He visited Minal in the hospital the next day and, as was expected, picked up the baby from the crib next to her. It did not take him more than a moment to realise that the baby in his hands did not have the hole on the left ear lobe. “Wasn’t there a hole on his left ear lobe?” he asked himself, carrying out another inspection of the child. “Surely, there is a mix-up.”

He did not lose more time and raised an alarm – as quietly as he could. Even in the best of times, a maternity ward knows little peace. And, this was a full-blown crisis. Bedlam broke loose. All nurses and attendants in the ward were summoned to take part in the search. In her bed, Minal grew tense. She was not sure why Narayanji had summoned the Head Nurse and what he had told her in hushed tones.

The Head Nurse addressed a meeting and her staff immediately set out in search. Minal noticed that each one of the nurses, a tad reluctant but complying with her superior’s advise, went up to a crib and look closely at each infant. Some did their best to wear blank looks on their faces but, try as they did, they could not wish the worry creases away.

Before long, a triumphant looking nurse found the infant with the hole in the ear lobe. Having been given a bath, he was found sleeping in a crib next to a fisherwoman and was restored to his own mother. Narayan kaka had saved the day. What if he hadn’t been as observant? What if the infant were not born with a tiny hole on his left ear lobe? Simply stated: History would have been different. Well, it would never have been made

Born on July 10, 1949, restored to his mother Minal the following day, the child was named some days later as Sunil Gavaskar. And the rest, as the cliché goes, is history. He went on to become one of the greatest cricketers ever, scoring a world record 10,122 runs with 34 centuries in 125 Test matches between 1971 and 1987. The younger fans know him as a columnist, TV commentator and Cricket Committee Chairman of the International Cricket Council.

In his autobiographical book, Sunny Days, Sunil Gavaskar wrote: “I may never have become a cricketer and this book would certainly not have been written, if an eagle-eyed relation, Narayan Masurekar, had not come into my life the day I was born (July 10, 1949). It seems that Nan-Kaka (as I called him), who had come to see me in hospital on my first day in this world, noticed a little hole near the top of my left earlobe. The next day he came again and picked up the baby lying on the crib next to my mother. To his utter horror, he discovered that the baby did not have the hole on the left earlobe. A frantic search of all the cribs in the hospital followed, and I was eventually located sleeping blissfully beside a fisherwoman, totally oblivious of the commotion I had caused! The mix-up, it appears, followed after the babies had been given their baths.

“Providence had helped me to retain my true identity, and, in the process, charted the course of my life. I have often wondered what would have happened it nature had not ‘marked’ me out, and given my ‘guard’ by giving me that small hole on my left earlobe; and if Nan-Kaka had not noticed this abnormality. Perhaps, I would have grown-up to be an obscure fisherman, toiling somewhere along the west coast. And what about the baby who, for a spell, took my place? I do not know if he is interested in cricket, or whether he will ever read this book. I can only hope that, if he does, he will start taking a little more interest in Sunil Gavaskar.”

July 8 2005

Hyderabad had got so used to thinking of him as a good-for-nothing goon but, today, he was now showing a heart; he wasn’t doing it to please anyone but because his conscience led him to do what he was doing. For years, he would not bat an eyelid when faced with blood. But today, his conscience made him stop and step out of his car – he just had to help the little boy, bleeding to certain death.

The city was burning – and he himself had a role in fanning the flames. The political warlords, their seats of power shaking, had ordained that some disharmony was in order. For him and his cronies, it was easy money. They were unfamiliar with anything that would pain their souls as they had sold their souls cheap more than a decade earlier.

But today was different. Something in him had snapped at the sight of the lad – Was he seven years old? Or would he be eight? – and he stopped his car stop next to the bleeding body, lying by the footpath near the State Central Library in Afzalganj. He cradled the boy up in his arms and drove to the Osmania General Hospital as his rattling Hindustan Ambassador could.

The doctor in the emergency room was truly terrified. The fear in his eyes was not caused by the sight of blood or the thought of the daunting task that he would face in saving the boy’s life but by the realisation that he had come face to face one of the most dreaded gangsters. For five years, he had seen the same grainy photograph of this dreadful man but the doctor had not reckoned with meeting him ever.

“Dekh doctor, iski jaan bacha le.. yeh bachcha mera kuch bhi nai lagta, magar isko kuch hua na, to mai tereko nahi chodunga (Look doctor, save his life… I don’t know him but if something happens to hi, I won’t spare you,” he said, walking away from the emergency room. The doctor’s face had confirmed that he would do his best to save the lad’s life.

It was twilight and he didn’t feel like going home. Well, he had no place that he could really call home. Come to think of it, the maze of lanes and bylanes near the Charminar were his home. But now, he decided he would go and sit on Tank Bund, venturing across the Musi after a long time – it was not always a drain and had once been such a charming river.

Then again, he hadn’t always been a goon. As he sat by Hussain Sagar lake to rest his tired limbs and weary mind, he wanted to pray for the little boy but realised he had not uttered a prayer in many moons. In fact, he had all but forgotten how to pray. He gazed in the distance, his eyes were unfocussing and his mind playing back images from a checkered past.

