Last thoughts on the Lennox case

A few months ago I wrote these two posts about Lennox, the pit-bull who had been taken away from his family because of his breed. Well, the final verdict came out today and it’s what most of us were dreading – Lennox is to be killed after all.

I’ll avoid getting on a soapbox about most of the issues involved here, but just to repeat my strongest thoughts on the subject: even assuming that there is any kind of justification for this whole series of events, I can’t begin to fathom the cruelty of a system that would take this long to arrive at a decision in this particular case. It would have been infinitely more humane to put the dog down within a few days of taking him away from his family and home. Instead, they kept him locked up for 18 months (the equivalent of more than 10 dog-years) and even the date for the appeal was set for nearly six months after the original verdict.

Try, for a minute, to imagine what that means for a creature incapable of understanding why its world has fallen to pieces, or putting together comforting narratives in its head, or keeping itself occupied in the hundreds of little ways that human beings can in times of distress. An incarcerated human in the same situation – horrific though it would be – would at least have the advantage of knowing what is going on, the ability to cling to the hope that things might eventually get better and the option of keeping his mind busy with a book or a notepad (in addition to the chores and activities that fill the regular prison schedule). In my view, the manner in which the Lennox case was stretched out is an even stronger comment on human insensitivity than the facts of the case itself.

At this point I can only hope that it doesn’t take these unfeeling brutes another year to get together the apparatus for the killing, and that the process itself is as quick and painless as possible.

Masks and mirrors

(Quick thoughts on two Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra films)

When a director helms a film that grows into a phenomenon, he can become so closely associated with it – especially if it came relatively early in his career – that his other movies might get downgraded or overlooked as a result. But in the long run, enthusiastic movie buffs might revisit those less popular works and find unexpected points of interest in them. This sometimes leads to critical reassessment; there are numerous examples through film history of a lower-profile work by a director eventually rising to supplant his acknowledged “masterpiece”.

I was thinking about this during a short phone conversation with director-screenwriter Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra – a prelude to our panel discussion at the Hindu Lit for Life festival on Sunday. Mehra is best known for Rang de Basanti, one of the most influential Hindi movies of the past decade. Combining the vitality of fast-paced, youthful, mass-audience cinema (and the presence of superstar Aamir Khan) with respectable subject matter (carefree youngsters become emotionally invested in their country’s problems and turn for inspiration to freedom fighters of the past), RDB was a big commercial and critical success – a rare combination in our cinema. Yet I think Mehra’s two other feature films are more interesting in terms of what they reveal of his artistic sensibilities and personal compulsions.

Those two films are his 2001 debut Aks and his 2009 production Delhi 6. On the surface these are quite disparate works. The first is a slick if overlong psychological thriller about a cop (Amitabh Bachchan in one of his best latter-day roles) who finds that his personality is being usurped by the maniacal killer he has apprehended. The second is an intimate “basti” story set in a Chandni Chowk community that becomes a microcosm of life in a chaotic country (as seen mainly through the eyes of a young visiting NRI).

“In a way, Delhi 6 was my attempt to remake Aks,” Mehra said during our phone chat. It was a casual remark, we had to quickly move on to other topics and he never got a chance to elaborate, but for me it tied in with some striking similarities between the two films. Both use masks and reflections as ways of concealing or revealing things about their protagonists – and by extension, about people in general. Both also contain extensive Ramayana imagery, with Rama and Ravana presented as mirror images. Aks (which means “reflection”) is very obviously a story about good and evil defining and complementing each other, but this theme recurs in Delhi 6 too. An idiot savant literally holds a mirror up to society, but everyone ignores or makes fun of him – until the end, when communal discord brings unpleasant things to the surface. An elaborate Ram Leela performance spread over days runs parallel to the film’s main narrative, a rampaging monkey man is used as a symbol for fear and paranoia in a divided community, and at the end the hero dons a monkey mask to try to make people see reason.

In both films, Mehra fuses elements of Western pop culture with elements from Indian mythology. Thus Aks centres on a psychopath who seems drawn from the dark Hollywood serial killer movie (there are references to The Devil’s Advocate too) but quotes the Bhagwad Gita (I love the irreverence of a back-story where a disturbed, Michael Myers-like child kills his parents after they teach him that death means nothing because the soul never dies). And Delhi 6 contains a song sequence where Times Square comes to Chandni Chowk, and Hanuman and King Kong occupy the same space (while the primal “kala bandar”, of course, resides inside all the characters).

There's no question that both films have their flaws: Aks is messy and uneven with poorly drawn supporting characters (and Nandita Das appears to have walked in from another, very different type of movie); and Delhi 6, though a brilliantly crafted ensemble film for its first hour and a half, has an annoyingly heavy-handed climax. But as examples of personal cinema, I think both are more provocative in some ways than Rang de Basanti, with its more conventional message-mongering.

