Recollection

Late afternoon. An unforgiving sun, oppressive heat and a salty breeze. Crabs lie frying on the sand.

He's sweating - around his neck, under his armpits and at the waist, where the elastic bites into tender skin. His languid body lies writhing on the beach-towel with the peculiar discomfort of those half asleep.

Waking up is always a compromise, he thinks, rolling his eyeballs underneath his eyelids. A compromise between freedom and choice. A choice made is a freedom relinquished.

He opens his eyes.

Sky. Bare, brilliant, blue and overwhelming. A compromise between space and light, between emptiness and enlightenment, between the physical and the surreal.

He removes his tongue from where it's wedged in a corner of his mouth. Rolls it about. Swallows hard, letting the bitterness of his sleep permeate his insides. He blinks into the distance. The light hurts. His eyes crinkle up. So does his nose. The sky breaks into fragments.

He can sense that something is wrong.

He rolls onto his side and rests himself on an elbow. The beach is empty. Not a soul around. The sand is a funny colour, he notices, black at certain places, a grainy brown at others, sheer white otherwise. A crow flies from atop a palm on the shore, swoops down to the foam and picks something up. He can't see what. Probably a dead fish. Or a snail. Or something which caught its eye.

The feeling builds inside him slowly. Like mercury inside a thermometer on a hot day. He falls back. Looks at the sky again. Where is this ...

He sits up abruptly.

Where is this place?

He laughs. The very thought preposterous and amusing at the same time. He shakes his head, clearing his mind. And thinks.

He can't remember. Tries again. No. Not working.

He looks around in panic. There's a bottle of beer lying nearby, in a stubby with pictures of naked women on it. The stubby is familiar. He remembers buying it. Buying it - somewhere, for someone ... Where? For whom? And why is it with him if he bought it for someone else? He strains his memory, staring hard at the crimson stripes running along the length of the towel. Where? For whom? He notices that the stripes have smaller white stripes running inside them. Who ...

Who was he?

There's sweat in his eyes, his breathing a combination of heaves and spasms.

There's something wrong here. He looks around again. He can see a woman far off, walking along the shore, towards him. From where he sits, he can see she's tall, and pretty in her fluttering frock and coolers. She's carrying a bag. He wonders what she's doing here. Maybe he should ask her about himself.

For chrissakes ... get a grip, he curses silently. Think. Focus, he orders himself. Or maybe you shouldn't focus, he reconsiders. Maybe you shouldn't think. Maybe you should let your consciousness wander. Yes, he agrees. Falling back, he closes his eyes.

There's nothing on his mind. He can feel the threads in the towel eating into his sweaty back. There's a sharp pain in his wrist. He then realizes it's been there all along, ever since he woke up. There, he kids himself, there's a memory for you. A painful memory, he laughs at his own joke. He rotates the wrist masochistically, relishing the pain, clinging onto it like one would cling onto a ledge when pushed over a cliff. He then starts moving each of his joints, searching for pain ... somewhere, some memory, some trigger. It's a bizarre sight. There? He feels his knee-cap. Wasn't that pain? He rubs it vigorously, almost sadistically, wishing there was pain. But no, he moves on. The ankles, the shoulders ...

And then, like fireworks on a night sky, an image bursts inside his head, like ink splashed violently on paper.

The fireworks die. The ink clears. And he sees an old woman, wrapped in a shawl, with graying hair tied in a knot. She's buying fish. There's a small kid standing beside her, holding her hand, pestering her. He concentrates on her face. And the old woman disappears, dissolving inside his mind. But the kid is still there, looking up at the old woman who's no longer there. The kid's now crying. He focusses on the kid's face. And presently, the kid disappears too.

The ink draws in quickly and clears away. Another scene. This time he sees a boy swimming in the sea. The boy looks like him. He wakes up. The boy looks like him! He closes his eyes quickly, and the image forms again. The boy's swimming. Eager for a clue, he looks into the vision. It's a race. There are other boys swimming besides the boy who looks like him, but they are ahead of the boy who looks like him. There's an island a few hundred metres ahead, with yellow breakers and red buoys and people cheering. The boy who looks like him is striving, stretching every muscle, but with every stroke, the others seem to surge ahead. He finds himself urging the boy ahead, exhorting him to swim faster. He looks up into the vision and sees the island nearing. He looks down and the boy is no longer there. He focusses into the sea, scanning the waves. And the vision breaks.