In a way, by forgetting that he was supposed to be a man that the Hyderabad denizen detested and by getting off his car to help the lad, he was only revisiting his childhood. In the still of the evening, he could hear the echoes from 1948. “Maaro, maaro! (Kill, kill!)”. Far too much property had been damaged, far too many lives lost in the Police Action that ended the Razakar’s movement.

He too would have been a part of statistics of those killed in 1948 before Hyderabad became a part of India had a good Samaritan not taken him away from the clutches of the mob and admitted him in hospital. He would surely have bled to death. The rest of his childhood was a blur – he did try his hand at studying but could get past the Higher Secondary School examination.

The best part of the convent schooling was not the curriculum but his discovering the joys of playing football. For two years, the Rector of his school re-admitted him despite failing the examination because he was the football team’s goal-scorer and had ensured that the school would win the inter-school tournament each time. The Rector had been transferred and his successor just didn’t like sport too much.

Yet, his football career had found the perfect launching pad. He could see that he had been the best in the business. The legendary Rahim saab had picked him up for special attention and he was a part of the crack combination that made the Hyderabad City Police team. His creativity in front of rival goals had reached such heights that the Big Three from Calcutta had all chased him down and he finally signed up with Mohun Bagan.

The sun had gone down behind the rocks of Banjara Hills and a silvery moon was just about coming up behind him. He was oblivious of the occasional Fiat and Ambassador or the Lambretta and Vespa scooters passing by. His reverie continued, unwilling and unable to click himself to the present.

Yes, the five years with Mohun Bagan were bliss, his magical feet mesmerising soccer devotees at the Maidan. It was the prime of his life. And yet he had been such a poor human being, demanding huge sums of money to make an appearance at a charity match in aid of the Bangladesh refugees. His closest friends – rats, they left him – had all seen the contrast but he hadn’t recognised the warning signs.

Bad company and bad ways quickly engulfed him and the magic in his feet seemed to desert him too. Life came unhinged without notice and before he knew it, he was back in Hyderabad and took to crime to make ends meet. Initially, his old friends had some sympathy but when they discovered he had spent several nights in the lock-up at the Chaderghat Police Station for beating up a policeman, they made themselves scarce.

Finally, after all those years, he now felt good and enjoyed a sense of freedom. Suddenly, he could hear the police sirens close in from the distance but he was not going to allow anything to interrupt his freedom now. He did not challenge his arrest. They handcuffed him and drove him away. There was none to shed even a tear.

The cops who led him away did not see much more than a criminal. For them, it was the end of a long quest for one of Hyderabad’s most wanted men. A couple of reporters and a photographer, clearly tipped off by their friends in the police, could see nothing but a sensational story that would dominate the front pages of their newspapers the next morning.

Yet, some miles away, the woman, whose son was now under medical supervision, saw him as the unknown angel with the power to gift life. Little did she realise that it needed her wounded son to help someone discover the freedom of life. As he sat silently in the police jeep that droned towards the Control Room near Public Garden, he realised that beneath all those layers of his life was the child – innocent and uninitiated in the ways of the world.

Layers, did you say? Or, merely, adjectives that summed up others’ perspectives? On second thoughts, he didn’t really know which was deeper and which was superficial. He didn’t care either. For he knew that, at the bottom of it all, he had a simple heart, a ticking mind and a healthy body. It was time for him to re-discover his soul.

The cracks in the brown earth

Overwhelming and stark

So misleading, so deceptive

Can make you wonder

Is a spark in my hearth?

Observe carefully, see reason

I only strain to watch a ’plane

The sun does not cause a shadow

Can you not smell rain on mother earth?

Yes, it is the start of the kharif season.

Open the mind and see life come aglow

Streaks of green, rising from the soil

More than whisper hopeful tales

Not at all about a land parched

But of a pot of gold and the rainbow.

Ye! You friendly stranger!

Do not miss the woods for the trees

Look at the brighter side of life

This will be season of plenty

There is just no danger.

April 28, 2005… 6:43pm

Trust this finds you in good health and cheer.

I write to tell you that our ploy worked — and superbly at that. I have just got an e-mail from the World Press Photo Academy to say that I have got an honourable mention in the human interest category for the year 2003-04 for my picture of the ‘rag-picker’.

I tried calling you on your phone but I was unable to get through… perhaps you are on one of those treks that you set off on ever so often… and I know how you detest carrying a cell phone…

I smile when I recall how you called the piece of equipment an e-leash!

I just needed to tell you about the letter from the World Press Photo Academy before I spoke with anyone else and hence this letter. I wonder if you remember how we were both searching for some soul-satisfying work last year. You went off to Manasarovar and I have not heard much from you since your return, though I did read some lovely reviews about the exhibition you held in Calcutta and Bombay.

