ravi shastri – Pertinent Observations

Having spent the day before Sankranti (pongal) cribbing about how festivals mean so much work and how they are designed especially to create marital discord I was pleasantly surprised to see this amazing religious event on Saturday evening.

I was at the inlaws’ place in Rajajinagar, having spent the day doing two pradakshinas of Bangalore, and visiting some twenty relatives and distributing sugar figures and sesame. And I was taken to the nearby main road (Dr Rajkumar road) to watch the ISKCON chariot festival.

And what an awesome event that was. While the chariot was some distance away volunteers came around distributing prasada in leaf bowls (donnes). And then there were some ISKCON Akshaya Patra vans that came around doling out yummy juice to all passerby. And then there was a mountain of people. And there were thousands of people lining the roads on either side.

There was a generator van, followed by people who were dancing as they marched along. The atmosphere was electric (pardon the Ravi Shastri-ism) and it was impossible to be not taken by it. I wanted to go join the dancers but there was more work to be done that night (visiting another half a dozen houses distributing sugar figures and sesame) so I stood by.

Then the chariot arrived, being pulled by two long ropes with some fifty people each. It was gender-segregated and the rope towards my side was being pulled by women so I didn’t have the opportunity to touch it (apparently if you touch the rope you get some good karma as it’s as if you’ve pulled the chariot). And volunteers continued to dole out prasada (sweet pongal) and juice.

I must confess I didn’t see the idol. When the chariot neared me, my focus was on catching the sweet packets which a monk seated at the side of the chariot was throwing. I must admit I missed quite a few good chances and let packets of coconut mithai fall into the gutter behind me. But i did manage to catch one, my days patrolling short midwicket in inter-section matches having come to good use.

It was awesome. It was so awesome that even a normally-non-believing me was completely taken by the whole festival. All the gloom of the previous day and tiredness of having driven around the city vanished in that moment.

And it made me wonder why we don’t make our festivals more fun. About why we don’t make religion more fun for people to follow, and instead waste our time and energy in mindless rituals. Thankfully Pinky also shares my thoughts and we’ve decided to celebrate only the fun festivals – where we have fun doing the required work.

But seriously, it would help making our lot more religious if we could let go of some rituals and adopt more of the fun components of festivals. But then people think they get good karma by enduring pain and all that..

It was the winter of 1991-92. I had just got introduced to this wonderful game called cricket, and about a month earlier had seen my first ever full one day international (on TV, of course). India had thrashed Australia at Perth. Ravi Shastri had taken 5-15 but still the man of the match award went to Srikkanth who made 60. This was two days after I had turned nine.

India was touring Australia and cricket craze hit me. It hit me so bad I couldn’t have enough of cricket. In a few days’ time I’d pulled out all the newspapers in my house and rummaged through them for cricket scorecards and stories. I remember getting fascinated reading about the England-West Indies series of 1991. And while going through the newspapers I saw that there was a Ranji trophy match on, and it was being broadcast live on radio. Out came my grandfather’s ancient pocket transistor.

The game was being played at Kolar Gold Fields (an ironic choice considering the Cauvery riots were on – the reason I had holidays from school and could indulge in luxuries like listening to Ranji commentary). On the first day, Karnataka had bowled Goa out cheaply, with Anil Kumble (i think) doing most damage. Goa had this left arm spinner in their line-up called Arun Shetty, and on the second day, he was spinning webs around the Karnataka batsmen. He took a 5-for that day, most of them bowled. Only one man was able to resist him. That also happened to be the day Rahul Dravid made his first first-class century.

Karnataka duly won the game by 10 wickets, with Dravid’s 100 being the difference between the teams in the first innings. Karnataka would go on to massacre Kerala and Andhra, while they drew Hyderabad after conceding a large first innings lead. Tamil Nadu were beaten by one wicket, but some silly points system in the Ranji meant that Karnataka, with four wins and a draw didn’t go through while Hyderabad and TN, with three wins each made it to the knockouts.

Unfortunately I don’t think I followed any other Ranji season as closely as that one, until cricinfo came along that is. Forget international matches (India’s tour of Australia, world cup, etc.), I would know the scorecards of most Ranji matches. At the ripe age of ten, I was able to provide insightful commentary on domestic cricket, on Indian team selections, and so forth. Sadly, I would never play the game.

Nowadays occasionally when I’m trying to take a break from work, I pick a random Ranji season from the 1990s and start looking up the scorecards. First the scorecards of all the South Zone matches (remember that Ranji was zonal in those days)., and then the knockouts. I remember that in one of the seasons in the early 90s, there were no draws at all in the knockouts (or maybe there were one or two here and there) – a far cry from nowadays when hardly one innings gets completed. And then I go on to look at the Duleep Trophy scorecards from the season – and these are the most interesting since I’m likely to know more players there.

It’s an awesomely good feeling to find a scorecard of a match that I remember, and I don’t know why but each time this happens I’m reminded of that game at KGF, the first one I followed, when Rahul Dravid made his first first-class century.

Tag: ravi shastri

Making Religion Fun

Ranji nostalgia