Some Stray Thoughts

Some Stray Thoughts

Let me confess at the outset itself that these thoughts were haunting me for quite a while. I was afraid of being labelled as an alarmist prowling around with ideas that are wild and figments of imaginations of a mind with a perverted point of view. At last I have decided to give vent to them as I felt that keeping them to myself is rather an act of cowardice on my part. So here it is;

Lord Acton a famous British Jurist had rightly said and I quote “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” unquote.

Now a day the media is agog with one thing; and that is Team Anna and the Lokpal bill. There is no doubt that all right thinking people of this country want to join hands with Anna Hazare on his earnest efforts to create a system called Lokpal.

It is said and rightly so that our institutions such as the Parliament, the Judiciary, and the office of the Prime Minister are slowly sinking in to a cesspit of corruption and we are very much concerned about it. In order to remedy this a group of people under the leadership of Anna Hazare joined hands and are agitating in a peaceful Gandhian way  to force the hands of the present government to bring about a bill which will encompass every institution in this country in its ambit to be controlled and policed. This bill if passed as they desire will create another super institution with absolute powers called Lokpal; and there comes the rub. Are we sure that in our eagerness to eradicate something we are not creating a monster of Dr. Frankenstein?

To drive my point home let me take you to the 18^th century France. The deteriorating economy of the country, as the result of fiscal mismanagement and the long years of feudal oppression had long been testing the public’s patience. Ultimately the king was forced to summon the ancient assembly. The oppressed group, the peasants and wretched manual labours, generally called the third-class, people of France ironically who paid maximum tax, could not exercise anything through this assembly, and had finally decided to break away and enforce their right. Ultimately then it was a kind of no holds barred situation. Maximilian Robespierre an ex judge who had previously relinquished his office as a Judge, because he was reluctant to condemn a person whom he knew was innocent came to the leadership. What witnessed then was the metamorphosis of a person. A judge who could not order one man to the gallows due to his conscience; Robespierre during his regime known as the ‘reign of terror’ had ordered hundreds of thousands of people guillotined. He expounded a new maxim “virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent.”   

This reign under Robespierre continued and many executions were held to stop any counter revolution taking place. Finally Robespierre himself was guillotined by his own people leaving the country rudderless till another autocrat named Napoleon Bonaparte took over the rule of France. In his own words Napoleon declared that “I found the crown of France in the gutters of Paris and I took it with my sword.” After taking over France he famously said that “France has more need of me than I have need of France”, no doubt.

To imagine that Anna or for that matter any one following him will become another Robespierre is rather farfetched I know; and that is why I for warned that I may even sound an alarmist. But that is not the point. If the institutions of this country about which we are very proud of; after sixty years can be marred with corruption who can vouch that the Lokpal will also not turn out to be the same in the course of time? 

A renowned Jurist of yester years writes in a popular English daily, and bats for an all powerful Lokpal bill. Though he accepts that the Judiciary in our country is the watchdog of any erring executive and people had full faith in it; he laments that Judiciary itself is very corrupt and no action is being taken. He recommends even a militant (sic) movement against corruption. He recommends that “the Judiciary and the Prime Minister shall be under Lokpal”. What comes to mind is a long forgotten Hindi Film song in which the protagonist laments that arson can be extinguished by a good shower; but if the shower itself gets fire who can after all extinguish it? If you can vouch that it can never happen so be it and I accept the label; the label of an anarchist.

Before I conclude let me again quote Lord Acton.

“And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that”.

Nawab of Indian Cricket.

Imagine; in cricket that you are at the crease and about to face a formidable bowler like say Wesley Hall or Gilchrest or the notorious Charlie Griffith. You are protected only with an abdomen pad and a pair of batting gloves and leg pads and not with those fancy protections like a helmet with a visor chest and elbow pads etc available to all batsmen of modern day cricket. Also imagine that you are totally blind on your right eye!   How will you take that situation? Face it or run away from itMansour Ali Khan Pataudi (Tiger) was a man who decided to face it come what may and created history of sort in his chosen carrier.

When he took-up the captaincy of the Indian CricketTeam, Nawab of Pataudi  was all his 21 years and 77 days old and  the situation, to put it mildly, was very tense. Previous captain the flamboyant Nari Contractor was struck down and incapacitated in the previous match by a vicious delivery by the C. Griffith. Veteran Polly Umrigar refused to lead the team. The mantle fell on Pattaudi (Jr) as the outgoing captain vehemently recommended his name for the post. Since then he never looked back. 

I remember, as a school boy from Kerala, where popularity of cricket was just picking up, listening to all India Radio commentaries of the test matches and watching our heroes in the two minutes clips available in the Newsreels shown along with usual cinema in the local theatres. I also remember myself and my brother cajoling my uncle to get permission to watch only that portion at the local cinema where he had some friendship with the owner himself.

Now a day in my soft skill training classes I impress up on my listeners about the need of having a role model. I can proudly say now that Tiger (as he was nicknamed) was my role model who remained the same throughout.

I was in Bombay; in 1969-70 when Australia visited India and we lost the first two matches.

An arrogant Bill Lawry had predicted that in the Delhi  test, “if I win the toss, will wind up the match in four days and go for fishing on the fifth day”. Australia won the toss but lost the match in four days. The next day a famous cartoon appeared in the “Free Press Journal” daily. It was like this. Pataudi was shown fishing and finds a fish popping its head out and asking him “Where is Lawry”?    

When he got married with Sharmila Tagore, arguably the reigning diva of Indian Cinema I was rather disappointed; not because that I felt that he was not a suitable match for her but the other way round. How long he can maintain the relation with such a flippant woman I wondered. This was not only my impression. The general view in the bollywood was also that this was not going to last. But they proved the Doomsayers wrong hands down. Ms. Tagore proved that she had the capacity to keep a marriage going all through the years.

I was in Delhousie on an official tour circa 1973. A film shoot for the film “ek mahal ho sapnomka” was taking place there. Sharmila was acting in it. It was rumoured that tiger will be coming to be with his beau. I remember waiting at the hotel premises for hours to have a glimpse of my hero. 

In a touching piece of remembrance Vijay Lokapally has written that “In the 60s and early 70s, we only talked about Pataudi. We wanted to bat like him, field like him, we wanted to be (only) Pataudi.” Somewhere else I also read that children of that time used to keep their right eye close while practicing batting to emulate him in ditto. Here let me share a secret of mine. I honestly wished those days that I lost the sight of my right eye to be like Tiger my Hero.

When asked what really exited him he quipped. – “The sight of a wild elephant. With the ears and the trunk stuck out and coming at you. That really terrifies me and excites me”. 

Tiger might have finished his innings; but will definitely remain not out for a long time to come.