Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar: Alone atop the highest peak

Sachin Tendulkar

His contemporaries have come and gone. He stands, alone atop the highest peak, the icy winds blowing past him. A slight smile streaks across the battle-worn face as the cries of the impudent and the wannabes get ever so louder.

For though he presents to the world the kind of humbleness that only the truly great possess, the fire inside has lost none of its hunger, as it consumes every ounce of his being, feeding not just on the cries of the nameless and the faceless who call for his descent; but now, more than ever, on the love of a billion silently beating hearts that worship the very ground he walks on.

At the height of his powers, he had no choice but to tune out all the adulation and the pomp of an adoring public, for the sake of the art that he had come to represent.

Ironically, today, it seems to be these disciples and devotees that spur him onward to a place that, even more ironically, is one that mere mortals have only glimpsed, fleetingly and oh-so-briefly, while he lives and breathes it with each passing day on the field.

Becoming more and more at one with the collective consciousness of a nation that needs him, craves him, now more than ever in an age of instant gratification and instant celebrities – mere irritants, flies we brush away impatiently as we watch in awe at the journey of the champion, our hero, messiah and savior.

To the average Indian, exploited, beaten, and downtrodden, living in denial in a country that has never really been his – for it is the playground of the high and the mighty – he has always been the constant, the silver lining in a cloud that has never looked darker.

He may rub shoulders with the pretentious so-called elite that have brought this country down to its knees, but we know he does so in jest, in resignation; because he doesn’t really need to tell us that he is one of us. How could he not be?

And so we rejoiced in his successes, took pain in the inevitable pitfalls that have come, and then gone, with the swish of a blade that had Ravi Shastri pouring out cliches, because some things really do not change.

We wouldn’t mind Mr. Shastri pulling every cliche out of his Big Book of Cliches for the maestro one last time, because this is a man who was born to inspire awe like few others ever have. And I’m not just talking about sport here.

And if Mr. Shastri can only hide behind the tried-and-tested word when charged with the monumental task of describing what this man means to this country as he steps out onto his home turf one last time, then we will gladly forgive him.

In fact, it may only be Mr.Shastri’s baritone that can do justice to our messiah’s final bow. The single that signaled Sachin reaching the landmark of 200, in that record-breaking innings against South Africa, was greeted by this instinctive response from Shastri – “Gets it! First man on the planet to reach 200. And it’s the Superman from India. Sachin Tendulkar…”

A moment that would have been incomplete if there wasn’t an Indian at the mike, trying to make sense of the phenomenon that is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. When he walks out for that last innings, I hope that it is a commentary team of Ravi Shastri and Harsha Bhogle that addresses the nation for his entire stay at the crease, commentator decorum be damned.

Not because others are not capable enough, but because our hero’s swansong deserves the words of two innately Indian men. And no one else, I believe, can do justice to that honor. They will revel in the chance, even if it may just be impossible to keep a straight face and not break down.

An adoring nation will join them, while watching that final test with bated breath, for one last sight of that back-foot punch straight down the ground, or that graceful prod on the off-side that sends the ball racing to the fence, defying description even after all these years.

Maybe the great man will oblige and hook one into the stands, a sight that is sure to provoke unmatched delirium, not to forget the unpleasant shiver that will surely go down Glen McGrath’s spine.

That he is but a cricketer is a notion we have never entertained, and rightly so, for reasons that the unenlightened will comprehend in due time, when the throne will be vacant and there will never come another to claim it.

And so we stand at this juncture, torn between the realization of our good fortune to have lived in this age – his age; and an immeasurable sadness, impossibility, a void, when confronted with the reality that one day he may not be around to enthrall and envy in equal measure.

That day is almost upon us. Today a nation stands and applauds the man whose contribution to the Indian life cannot be captured by mere words. They will weep when that day finally arrives, and then, maybe, we will be able to understand what his name means to this country, and to the cricketing world.

The man himself has no such worries, for he isn’t blinded by his mortality on the turf that has been his life – he is freed by it. And so the legend lives on. And how.

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