[A sketchy session report is here. The bit about Mehra wanting to "adapt the story of Karan from Mahabharata - the episode in which his mother says she is not his mother" should be taken with a bit of salt]

Rafa: the pros and cons of a mid-career memoir

[Okay, this is my last piece on tennis for some time - a review I did of Rafael Nadal's autobiography for Business Standard. Some earlier thoughts on Nadal and the book are here]

Sporting careers follow a different trajectory and time-scale to most others. Since a top player in a physically demanding sport may well retire at age 30 or less, having already achieved most of the things he will be remembered for, there’s nothing unusual about an athlete having a memoir out at a relatively young age. But some debate can be expected when a sportsman’s autobiography arrives while his career is still active and near its peak. And so, the first question that must be asked about Rafael Nadal’s life chronicle Rafa is: why now?

One obvious answer is that last year, at the age of just 24, Nadal became the youngest male tennis player to complete the Career Slam – that is, winning all four majors (the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open) at least once. That’s a prestigious enough achievement in itself, but the context made it more dramatic. A year earlier, injuries, family troubles and apparent lack of mental focus had combined to put a question mark against Nadal’s longevity; many journalists and viewers had sounded the death knell for his career. This made his resurgence – and the solidification of his status as one of his sport’s best players – even more impressive.

In our age of instant information and round-the-clock media scrutiny, it must have seemed natural to come out with the “official”, inspirational story. Rafa covers various aspects of Nadal’s life, but the narrative is anchored around the two defining matches of his career: the celebrated 2008 Wimbledon final against his great rival Roger Federer, which saw Nadal win his first non-clay Slam and take a big step towards claiming the number one ranking; and the 2010 US Open final win – against another worthy rival Novak Djokovic – which completed the Spaniard’s Slam collection.

Though we’re told that this book is authored “with” journalist John Carlin, it’s safe to assume that the writing is entirely Carlin’s. For one thing, Rafa isn’t exclusively in the first person; alternating with its main narrative are short, “objective” chapters that provide an outsider’s commentary on Nadal and his inner circle. Also, the refined coolness of the writing (phrases like “the cathedral hush of Wimbledon’s Centre Court” and “I didn’t expressly prohibit them from raising the subject” appear in the first couple of pages) will initially be distancing for anyone familiar with Nadal’s spoken English (“He play better than me – that’s the true, no?”). But as you read on, it works because it reflects the inner clarity of a contemplative, grounded sportsman.

This comes across most vividly in Nadal’s reflections on the day before a big match, and the hours leading up to it: about chatting with family over dinner and pretending it’s a normal day, though everyone knows he has already started playing the match “in a space inside my head that should remain mine alone”. Or how, when he finds himself alone with Federer in the locker room a few minutes before a final – just the two of them in a spookily quiet space that housed 128 players a fortnight earlier – he settles for a quick handshake. (“To joke or chatter about football, as we might before an exhibition match, would have been a lie he would have seen through immediately and interpreted as a sign of fear.”)

A major talking point around any mid-career memoir is what a sportsperson should or should not disclose while he is still playing. Nadal has been prone to recurring injuries, which get extensive media coverage. His supporters point out that like many other athletes, he plays through the pain and is often good enough to win tournaments despite his ailments; but there has been a rising belief that injuries are used as convenient excuses for losses, or that his frequent medical time-outs are ploys to throw off an opponent’s rhythm. Even those who are inclined to give him the benefit of doubt have gently suggested that he might be turning into a bit of a hypochondriac; recent incidents such as the one where grabbing a hot plate in a restaurant led to nasty finger blisters, or the unfortunate attack of cramps during a US Open press conference, have been the subjects of much Internet humour.

Perhaps with an eye on this negative publicity, Rafa tries to set the record straight, providing medical details about the congenital foot disease that almost ended Nadal’s career in 2005, and the effect it had on his subsequent physical and mental conditioning. An obvious downside to making such revelations is that it might give rivals extra information as well as motivation. But this is clearly a risk he has opted to take.

Other highlights include Nadal discussing the ups and downs of his relationship with the only coach he has ever known, his paternal uncle Toni – a hard taskmaster who helped channel his nephew’s famous mental strength, but who may have been excessively harsh on occasion. These passages have received much press coverage, most of which makes the book sound more controversial than it is, but when you read them as part of a larger narrative they don’t seem so shocking. The overall impression here is that of a young man who is still highly dependent on family (Nadal lives in a multi-storeyed house with his large clan) but who is also becoming conscious of the need to speak his own mind and break out of a parochial image.

All this adds up to a book that has many candid interludes mixed with some bland reportage and superfluous chronicling of career highlights. But in any case, Rafa might already be somewhat dated. When it was written, Nadal had just come off his finest season and it seemed his position at the top would be secure for some time, but things are no longer so rosy. He has had a fine 2011 by most standards, but he has been a distant second-best this year, having been overshadowed by Djokovic.

Whether this marks the beginning of a permanent decline or motivation for another comeback remains to be seen. Either way, there’s no doubt that Nadal will update this autobiography – or write a new one – when his career ends. The revised version, written with the benefit of distance, should be even more revealing.

