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.

—

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.

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.

This one was quiet, but pigeons can sometimes get on your nerves when they decide to exercise their syrinxes. Years ago a pigeon family made its nest on the parapet below one of our windows. (Sometimes they even tried to set up home in the bedroom lofts. Removing the twigs can be quite a task, because the birds can be quite persevering once they’ve identified a site.) The parapet family was a garrulous one, and as a boy I’d hear the lowing sound of the pigeons, distant-sounding and so unlike a bird-sound that I used to think it came from a buffalo on the road below us.

Today’s pigeon was also very slim, much more lithe-looking than the English pigeons I’ve become used to seeing over the last few years. It’s surprising that here, where people are generally more tolerant of the birds, they’re thinner, whereas in England, where they are considered pests and carriers of germs and people are asked not to encourage them, they have a well-fed, cared-for look. There they loiter on the ground, on pavements, tottering about leisurely, and will not budge if they’re in your way as you walk. They are self-assured.

It’s not just birds, though. Once a young bat lost its way and ended up in the flat. Once in, it was at a loss. Presumably its radar system was thrown by the odd environment. It fluttered its wings every few minutes, but could do no more than move jerkily a few feet to one side or another, bumping into walls and cupboards. It was a while before we could guide it to the window.

The three-striped palm squirrel, he (or she) of Ramayana fame, is another habitué of the dining and living room, scurrying across the top of the dinner table, occasionally knocking things down, sometimes clinging to the edge of the bamboo curtains in the windows. The Tamil word for them, Anil, so imprinted itself in my mind at a young age that I often think of India’s most famous leg-spinner as Squirrel Kumble.

Everyone must have a monkey story. Ours dates back to more than fifteen years ago. We watched through the grilled door separating the dining area from the balcony, where two monkeys had alighted. One of them sat on a cane armchair with a proprietorial air. The other visitor, more adventurous, found one of my grandmother’s soft cotton saris drying on the clothesline. It took the sari, drew it around its head and gathered it under its chin with one hand, while with the other it picked up a plastic cricket bat from the corner where junk was piled up, and began chewing on the bat’s handle.

The mango tree outside the balcony is now in fruit. Perhaps I’ll see my first parrot of the season if I keep my eyes peeled.

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.

‘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!’

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.

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.’

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.’

I looked around, circumspect. To my immediate left was a rather tall boy, a smile playing on his lips. His hair stood up on his head, pointing in random directions, like the quills of a porcupine when it has scented a foreign animal. I wasn’t, in those days, acquainted with the laws of probability, and it struck me as extremely natural to turn to the porcupine and ask, ‘Are you Rohan?’

He was drinking water, sucking desperately at his keep-cool Milton bottle, the brown strap around his neck. Now he yanked his bottle away with a plop, looked at me with a sort of distracted interest, and nodded his head. I told him my name, and he gave me a wide grin.

I was overcome by a sense of relief, of security. My grandmother had said she knew a Rohan, a very nice boy, in my new school. Here he was – I’d found him. Things couldn’t be so bad at this place after all.

 *

 Meanwhile, the teacher was beginning to take control of the class. I can’t remember exactly what transpired next on that first day at school, but over time I fell into a routine. I would reach school at eight-thirty, grudgingly let go of my father’s hand at the gate, and walk the long distance up to the Junior Block, water bottle swinging from one hand, a little bag on my shoulder. The bag contained one notebook, an eraser, and my tiffin box (which was the most important thing). I would then quietly take my place next to Rohan and wait for the day to begin.

The ayah would come around in the morning with a square tin box full of sharpened pencils, and we would pick out one each, comparing the sizes and colours. She would then rush off to some nearby class, presumably to clean up the mess some kid had made – people seemed to be vomiting all the time. I remember feeling distinctly sorry for the ayah. The teacher would make us write ‘a’ or ‘j’ or ‘k’ in cursive style throughout one page of our exercise books, on those ghastly four-ruled pages. The Four-Ruled Page was an unbearable tyrant, for it seemed to set so many constraints on you simultaneously without batting an eyelid (or whatever it is that Four-Ruled Pages bat under duress). The loop of the ‘j’ had to touch the bottom-most line and the top of the letter the third line; the dot was to be placed exactly half-way between the third and fourth lines.

