So My Grammy's An Axe Murderer

More than an all-knowing God, or medicine, or Metallica or marriage, I believe in sport. Sport is salvation, and sport will break your heart. Sport will polarize, and come together. In fact, religious devotion to a sports team throughout one's life will put you through the paces -and then some- of a classical romance, or star-crossed love: agony, ecstasy, faith, loss of faith, joy, despair, terrible tattoos, denial, depression, annoying nicknames, addiction, betrayal, those ridiculous couple tee shirts, abuse, violence, self-destruction,  euphoria and -in these times- a few hundred gigabytes of memories captured on the digital retinae of assorted electronic devices.    

While sport fandom, like any parallel universe, is populated with villains and heroes and average Joes alike, India is, on the whole, a nation of mild-mannered sport obsessives. "Mild-mannered", save for the rare occasions of setting cricket grounds on fire or hurling stones at the home of the captain of the national team, but these instances are few and far between. Unlike my experiences on the football terraces of England and Scotland, watching the game from the stands at cricket grounds in India will invoke neither fear for life or lust for blood. Indian sports fans are masters of compartmentalization; the joys and sorrows of sport are rarely allowed inside the uncompromising walls of real life.

Or so I thought till a few days ago. The family home was still a place of hope and order and warmth as I hurried back from the beach in the dying daylight last Sabbath. I swerved, sped, braked, honked, out-maneuvered, cursed. I was in no mood to let something as pedestrian as traffic laws slow down my march towards our living room to watch two-time winner and serial finalist Chennai Super Kings bash it out against  the young pretender Kolkatta Knight Riders in the final of the Indian Premier Leage 2012. The whole family was rooting for the underdog, KKR, and we had even come up with some chants and celebrations for the event.

Dad is waiting outside. One look at his ashen face, and I know there's a giant meteor headed our way, or maybe our worlds have already collided and he's waiting outside to ease me in.
"What's wrong, Dad?" I ask.
"It's Grammy," he can barely say the words.
Of course. Well, she's nearly ninety. She's had a good run, the old bird.
"What happened?" I decide the questions still need to be asked.  
"Must have been all the hype in the media. She's fallen off the wagon."

Of course. A tumble off a speeding wagon would certainly kill a lady her age. Horses do what, 60 an hour? Definitely enough to...wait. Where the fuck would she find a horse in this town? Grammy may be old, but this is 2012. 

"Dad," I soothe, "you're still in shock. There's no wagon."
"No," he's in tears now, "it's like old times. She's fallen off the wagon. She's inside raising hell right now."

It hits me like a ton of bricks. I'd heard about it before - Grammy's infamous past as a cricket hooligan. The last cricket match she watched was in 1983: the final of the ICC Cricket World Cup which India won against West Indies by a whopping 43 runs. That was over a year before I was born. Legend has it that world cup resulted in the destruction of nearly three dozen chicken coops, eight uncommissioned murals on the church spire of dancing phalluses that refuse to come off to this day, and six ritualistic beheadings of oxen- one for each Indian victory in the cup- in Grammy's village. An immigrant farmhand, and the postman, who both reported sightings of a woman stumbling around in the dark holding an axe in one hand and (what looked like) an ox's head in the other on different nights, died in their sleep within hours of the final, their faces scrunched up in vicious mimes of delirium. Grammy disappeared the same night. A week and four moons after the final,   an axe was discovered clogging the municipal water tank, it's contents a bloody mix of ox nerve and muscle. Still seven nights later, Grammy re-appeared. She never watched a cricket match again. The village would have to wait another year for a new postman.

I can hear the pre-match analysis on the TV before I even step into the living room. Uncle Psy is in my seat, nursing a whisky. Cousin Chaz, his wife Flora and Aunt Florence are all spread out around the living room, suitably uncomfortable at having crashed a party only to find out it blows. Mom sits in the corner, sobbing into the Knight Riders scarf she ordered over the internet. The atmosphere is funeral, but sporty. Grammy is on the recliner, her hands cuffed on either side to the armrests. I reach over, and gently pull the sock out of her mouth.

Grammy swears like a parrot in a Judd Apatow movie. Most of her insults are quaint in an old world kind of way. Between overs, she rocks back and forth, alternating periods of calm with resounding screeches and wails. I hold her hand through the game, holding her mug for her as she sips her Ovaltine through a straw. At the end of the first inning, I wink and silently uncuff one of her hands. Grammy may have resurrected her inner badass, but I wasn't going to rob her off her dignity. She hurls her mug at the TV, but her throwing arm's not what it used to be. It clutters limply on the floor next to her feet. We laugh, relieved.

