SMG Sportingly Spoilsport
by Kishin R. Wadhwaney.
Siddharth Publications.
Pages 232. Rs 500.
Siddharth Publications.
Pages 232. Rs 500.
INDiA
is starved of sporting icons. Very few disciplines have thrown
up sportspersons of international calibre and, fewer still,
world-beaters. Although tennis, badminton, boxing and wrestling have
contributed a bit towards this end, cricket remains way ahead of the
rest. This is the only game that has consistently produced champion
players like Sachin Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Rahul Dravid, Virender
Sehwag, Anil Kumble etc. However, Sunil Manohar Gavaskar is considered
Indian cricket’s first superstar. During the 1971 tour of the West
Indies, his performance drew comparisons with Don Bradman. This, when
he had missed the tour’s first Test owing to a surgery and was short
of practice!
Wadhwaney refuses to
deify Gavaskar and treats him as an ordinary mortal, portraying, along
with his achievements and positive personality traits, the darker
shades, or the warts and moles. Whether it is the controversy
involving Bishen Singh Bedi’s axing in 1981, the treatment meted out
to Dilip Doshi or the Gavaskar-Lillie run-in at Melbourne, the author
does not mince words. There are other issues, too, wherein the
cricketing legend’s penchant for intrigue and pretence has been
underscored.
This is a book that
would interest all those who are enamoured of all things cricket –
both on and off the field. After all, what could be more absorbing
than an incisive writing, garnished with anecdotes, on a cricketing
legend like Gavaskar.
Knowing Dil Das
by Joseph S. Alter.
Penguin.
Pages xvii+193. Rs 299.
by Joseph S. Alter.
Penguin.
Pages xvii+193. Rs 299.
Alter
is a son of a missionary and teaches anthropology in America. During
his childhood days in India, he had become friends with a ‘low-caste’
doodhwala named Dil Das. Over a period of time, Alter became
interested in the fascinating tales that Das used to narrate. Mostly
autobiographical in nature – typically dwelling upon shikar-related
adventures; these tales were a mix of fact and (perhaps) fantasy. Das
talked of having gone on hunting expeditions with kings, politicians
and other upper-class huntsmen. Nevertheless, the author discerned in
these narratives glimpses of history that you would not find in any
standard textbook or even other published records.
But there are other
tales, too; of the pleasant, and not so pleasant, interactions with
people belonging to upper castes, which show Das observing all the
then extant rules of Hindu hierarchy. These give us an idea of how the
village society used to function in the Himalayan foothills and, most
probably, still does. For example, when a Brahmin friend invited Das
to have tea with him, Das accepted the offer but on a neutral ground
– where it was not a taboo for a Brahmin or a ‘low-caste’ person
to enter.
Alter has skillfully
coalesced history, anthropology, biography and sociology to come up
with a book that should be of great interest to common readers as well
as research-scholars.
You are not Alone
by Arun Mirchandani.
Frog Books.
Pages 150. Rs 195.
by Arun Mirchandani.
Frog Books.
Pages 150. Rs 195.
This
novel, written in first person, recounts the tale of Sanjay Sanghavi,
a seventy five year old gay person. It starts with his childhood in
Singapore where, as a four year old, the ‘tendency’ begins to
manifest itself. The child shows interest in Barbie dolls and feminine
dresses and feels uncomfortable with masculine behavior.
Soon, his father is
transferred to Mumbai where Sanjay does most of his schooling in an
up-market school. As he grows up, Sanjay turns obese, and becomes
infatuated with a well-built classmate. But, things turn raw when he
is bullied and sexually molested by some of the boys in his school.
Mirchandani has written
a sensitive and absorbing account of a homosexual. Section 377 or not,
it is well known that our society has still to accept gays as its own.
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