German and Hanover 96 goalie Robert Enke’s death stunned the footballing world on 10 November 2009 when he was hit by a train passing at over 150 kmph at a level crossing. A note was later recovered, the contents of which have not been publicized, confirming suicide. Enke had been battling depression for years following the death of his 2-year-old daughter to a heart complication. He and his wife had adopted another little girl earlier this year, and Enke feared that if news of his mental condition became known, they might lose their second daughter as well.

Tottenham Hotspur’s Italian goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini was in a serious traffic accident a couple of days later when his motorbike collided with a car. It resulted in two broken wrists and an injured pelvis. While Spurs are being quite circumspect about his injuries, they have been described as serious and “life-changing” by the police. (The passengers in the car escaped unhurt.)

Goalkeeping can be quite a dangerous enough job — ask Petr Cech, who now plays with a head brace — yet both Cudicini and Enke happen to be in the news off the pitch. Sadly, Enke’s troubles extended so far beyond the posts that he paid with his life. Cudicini’s prognosis is so far unknown, but he rides on the good wishes of the footballing world.

~PD

The chances are, we have all unwittingly been involved in a fandom or dozen at some point or other. For me, since being a nerdy kid who read three books in two days, fandoms have, ironically, helped in hanging on to a semblance of sanity at times. Maybe a healthy dose of un-reality is the best medicine when one needs to get away in one’s mind. In fact, I would go so far as to say that being involved in a range of fandoms was critical in my choice of career. Whether what was right or wrong is another issue!

All things Enid Blyton

Frighteningly enough, it was the wholly inappropriate Enid Blyton books that saw me through childhood and early adolescence, and first made me question if I could be a writer. By the age of 6 or 7, I was totally into the Five Find-Outers and Famous Five; I wanted to be one of them. Soon I was going on make-believe adventures with Roger, Diana, Barney and Snubby; hanging out with Jack, Nora, Peggy and Mike in their secret island; or off with Phillip, Dinah, Jack and Lucy-Ann on an exotic vacation… Yes, well, I hear people coughing “obsession” about now! Hey, we moved a lot and I didn’t have many friends…

I must add that even as a child I found Enid Blyton disturbing and now that I think of it, given the sexism, xenophobia and (I can’t think of a better phrase) the bourgeois elitism, it isn’t something I would like to see children reading. People think that kids don’t see a lot of things, but some kids do. At least I did, and a lot of my contemporaries did too.

Star Trek

Sets made of plastic toys, William Shatner’s overacting, Captain Kirk getting it on with a different woman each week… honestly, it isn’t hard to see the detractors’ point of view. Sometimes, I get a nagging doubt about whether I really love Star Trek, or just fell in love with a pointy-eared half-alien.

ST: TOS has its share of critics, but it must be admitted that it was revolutionary in its own way. For the 1960s it was quite bold — featuring one of the first inter-racial kisses on TV — and touched upon a number of ethical issues that will hopefully remain timeless. That said, despite the imagination and vision employed by creator Gene Roddenberry, it is also an excellent example of how present-day values constrict our ability to imagine the future. The final episode, called “Turnabout Intruder”, showed a female Star Fleet officer taking over Kirk’s body because she had a compelling wish to command a starship, and in the 23rd century women are not allowed to hold command! Roddenberry expressed regret for inclusion of that idea later on, but generations of fantasy writers should thank him, because it gives us an excellent lesson in going where no-one has gone before.

Sport

Most of the significant relationships in my life have revolved around sport. The two games that I especially love are cricket and football, and was lucky enough to have gained a nuanced understanding of both rather than being limited to one of winning or losing. Lately, mainly due to a discontent with the way cricket is portrayed in the media and managed by the powers-that-be, I seem to be getting increasingly out of touch. However, I know it will take very little to get me back into it. I can still pick up, say, Stephen Waugh’s autobiography and smile when I read about something that I remember seeing or listening to (radio) or reading about.

I got into cricket at the age of 10 or so, and had a short and undistinguished stint as a medium pacer for my college in my late teens; football was a later development. I had always liked it, but it was the late 1990s/early 2000s that English and European football started getting beamed live into our living rooms. Doing the Goalpost was also a lot of fun. I miss it.

