नहीं था; लगा कि अब शायद १२.०० या १२.१० बजे होंगे. तो मैंने भी भौं ज़रा चढ़ाकर कहा, ‘बारह बीस?’

ठीक उसी पल दरवाज़े बंद हुए और ट्रेन चलने लगी. उनके चेहरे पे राहत भरी मुस्कान फैल गई. ‘आह, मुझे लगा हम आधे घंटे तक यहीं पड़े रहेंगे.’ अब मुझे भी वार्तालाप में शामिल कर दिया गया. उन्होंने पुछा कि मैं कहाँ का हूँ. मेरे ‘चेन्नई का’ कहने पर उन्हें पहले चंडीगढ़ सुनाई दिया, फिर मैंने समझाया. वे कहने लगे कि वे कभी चेन्नई तक नहीं गए लेकिन दक्षिण में बीजापुर तक गए हैं. लगभग चार साल महाराष्ट्र और गुजरात के शहरों और गाँवों में घूम चुके हैं. मेरे पूछने पर कहा कि गुजराती और मराठी भी थोड़ा बोल लेते हैं, और नागरी लिपि भी जानते हैं. भाषा-प्रवाह उनकी काफी तेज़ थी, और लहजा काफी अच्छा था, हालांकि तनिक सी विदेशी झनकार मौजूद ज़रूर थी. बंगाली लड़कों कि ओर मुढ़कर पूछने लगे कि यहाँ क्या करते हैं.

‘पढ़ते हैं.’

‘अच्छा, क्या पढ़ते हैं?’

‘कंप्यूटर साईंस.’

‘हाँ, आजकल भारतीय लोग वही पढ़ते हैं ना. मुझे लगता है जब तक दुनिया में कंप्यूटर होगा हम आज़ाद नहीं होंगे. अब हर तरफ़ इन्टरनेट है. किसी कंपनी से पूछो आप क्या करते हैं, तो कहते है इन्टरनेट पे साईट है, उस पर देख लीजिये.’

लडकों ने उनसे पुछा कि वे कहाँ से हैं.

‘आपको क्या लगता है?’

‘लगते तो यहीं के हैं.’

‘पहले आपने सोचा हुआ होगा ना, कि यह गोरा कैसे हिंदी बोल रहा है.’

कुछ-कुछ संकुचित स्वर में: ‘आप वैसे गोरे ही दिखते हैं.’

‘गोरा ही तो हूँ!’ यह कहकर जोर से हंसने लगे. मैं उनकी भावना समझ सकता था. मुझे भी काफी मज़ा आता है जब जर्मन लोग मुझे उनकी भाषा बोलते हुए पाकर हैरान होते हैं – इसके बावजूद कि मैं इतना अच्छा नहीं बोल पाता हूँ जितना ये व्यक्ति हिंदी बोल रहे थे.

इतने में उनका स्टेशन आया. उठते हुए उनहोंने कहा, ‘वैसे आज कल कहते नहीं हैं, लेकिन …’ — यहाँ जोर देते हुए — ‘शुभ रात्रि!’

More Lipograms: Mythology without the ‘E’ – 1

Krishna gulps down milk and yoghurt, burfi, malaai,

Much of it not his, oh, no, nor of his family;

Still Krishna grows chubby, as also you can

If you can filch, and charm your way out of any jam.

His grin (impish, mocking, but also disarming),

Affords him this luxury, among a myriad of things.

.

What do you do with him, who’s so out of hand,

So stubborn; who’ll follow no command?

Today Yashoda finds him frolicking,

Frolicking, burrowing through mounds of sand,

Clawing at it, throwing fistfuls at his chum:

A roguish child who’s having his fun.

.

But what’s this now? Yashoda panics,

As Krishna, with a glint almost manic

Stuffs sand in his mouth, chomping and crunching.

‘Stop that!’ shouts Yashoda, loud and rasping.

‘What’s that in your mouth, young rascal?

Show your ma now – now, this instant.’

.

Still grinning, Krishna drops his jaw.

In his mouth is all that God has wrought.

Plants, animals, humans; plains, mountains, sky;

Colours and odours, music and cacophony;

Mathura, Vrindavan, Krishna, Yashoda.

Yashoda bows: ‘Now I know you, my Lord.’

Funny Word Article Reader

One evening some years ago, I was at a fashionable restaurant on a busy street. While I fully anticipated a mouth-watering, stomach-filling, calorie-supplying meal, I got something in addition to that: a most entertaining lesson in the modern-day nomenclature of things.

As we walked towards the entrance, six would-be gorgers, famished but trying to look genteel, a young man hopped out from behind a counter at the door and asked, ‘Name, sir?’

I gave it to him.

‘Table for?’

‘Six.’