[Finger blisters photo credit: Nadal News]

The Akshara Ramayana

A shout-out to theatre enthusiasts in Delhi: Gopal Sharman’s acclaimed play The Ramayana is being performed at the Akshara Theatre between October 1-4 (starting 7 pm). Sharman’s play centres on specific episodes from the epic – such as a long conversation between King Dasharatha and his queen Kaikeya – and central to its performance is the katha vachaka or storyteller, who is initially seated in the audience but then takes the stage, articulates the questions raised in the narrative, and eventually transforms herself into the characters. Naturally, this is a complex task for an actor, and Sharman’s wife Jalabala Vaidya has given highly praised solo performances – modulating her voice to bring the Ramayana’s characters to life – in over 2,000 performances worldwide, including on Broadway and the West End.

The Akshara production won’t be a one-woman show this time – it has a cast of young actors – but Vaidya will continue to play the katha vachaka and also perform the Dasharath-Kaikeya samvaad as well as the intimate final act between Rama and Sita. For details regarding tickets, timings etc check the Facebook page or call at 9313994368, (011)23361075 or (011)32910427.

‘And if you gaze into the abyss, Rahul gazes into you’

It’s probably accurate to say that this blog hasn’t been kind to Jeetendra and his progeny over the years. I’ve written flippant posts about the films he has appeared in – Dharam Veer, The Turning Brain and Nagin among them – and mocked the tendency to credit him “Above All” in movies where he had an inconsequential role. I’ve commented on the pointlessness of Tusshar Kapoor and written rude things about Ekta Kapoor’s serials (including her mangling of a beloved epic: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) as well as a skit about her encounter with the Goddess Kali. Rereading some of these posts makes me feel like a lowly earthworm wiggling through slush, much like Jeetendra and Reena Roy in that snake dance, and my conscience makes a “tuk tuk” sound like the shuttlecock popping against Jeetu’s badminton racquet in that Humjoli song. But I digress.

Despite my own record of misdemeanours on the subject of Jeetendra, I have now read something that makes me feel deeply sorry for him: this hilarious post from an American humour site about “the 8 manliest foreign movie posters ever”. At number 1 is a Jaani Dushman poster, and don’t miss what the writer has to say about our hero, whom he recasts as a generic “Rahul”. (He also describes poor Sunil Dutt as "an Arabic Ron Jeremy".)

This post has been going viral on the Net. Given its popularity, it’s probable that long after Jeetendra’s distinguished body of work (Ekta and Tusshar included) has been forgotten, he will be remembered in distant countries as “Rahul, who wanted to rape the wolfman”. Would you wish that fate on him? (Take a deep breath before answering: remember, Rahul’s eyes are watching you.)

P.S. Much as I’d like to take credit for the title of this post, it comes from one of the comments on the Cracked.com piece.

Mini-review: Rakhshanda Jalil’s Release

[A snippet from my weekly books column]

Rakhshanda Jalil’s slender short-story collection Release is described on the jacket as exploring “the lives of Indian Muslims, not the marginalized or ghettoized Muslims of popular stereotype but ordinary, mainstream ones”. I felt this was a case of a publisher trying too hard to brand a book: in most of these stories, the religious identity of the characters is beside the point. For bubble-wrapped readers who have an extremely narrow view of what Muslims are like, I suppose it may come as a surprise to learn that a jovial, hard-drinking raconteur who runs a hill-station hotel could be named Yousuf. Or that a Zainub Begum could be a successful scriptwriter, happy to share salacious gossip about movie-stars. But Jalil’s book deserves a more sensitive and intelligent readership than that anyway.

These are stories about character-revealing choices as well as unexpected encounters and disclosures – some of which don’t have an immediate effect but could prove life-changing in the long run. A man is taken aback to discover that a shy girl he had known decades earlier has become garrulous and assertive; a plain-looking, middle-aged lady finds herself being stalked by a young boy; an affluent man comes to a mountain getaway each year to indulge himself in a most unusual fashion. All these pieces are elegantly written but the one I liked best – a minor classic, I thought – was “The Failure”, in which a vacationing couple in the 1970s stumble on an impeccably maintained but desolate resort run by a sahibzada. This is a fine pen portrait of a regal but uneasy man (his chinless face takes on the appearance of “a sea buffeted by severe storms” whenever he is asked an awkward question) who might be ahead of his time – or who might, like some of Jalil’s other protagonists, simply have failed to seize a vital moment.

Shakti Bhatt prize shortlist

The shortlist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize for 2011 has been announced. I've read three of the books on the list and will be reading the others in the next few weeks. Here are my posts about Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon and Shehan Karunatilaka's Chinaman. And a post about Shakti here.

Seen, not heard: R K Narayan on a movie set

The long relationship between literature and cinema is full of anecdotes about writers feeling demeaned, patronised or outright bullied by a medium they couldn’t relate to – from George Bernard Shaw’s crabby reaction to winning a screenplay Oscar for the filmed Pygmalion to countless stories about authors hired to adapt screenplays and then standing by as their work is butchered. But one of the best first-hand pieces I’ve read about a reticent writer’s brush with commercial cinema is R K Narayan’s essay “Misguided Guide”, now excerpted in the Jerry Pinto-edited collection The Greatest Show on Earth.

