I'm always there

 

Recently, there was an article on the Net regarding Ravi Shastri’s Audi being restored:

https://www.rediff.com/cricket/report/how-shastris-iconic-audi-was-restored/20220604.htm

The article and the pictures took me back to my callow youth. That Audi and I are old friends, but let me not get ahead of the story.

In 1983, at about six in the morning after the World Cup final evening, we, the Bombay summer trainees of IIMB, had to board the train from Bombay to Bangalore so I landed at the Bombay VT railway station waiting room the previous evening to wait out the night at the station so as not to miss the train. After a score of 183, no one in his wildest dreams seriously expected India to win. No TV either in that locked-in waiting room. As the West Indies wickets started tumbling, that microcosm of India in the waiting room celebrated as one and how. None of us there slept that night.

Cut to 1985. I was sitting at my desk in an office hall in the Shipping Corporation of India, Bombay, as usual gazing into the horizon thinking about nothing at all, when suddenly Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri landed up at my desk. They must have spent exactly a minute and a half there. They had come to ask when that ship carrying Ravi Shastri’s Audi (won as Champion of Champions) was docking. I gave them the info and offered them a cup of tea but they declined and left. After that, I looked around and there was a sea of humanity (Shipping Corporation staff from all 12 floors of the building, mostly females) crowding the aisles and corridors and ogling/ gaping at me. Most of them had missed seeing Ravi Shastri in person by a whisker and I was THE NEXT BEST THING since he had talked to me. That brief period when I was allocated the Australia desk (basically two ships, Ramdas and Ravidas operating in the Australia – India sector) had its uses.

Then came the day when the ship actually docked. The General Manager and I went to the docks to hand over the car to Ravi Shastri. Ravi Shastri strode in, tall and lithe, a few dock worker types following and growing in numbers. The car was unloaded from the ship and ready to go. The GM handed over the keys ceremonially, posed for the cameras and left. I was waiting for Ravi Shastri to drive off into the sunset and me to come back to the office. One small problem – he didn’t know how to drive and that day, Gavaskar (who knew how to drive) had not accompanied him. Meanwhile, the crowd – mostly dock workers – had begun to swell to huge numbers. Those days, there wasn’t any police arrangement for cricketers, especially in restricted areas like docks. I hid Ravi Shastri inside the ship where the crew plied him with tea and biscuits and went out and told the teeming masses that Ravi Shastri had left. After about two hours, the crowd dispersed and then and only then, a by then thoroughly bored and fed-up Ravi Shastri emerged from the ship and managed to go back. Long years later, when I met him at Tolly Club in Calcutta, I tried to jog his memory but clearly he had forgotten. As per the above report, he still has that car, now restored to its pristine glory.

In 1996, I was SP, Calcutta Airport. During that World Cup, there was an intelligence input that a specified terrorist group would carry out an attack, probably targeting a particular team. All the teams were landing up in Calcutta for the inaugural ceremony. I made an arrangement with the airlines so that the teams would sit at the back of the planes. While the other passengers were disembarking through the aerobridge, the players would get down from the back into the tarmac and be taken away by buses through other and secure gates. That way, they would be insulated and avoid possible problems. All the teams and the consuls, especially Australia, appreciated this arrangement. Meanwhile, there was the Indian team big-wig who shall not be named. He refused to sit at the back of the plane. Just because of this, the Indian team was delayed by about an hour, the passenger flow and the players moving in opposite directions inside the plane. Anyway, the inaugural ceremony bit went off okay. Problems arose when the Indian team landed up to play the semi-final, after beating Pakistan in the quarters in Bangalore. 