Remington Steele, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files

Only laziness and the fact that this post is getting longer than I anticipated that made me club these three together. I was into each of these series at different times, and they were all very different. While Buffy and X-Files fall into the SFF genre, Remington Steele was a detective series. It was aired in the 1980s, though we got to see it in the mid-1990s, when I was in my late teens. It all began when a private investigator called Laura Holt set up her own agency, but let’s hear it in her own words:

Try this for a deep dark secret: The great detective Remington Steele… He doesn’t exist. I invented him. Follow: I’d always loved excitement, So I studied and apprenticed, and put my name on an office. But absolutely no one knocked on my door. A female private investigator seemed so… feminine. So I invented a superior. A decidedly masculine superior. Suddenly there were cases around the block. It was working like a charm. Until the day he walked in, with his blue eyes and mysterious past. And before I knew it, he assumed Remington Steele’s identity. Now I do the work, and he takes the bows. It’s a dangerous way to live, But as long as people buy it, I can get the job done. We never mix business with pleasure. Well…almost never. I don’t even know his real name!

Pierce Brosnan, with his blue eyes and rougish smile, really wormed his way into our impressionable teenage hearts as Mr Steele. And Laura was pretty great too. The mystery about who Steele really was, and the tension between him and Laura kept us entertained for years, and we pretended all the unpleasantness that existed behind the scenes never existed. I’m sure I’ve seen all 94 episodes, and all of them more than once.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the next serial I really got into. To be honest, I’ve not seen much of Joss Whedon’s work apart from this, though have heard a lot of good things. I have to admit part of why I like him is that he identifies himself as a feminist, which is clearly visible from his work. His whole idea for a feisty young woman kicking ass (why is it “kicking arse” doesn’t have the same ring?) came out of the fact that he hated how the blonde is always doomed in horror movies. Well, not only did Buffy provide a great role model for young people, there were a number of interesting characters in the series, not to mention a pace and excitement that kept the plot going for a long time till — like all good things — it started to unravel.

As for The X-Files, well, what can I say, I absolutely and totally devoured it. It was the first time I seriously wondered about what went on in the making of a story like this, and did a lot of reading up on Chris Carter. I was intrigued by his work, and also watched Millennium while it aired here. (I wrote a loooooong essay on Carter, The X-Files and the then-upcoming Millennium in my entrance examination for MCRC, Jamia! I don’t know what they made of it, but I did get an interview call, which I bunked.) I always had a softer spot for Scully than for Spooky Mulder, and was often annoyed that her perspective got repeatedly steamrolled. To be honest, the later seasons ended up “jumping too many sharks” and got a little bit pointless and boring, but I’m hoping for good things from the upcoming movie, I Want to Believe.

The Wheel of Time

When it comes to books, I know that I belong to innumerable fandoms, but the Wheel of Time has a special place. People might complain about the one-dimensional main characters, too many side characters, the needlessly meandering plot, Robert Jordan’s style of writing, the similarities to LOTR, and, heck, even blame Jordan for dying before finishing the series… but such criticisms are commonplace for any work of fiction of this massive a scale. Jordan never denied being influenced by Tolkien, and frankly, I like his style of writing. I found the humour in the early books almost “British”, and that’s the highest praise I can give!

Apart from the fact that it is an amazing work of literature, and opened the doors to the wonderful world of fantasy for me, there are two other reasons why WoT is special. The first of course is that it is what made me decide exactly what I wanted to write about. I’d been meandering about writing fiction seriously for a few years, and had a lot of aborted attempts. After reading The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and The Shadow Rising in quick succession, I KNEW I was going to write fantasy. I know my first book has a similarity to EoTW in its basic plot, and I’m not ashamed. There was an acknowledgement to RJ in that book.

The other reason is that I met a lot of people because of WoT, through the forum Moiraine’s World. (Oh, I can imagine Marie preening here…!) It was the first time I ventured into the world of online socializing, and I certainly don’t regret it. It’s been fun and annoying and amazing and a lot of other things all at the same time, and “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world”!

