Prayers of association, like, love and respect: For Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher is currently recovering from a ski accident

On the morning of 30th December 2013, I received a message from one of my friends about Michael Schumacher being in a coma after suffering a serious head injury following his skiing accident in the French Alps. My friend’s been a Schumacher fan, like forever. In contrast, I have long followed the man – and the sport – from the fringes. Still the name of the man in context made for an immediate recognition, thrusting me back into the past when zooming cars marked my time-table during vacation time and the first word to be correlated with Ferraris was that of the German.

To say that F1 has never appealed to me would be an understatement. I don’t understand the logic of men being cooped in car-like contraptions whizzing past at break-neck speed, weeks on end, month-after-month and year-after-year. But back when I was a kid, trying to explain the same rationale to my elder cousin who had his walls taped with posters of innumerable F1 race drivers – including Schumacher’s – meant inviting trouble which I did on more than one occasion.

Thus forced to watch the races with my cousin’s commentary ringing about in my ears, I managed to grope my way round the sport. Drivers’ names were identified – the more complicated the name, more number of times the pronunciation trying to perfect it, cars’ names were thrown about in casual conversation with other cousins – I had to show off, of course and beyond all these, there was the obvious emphasis on Schumacher. Though at that time, I used to call him ‘Shoe-maker’ plainly to irritate and irk my F1 crazy cousin.

Not that my cousin was a big fan of Schumacher himself. It would be prudent to say that while he liked Schumacher for the competitiveness he brought to the sport, his love was reserved wholeheartedly for someone else. He even aspired to be like that someone else, though he wished that Schumacher would be round still racing when he marked his all-important debut into the F1 world.

Eventually, my cousin decided to take up an alternate career option, his most-loved F1 race driver retired and so did Schumacher. But my cousin’s love for the sport and respect for the German long remained even though his career path took him on a tangent totally away from motorsports.

In the short and fleeting moments when my cousin and I used to discuss the technicalities of F1, he used to make it a point to emphasise how Schumacher won, the littlest of differences that made him out to be the champion that he was. To be honest, I scoffed at the way his tone used to turn serious when he used to point out the subtleties of Schumacher racing away to glory. The seriousness was always accompanied with a wryness that his favourite could never come close to besting Schumacher and despite all his respect towards the latter, I perceived that this fact rankled and grated on his sub-conscious even though he never voiced it.

To my undiscerning eye, these clarifications that my cousin kept repeating seemed quite immaterial and irrelevant. To me, subtlety never existed in the sport since I figured all one had to do was to keep the throttle on, if one wanted to win. My cousin pointed out that it wasn’t about merely ‘keeping the throttle on’ wasn’t going to win anyone any races and went to delve into the nuances of track conditions, the optimisation of the engines, drivers’ reflexes and acumen and several other elements of physics that went beyond the simple understanding of Newton’s Laws of Motion that my school curriculum was offering then. His passion for the sport always bubbled during these impromptu discourses and I am proud to say, I did treasure these snippets of information from my otherwise very reticent cousin.

Though I lost touch with my cousin as the years progressed, Schumacher never really went far from my mind. In college, Schumacher’s association with Ferrari was a hot topic of discussion between my friends and me, especially more so when Sachin Tendulkar received the car as a gift from him. This time, the name was pronounced quite carefully like the way it was supposed to be, though my friends did mock my recalling of the infamous ‘Shoe-maker’ pronunciation for quite a few days thereafter.

When India entered the F1 fray, following F1 became all the more imperative. Unlike the days when I half-heartedly parked myself before the TV set to watch the sport, interest in it came more willingly though there was no live Schumacher who I could correlate the past with. Newer drivers had arrived on the block, their names were more easily pronounceable and there was a whole lot of development on the car mechanics and dynamics front.

Suddenly when the German announced a comeback, almost four years ago, in 2010, the past merged with the present. I gave myself a refresher course on what my cousin had pointed out all those years ago. Though, I didn’t fail to notice that the ‘subtleties’ of Schumacher didn’t do much for him as far as making a second wave of impact was concerned.

Did I manage to figure out why this was so? Not really. I still hadn’t managed to understand the game entirely. But it wasn’t as if Michael Schumacher not adding anymore podium finishes to his impressive number made any difference to me. I was transported to the past and I was glad to be there, even if it was meant to be a minuscule interlude.

Schumacher’s second retirement at the end of the 2012 season didn’t come as a surprise but as a move that was a natural progression of things. This retirement didn’t for a moment mean that he was going to be thrust aside into oblivion in my mind and I was content with the status quo as it stood.

But when my friend sent me the message about Schumacher being critically ill, it brought home a lot of fears. Fate’s cruelty was emphasised even more acutely and it seemed almost inconceivable that a man who had been unconquerable on dangerously curving tracks would be laid low by such a freak incident. The potentiality of this retirement was all wrong and it was premature too, as it was untimely. And for this retirement, I wasn’t ready.

My understanding of the sport began with this man and continued for the most part because of him. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t an omnipotent F1 figure anymore, but the fact that he was out there, was reason enough to make me switch on the races every Sunday. At some indefinite point someday, perhaps it will be someone else who will make me want to pursue the sport even more keenly.

But for now, and the near future, Michael Schumacher is the only race driver I have ever liked, loved and respected. Just like my cousin who never gave up on coaching one reluctant kid about ‘Shoe-maker’s greatness on the race track, please ‘Shoe-maker’ don’t give up on all of us who are out there waiting and praying for your speedy recovery. We need our legend back to set our seemingly disarrayed lives back on track as you used to all those Sundays ago…