This is an account of Narayan’s association with the production crew (comprising Indians and Americans) that set out to film his novel The Guide – their initial fawning over him followed by a series of events which made it clear that his original vision was irrelevant to their needs. Here's his description of an early conversation with the director Tad Danielewski:

“He brushed aside my comments and went on with his own explanation of what I must have had in mind when I created such-and-such character. I began to realise that monologue is the privilege of the filmmaker, and that it was futile to try butting in with my own observations. But for some obscure reason, they seemed to need my presence, though not my voice. I must be seen and not heard.”

Narayan isn’t usually thought of as a comic writer, but here he uses his characteristically dignified prose to convey an ever-escalating series of goof-ups, and the results are hysterically funny (the picture that came into my mind was that of the poker-faced Buster Keaton at the heart of a storm as things collapse all around him). Ideal locations near Narayan’s home-town Mysore are explored, heartily approved of ... and then bypassed in favour of incongruous north Indian settings. (“We are out to expand the notion of Malgudi,” he is peremptorily told. “Malgudi will be where we place it, in Kashmir, Rajasthan, Bombay, Delhi, even Ceylon.”) Meetings take place on the edge of a hotel swimming pool, an unnecessarily expensive set near Delhi is washed away when the Yamuna rises, a romantic scene runs into trouble (“the hero, for his part, was willing to obey the director, but he was helpless, since kissing is a collaborative effort”), a surreal attempt is made to get Lord Mountbatten to promote the film in England, and when the author protests that a scene involving a tiger fight wasn’t in his story, he is assured that it was.

Reading all this, I wish Narayan had got his revenge by writing the script for a movie about the making of Guide. It might have been just as entertaining as any other good film about the shooting of a movie, such as Shadow of the Vampire (with its witty line “I do not think we need... the writer”). And of course, a 70-year-old Dev Anand would have been happy to play the 40-year-old Dev Anand.

P.S. The Greatest Show on Earth also carries a typically goofy-narcissistic excerpt from Dev Anand’s autobiography (I wrote about that magnificent book here and here), which presents a somewhat different account of Anand’s first Guide-related conversation with Narayan. Without comment, here is some of it:

The receiver was picked up and I heard a voice say: “R K Narayan here.”

“Dev Anand!” was my reply.

“Dev Anand!” He was curious. “Which Dev Anand?”

“Dev Anand, the actor!” I clarified.

“Are you sure?” He did not seem to believe me.

“Yes, it is me!” I assured him.

“Nice talking to you, Mr Dev Anand,” he said warmly. “Where are you calling from, Mr Dev Anand?”

“I frantically tried to get hold of your number in New York…” I said.

“You did!” he interrupted me, getting interested when he heard the word “frantically”.

“Couldn’t get it from anyone, but now I am calling from Los Angeles, California,” I finished.

“I see.”

“Hollywood,” I emphasized.

“Hollywood?” he said quizzically.

“A name associated with the best of show business!” I enthused.

“Of course, Mr Dev Anand,” he played with my name and gave a friendly laugh.

After some more of this the conversation ends, as everything must, and Mr Dev Anand wraps up his chronicle with this priceless sentence:

The receiver was put down with a bang, which seemed to indicate his excitement.

More likely, Narayan was making a wild dash for his anti-stress tablets.

Rafa: the war within?

It’s difficult to gauge exactly how one forms a connection with a particular sportsperson – fandom is a thick brew made up of many secret ingredients – but one possible explanation for my interest in Rafael Nadal’s game and personality presented itself last year...

To read on, go here. This is a piece I did for First Post - it's about Rafael Nadal as perpetual underdog, my own identification with an aspect of his personality, and the frank self-analysis in his new autobiography. Of course, it's a bit ironical that this piece is appearing just as Rafa is almost certain to lose the US Open final to his 2011 nemesis Novak Djokovic (being a masochist, I will be up watching the match later tonight), but that's how things go in sport.

P.S. For any regular blog-readers with feedback on the piece - I'd prefer you leave comments here, not on the First Post site.

[Two earlier tennis-related pieces: From a Rafa fanboy and Deuce: On tennis narratives and rivalries]

On a documentary titled Videokaaran, and its memorable "hero"

A few years ago, while doing research for a story, I found myself at an Old Delhi movie theatre called “Moti Talkies”. The communal film-viewing culture in this part of the city was fading. Families rarely came together to watch movies now, one of the theatre’s employees told me – “it's mostly people from the labour class who drop by once in a while, and they are okay with watching a film while sitting on the steps” – so there was little motivation or money for revamping. The barely maintained hall with its decrepit seats now specialised in irregular screenings of Bhojpuri films, though the manager half-heartedly claimed that they sometimes showed the latest Hindi releases.