Doctor Who, Torchwood and Russell T. Davies

I still remember that evening when Swapna was being a total pain with those Doctor Who DVDs. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, but she left them on my table and said, “Try and watch them.” I did, and I can’t believe I was such a fool as to ever wonder if I’d be interested! Fine, so the Doctor I liked better left the show; fine, that most of the plots are thin to the point of emaciation. It doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t — it’s unadulterated fun, some typical British humour, lots of aliens, lots of running, some cool gadgets… oh, I love it!

The Ninth Doctor of the 2005 series was my favourite, but the stories in that season were mostly… um… bad, apart from the whole “Bad Wolf” story arc. Series two and the coming of David Tennant seemed to take things up a notch. Given my fascination with other kinds of fantasy, it touched a peak with the two episodes “The Impossible Planet” and “Satan’s Pit”, though “The Girl in the Fireplace” was a super episode too. Series three was very up and down, but the ups were very high indeed, with episodes like “Shakespeare Code”, “Blink”, “Human Nature”/”Family of Blood”, and the first two of a three-part finale.

Torchwood is a Doctor Who spin-off, very dark and aimed at an adult audience, especially with its in-your-face violence. It features one of the Doctor’s companions, the immortal Captain Jack Harkness. While Torchwood is undoubtedly a little thin in the class department at times, it has its moments. It also has an excellent cast, playing the roles of sweet, nerdy Tosh, sarcastic Owen, let-me-fall-all-over-you-Captain-Jack Gwen (okay, that’s mean, but I don’t care!), and the efficient Ianto for whom the term “still waters run deep” seem to have been invented.

Can’t talk about DW and TW without mentioning creator Russell T. Davies, best known for Queer as Folk before DW came back on air. I intend to write about him in detail later, so just saying here that I love how versatile he is. If only he hadn’t written that wholly regrettable episode called “Partners in Crime” for DW: Series Four (2008)…

Gaming

Oh dear… this is getting out of hand now…

Very briefly, more or less in descending order of how much I like them: Deus Ex, The Sims 2, Hitman, Diablo (all), Jedi Outcast, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, various football management games, Prince of Persia (the original; the first game I got hooked on, in the mid-1990s)… and more.

Reginald Hill and Ian Rankin

Arguably, among the the best writers of crime fiction plying their trade at the moment. With Hill it is his Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell) and Pascoe series, based in Yorkshire; and with Rankin the Inspector Rebus books, based in Edinburgh. Both have been made into TV series. Will not get into too much detail, but suffice it to say that while Hill is a master at wordplay, Rankin’s characterization is superlative. Both are excellent narrators, though neither have been able to reproduce the same sort of form with their other works. (For reviews of most of Hill’s books.)

Right, so before I can think of anything else that will make this post even longer, it’s time to wind up!

~PD

No really — that’s the semi-finalists’ line-up for the FA Cup. The first time in exactly 100 years that three of the last four are outside the top league. A top league that incidentally consists of players whose worth goes into millions of pounds; players who earn in a week what people like me wouldn’t in ten years…

But that’s besides the point. The question is, what does this really say about English football? That the top clubs have bigger fish to fry and thus give the world’s oldest football competition the short shrift (forgive the clichés)? Remember that Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool — all knocked out in pretty major upsets — are involved in the Champion$$$ League.

Or does it mean the glorious uncertainties of the FA Cup — wow, if I keep on with the clichés, I will give Ravi Shastri a complex — are, well, so gloriously uncertain that it has thrown up an absolutely unlikely last four, giving us the possibility of a thrilling and open contest…

English football is very much like Indian cricket — both think the sun shines out of the respective behinds. Which is why it is amusing to find the FA wringing their hands, trying to figure out if they will need to reduce ticket prices for the semi-finals to fill the 90,000-capacity Wembley. Which incidentally cost £798m and counting to construct and maintain.

Anyhow, perhaps it’s time to put the cynicism aside and cheer on Barnsley, Cardiff City, Pompey and West Brom. Credit where credit is due… or is it?

~PD

The thing about Adam Gilchrist was that you noticed him. What is even more commendable is that you noticed him for the right reasons. Whether you loved him or hated him, you’d have to admit, Gilly played cricket like it should be played. And with his retirement, it is clear that cricket will no longer be as exciting.

