Tendulkar and my bread

It seems that there is no dearth of cynical people in our country. I am appalled by the long chats and messages which have flooded the home page of my facebook this afternoon, deliberating and questioning the greatness of Sachin Tendulkar’s double ton at Gwalior yesterday.

There is a possibility that many of you may have already seen these “intellectual exchanges” as those who participated are our common friends. But for those uninitiated let me tell the gist.

While the world is celebrating Sachin Tendulkar’s double ton, the first man to do so in the history of cricket, these intellectuals are trying to drive home the often repeated point that we Indians are idol worshipers. Instead of saluting ‘Sach’ a towering performance they have raised two new objections over the master blaster’s golden innings.

Here is the first one:
“Sachin was agitated when Dhoni was scoring runs for the team and this establishes that he was playing for his personal record,”:
Now, that’s typical of these hypocrites. Tendulkar’s 200 effort was for self and the 60 odd runs by Dhoni were for the team? How?.

Sadly, this is not for the first time that I have heard this absurd argument. In the past too whenever Tendulkar had it big, I have heard them saying: “It was not in the second innings” ; “ It was in Asian sub continent,” “This was the first one away but the bowling attack was weak,” “ Pata wicket hoti re”. . etc etc

There is a tribe which takes pleasure in antagonising our heroes. They do it with a deliberate purpose. Firstly, it helps them to stand out, people look at them in awe..hey here is someone who is talking something different than the lesser mortals.

I had thought that Tendulkar’s 200 has silenced these critics once for all. It was not to happen. They still feel that Tendulkar looked agitated while Dhoni was scoring and that he desperately wanted strike for carving a yet another personal record.

To me Tendulkar never looked agitated. Tendulkar was as clam as a champion should be. It is another matter that thousands of his fans were agitated since Dhoni kept him away from strike for three final overs. Anxiety had gripped all of us (Tendulkar fans) and we are not denying the fact that at that moment we were more interested in Tendulkars one run and not Dhoni’s sixes.

And, why not? Had Dhoni given Tendulkar the strike early, he would have easily scored 215-220, a near impossible target for the next generations of cricketers. We are happy because even after these odds -- including the one posed by Dhoni, which got averted thanks to the brilliant fielding by South Africa -- Tendulkar managed to keep his date with the history. He scored half the runs on the board and was given man of the match, I think that’s enough to settle your first objection.

Second: One ‘intellectual editor’ has commented that we Indian’s create god out of men. He has reportedly said that we have turned Tendulkar into a “gladiator” but he and his records will not help the people in India win their daily battle for bread!.
Now, this is something very very cynical. Unfortunately, my socialist friends are writing paras and paras supporting this non-cricketing argument. Going by this logic they may even hold Sachin guilty for the malnutrition in Melghat.

My dear critic we perfectly know that watching cricket will not give us bread nor any other materialistic pleasure. Do you really want to know why we watch him bat? The answer is very simple: It makes us happy. His hundred instills in us a sense of pride. A sense of satisfaction.
Dear ‘intellectual editor’ you may not be able to fathom this pleasure because it can not be compared with the pleasure one gets after pigging around.

True. “Gladiator” Tendulkar and his records will not help me and hundreds of his fans to win our daily battle for bread.
But my dear friend life is not all about winning bread.
Had that been the case we would be still living in caves as tribal’s.
========
Abhijit Atre
==========