He smiled apologetically. ‘Please wait just ten minutes, sir.’ Genteel souls do not argue with reason, so we nodded and took our seats – placed safely outside the restaurant where we could exert no pressure on those fortunate enough to be inside – and looked around. The first thing that caught my eye was the fact that the counter behind which our friend stood had a name. I looked at the shiny plaque that said: GREETER STAND.

So the man had a name. Greeter: one who greets. How enchantingly simple! But that was not all. A few feet away stood a similar counter, this one bearing a plaque that said, totally hyphenless, ‘Take Away Counter’. We would have loved to comply, but it would have been quite a job lugging it around. Besides, we were famished.

Our ‘greeter’ brought us our menu cards. At the end of several colourful pages, each with photographs of dishes and ‘combos’, I saw this line: ‘As concerns further clarification/explanation, your order taker will be glad to help.’

Order taker: one who takes your order. I put down my menu with a sigh. It was no longer something I could brush away as an aberration; I really was behind the times. I must learn the new lingo.

~

Days later, I was consumed by the philosophy. What a godsend to society, this wonderful system of naming!

Picture for yourself what I imagined that day.

Early in the morning, you hear the footsteps of your newspaper-deliverer, and the thump of the paper as it lands outside your front door. You pick up your mug of coffee, glance at the headlines, and switch on the programme-displayer, searching absently for the channel-changer. You soon realise that there’s nothing much on any of the channels, and the thrill of pressing buttons on your channel-changer wears off after about ten minutes. You now want to get going for work, so you turn on the bucket-filler in the bathroom.

Neatly dressed, you step out into the floor-changer and descend to the ground floor, where your chauffeur (some old terms, unfortunately, must persist) opens your car door for you, and you are on your way to another day at the office. The last person you want to meet today is your infernal salary-payer, but, well, you don’t have much of a choice.

So you pick out a magazine, hoping to relax, and you come across a most irritating piece by a smart-alecky article-writer. And so, for the moment, you’re the Funny Word Article Reader.

End of the decade?

Location: Planet Journalism. 

TEACHER: Now, students, I want you to write the following imposition 10 times each before the end of the week. I am projecting it on the screen for you to take down.

STUDENTS: Groan.

TEACHER: Shh. Look at the screen. This is what I want you to write.

1 AD (or 1 CE): The first year of the Common Era.

2000: The two-thousandth year.

31 December 2000: The last day of the two-thousandth year. At the end of this day, 2000 years are over.

Let us now keep aside those first two thousand years. In other words, keep aside those two hundred decades.

1 January 2001: The first day of the first year of the 201st decade.

1 January 2002: The first day of the second year of the 201st decade.

Similarly,

1 January 2010: The first day of the tenth year of the 201st decade.

Now, there are ten years in a decade.

Which means we have a whole year to go before the 202nd decade begins.

So, from now on, we will stop writing headlines about the greatest this of the decade and the worst that of the decade, and haranguing everyone into celebrating the start of a new decade. When the new decade actually does start, we may be allowed to use such headlines all over again. We may.

 

STUDENTS (among themselves):

New decade begins with unbelievable imposition.

Biggest disagreement of decade.

Students express hope that new decade will be less stringent.

TEACHER (muttering through clenched teeth): I will not give up. I will not give up.

Warming Up

Place: Chennai

Time of year: January

Diurnal temperature range: 20-30 degrees Celsius (approx.)

Location: A Café Coffee Day branch

Item: Menu card

Theme: Winter Collection ‘09

Sample entries:

‘Chocolayers: Hot choco-latte infused with hints of aromatic cinnamon. Like sitting by a fireplace on a cold winter day.’

‘Level Three: Irish crème flavoured Kaapi and spicy overtones come together to envelope you with warmth – just like your favourite cardigan.’

At First Sight

I remember clearly the first time I saw him. It was on the first day of Upper Kindergarten, in a new school. My father held my hand right up to the door of the classroom, which was on the second floor of a grey, then forbidding building.

All of five, I was bewildered, intimidated by a classroom filled with rank strangers. The teacher, a middle-aged lady sporting huge spectacles, seemed to harbour unimaginable danger. The other boys and girls, seated at low colourful tables on low colourful chairs – red, blue, yellow, green – seemed to be grinning wickedly at me, the hapless newcomer. I turned desperately around to clutch at my father’s thumb, but he had vanished already. I began to bawl. I realised soon enough that it was an impossible situation, so I allowed myself to be taken by the teacher to the table at the back end of the classroom, still roaring my displeasure. Before I knew it, I was sitting in one of those absurd little red chairs, curiosity about my new environs having stifled my tears. Eventually, I forgot that I was supposed to be crying. It was then that I remembered what my grandmother had told me the previous day.

‘I know a boy who goes to your school. His grandparents live on our street – you must make friends with him.’

‘But how will I find him?’

‘Don’t be silly. He will be there in the class too. All you need to do is to ask for Rohan.’