In an era when wicketkeepers are valued more for their ability to throw their bats around, Australia’s Adam Gilchrist stood apart. Not only does he retire with a Test average of just under 48—something any specialist batsman would gladly take—he also happens to be (at the time of writing) the most successful wicketkeeper in Test history.

Wicketkeeping can often be a thankless role to perform; yet it is crucial to any side, especially to one that had such a strong bowling attack as Australia. Gilchrist had a critical role to play in the careers of two bowlers who were without doubt the best in their business—pacer Glenn McGrath and leg-spinner Shane Warne. Whether standing back to raging speedsters or sniffing the stumps when the likes of Warne plied their trade, Gilchrist was also arguably the best in his generation.

Stepping into Ian Healey’s giant shoes was a task to faze the best and the bravest, but Gilchrist did him proud. His solid presence behind the wicket was accompanied by a batting style that can only be described as exhilarating. Yet it would be mean to put him down as a slogger. And while he suffered loss of batting form many times in his career, one would be hard pressed to complain about the quality of his wicketkeeping.

Gilchrist was a sportsman in the true sense of the word. He was passed over for captaincy after the retirement of Stephen Waugh, doomed to remain a vice-captain forever. Cricket lovers will find it difficult to forget how he walked at a critical juncture after being given not out during a World Cup game. Nor will we forget the smile and the shrug of “It’s just a game,” that he often quoted after losing a match. He played as hard as any of the Australians do, but he seemed to remember that at the end of the day they were only entertainers.

Adam Gilchrist played in a team that I loved — a team that was once made up by the likes of the Stephen and Mark Waugh, and Glenn McGrath, among my most admired sportspeople. Hence, it is hard to find the words to bid Gilchrist farewell. Peter Roebuck, on the other hand, seemed to have had no such trouble. Writing on Cricinfo.com, he says:

The sight of [Gilchrist] lifting a boundary catch when quick runs were needed — and departing with something akin to a hop and skip — reminded spectators that cricket is just a game and ought not to be meanly played…
Yet to characterise Gilchrist as a cavalier is to underestimate his craftsmanship and his contribution. Guarding the stumps was his primary duty, a role he carried out with an athleticism and skill that spoke of substantial skill and unfailing stamina. It was no easy task to replace as superb a gloveman as Ian Healy… Gilchrist met the challenge with aplomb, not so much ignoring the hisses that greeted him as turning them into cheers by sheer weight of performance and freshness of character…
But it is in his secondary responsibility as a batsman that Gilchrist will be remembered longest and cherished most. Simply, he changed the role of the wicketkeeper, changed the way batting orders were constructed… [H]e became two cricketers, a dashing and dangerous batsman and a polished gloveman. Throughout his career Australia has been playing with 12 men.
Yet it is not the keeping or batting that defined him… Gilchrist played in his own time and by his own lights… Accordingly he was obliged to tread the fine line between serving the interests of the team and applying his personal code.
Every significant passing produces a hundred memories. Gilchrist’s also brings forth a hundred smiles… The amazing thing is not that he occasionally faltered. The amazing thing is that he so often succeeded.

Read the the whole of Peter Roebuck’s article.

For me, cricket as I love it has been dying a slow death. Not just because of the way the game has been hacked for commercial gain, players encouraged to think that they are bigger than the sport, or a media no longer interested in providing an objective coverage, but also because of the departure of those sportspeople who had once made it more than a game for me.

I love cricket, but I no longer make much of an effort to follow it. And, like I said when Glenn McGrath retired, now there will one less reason to.

~PD

Responding to the the current (very distressing) trend of viewing agression as desirable and as a positive personality trait, Amit Saxena wrote:

[There] is a difference between team intensity and aggression that stems from individual or mob fury. Indians can be unfocused as a team but can break into uncontrolled, often unwarranted, rage in other situations. We Indians do not introspect on our violent tendencies, overt or latent. Aggression is cowardice by another name. It points to a basic lack of respect for another individual. It reflects a kind of mental laziness.

Finally, someone standing up and saying that! Read the entire piece, in its correct context, here. He was representing the Counter View, but the View is interesting to read as well.