He opens his eyes again. Frustrated. His back is itching, and the pain in his wrist is irritating. But he knows he must try again. And he closes his eyes.

He sees a man and a woman making love. He looks around them, and all he sees is darkness. He realizes that the darkness is not in his vision of them, but around them in the dream. The woman is pretty. Not beautiful. Just pretty. He looks at the man, but the man's back is turned towards him. He realizes he can't see who the man is. He tries rotating the vision. But no. It's stuck in his head. It doesn't change any more. The couple is frozen. Suspended in his imagination. Locked in an eternal embrace. And he keeps looking at the woman, expecting her to disappear. But no, she stays there, her face serene and divine. And just as it seems as if she's going to smile at him, the vision breaks into a million little pieces, and the ink draws across. He waits for it to clear, but it stays that way.

He opens his eyes. Waking up is such a compromise. It's like you know where you are and where you want to end up, but you still have to look up the map and make the journey. It's like building a bridge just for the sake of it.

He turns over on his back, thinking. Of the old woman. Of that boy who looked like him. And of that couple locked together.

Who are these people? Do I know them? Or are these just images from some B-grade movie I might have seen recently? Like yesterday? Oh damn ...

He sits up, looking at the sea in front of him. The waves break, advance and retreat, break, advance and retreat.

What have I got now? A beach-towel. A half-drunk bottle of beer. Do I drink beer? I don't know. Hell, I don't remember! Add to that a few stupid images stuck inside my head. Where do I go from here? I don't know where I am, don't know where I want to go, rather I don't have a clue where to go, and what's worse, I don't have a map. Big journey!

He spits into the sand. The spittle rolls into a ball, gathering some grains before it stops.

Maybe it's all for the good, he rationalizes. Who knows what I was? And why should I take the trouble to find out? Maybe this is a chance to start all over again. I just have to decide not to choose. Choose not to remember. Choose not to be what I was. Choose not to go where I should go. Choose to see everything in a new light. Make new memories, start a new life. He feels his thoughts fleeing.

Maybe I'll go work in a restaurant, save money, travel around the world. Or maybe I should make a movie. Or, or, maybe I'll go live in a faraway island, and fall in love with a native girl. He catches himself fantasizing. Rubbish. Need to remember, need to get my bearings, he reminds himself. He feels tired all of a sudden. He plops back on the towel, and closes his eyes.

And almost immediately, the couple reappears. Almost as if they were waiting for some imaginary curtain to part.

The woman is smiling at him now. Again, he's curious about the man. This time, however, the image yields as he tries to rotate it. Slowly, the man's face emerges. The jaw, the straight, long nose ...

"...jaaaaaayyyy!"

Someone's tugging at his shoulder. He wakes up.

"Ajjjjjaaaaaay ... wake up. Let's go. It's getting late"

It's her.

The pretty woman from his vision.

The tall woman in a frock. A pair of coolers on her head, and a bag of shells in her hands.

"Ajay, what's wrong?"

Ajay.

He feels like a man who fell off a cliff and discovers he has wings.

Ajay.

Images whiz in front of his eyes. ID cards, driving licenses, mark-sheets, people, places, a beer stubby bought for a friend who died, badminton and an overused wrist, voices calling out - AJ, Ajjie, coffee machines, credit card bills, mobile phone numbers, parties at work ... and amidst all these there are other images and thoughts. Images of an old woman buying fish, of a boy swimming, of a couple making love. And thoughts of a faraway island and a native girl.

"Nothing Anjali," he says, smiling at her, "Let me go get the car," and reaches under a corner of the towel for the keys.

Waking up is a compromise.

A compromise between freedom and choice.

The choice to dream.

And the freedom to live.