KKR overcomes a poor start to their inning to seemingly take control of the match. Then they lose another wicket. And another. In our living room too, things take a bad turn. Grammy, who has been silent for a while now, starts cussing again. As Yusuf Pathan walks in to bat, she yells: "oh great, it's the ugly sister." She has a point. I suppose Yusuf is somewhat uneasy on the eyes, especially in comparison to his brother Irfan who plays for Delhi Daredevils. He's got this mullah beard thing going, and he looks a bit like a gnome. But her words have somehow gotten under my skin. I sat through a barrage of Grammy's spitballs, I calmed my Dad down when she called him a little girl, I let it go when she poked me in the eye for holding her too tight. But this feels unpardonable somehow. Grammy has crossed a line.

The Brothers Pathan: Irfan and Yusuf

"Oh, you're one to talk about looks," I sneer, "you don't even have teeth."

When I come to, I'm on the floor. The family, with the exception of Grammy, lean over me, their faces a mixture of mirth and concern. "What the hell happened?" I ask.

"Grammy headbutted you," says Uncle Chaz, struggling to contain a chuckle.
I rub my forehead where it hurts.
"That seems to have let the wind out of her sails," says Dad, "she's been quiet as a baby since."
I sit up and smile. Grammy looks more herself now, half asleep on her recliner.

We watch the rest of the game like normal families do, cheering and cracking jokes. Dad wakes Grammy up for the last over, and we see out a tense victory for the Knight Riders. Gammy pecks me on the forehead, and retires early to bed.

Much later, after the drinks and snacks are cleared away, I decide to make sure Grammy is alright. Light seeps out from under her door. I knock softly, and enter. Grammy stands by the window, her back to me. She has been waiting. "Grammy," I say, "I'm sorry about earlier." But she has other plans. She lifts up her dress in one last hooray, and clearly visible on sagging butt cheek, is a tattoo of the face of Kapil Dev, independent India's first real hero and world cup winning captain. It's a pity Grammy didn't blind me when she had the chance.      

Icy Highs's Video Recco: Poem from "So I Married An Axe Murderer" (Desert Island Top Five)

  

       

 

The Wonder Years

The summer of ’94, cruel though it was, was a magical one. Our mango tree, which hadn’t borne fruit in five years, was re-acquainted with the thirst for life, for immortality. Our courtyard was thick with the sticky-sweet scent of her yearning, her branches bustling once again with activity, red ants and bees and crows visiting once more to convey their regards and partake of the festivities. Unbeknownst to her, a few feet away, summer had stirred similar desires in Rita’s young guava tree who now peeked nosily over their wall and into our make-shift cricket pitch, winking knowingly at the sudden spring in our steps.

For it wasn’t just the trees and the ants, and the birds and the bees, that summer had chosen to enchant with its ways. Ramesh and I, in our own ways, were unwitting participants in the game of life. It was neither spoken of, nor quietly acknowledged, mainly because we weren’t entirely certain what ‘it’ was. But it was felt when Ramesh theatrically ran his hand through his hair after bowling a particularly good delivery, or when I raised my bat skywards after hitting a boundary. We were at that age when we could still openly take delight in imitation of our heroes (not just their motives, but their gestures, their mannerisms), and we were all the protagonists of our own mind-movies. Rita too, probably. We weren’t societally obliged to feign cool indifference or intellectually programmed to spew cynicism just yet. Those years were on their way. In the summer of ’94, we were content to be led, and to follow. We knew our heroes, and we knew what beverages they preferred, what cars they drove and what hair conditioner they used, and we wanted what we knew because what we knew was happiness.

We didn’t know why we fought over whose team Rita would play on, though she almost always cost her team the game. We didn’t know why we let her bowl and bat more than any of us ever did though she was patently terrible at all aspects of the game. We didn’t know why we were so much more competitive when Rita was around. I didn’t know why I boasted continuously about cricket camp to her though I dreaded the thought of attending it. We did know though that we wanted her around, and what we knew was happiness.