It was a world very far removed from the one I’ve inhabited for the last few years as a multiplex-goer watching the slickest new mainstream films, thinking little of paying Rs 180 for a ticket. But even halls like Moti Talkies seem plush compared to the milieu depicted in an excellent new documentary titled Videokaaran, directed by Jagannathan Krishnan. Shot largely with a handheld camera, this film is about the world of underground video parlours, where viewers gather to see films on the cheap in makeshift settings, and cinema is a passion as well as a business.

The establishing sequence in Videokaaran shows a filmi discussion between a group of working-class young men. Discussing the relative merits and fan followings of Rajinikanth and Amitabh Bachchan, they rib each other good-naturedly; one of the boys defensively mutters that he doesn’t get worked up when someone says something bad about his favourite actor. Occasionally the scene seems staged, rather than the impromptu documentary-interview it purports to be; but then you realise that these are kids who have moulded themselves after movies and movie stars, so that they are already natural performers – the swagger, the cockiness, the smart lines come easily to them.

One face takes over the scene – a young man explaining that every Rajnikanth film has a “message” for society. For instance, when Rajini plays an autorickshaw driver, he resolves that if he sees a pregnant woman walking on the road, he will give her a lift for free, even if it means telling his current passengers to get off. "Usne yeh message diya hai ke tum bhi aise karo ... Aur jo log gharwalon ki baat nahin sunte, woh uske picture dekhke uski baat sunte hain."

The young man is named Sagai Raj – he used to run a video theatre near a Mumbai slum but he now works in a photo studio – and his personality plays a big part in making Videokaaran such a compelling experience. Partly philosopher and raconteur, partly giggling sociopath, Sagai is capable of holding forth on just about any subject. He relates stories about smuggling a stack of 40 porn DVDs by passing the package off as a “Mother Mary statue”, and about splicing scenes into a film to make it more appealing to an audience (“our marketing is more effective than that of filmmakers who spend crores”). He shares his gyaan about film editing, and why certain scenes are shot the way they are. (Heroes prefer to do dance scenes with a group of back-up dancers, because then everyone can look at each other and get the steps right.) Horror and gore films (including Passion of the Christ!) seem childish to him, he boasts, because he’s seen far worse in real life.

Even though this is a documentary and Sagai is “playing” himself, it’s hard not to think of him as a “character”. He’s a savant of the streets, cocksure at most times, with just a hint of vulnerability; his laugh is like a horse’s neigh, a strange mix of nervousness, brashness and a genuine need to please. He is our entry point into a setting where films can be character-building but can also become endorsements for perversions and misconceptions. (Watching a blue film, he says at one point, can help a man “read women accurately” – “ladki ko sahi pehchaan ne ka raasta blue films se hai”.) The way of life portrayed here is one where, even in moments of extreme crisis (such as when the video theatre is demolished by the authorities), one can get succour from the inspirational songs sung on screen by larger-than-life heroes. Videokaaran is a story about people whose relationship with cinema is immediate and intense, in ways that most multiplex-goers wouldn’t be able to fathom.

P.S. Videokaaran hasn’t yet got the distribution it deserves, but it has got a small word-of-mouth following and the filmmaker is trying to arrange a public screening in Delhi. For news and updates, see the film’s Facebook page. And the trailer is here.

Deuce! On tennis narratives and rivalries (and Steve Tignor's High Strung)

[Did a version of this piece for Forbes India. Here's the - slightly shorter - magazine version]

Nearly every time I hear or read (or participate in) a sports-related discussion, I’m reminded of a single-panel comic I saw once on a website. “A weighted random number generator just produced a new batch of numbers,” one stick figure says. “Let’s use them to build narratives!” replies his companion.

The descriptor at the bottom? “All Sports Commentary.”

Building narratives is something sports fans spend a lot of time doing; one can argue that sports-watching wouldn’t be much fun if we didn’t do it. We are all guilty of reading too much into statistics, or tossing off smug statements about this or that player. (Try counting the number of times you’ve heard the remark “He can’t handle pressure”, made about someone who has been ranked in the top 10 of a sport for years.) In cricket, when a strike bowler gets a star batsman out a few times – even if a couple of those dismissals were lucky – it becomes accepted that the former is “in the latter’s head”. We think we know what is going on in the minds of our favourite players, and we make whimsical connections between athletes who lived decades apart. Even the more balanced, self-aware viewers frequently succumb to the human tendency to see patterns.

Aiding us in this is the sports media, which specialises in creating stories with a dramatic arc (they’d be out of a job if they didn’t). Thus we regularly get eye-catching headlines about eras ending and batons passing rapidly from one champion to another – when in fact sports history is more often marked by slow, incremental changes. The careers of top players overlap for long periods; a champion may begin his decline or get overtaken, but then return for a last hurrah when no one expects it. When he entered the 2002 US Open, Pete Sampras had gone 33 tournaments without a title – the “Sampras Era” was well and truly over – but he won that trophy against all expectations. Jimmy Connors reached the semi-finals of the 1991 USO at age 39, eight years after his last Slam win and more than 15 years after his peak. Sporting narratives are rarely cut and dried.