Timepass

MK tagged me. So here goes...

I am thinking about -

How frightening it is when you're scared of nothing, how freedom really means being shackled of your own accord, how poetry and programming are not too different, and how denial is my primary mode of existence.

I said -

I would come back and I didn't.
"...be sure to crack stupid jokes. Women like men who crack stupid jokes..."

I want to -

Obtain a Ph.D. in Economics, take up teaching and live one day at a time.
Learn to play the violin.
See the inside of a rain-cloud.

I wish -

I could free my imagination of the bounds that logic imposes.

I miss -

A lot of people than I would care to admit to myself.

I hear -

Waves crashing on a faraway shore in my sleep.

I wonder -

How long it will be before fuel cells dominate the Indian automobile market?

I need -

Zero maintenance, infinite space.

I regret -

The low traffic that my blog generates.

I dance -

That's a lie.

I cry -

Rarely. And alone. And then uncontrollably.

I am not always -

Nice.

I make with my hands -

Paper boats.
Sandwiches.
Love.

I write -

In English, mostly.

I confuse -

The hot water and the cold water taps.
Compassion and love (the generic kind).

I should try -

Mango milkshake with chocolate ice-cream.
Pickles and idli.
Writing haiku.
Watching more Malayalam movies.

I should finish -

Dr. Zhivago.
One hundred years of solitude.

I know -

Very little.
How to bowl the 'Doosra', the top-spinner, the flipper and the googly.

I am -

Just passing through.

And finally -

"We are where we are at the only time we have." - Shashi Tharoor, 'Riot: A novel'

I tag -

catch 22, STALLION and Srini -- Give it a try guys. Should be fun.

Late thoughts on the Wimbledon and World Cup finals

Ecstasy and agony, hours apart. One man will sleep easy and the other will probably never for the rest of his life.

Wimbledon Final

What is it with Roger Federer when it comes to Rafael Nadal? Why is he so determined not to compete when he faces the Duracell bunny from Spain? Is it just me or is Federer reluctant to acknowledge Nadal as an equal?

One of the commentators got it right on Sunday when he said, "The longer this match goes, the deeper Nadal will penetrate into Federer's psyche." That has got be the single most insightful comment I've ever heard on T.V. It accurately diagnoses Federer's problem with Nadal, and also offers the remedy. Federer has got to admit to himself that he has serious competition, and that too not from someone who is as graceful or as gifted as him, but from someone whose philosophy of tennis is the very antithesis of Federer's.

While Federer swoops and skates across the lawn, Nadal scurries from corner to impossible corner, fetching balls with all the eagerness of a golden retriever. While Federer is calculative and polished, Nadal is direct and desperate. Federer flits demurely between the tramlines, a quality of shyness about his ballet-hall grace as he slices his backhands. Nadal is all adrenaline and testosterone, his hunger naked, his ambition delightful. Federer fences, Nadal punches. Federer is King; Nadal, heir apparent.

Federer's problem, in my opinion, is that he feels he’s too royal to acknowledge the proletarian talent of the resourceful Nadal. He even said he didn’t expect Nadal to make it to the final, which, while being admirably honest, says a lot about what he thinks of Nadal. Did you see the post-match photo session and the interview? All the while when the camera was on the two of them, Nadal and Federer never met eye to eye, and not earlier either, when they shook hands at the end of the match. That, to me, says a lot. So much for Alan Wilkins harping about how the two players are great friends!

Earlier this season, when he was losing to Nadal with such alarming regularity, I got the feeling that he fooled himself into thinking that it was the surface, clay, and not the opponent, Nadal, that got the better of him. Somehow I feel that all this while he's been playing golf on the tennis courts -- focussing inward and refining his game to such a level that it didn't matter who the opponent was; he just had to beat the course. It is only recently that he's woken up to the reality of an adversary facing him across the net. And a capable one at that.

On Sunday, when Nadal had him panting in the second and third sets, Federer was visibly reluctant to shift up that extra gear, which he finally did in the fourth set. And he was so eager to get back to his I-don't-believe-you-exist-I-refuse-to-compete-with-you mode that he ended up losing his serve the first time he served for the match.

