How to leave at the right moment?
Before everything else, let’s take a moment to appreciate greatness. What it means and more importantly, how long it survives in the thick of memory? I am obviously referring to Lionel Messi and his (ongoing) haphazard exit from Barcelona FC. To imagine this football club without its talismanic captain is akin to drawing a scenario without the blue shade. For two decades, Messi has been associated with the club and has, time and again, proved why he might very well be the finest exponent of football. Mixing sports and politics could create an unsavoury dish but if you understand the business side of entertainment, you shouldn’t be surprised by how things panned out over the last two weeks. In an ideal world, Messi should be retiring from football — at least in Europe — from Camp Nou but since that is not happening, the least a (club) football fan can expect is watch him continue to play with the same ingenuity wherever he chooses to go next. Besides, at what point have you ever sat back and wondered whether this little fellow has lost his spark? I am grateful for that and that’s why great players deserve greater freedom.
Speaking of leaving the big stage, it’s always advisable to exit at the right moment. Never too early. Never too late. Seinfeld (the show, not the comedian) could have completed their 10th season but the writers knew that nine is enough. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said about The Big Bang Theory (the show, not the theory) as it dragged on and on. Even though entertainment is the common denominator here, sportsperson function differently. When your career is short-lived — with most athletes hitting their peak before 30 and presuming retirement at 35 — it’s understandable why the likes of Sachin and Dhoni didn’t wish to say goodbye and/or Federer doesn’t want to, yet. These individuals have spent their whole lives in the pursuit of one discipline — name any sport you like — and can’t imagine how their existence would be like without having to put on the shoes for a match. For them, retirement is not a phase but a full stop. Unless, of course, they can carve out a career in their beloved sports as a coach/commentator/pundit/etc.
One of my earliest colleagues (Rojell) once told me that he is learning how to play guitar and he plans to convert my poems into songs. I remember laughing it off because I could never imagine my doggerel getting sung with any respect. Long story short, he indeed tried to create a tune out of my poems and even recorded for us (fellow colleagues). In all fairness, it sounded forced and the exact opposite of catchy. After all these years, I finally get why a song is so damn effective. Words, on their own, aren’t hypnotic enough. Regardless of who wrote them. It’s only when the words find a tune and start dancing with your breath that they reach their ultimate potential. Simply put, the power of words is quite limited whereas the power of music is infinite.
Before the lockdown, walking used to be my favourite thing. Used to book an Uber and then walk nearly half a kilometer to meet the driver at the main gate itself. As of now, sitting on my chair for hours has become my natural pastime. I wake up around six and spend a monumental amount of the day stuck to my black chair. It’s not at all healthy but that’s how it is. Sometimes, I consciously make an attempt to keep moving here and there but then, how far can a mullah go from his mosque? To make things worse, I host online quizzes every alternate day which requires me to stay seated as well — not just for hosting purposes but also during questionnaire preparation. The only saving grace is the fact that you burn more energy by sitting in a 15-minute meeting than Usain Bolt did running the 100m dash. I simply love statistics that work in my favour.
If you don’t follow me on Instagram, you won’t know what this paragraph is all about. So, the thing is, I post a lot of stories featuring my surroundings. Which translate to several pictures of birds, insects, trees and related entities. So much so my followers often ask me whether I live in a forest reserve. And they sound shocked when I tell them that I am a resident of Gurgaon. They somehow imagine this wannabe city as a dustbowl of hopes and aspirations, not greenery and life. To spice up my conduct, I’ve started calling myself a pseudo-naturalist. For instance, when I display an exquisite picture of mosquito eggs on my balcony window, I am being ironic. Moments after clicking the picture, I am getting rid of them by wiping them off. That’s the least I can do for maintaining balance in nature.
Some words need to go out of fashion and some words ought to get back into limelight. Words like ‘proud’ have had their share of popularity and it’s time to retire. On the other end of usage, words like ‘inherently’ must get back to the forefront of the English language. For example, we are used to saying stuff like “My son is very lazy” or “This gormint is very bik chuki.” Now, replace ‘very’ with ‘inherently’ and witness the magic of seriousness. You are welcome. You can throw the i-word — won’t be surprised if Apple’s marketing team picks this up — wherever you like and turn a lame observation into something worth of weightage. America is inherently racist. India is inherently casteist. Pakistan is inherently hinduphobic. China is inherently islamophobic. UN is inherently effete. And so on.
Only 4 months of 2020 are left. No, 2021 won’t be any different but change is good because it’s filled with promises of a nicer tomorrow. That said, if there is a singular aspect of 2020 that should leave us, it’d be the unrelenting cloak of anxiety. Perhaps someday soon, we’ll be able to breathe easy and learn to distinguish between what’s important and what’s not-so-important. Since nobody else can teach us the difference, the responsibility falls squarely on each one of us. Our mental well-being matters. If we aren’t sound up there, we won’t be able to reap the benefits of being alive. Maybe we must give mindfulness as much due as we give to hunger. When was the last time you went hungry for a long, long, long time? Exactly. Meditate. Walk. Talk. Paint. Whatever works. The greatest paradox of our generation is taking (unnecessary) stress comes easy to us. Relaxing is inherently hard.
You may remember 2006 World Cup final for Zidane’s infamous headbutt, which got him a red card and a step away from lifting the WC for the second time in the final match of his career. However, at the end of that epic war, Simone Perrotta got the winners’ medal. In case you’re wondering “Simone Perrotta, who?”, you aren’t alone in this. A week ago, I wasn’t aware of him either. Turns out he was born in England but played for several Italian football clubs. Interestingly, he was expected to show up for England’s national team but he chose to stick with the Azzurri. Anyway, the reason why you are learning about him here is he was born in Ashton-under-Lyne in Greater Manchester and after winning the World Cup, that little town decided to put up a statue in his honour along with the likes of Geoff Hurst, the only player to have scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final (1966). The point being, sometimes, a statue will go up even if you don’t remember the 20 other players who were on that field that night.
Very few sentences appall me as much as a woman in my presence stating that she is not a feminist. It’s one thing to believe in the tenets of humanism that doesn’t distinguish between genders but quite another to ignore the battles fought by courageous women in the past. Had they remained silent back then, women today wouldn’t even have had a voice in public. From correcting something as basic as ‘Time Person of the Year’ from ‘Time Man of the Year’ to demanding equal pay for equal work, feminism has come a long way. Which is why the recent event involving Donald Trump was deeply funny. He, in his newfound presidential spirit, pardoned legendary suffragette Susan B. Anthony — yes, the same lady who once remarked that bicycles had done more for the suffragette movement than anything else — for her “crime of voting” when it was illegal for American women to vote. Interestingly, the Susan B. Anthony Museum has officially rejected his pardon. According to them, Susan B. Anthony never accepted her crime and hence there was no need for a pardon. Touché.
Did you know that it took dolphins about 10 million years to go back to the ocean? Yup, you read that right. An organism that originated in the sea moved to the land and then decided to leave the land for the sea again. This reversal in decision took the organism a really long time. One way of looking at this trajectory is dolphins realizing that the land is not worth the trouble and it’s best to live it up in the sea. And if you look at the dolphins, they are always smiling and laughing because their ancestors made the correct decision. They even celebrate that ancient move by jumping up and down across the waves for no reason. On that lovely note, do you know who is the closest terrestrial relative to a dolphin? A hippopotamus. Yes, that greasy wreck of a being that never seems happy. So darn angry that hippo attacks have the highest mortality rate (87%) of any animal examined. Here’s the craziest shitty part: they mark their territory by spraying their poop around with their tails in a helicopter-like motion. If only they could make it to the sea the way dolphins did.
