Victor Baneerji is a bengali Actor who acted in “passage to India” as Dr.AZIZ,inbritish India who was wrongfully prosexcuted by british for rape .
ALL IN THE GAME
BY VICTOR BANERJEE
Calcutta, April 12:
The great thing about being an actor, politician, contractor or
cricketer is you need absolutely no educational qualifications to make
it big. And when you do, you have people hero-worshipping your
suryavanshi butt and adding pompous sobriquets to yesterday’s anonymity.
We love cricket. Anyone who tells you that the game’s patronage in India
comes from mass unemployment, the pursuit of a sport where skills are
dependent on fate and the results are determined by gentlemanly backroom
deals, will be lying. I realised just how much the world thinks cricket
means to us when the funeral service of the great Don Bradman was
telecast live in Australia , India and Pakistan.
Unseen requiem
I watched it only because Bradman was a genius on whose skills the world
is still cashing in. I asked all my friends who live and die cricket
year after year what they thought of the service and was astonished to
find that not a single person I asked had bothered to watch the
programme. In a country where St Xavier turned in his sarcophagus to
watch the corruption of his flock at the hands of blackmarketeers of
cricket, I truly wonder how many people tuned in to the Don’s requiem
mass. All that the Don did here was inspire punters and thousands of
snotty-nosed kids in expensive designer gear, afraid of any contact
sports where they might bruise a shin, to take up a game that has
evolved from the body-line specimen to the pocket-book species of today.
Now, to the gallery of unknowns.
The likes of Leslie Claudius, Sailen Manna, Keshav Dutt, P.K. Banerjee
and Gurbux Singh, followed by 200 schoolchildren march along Red Road’s
melting tar in the noonday sun pleading to the world for just one astro
turf to play hockey on. There is no tension in the air. No red banners
swirling over the heads of menacing scar-faces who will tear up or burn
anything that stands in the way of social and economic regress. A
solitary police inspector on a mobile, with not a single constable as
back-up, calmly and crisply communicates with Lalbazar to dispel any
fears of violence with hockey sticks.
Someone was looking around for the sun-blocking white paste that looks
so sportsmachogenic on skins that hardly burn, on faces with genetic
tans. The poor darlings of the cricketing world have to fight boredom in
the blaze of the tropical sun between drinks and lunch and tea breaks.
There was none. To save the situation, Gurbux pulled out cartons of
sports caps that had been given to him by what you may call the sponsors
of the parade – SERVO, although Indian Oil was in fact commemorating the
finals of the 106th Beighton Cup Hockey Tournament. There were enough
caps to shield all the bald pates and grey hairs around.
Stars & smiles
Claudius, with a record number of gold medals, drove up on a scooter
that was sputtering on reserve. Manna walked out of nowhere in the
safari suit he saves for special occasions. PK was holding forth on
Asian football after India’s superb win over the UAE. Subrata
Bhattacharya was mulling over the fixture that would pit India’s
greatest rivals MB and EB against each other the following day. Gurbux
flitted from one star to another and energised everyone’s hormones to
smile for the cameras and begin the march of protest and appeal. All
said and done, there were more sporting greats in 10 square feet than
will ever assemble again.
There were no cheers for these all-time greats. Aged from the mid-50s to
those pushing 80, you could tell from their strides that these were
forces to reckon with in their time. No one wore Versace or Dalmia
shades to screen their eyes from the sun. No cheeks or lips glazed with
unguent. No designer labels adorned breasts and sleeves. No one cared
for the few who silently cried for the survival of a game that has
brought more international laurels to India, than any other.
The trouble with the Milkha Singhs, Padukones, Wilsons, Ferreiras,
Viswanathan Anands, Gopichands and Claudiuses of India is they just
don’t have the style that makes Bollywood’s actresses swoon and sets
politicians fighting to be on governing bodies that will let them travel
from the calypsos and sambas of Trinidad to the meadows and mountains of
New Zealand.
Charisma counts
These old stars, and the young boys and girls playing chess, badminton,
tennis, hockey and football today, have either too much brain or too
much brawn or too much agility. The laid-back charisma of being an
estrogenic cricketer is beyond their testosteronic comprehension.
None of the people I worshipped and admired can boast of a life-time
rail pass or a lakh in the bank or, for most, even a Padmashri. Being
world champions doesn’t qualify any of them as Bharat Ratnas; they
simply must improve and do better. In time, it is their physiotherapists
and orthopaedic surgeons who fix their shattered knee-caps and give them
hip replacements who will be recognised and decorated by our geriatric
leadership.
Sadly, my childhood heroes shall all go unsung and unrewarded to their
graves. I salute th
"jo kHat main kahte they apni jaan mujhko
aaj kHat likhne main unki jaan jaati hai …