All that said, it’s easy to see why so many tennis experts consider the 1981 US Open a historically significant tournament, and the end of an important era in the men’s game. It was the last major, or Slam, played by Bjorn Borg, who had been the dominant male player of the previous few years. Borg's rock star-like status had defined the first decade of the Open Era, a period when the sport’s class division came to an end and some drastic changes did take place. And his own career, unlike those of most athletes, ended on a genuinely dramatic note: shortly after losing the USO final to his younger rival and nemesis John McEnroe, he announced his retirement, aged only 25.

It’s no surprise, then, that Stephen Tignor – one of the best tennis writers at work today – has written a book that dwells on the 1981 USO as the culmination of a dynamic decade, as well as a harbinger of the decade to come. But in looking at the period through the prism of its most celebrated rivalry, Tignor’s High Strung also recognises that the friction between great competitors is what makes sporting contests so compelling.

The Borg-McEnroe story had every element you’d want from a dramatic storyline – not least an attention-grabbing contrast in personalities. Anyone familiar with Tignor’s work for Tennis magazine will know that he is a writer with a real head for nuance, but even he can’t resist titling the first chapter of his book “The Angel and the Brat”, and setting one legendary persona against another: Borg the Ice Man, under whose imperturbable surface burnt hidden fires, versus McEnroe the Superbrat, perpetually on edge, scourge of umpires and genteel viewers. Weaving in and out of this story is the other top player of the time, and the Open Era’s first blue-collar brat: the mercurial Connors, who had separate intriguing rivalries with Borg and McEnroe. But there’s no question who the two protagonists are.

There is a temptation in sports writing – particularly in individual sports – to cast major rivals as doppelgangers with an almost mystical bond; as players who form an ambivalent relationship as they come to realise that their names will always be linked together. Describing McEnroe’s pursuit of Borg, Tignor writes: “At its deepest psychological level the match was a case of a little brother trying to slay a big brother, an acolyte attempting to kill an idol.” McEnroe had looked up to Borg, holding him as a personal standard, ever since he had served as a ball-boy during one of the Swede’s earliest matches; for him, the only truly meaningful way to reach the apex of his sport was by conquering his idol.


This romantic view of sporting conflict has it that Borg’s sudden retirement was a case of a champion crushed by the emergence of a rival capable of beating him. But Borg’s exit was equally the result of well-chronicled factors in his personal life. Even before McEnroe became a serious threat, there had been signs that the reticent Swede was being worn down by the grind of the celebrity life; twenty-five may not have felt very young to someone who, making his Wimbledon debut at 17, had been assaulted by hundreds of screaming schoolgirls in the first manifestation of a decade-long phenomenon called the “Borgasm”. (See photo near the end of this post.)


Even so, the rivalry was majestic on sporting grounds alone. Borg’s frustratingly consistent, error-proof baseline play contrasted well with McEnroe’s fine touches and all-court artistry – they played two classic five-set Slam finals in 1980, and their head-to-head record would end at seven matches each. After McEnroe swiped the Wimbledon title from Borg, it seemed almost predestined that Borg would return the favour at the USO. But that didn’t happen. And so, Bjorn Borg – who still holds the record for the highest percentage of Slam matches won – walked away defeated from his last major. For the sport – which had the young future champion Ivan Lendl waiting in the wings, as well as a new era of graphite racquets to come – it was an end and a beginning.

****

This month’s edition of the US Open marks exactly 30 years since that fateful tournament, and once again we narrative hounds are on the scent of a Big Story. The interim decades did see a number of intriguing rivalries in the men's game – most notably the ones between Sampras and Andre Agassi, and between Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker – but they were relatively low-intensity or confined to specific venues; both players were rarely at their absolute peaks at the same time, and one never quite had a sense of big things at stake for the sport. However, the past few years have seen a rivalry that in some ways has eclipsed even Borg-McEnroe. And there are signs that the era it defined is ending.


For nearly seven seasons – a vast stretch of time in an athletic sport – tennis lovers have been riveted by the saga of Switzerland’s Roger Federer and Spain’s Rafael Nadal. Federer has overtaken Pete Sampras’s Slam record and set new standards for tennis dominance, holding the number one spot for 237 consecutive weeks and reaching an incredible 23 straight semi-finals at majors (for comparison, Sampras never made more than four semis in a row). But even in his peak years, the one player the Swiss could never dominate was Nadal, whose defence-to-offence baseline play, mental tenacity and powerful top-spin seemed almost laboratory-created to break down Federer’s more subtle game. In Federer’s greatest year, 2006, he lost just five matches in all – and four of them were to Nadal, all in finals, and most of them on clay, the surface where the Spaniard was best able to exploit the advantages his left-handed forehand gave him against Federer’s one-handed backhand.