~PD

Martina Navratilova: Having been a fan of Navratilova since I was a kid, I always regarded her as a permanent fixture in the world of tennis. It came as a shock, therefore, to realize that she was *gasp* really retiring this time! With 177 titles in a career spanning three decades, it is no surprise that she is considered one of the greatest in the game. I lost my interest in tennis a long time ago, but not in Navratilova. No stranger to controversy, she has also lent her voice in support of underprivileged children, animal rights, and gay and lesbian rights.

It feels weird to think she won’t be playing any more…

Zinédine Zidane: “Zidane’s legacy was more than the goals he scored, the titles he won, the honours he was awarded. His legacy is a testimony to the fact that good guys need not finish last.” This is what I wrote on a detailed write-up after his controversial exit from the World Cup final between France and Italy in July 2006, and that just really sums him up. Despite the head-butt incident and the red card, his inspirational leadership in the 2006 World Cup still won him the Golden Ball. He’s reputed to be a shy, simple man, but it is really hard to sum up this footballing magician, father of four, former UNDP Goodwill Ambassador…

It is said that no person can be greater than the sport, but with Zidane, it makes you wonder.

Glenn McGrath: In 2001 I made my first Web site. It was to cover the Ashes Tests between Australia and England. I called it Line and Length… after Glenn McGrath! His unerring accuracy makes him one of the deadliest bowlers in international cricket. Tthe smiling mild-mannered countenance notwithstanding, he is hated and feared by batsmen near and far. McGrath’s Test retirement will come into effect after the fifth and final Ashes Test in Syndey, Australia. He will continue playing one-day games till the World Cup later in 2007.

I know I will really miss that easy run-up and smooth delivery action. Miss those bewildered batsmen facing him. Lately I have been feeling that I’m “growing out” of cricket, and the retirement of the Waugh twins over the past years increased that. When Glenn McGrath goes, there will be a one huge reason less to watch.

~PD

Meanwhile, still keeping with the England theme, here’s a little something I forgot to mention in my earlier posts. In England I spoke for the first time to two friends whom I’ve known for a while, but all our communication had been online so far, by IM or e-mails. One is Laura O’Connor, who lives in Northern Ireland, writer of the only fan fiction based on my book! The other is Peter Perchard, former editor of the Cricketer International, whom I got to know when I used to write for the magazine. We kept in touch via e-mail subsequently, but over the past year or so had lost touch.

It was great talking to both of them—putting voices to all that text can be quite amazing!

~PD

Yet the sporting climax that it was supposed to be was hijacked by arguably the most dramatic curtains to an illustrious career. That head butt… that red card… Rest assured, it will be talked about for a long, long time.

The truth is, the game would always have been as much, if not more, Zidane’s Final Match rather than World Cup Final, even had he not head-butted Marco Materazzi and got himself sent off. Thousands of football fans from all corners of the world switched on their TV sets as much to catch a last glimpse of Zidane as to find out who would take home the cup.

Zinédine Zidane always had a habit of mesmerizing his audience. Be it with those sublime passes, those dizzying shimmies past a handful of defenders, or a perfect shot curving into an inviting net. It is not just his extraordinary footballing skills that make him an object of interest. It is as much his enigmatic personality, his Algerian origins and his humility.

Zidane has always been fiercely protective of his private life, but because of his origins has had to field queries as well as accusations regarding his loyalties. Born in Marseille of Algerian immigrants, he was brought up in La Castellane, a council estate in the northern suburbs of Marseille. However, his stature overshadows any religious/racial divide that simmers in present-day Europe. He has always refused to get drawn into political arguments and steadfastly refused to take sides. That in part has been what has earned him the respect of family, friends, fans and players alike.

Despite fame and fortune, humility has remained one of Zidane’s most endearing qualities. As Michael Owen testifies:

[Players] are full of respect for him, and not just for his skills…. As we walked in after the final whistle [of a Euro 2004 game where France beat England in dramatic circumstances, with Zidane scoring both France's goals], I looked up and saw Zidane heading straight towards the dressing room while the rest of the French players were dancing around on the pitch…. He’s an unbelievable player, but what we respected most about him was that he wasn’t rubbing our faces in it, unlike some. There’s no messing with Zidane. He doesn’t need to tell anyone he’s brilliant. He just is.