An athlete is a competitor first and artist next. Federer would do well to remember this and let Nadal "penetrate his psyche" so that it hurts him the next time he loses to the Spaniard. Only then will he motivate himself to play at top gear always and not just when needed, especially against Nadal.

Nadal for his part showed what a truly wonderful player he's going to be in the years to come. He is a terrific competitor, the best among the current crop. And all he has to do next time is to stand deep on Federer's first serves, step up on the second serves, use that decent return of serve he has (Did you see that blistering forehand cross-court return of serve in the third set tie-break? Left Federer gasping, it did), leave the mid-court moon balls back at the French Open and start hitting his balls deeper towards the baseline so that he has the approach shot all set up. The French is all about patience, whereas on the grass, aggression alone is rewarded. You need to force the issue. Ask Ivanisevic.

I'm really looking forward to the next final between these two. To see if Federer lets himself compete against Nadal, and to see if Nadal learns his lessons well.

World Cup Final

World cup victory as a captain. The perfect last match. Talisman.

Zinedine Zidane.

I've been a great fan of his ever since I saw him play for Juventus and execute that trademark twirl which left me in raptures. I thought you could do that only on EA Sports’ Fifa! Feet that cast a force field around the ball, the balance of a trapeze artist, the midfield vision of a general and the introverted genius of a chess champion … And all that people will remember him in the years to come? Not that knifing brace which plunged deep into Brazilian hearts in the '98 final, not that screamer which left Bayer Leverkusen fans bawling in the 2002 Champions league final, not all those Player of the Year awards, but that one moment of insanity which nobody will ever understand, that one instant when the dream died. I can already see him being reduced to a trivia question:

"Which player holds the dubious distinction of scoring in two World Cup finals and being sent off in one of them?"

Damn. So many emotions went through me when I saw that replay. Disbelief, shame, anger, agony, regret ... watching him walk off the pitch with his head hung in shame was heart-wrenching to say the least. And this in a match which had seen him entice and exhort his team through 120 minutes of the best World Cup final I've seen. Damn. Why oh why oh why?

It’s easy to slam Zidane for being irresponsible and postulate how he ruined everything, but how many of us understand what he did? Not for a moment am I excusing what he did, just that maybe we need to redefine our understanding of genius (can you really believe how people say that it’s because of him that France lost the penalty shootout? That’s rich, oh yes!). Was it just a simple rush of blood? Or is it the evil of genius finding a perverse delight in defiling that which others hold sacred? This perversion is essential to genius, I believe.

Roger Federer and Zinedine Zidane. As different as geniuses come -- one plays a sport in which the only contact allowed between players is a shake of the hand after the match, while the other plays a game which considers Gary Linekar special (Linekar was never cautioned in his career; he never got as much as a yellow card in his playing life). But then are they that different? Is there any common ground?

Unlike other forms of human endeavour where genius is encouraged to blossom, sport is twisted in that we ruthlessly challenge our geniuses day in and day out, ungratefully asking them to prove themselves against mediocrity, often in conditions unfavourable to them (it is the rare sport where genius is left alone to enthrall us). And it is in how they treat their opponents that Zidane and Federer share the cruel fate that extraordinary talent is confronted with in sport. Both of them refuse to believe their opponents exist when they need to. Zidane, in the way he pulled (past tense already) off those outrageous dribbles, only to find a gawky defender charge in with a clumsy challenge; Federer, in the way he refuses to acknowledge that Nadal could retrieve his razor sharp volleys. And this refusal is essential to their psyche, for if at all genius thrives on anything, it is the denial of the obvious.

I had a wonderful time that night, really. And in the end, as I switched off my T.V. set and went to bed, Sunday threw an insight into the nature of sport. Sport is poetry, drama, theater … all that is fine. But above all it is ugly. Ugly in the primitive way it forces its finest exponents to compete, ugly in the way it taunts and reduces a subliminal genius to a subhuman primate. And the funny thing is, it is this ugliness that we find attractive!