Between them, these two men won 23 of the 26 majors that were contested between the 2004 Wimbledon and the 2010 US Open, and they maintained a stranglehold on the top two ranking spots for most of this time – a duopoly unprecedented over any comparable period in tennis history. In just five years, they played each other in a record eight Slam finals, on all surfaces. (The leading rivals of the 1990s, Sampras and Agassi, contested five finals over a 12-year period.) And there have been irresistible parallels with Borg-McEnroe: Borg took his fifth straight Wimbledon title in 1980, winning a classic five-setter against the young McEnroe; Federer won his fifth straight Wimbledon in 2007, beating off a similar challenge from Nadal; and in 1981 and 2008 respectively, the younger man reversed the result.

There are other similarities. At one point, Tignor suggests that McEnroe was at his best when he was the hunter, not the hunted – when he had a player ahead of him, whom he could run down – and that he was never quite the same after Borg had retired. Many have said exactly the same thing about Nadal, who appeared more carefree when he was ranked number two than when he took over the top spot. Perhaps he needed the mountain of Federer ahead of him.

But sporting comparisons are never so facile, and there is simultaneously a counter-narrative that casts Nadal as the modern-day Borg. There is a thirty-year age difference between these two champions, almost to the day, and both were teenage superstars. Like Borg, Nadal is a master of the natural surfaces, a clay-court monster (he recently equalled the Swede’s record of winning six French Opens, on the surface where it’s hardest to sustain excellence over a period of time) who successfully adapted his game to grass. The words used by Time magazine to describe Borg in 1980 – “an inexorable force that is one part speed, one part topspin and two parts iron will” – read like a sketch of the Spaniard.

Neither man ever seemed as comfortable on hard or synthetic courts: Borg’s Waterloo was the US Open, where he finished as runner-up four times; until last year it seemed like the same would be true for Nadal, but he completed his career Slam by beating Serbia’s Novak Djokovic in the US Open final.

Now, however, the same Djokovic is threatening to end the Federer-Nadal era. He has utterly dominated the men’s tour this year, beating Nadal in five finals, and the events of the past few months have raised the question: is history being rewritten on the 1981 palimpsest? Nadal is now 25 – the same age that Borg was when he abruptly hung up his racquets. Could it be that Rafa now has a “McEnroe” of his own?

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Ultimately, these stories can be spun in many different ways. What’s more interesting is how tennis rivalries – and our perceptions of them – have altered in the past three decades. In the Internet age, sports fandom is more intense and in-your-face. Everyone has not just an opinion but a public forum to immediately express it in; fans around the world can access even the smallest tournaments and discuss matches “live” on message-boards. Everyone becomes a psychologist when it comes to analysing the behaviour of their favourite – and least favourite – sportsmen. Thus, Federer fans see him as humble while his dislikers proclaim with equal confidence that he is unbearably arrogant. Nadal’s on-court mannerisms such as the vigorous fist pumps and shouts of “Vamos!” are decried by those who don’t care for his playing style, but his fans point out that these self-motivating gestures are never directed at his opponents, and that he is well-behaved off the court.

Leading players have always been cast into images that are impossible to break out of. Borg, for instance, was mythologised as having a resting pulse rate that never rose above 35 – a claim that is about as accurate as the one that he had ice in his veins. High Strung indicates how this reputation developed (“a two-inch dip in his chin after a missed shot was the equivalent of a racquet hurled over the fence for most players ... if he stared for a not-absolutely-necessary extra split-second at a line judge after a close call, it had approximately the same effect as a 10-minute profanity-laced tirade from McEnroe”), but there are also vignettes that show another side to the player – such as a remarkable photograph of a young boy looking more shy (and dazed) than aloof as police keep hordes of those schoolgirls away from him.

Simplifications have also plagued the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic rivalries. Nadal has been labelled the unrelenting “bull” (zoopomorphizing a Spanish athlete thus is an ancient tradition in sports writing), while Federer is the ballet dancer with the smooth and seemingly effortless game. Djokovic’s name has only just entered the great-player discussions, but a few years ago he drew attention for his locker-room imitations of other players’ mannerisms, including Nadal’s butt-picking gesture. This writer (a big Nadal fan) thought them funny, but people with thinner skins saw the imitations as disrespectful. At any rate, the Serb’s reputation has been fixed for all time in some minds: as the Djoker.

There have, of course, been positive changes in our perceptions too. Tignor’s book reminds us that Borg and McEnroe were friends off-court, but for most fans the dominant image of their rivalry is that of an undemonstrative or even sullen handshake at the net. Today, however, there is so much more coverage – not just on official media but through fans’ reports, photographs and videos – that we are constantly exposed to the goofier sides of players. We see them fooling around at exhibitions, participating in musical sideshows on the eve of a tournament, or having a casual courtside chat shortly after a seemingly acrimonious match – and so it becomes more difficult to sustain notions of deep hatred between rivals.

It helps that today’s top players have consistently been fine sportsmen – or “good boys”. The mutual respect between Federer and Nadal in particular contrasts strongly with the acrimony that dotted some player relationships in the past (and their hugs at the net have even spawned homoerotic online fan fiction that would have had Connors and McEnroe barfing into their racquet bags – but I’ll let that pass for now).