                                                          Icy Highs's Video Recco                                                                        

  The First Kiss scene from Wonder Years 

How Virat Kohli can spare a few blushes, and (possibly) save the world

Time was when a nation was judged by it's heroes. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi all did just as much for national image as they did for their people. Then the navel-gazing, oil-paranoid Nineties happened, and most countries lost the right to claim any kind of heroism at all. The Noughties have somehow brought things full circle, and in these consumerist times, a country is often judged by the brands it's idols endorse. Just as brands are judged by the celebrities that endorse them. So for every retired punk rocker doing serious damage to his credibility by selling insurance on the telly, there's a Gillette or Nike distancing themselves from a philandering Tiger Woods. And just as national heroes once upon a time rebelled against injustice or stood up for those trampled upon, they now kick balls great distances, or compose angsty guitar lullabies. The times they are a-changing, indeed.

Whether or not heroism is a quality attributed too easily today is a debate for another day. I spent much of my day -as did at least a few million other Indians, I suspect- in front of the telly, watching the national cricket team pull off an astounding victory over sworn enemy and perpetual rival, Pakistan. The pace was set by a typically robust start from Sachin Tendulkar, a man who has long been elevated to the status of a cricketing God (is there any other kind?), and sustained marvelously by Virat Kohli, the most promising batsman India has produced since the Fab Four. The 23-year old Kohli is a bonafide youth icon, who has backed up the millions he earns in endorsements with stellar performances for his team(s) time and again.

As the Indian innings was approaching the final quarter, the commentator made an observation about young Kohli that would have made a great riff if he were comically inclined. Looking back on Kohli's celebration on scoring a century, the commentator remarked: "why does he look so angry?" His question sounded so genuine I nearly choked, laughing. It's true, the talented Mr. Kohli does have a fist-pumping, war-waging, thandav-evoking quality to his century celebration, and I have wondered on more than one occasion where he gets all that energy from after batting for so long. I've just never had the energy to contemplate it long enough to arrive at an answer.

The commentator delved a little deeper into Kohli's psyche, musing aloud that it was perhaps a means of staying focused on the team's goal after surpassing a considerable personal milestone, or indicative of the desire and hunger of the younger generation or some such psychobabble. Maybe his parents didn't love him enough, I don't care. I did notice he contrasted Kohli's celebrations to Tendulkar's, a man who has scaled practically every statistical peak that populates the game, and goes about it in muted, dignified fashion. I didn't think it was fair to compare two individuals on what is essentially a personal expression of joy, and I'm still not convinced his theory goes any deeper than "to each his own".

A few minutes after his comment however, an ad came on featuring the man of the moment, Mr. Kohli himself. It was for Fair and Lovely, a much-maligned and much-in-use cosmetic product that promises to lighten the complexion of one's skin. India has long debated the morality (or lack of it) in promoting ''fairness'' of skin   as a (key) determinant of beauty in a country where the majority of the population is dark-skinned. Questions have been raised about whether it is ethical for celebrities to endorse fairness products, and whether these products even work, but the cosmetic industry lobby has always teacupped such storms with a minimum of difficulty.

I wouldn't fault somebody for having a distinctive preference for a sexual partner of a particular complexion (it's as straightforward as preferring blonde to brunette, or tall women to midgets, whatever), but I do feel strongly against establishing one common standard of beauty for a billion people. If nine year olds today feel towards Kohli anything similar to the fanatic devotion I felt towards a then-20-year-old Tendulkar, they're investing a lot on this talented young man - hopes, dreams, aspirations, even life lessons. Tendulkar was the perfect role model - the Doogie Houser of cricket- with his prodigious talent, and his impeccable behavior on and off the field. And in almost twenty two years of professional cricket -and hundreds of advertisements- never have I seen him endorse a product of questionable character.

Tendulkar seems like one of those kids you wouldn't really want to hang out with in school simply because he was too determined and too focused to be fun company. (Would you really want to hang out with Doogie Houser?) Frankly, he's missed out on more than he will ever realize if his squeaky-clean image is entirely true. Kohli on the other hand has- or used to have- a bit of a reputation as a partying type, and I hope he gets his share. I'd never put pants on during off-season if I were him. I do hope however that he chooses wisely when he lends his name and his credibility to consumer goods. The current generation of adolescents don't have to wait for a game or concert to catch their heroes in action - they're constantly hanging on to their every word and action on social networks and cable TV. It'd be a shame if the only lesson a 9-year old fan takes away from someone as successful and driven as Virat Kohli is how far he or she is from the ideal colour spectrum.  Maybe Kohli could bottle his excess anger and offer the world an alternative source of energy instead.

Image sources: V. Kohli, S. R. Tendulkar