I seemed to grasp all this reasonably well, but the there was one confusing incident right on the second day. Rohan had just dug his elbow into my rib when the teacher looked straight at him and said, ‘Narayanan! Pay attention to what I’m saying.’ He had immediately pulled his elbow in, conjured up an angelic expression, and the class had gone on. He explained to me afterwards that his full name was Rohan Narayanan.

The days went on, and I discovered I was finding a surer footing in the class. I found thin, brown-haired Jai, who loved Parle-G glucose biscuits so much that he would exchange a chocolate-covered crunchy wrapped in green and white foil for just two of them. I made friends with Bharatan, who had ants in his tiffin box one day and complained to the teacher, and with Saket, who, like me, fell off the bars of the Jungle Jim with clockwork regularity at playtime.

The only person who could make me quail was, to my surprise, Rohan Narayanan. He displayed a disconcerting talent for playing pranks. When he was around, my conscious self would tell me: ‘Be on your guard, Siddhant!’ But I was always beguiled by his easy smile, his twinkling eyes and his smooth talk. One day I found a piece of newspaper along with my glucose biscuits, another day my brown shorts were glued to the bench. Yet another day, as I was drinking water, he gave my bottle a thump from the other end. It’s a wonder I had any teeth left. He did it, he said, ‘just like that.’

 *

 That the chap had some sort of magnetism – or whatever ism a five-year-old might have – is easily borne out by the fact that when I visited my grandmother after ten days at school, I was enthusiastic in my reports of Rohan.

‘Would you like to see him? He is at his grandparents’ house just down the street,’ she said. So we set off, I, a little chubby figure, holding her hand. We walked down the street, a half-neglected cul-de-sac with pieces of tar conveniently chipping off the surface of the road so I could kick them along the way.

We arrived at a little iron gate. Outside, it said ‘J Nagaraj, MA’. (Maybe I’m getting mixed up: I can’t remember how much I could read at that age.) I pushed open the little rusting gate and rushed in when it staggered back with the slow clang-creak typical of its kind.

‘Is this their house?’ I asked, keen for confirmation.

‘Yes it is. Call out to your friend,’ said Grandma.

I gulped in some air and shouted, ‘Rohan!’

Two seconds later: ‘Narayanan! Narayanan! Rohan Narayanan!’

Then I heard a click and a young man opened the door. He greeted my grandmother, then went inside and fetched a boy my age. (I learned later that he was the boy’s uncle.) The boy was in frayed shorts and a vest, had thick, curly hair, and tried to hide behind his uncle’s legs.

‘Here he is, ma¸ say hello to Rohan.’

‘This is not Rohan!’ I protested. I would know the twinkling eyes and the spiky hair anywhere.

‘Of course it is. Rohan, do you recognise your friend Siddhant?’

Of course he didn’t.

‘He’s very shy, paati,’ said the young man who had opened the door, looking at my grandmother with mild embarrassment. After another unsuccessful minute of waiting for us to say that we recognised each other, Grandma said I was probably hungry, excused herself, and took me homeward.

‘That was not Rohan! He looks totally different!’ I reiterated as we walked back.

‘Nonsense, child. Anyone would look different at home in a vest and shorts.’

 *

 In the years to follow, I got to know Rohan – the real one – quite well. He does have curly hair, and though his abilities are many and varied, playing pranks is not among them. As for my classmate Narayanan, his claims to being called Rohan eventually proved unfounded.  I saw him recently after many years. He said he had become an actor in Tamil cinema, and that his first movie would be out in a few months. His mentor was yet to decide on a screen name for him. Six months later, I saw his face on posters plastered across several walls in the city. Below it, in Tamil, I spotted the words ‘Introducing Rohan’.