Mob hysteria inside the airport. Azhar was travelling with Sangeeta Bijlani – they were not married then. The mob was touching Sangeeta’s feet, calling her Sangeeta-di. The next day or the day after, India lost badly to Sri Lanka. Some cute guys tried to light bonfires inside the stadium. The following morning, I landed up at the airport at about 5 AM. The first person who met me was a dishevelled Srinath, practically in tears, “I know why you wouldn’t like to help me but please, please help me find a seat on a plane, any plane, going to Madras…” A little later, good old Azhar came in with Sangeeta in tow. The mob hysteria, now the lynch-mob hysteria, almost went through the roof. Sangeeta and Azhar had to travel some distance inside the airport to get to a particular gate. The mob was charging menacingly, shouting “Kothay achhe (beeped out) Sangeeta?” meaning “Where is (beeped out) Sangeeta?” They thought she was the reason for Azhar and the team’s indifferent performance. “How dare they go around like this without even being married? Think of Azhar’s poor wife…” And so on and so forth. Almost the same guys who were touching Sangita-di’s feet so affectionately the other day! I tried to divert the crowd by separating Sangeeta and Azhar and channeling them through separate routes but they were not keen on it. Later, they separated for good.

I think, in June 1996, Sourav Ganguly scored a century on his debut test at Lord’s. He followed it up with another century in the next test. After the series, he came back to the home, sweet home, Calcutta. I had told the Additional SP to supervise the police arrangement at the airport. I was not planning to go but some sixth sense prompted me to give it a once-over. When I reached the VIP gate at Calcutta airport, I saw a crowd of about 20,000 at the VIP gate, chanting “Maharaj”, “Maharaj.” The police cordon was broken through and in disarray, the Additional SP was nowhere to be seen and a large guy with several gold chains around his neck was proudly holding court and directing “this vehicle will go into the tarmac, this vehicle will be stationed here, this is the reception party for Sourav at the plane” and so on. I sent for reinforcements and walked up to the guy and told him hang on, not a single person or vehicle would go inside the tarmac as it was a protected area. Sourav would come out and have fun. He screamed that he was such-and-such and didn’t-I-know? I also screamed back. Things got pretty hairy because the mob and the press were clear about who they were with and indicated it in no uncertain terms. When the reinforcements came and I threatened to arrest “the” Big Guy, finally, tempers cooled down. [Incidentally, Sourav himself, when he came out, was grace and humility personified.]

In 1999, during the inaugural test of Asian Test Championship at Kolkata (India – Pakistan), I was on duty at Eden Gardens stands. It was a pretty see-saw match. It was also the debut test of Shoaib Akhtar who announced his arrival to the world by getting Dravid and Sachin out off successive balls. The first time both of them and all of us saw those particular deliveries was on TV replays – he was really fast and probably gave it his all. After a hectic three days of hard work in the blistering sun, I thought I’d take it easy on the fourth day (second innings) and went to the upper stands (shaded) to sit down and enjoy a bit of fascinating cricket. The moment I sat down, Sachin got run out under controversial circumstances (colliding with a Pakistani fielder) and all hell broke loose. I had to again rush around and somehow the day passed off. The next day, there were about one lakh people in the stands and it was madness. On an earlier occasion, there was a police lathi charge at Eden Gardens and several people had died in the stampede. Keeping that in mind, we were told to “persuade” the people to kindly leave. If anyone has seen a sports loving crowd, he would have an idea how little persuasion counts for in such a situation. Anyway, I was trying my best – persuasion, cajoling, threats – when suddenly one water bottle hit my Commissioner. Something snapped in me and I went to action with the Rapid Action Force and emptied those particular stands. Other stands followed suit. Luckily there were no casualties. For the first time in the history of Test Cricket, almost a full day of a Test match was played in a completely empty stadium, that too Eden Gardens. I read in the papers the next day that Azhar had described it as an eerie feeling.

As I keep telling the wife, I’m always there. Whether India wins the World Cup, whether India crashes out of the World Cup, whether Ravi Shastri becomes the Champion of Champions, whether Azharuddin and Sangeeta Bijalani are matched or detached, whether Lord’s bows to aamader chhele Sourav, whether Cricket is played to packed houses or empty stands, whether Ravi Shastri gets to renew his affair with his recandescent Audi, whether anything at all to do with Indian cricket or cricketers, I’m always there.