(Michael Owen, Off the Record: My Autobiography, pp.316–17)

On-field rushes of blood have not exactly been alien to Zidane. And though his dramatic exit from professional football shocked many of us, he might have done the footballing world a great favour. For the first time FIFA has owned up to the possibility of verbal abuse being a serious issue in the game. Zidane may have muddied his graceful exit, but it might well end up being a compromise towards making the beautiful game a little less ugly. And:

perhaps we’ll never know what was said or what he was thinking. Perhaps the greatest riddle of all is that in destroying his legacy as a sporting hero, he might have immortalised himself as the man who stood up to bigots, real or imagined, no matter the price.

(Simon Hattenstone, Guardian Unlimited Sport)

It is impossible—from any point of view, for any reason—to condone what Zidane did. But it is equally impossible to say with certainty that his rash action “snuffed out” his legacy, as the Hattenstone says in his Guardian article.

For Zidane’s legacy was more than the goals he scored, the titles he won, the honours he was awarded. His legacy is a testimony to the fact that good guys need not finish last.

Zinédine Yazid Zidane: Farewell. And thank you for the music.

~PD

They got there by the skin of their teeth, but they did win it. By one wicket.

Over 860 runs in 100 overs. A nail-biting finish. I hope I never get to see anything like it again!

No doubt the game will go down in the history of cricket as the “greatest” match ever played, and in the euphoria it will be forgotten that it featured two of the worst bowling performances, that too by two sides of the calibre of Australia and South Africa.

Bigger and bigger scores have ostensibly made one-day cricket a spectacle, and in the hype what is often glossed over is the fall in standards of the game, both batting and bowling. Today’s game was a perfect example of that. So, while I enjoyed myself thoroughly, for the sake of cricket I hope I never see this sort of thing again!

~PD

“No Ganguly, no cricket,” claimed supporters of dethroned Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly days before the one-day international between South Africa and India was to be played at Eden Gardens. And when Ganguly was indeed selected in the Test squad, ostensibly as an “all rounder”, you didn’t have to be a seasoned cricket analyst to realize that it was more a political than a cricketing move.

While India went on to suffer a humiliating defeat in Eden Gardens, the partisan Calcutta crowd were seen and heard to be enthusiastically cheering South Africa on! Though I do not subscribe to the “you should support India out of patriotism” view—sport is an entertainment; support whoever makes you happy!—this was a little bit extreme as well!

For some reason, the media attributes great sporting knowledge and fair behaviour to Calcutta’s sports fans! Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Bengalis in general consider themselves—and are considered by some, it has to be admitted—to the be intellectuals of the country! Yet history says otherwise. Calcutta has a reputation of pettiness and petulance when it doesn’t have its way.

1983: India lost to the West Indies, and the team bus was pelted with stones and such. Sunil Gavaskar documents the incident in its full “glory” in the second part of his autobiography, Runs and Ruins. Even the wives of Gavaskar and Kapil Dev were not spared!

(1985: I am not sure why this happened, but the behaviour of the crowd was so bad that Gavaskar refused to play in Calcutta ever again. Two years later, when a Test match was scheduled here, he sat out!)

1996: Semi-finals of the World Cup, India versus Sri Lanka. India were getting the thrashing of their lives, and the result was a foregone conclusion, when the Calcuttans decided if India couldn’t win, there wouldn’t be any cricket. They started throwing missiles and setting fire to banners, which escalated to setting fire to the stands! The match couldn’t be played to the finish and was awarded to Sri Lanka.

1999: After India and Pakistan had resumed cricketing relations following a long gap, a Test match was scheduled at Eden Gardens. But disheartened fans started chucking missiles at the fielders when India were getting stick. It got so bad that the stadium had to be emptied and the match played to empty stands.

This is, by no means, a comprehensive list of the times the red mist has hijacked Calcuttan fans’ better judgement. The city is and always has been the most volatile and partisan of cricket crowds in the country. Their knowledge of the game—and its spirit, for “cricket” is synonymous with fairplay—is as shallow as a puddle in a pothole.

~PD