mother & Cricket in times of Pongal

Before cricket became business and is now played year round, till about 80s Test matches  used to be played between countries once in four or five years. Test matches were always a five day affair.Foreign teams came to India, usually just after the monsoon as it was not conducive for white skin to tolerate summer or so it was thought. 

For Madras generally during Pongal holidays the cricket Test took place. In 1966-67 West Indies cricket team came visiting India under the captaincy of Sir Garfield Sobers one of the greatest all rounders the cricket world had ever produced. India was captained by the stylish Nawab of Pataudi. The Madras Test match was played full five days ending in a draw.

 

It was a big surprise when my father got me and my brother Rs.15 season gallery ticket. What was more exciting to a teenager than watching the match on all days from stands with screaming fans. I don’t remember having slept all those days. Both of us used to get up by 4 in the morning and get ready by 5 am and pick up the lunch bag and start running for about 3 kms from our home to the T.Nagar bus terminus. A bus no.13 packed to the brim will start by 6 am and reach the venue in an hour with the whole lot of people in the bus discussing various finer aspects of the game. After a few hours wait at the gates in a serpentine restless crowd the gates will be opened by 9 and then it was utter chaos. The crowd a few thousands will start running towards the stands to get the best view. Once you climb and sit on those dangerous tilted planks tied to casuarina poles there was no way you could get down till the end of the day. It was estimated that about 50 thousands are so nonstop screaming spectators were present on all days. We used to have separate score cards and note down carefully every run scored and ball bowled. I can’t even believe for the life of me as to how I had so much patience and interest. I used to memorise the batsmen line up on both sides and their previous innings at Madras and so on. That time, I vividly remember India winning the toss n batting with opener Farooq Engineer n Dileep Sardesai. The former was electric scoring almost every ball esp his dancing down the wicket strokes sth like 93 or so before lunch while the latter with just 13 was holding fort at the other end. The fearsome Wess Hall n Griffith were sending down bouncers n beamers to dislodge the intemperate batsmen with spinner Gibbs doing all his best to tease the dead pitch to life. 

It was Bishen Bedi's debut n  perhaps Chandu Borde's last series. Borde scored a beautiful century.

For the Windies it was the batting of stylish short Rohan Khannaiah's 61 r so in the first innings who always fell down while hitting a pull shot. The icing was Sobers hitting outstanding strokes all round the wicket at will. He scored 95 in the first innings and in his second  innings along with Griffith he stood like a colossus between India and victory, scoring 70 odd runs. Ajit Wadeker probably his first series scored an attractive 60 or so in the second innings.

 

Of course there were other interesting sidelights. There was lots of gossip floating around, some of them turned out to be true. For instance about the actress Sharmila Tagore and the Nawab which did later result in the marriage. But there was also gossip in the stands and shouting about a certain actress linked to the famous West Indian all rounder. In fact on the very first day a certain newspaper carried a big ad of a particular brand of soap with the particular actress, very suggestively. The spectators had brought the paper and kept shouting at the cricketer on the ground showing the ad. It was so embarrassing after some time the man changed his fielding position and never fielded on our side of the ground!

 

However I almost missed another hero behind the scene. Every day when I and my brother had to leave by the first bus @six o'clock to the stadium my mother, god alone knows when she used to get up, cooked and prepared rice three varieties n packed in leaves separately for both so we don't fight about it. As it was festival she did not want us to miss the good food. She did not once complain about it. Wasn’t she tired over worked and wanted us to be more responsible. Nothing entered our heads except our own world and interests which we spun around ourselves like a cocoon and lived in it. It took me years( as a parent naturally) to suddenly realise how much she gave(up) for her kids and how much we took mother for granted. Probably it was the story of every parent who raised a family with untold sacrifices without any expectation. I often narrate these episodes to my two kids to make them understand and so that they would be sensitive to people around them and not take them for granted. But they too are in their own cocoons. Perhaps much later they will also repeat a similar episode to their kids or better still, blog about it!

 

 

*A brief history of balm oil*

Balm oil the ultimate oil of all citizens of Bharat more so of Tamil Nadu in the last four decades has phenomenal history of rise to dizzying heights and no fall. So it's important for us to examine it's genesis n it's historic march across the length n breath of the sub continent.

In the early 80s due to sudden shortage of cooking oil in India, not that it was aplenty earlier but the govt babus finally woke up to the fact of it's shortage and more due to the potential gold mine this would provide decided to import Palm oil from Malaysia that was producing it in excess n had not much use of it.

Now when ship loads of P oil landed the entire well oiled  supply chain went gung ho and as expected contributed its own versions to the mother oil so as to make it probably more agreeable to the desi palate. So when the desi customers finally consumed it there was not much palm in it as the oil was made indigenous to their satisfaction. To elaborate further if a consumer bought 1 litre of P oil and sent it to a good lab for test it probably will have a variety of desi oils so as to make it more agreeable to the local consumer. Now this edible swadeshi concoction having undergone a thorough makeover after its arrival at Bharat naturally acquired a more agreeable desi name ie. Balm oil, the oil for all seasons.