At this point, though, tennis belongs to neither Nadal nor Federer. With a 53-1 win-loss record for the year (at the time of writing), Djokovic is the clear favourite to take the US Open title. If he does (which will mean winning three out of four majors in a calendar year – something Federer and Nadal have both done in recent times but such greats as Borg, McEnroe and Sampras never achieved), it will be possible to speak of 2011 as another major shift in the sport’s history.

And then the weighted random number generator will probably kick in again, and we’ll have a completely different narrative to follow next year.

Professor Shonku and the sceptical scientists

[From my Sunday Guardian column]

Leading scientists and science writers often express irritation with what they see as unscientific, “anything goes” sci-fi writing – stories where outlandish scenarios are postulated just for plot convenience, with no heed to the laws of physics and biology. For instance, J B S Haldane and Stephen Jay Gould have written separate essays on the subject of optimum size in living creatures – the fact that a large change in an animal’s size inevitably carries with it a change in shape or form (if the new species is to survive for any reasonable period). When a creature grows in length while retaining the same basic shape, its volume will grow much more rapidly than its surface area: if it becomes thrice as tall, the surface will increase nine times but the weight will increase 27 times. Because of this discrepancy, any abnormal growth would cause problems in body functions such as respiration and digestion.

In this context, both Haldane and Gould make references to fantasy literature. Commenting on the giants Pope and Pagan from an illustrated edition of Pilgrim’s Progress, Haldane good-naturedly points out that if those monsters were ten times taller than regular humans, their body weight would be a thousand times greater, and their thigh-bones would break. “This was doubtless why they were sitting down in the picture I remember. But it lessens one’s respect for Christian and Jack the Giant Killer.”

Gould is more cutting. The creators of many science-fiction stories seem to have no inkling of the relationship between size and shape, he remarks. The miniature people of films like Dr Cyclops and Bride of Frankenstein “behave just like their counterparts of normal dimensions – they fall off cliffs or down stairs with resounding thuds, they wield weapons and swim with Olympic agility…and giant insects continue to fly and walk up walls”. But actually, a two-inch person’s experience of the texture of water and air – and the sheer business of moving about – would be very different from ours. And the wings of an insect several feet long would never be able to carry the creature’s weight.

I suspect Haldane and Gould would not have approved of the adventures of Professor Shonku, one of Satyajit Ray’s most delightful literary creations – especially the story where Shonku travels to Norway and discovers that another professor has captured a number of famous people and reduced them to a tenth of their size. But while I respect the concerns of the real-life scientists, the Shonku universe never fails to enthrall me. Even if these stories don’t stand up to the most rigorous tests applied to sci-fi, there’s no question that they are high-quality fantasy writing, marrying imagination and intelligence. The professor’s globe-trotting also gives Ray a pretext to share information – in his usual non-didactic way – about other lands and cultures with his young readers.

The most recent English translation of these stories was The Diary of a Space Traveller, which has 11 stories translated by Gopa Majumdar (who has also done fine work on Ray’s Feluda tales) and one story translated by Ray himself. Included in these narratives are an expedition to Mars, an encounter with a Chinese hypnotist, a colour-changing sphere that turns out to be a tiny living planet, and reflections on what makes a robot truly lifelike. The writing throughout is gentle and humorous, and Shonku’s references to his many eye-popping inventions (an incomplete list is here) ensure there isn’t a dull moment. Anyone who patronisingly suggests that these tales are "only for children" would do well to note the eye for detail and characterisation, as when Shonku says of his simple-minded servant Prahlad:

Sometimes slow and foolish people can show more courage than clever ones, as it takes them longer to work out the need, or reason, to feel scared [...] I remember one particular occasion very well. A gecko had fallen from the ceiling on my bottle of bicornic acid and overturned it. I could do nothing but watch helplessly as the acid slowly began to spread towards a little heap of paradoxite powder. All my limbs went numb at the mere thought of what might happen if the acid made contact with the powder.

Prahlad entered the room at this crucial moment, saw me staring at the acid, grinned and coolly wiped it off with a towel.

Since most of the stories are told the form of diary entries written by Shonku, it frequently happens that the final entry in a story begins along the lines “I’m shaken by what happened yesterday – it’s a wonder I’m alive to relate this tale”, after which the professor describes the climax to his latest adventure. For the thrill-seeking reader, this is a comforting device – it promises excitement but also reassurance that all will turn out well. These tales are fine examples of the talent for fluid storytelling that served Ray so well in his films. I discovered Shonku for the first time as an adult; I envy my Bengali friends who grew up with him.

Lit for Life

Spreading the word about the Lit for Life conclave being organised in Chennai and Delhi to celebrate 20 years of the Hindu Literary Review. Here's the programme schedule for the Delhi leg of the event on September 25 at the India Habitat Centre - some promising panels on literature, film and theatre, including one where I'll be in conversation with director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. The shortlist for the Hindu Literary Prize will also be announced later that evening.