As for me, I kept seeking that one photograph that would define my life. Each time I thought I had done some good work, I realised that I could have done better. I shot some moving pictures of HIV-AIDS patients and others of inmates in Tihar jail.. you would have loved the play of light on the faces of the inmates… I also went across to Virender Sehwag’s home in Najafgarh and came back with a neat compilation of a day in his life but I hadn’t found anything that satisfied my soul…

I so longed to speak with you… and was walking to the STD booth to make a call when I spotted Maya. She was out that morning, picking rags… I was mersmerised by the eyes… I must have shot hundreds of frames of Maya, including those of her beautiful eyes. I chose to send but one to the World Press Photo Academy… I have enclosed that for you.

I just want to say thanks for being there… We may not stay in touch over the phone and mail but Pablo, you mean much to me… you have shown me the way and I do not think I would have been a good human but for the long hours that you spent sharing your own take on life with me…

Warm regards,

Ritika

PS: I have written to the World Press Photo Academy declining the award. I have told them that I have got the best award I could ever have… that I have aadopted the girl and she now goes to a good school. Finally, I can be proud of some things that I do in life. Pablo, I am sure you would approve.

Apr 23, 2005

- – - – - – -

Last night in the school under the dim streetlight

The good lady spoke of things dark and bright

She has always been a wonderful spirit

Teaching us the alphabet and the digit.

She never let us ponder or think

Of how much worse it could all have been

I don’t have the time to let such thoughts sink

For, my daily humdrum is not all that I have seen.

It is so easy to lend wings to a dream

But it is about putting the best foot forward

And taking life one step at a time

Through filth or a garden but not seeking a reward.

The miss taught me if keep my feet on ground

Today and all the tomorrows will only be sound.

To my teacher, all of 75 years old,

I shall remain forever grateful and bound.

From the corner of my eye, I can see the camera

That freezes this moment for the world

And makes people imagine a chimera

But me, I get on with life, aware and bold.

Apr 22, 2005

Yet, there was something in air that said it was unusual. In all my years – don’t ask me how many, for I have no idea – I hadn’t heard of a Panchayat meeting being called after the crimson sun had sunk beneath the horizon. As I made my way from the farmland and got closer to the village square, I also heard muffled drum-beats and a a pack of mongrels which was howling as they fought a territorial battle.

The meeting was being held around a fire, the dry wood crackling furiously, fiery tongues leaping skywards. The tantrik, clearly out to fleece the gullible, was dancing around the fire, pretending to be possessed by some divine power. The light from the fire accentuated his matted hair and the vermilion marks on his forehead. I could see he was putting up an act – and doing a poor job of it.

Why had the village folk resorted to the mumbo-jumbo? I looked around the gathering, searching for the priest who had brought me up after the accident, even if he had earned the wrath of some powerful people in the village. None of the others would speak much with me, let alone treat me with respect. But with the priest not around, I had to ask to Mahesh the cobbler to fill me in.

“We are aware that there is a ghost lurking in our village. The tantrik is trying to drive it away.”

The baniya (trader) had incurred losses but only because he had not kept pace with competition from the neighbouring village. A malnourished couple had lost their child, born six weeks prematurely, to jaundice. Some cattle had died because of a disease. And they blamed all of that on my great-grandmother. All the wretched soul did was chant some mantras, incoherently, as she waited for her appointment with death.

I knew they all detested my great-grandmother and reserved only contempt. I must admit her disheveled hair, sunken cheeks, bent back and long, dirty finger-nails made her look weird. But that was no reason for them to revile her.

The priest was an exception, a noble soul. He would spend time with me each day, feeding me and educating me in the ways of the world. For some reason, he would neither enter the house nor meet my great-grandmother. It was almost as if even he dreaded meeting her. She had lost her whole family and, as a consequence, her balance as well.

She seemed to survive on the fruit I stole from the nearby orchards. Strangely, the priest also kept me away from the school where I could hear others recite rhymes, learn the alphabet, count the numbers and taunt the teacher for wearing a tuft.

“If there is a ghost, it seems a good one. It hasn’t harmed anyone, has it?” I attempted to tell the Panchayat. I wanted to say more but I was shouted down. I can’t tell you enough about the herd mentality that grips a village, especially when fear is the key. I had made a mistake. I had drawn the attention of the Panchayat to me – and its focus on my great-grandmother.

“It has to be her.”

“She does look like a wicked witch.”

“She must be the one.

“Kill her.”

God! They were going to kill a harmless old woman just because they though she looked like a witch. She knew no magic, let alone black magic. And, truth to tell, she was no ghost.

The cacophony was growing and I simply had to slip away from the square and head home, hoping I could do that unnoticed. A chill wind was howling across the village. I looked up the sky. Countless stars were twinkling against the dark canvas. As I closed the door of our hut behind me, panting for breath, I could see the priest stand by my great-grandmother’s body.

The monotonous beat of a dozen and more drums faded away. Now that my great-grandmother was no more, it was time for me to move on. Them mortals would never find me.

Jun 15, 2005 7:50 am