Sometime in the second half of the 1970s there was this frail boy who one fine morning fell heads over heels in love with cricket, a game he could not play by any measure. Because he could neither bat, nor bowl, or field. He loved the game, nonetheless. For its sheer grace than anything else, perhaps. The more he realised that he could not weild the willow or hurl the cherry, the more he grew passionate about the game.
He loved the game because of two players who used to be the favourite Sportsweek pin-up boys at the time – two of the Amarnath brothers – the stylish Surinder and the gritty Mohinder. He rooted for the former more than anyone else donning the India flannels. It was just because of him perhaps that he had begun loving the game that those days only gentlemen played.
And soon when Surinder Amarnath was unceremoniously dropped from the Indian side, he just stopped being an Indian fan. He felt betrayed. Betrayed by who, we might not be able to tell. Maybe we will agree unanimously that this feeling of betrayal could by no means have any rationale. He felt that the fervent zeal with which he always cheered the Indian team had been belied. But then, he was not yet in his teens when this happened. In other words, too young to dispassionately sift the good from the bad in his callow mind. His love for cricket did not dissipate, and over the years in fact intensified. But, he became trenchantly anti-India when it came to supporting teams as the days wore on. He seemed to derive some sadistic pleasure in seeing India lose at cricket.
Time went by and with India winning the World Cup in 1983, the game soon ceased to be a gentleman’s game and became an entertainment vehicle for the corporate world and the cricket lords to ride to more riches. The stiff upper lip kinda claps that greeted boundaries and wickets in the good old days had given way to hooliganistic outbursts all around, that were more in league with football, we might say. He was a product of this ‘civilised’ society that he lived in. He kept watching cricket on television, though his interest was now waning by the day. His own outbursts as he watched matches were just as inhuman as those of the primeval maniacs who thronged cricket stadia.
“Break his nose”. “Break his head”. “Crunch his balls”. “Bang his chest”. “Kill him”. was the way people would pray to the cricket gods when fast bowlers would pace up to hurl bouncers and beamers at batsmen. He, being a product of this same world, was no different. That was what he silently, albeit, kept wishing. Oh yes, only when it came to pacers of other countries bowling furiously to Indian batsmen.
Late in the 1980s India had a bang-bang opening pair in Krishnamachari Srikkanth and Raman Lamba. Must have been the Nehru Cup. The two would go all guns blazing and would never look like getting out. . “break his nose”. “break his head”. “crunch his balls”. “bang his chest”. “kill him”. was all that he could shriek silently at. Just shrieking for blood. He loathed Raman Lamba and was always wanting to have him dislodged from the crease – at any bloody cost. ”. “kill him”. huh. But the 1980s went by and many things happened in his own life that would change his way of thinking and looking at things altogether. And yes, cricket had ceased to be of any interest to him. He didn’t give a damn anymore about the game. Who cared if India won or lost.
Came the 1990s. He had drifted from this to that and back again. And over and over again. And towards the end of this decade, Raman Lamba was still at cricket. Playing here and there. No, the tall, handsome and flamboyant batsman was there. In Bangladesh that February 1998— playing a league match for Abahani against Mohammedan when he suffered an injury on his head while fielding at forward short leg. The ball had been struck with such power that it ricocheted off Lamba's head, and ballooned to the wicketkeeper, who backpedalled to take the catch. Lamba picked himself up, dusted off, and walked off the ground unassisted. He complained of a nasty headache. Soon hemorrhaging began. He was rushed to a hospital, but Lamba’s condition deteriorated sharply. By the minute. The life support systems had to be turned off shortly after he went brain dead, and the swashbuckling cricketer soon lost in life.
Back home, the one who as a boy loved cricket, and as a young man only liked to see India lose, and had lusted for the blood of many, including that of Lamba, read about it in the papers. Nothing sunk into his head initially. Till he read about Lamba’s Irish wife, Kim, clinging on to his lifeless body somewhere in Dhaka. All she did was clutch on to Lamba’s dead figure, not wanting to let him go, not wanting to believe he was dead.
It left the young man devastated.
“Kill him, kill him, kill him” were what rang in his ears. Maybe there was no connection between his juvenile, bloodthirsty, warmongering cries of maybe 10 years back, and Lamba’s bizarre accidental death now. There could not have been any connection. The more he thought about wishing death for Raman, and Kim Lamba hanging on to his corpse, the more he wept inconsolably. He still does.
That young boy of yesterdays and now a young man, became wizened in a flash. That was the day that his way of looking at death changed. Deep inside, he stopped wishing death for anyone. He wishes ill for everyone he hates, but death? Not really. Not even for his bitter enemies, no matter the amount of ill-will and hatred he nurtures in himself. Death is something he cannot quite wish for anyone.
Need I say that – that, the protagonist in this story is the author of this write-up as well?
No, let’s not get into that. You can curse me as much as you can while reading on.
Well, as I said, there was nothing much that had changed instantly for me that day. Except for one thing —I stopped being a headbanging votary of death.
Wishing or advocating death can have no place in a civilised society. Yet we have been brought up in a milieu of perverse popular fiction and mainstream linear cinema where vengeance rules. We live in an ethos where only one killing can justify another. One killing for another it seems is the only civilised way of meting out justice. All in the name of a cerebrally-depraved war against evil.
Why is it that we see so much of evil in this world? Why is it that we hardly, hardly see any goodness? The answer may well lie in the fact that today there is precious little that differentiates the good from the evil. They are all one and the same. And that’s because, the good in its zeal to mete out justice stoops to the same level as evil is. The good end up doing the same evil things in the name of goodness and justice. Nice words, those.
More often than not today, you will find that there is no palpable difference between anyone. The Bushes and the Saddams are all the same. Why else should the most “civilised” of all nations indulge in the most uncivilised acts in Iraq, all in the name of fighting terror? The track record of our own so-called security forces in Kashmir and the Northeast haven’t been quite squeaky clean either.
And these things keep recurring because the good willy-nilly loses sight of what it itself stands for. It is evil which is so powerful that brings the good down to its own low-life level. And after a point there is no perceptible difference between the two.
And yes, there’s no such thing as a holy war. There is nothing holy about a war. And there’s no such thing as a glorious death. There’s just death.
Meanwhile, stop screaming for blood, will you?
PS: This piece has nothing to do with the Mumbai attacks. This is about death. So, kindly refrain from waging a war against terror on this page.
