My Cricket Needs West Indies!

John Parker:

 “……It said a great deal for Smith that he did not allow the misfortune to throw him off balance. Bowling more carefully, he delivered the rest of the over to the order. Five balls went down, each of them swinging into the batsman. Three of them Troughton was able to leave alone, as they swung across his body and down the leg side, making Deacon leap and stretch to stop them from going for byes. True, Troughton played carefully, once going right up on his toes to bring the ball down on to the pitch in front of him with the straightest of the bats, dropping his wrists and slackening the fingers round the bat handle. The seventh, aimed straight at the middle stump had Troughton driving across the line trying to work it away to mid-wicket. It moved off the pitch again, but this time in the other direction, touching the outside edge of the bat as it went and winging its way chest high to Gauvinier at first slip- a straightforward, finger-tingling slip catch. He flung the ball high in delight- for himself, for Norman, for the ball, for the catch, for the score and for the sheer joy of cricket”

 

( “The Village Cricket Match”, 1977 from cricket anthology “The Joy of Cricket” Selected and Edited by John Bright-Holmes)

 
[In my imagination, all the players in the quote above- Smith, Troughton, Deacon, Gauvinier, Norman- are black West Indies players.]

Commerce keeps raising her unlovely head in this beautiful game but who am I to disparage illusions of their gold? 

But then the team like West Indies rescues the game of cricket once in a while from their clutches. I think many Sri Lankans were happy to see WI win the T20WC on the night of October 7 2012.

Batting of Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels over the past week brought back memories of Vivian Richards, Clive Lloyd and the late Roy Fredericks.  


Thank you, West Indies once again for splendid, care-free cricket and,  even more, for Gangnam Style celebration after that.

Image courtesy: The Sun, UK

Blankets of Franz Kafka, Dasopant, G A Kulkarni and Warren Miller's Mr. Bromer

W H Auden:

"If we try
To ‘go southern’, we spoil in no time, we grow
Flabby, dingily lecherous, and
Forget to pay bills
Still, he will ‘go grateful’, he says, glad
To bless this region, its vendages, and those
Who call it home: though one cannot always
Remember exactly why one has been happy,
There is no forgetting that one was."

I came across the following by Franz Kafka on Facebook on his birth anniversary:

“Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.”

('The Complete Stories')

It's so true but little sad to read only about unhappy dreams.

Doesn't a blanket lead us to our happy dreams? I remember as a kid I was so fond of a white soft blanket called 'pasodi'(पासोडी) that I refused to give it up even when it was torn. I always felt very secure under it.

[Pasodi has rich literary connotations in Marathi.  Medieval saint-poet Dasopant (दासोपंत) wrote poetry on a piece of cloth- measuring 40 ft by 4 ft- called Dasopant's pasodi (दासोपंतांची पासोडी) . The writing is also illustrated richly. If you read Marathi, read an essay on this here.]

When my pasodi was taken away, I felt both sad and insecure. If I had a choice, I too would have taken up an AK-47, just like Mr. Bromer in the picture below!

Artist: Warren Miller, The New Yorker, April 6 1992

Here is a small passage from G A Kulkarni's story where his protagonist Swami- now treacherously entrapped in a forced solitude- is reflecting on the touch of love of many people in his past and comparing it to a clothing with small mirrors sewn into it. I believe that clothing is a blanket.

जी ए कुलकर्णी:

"...-ही सारी माणसे, त्यांनी आयुष्याला केलेले मायेचे स्पर्श, त्यांच्या या स्पर्शाचे लहान गोल आरसे बसवलेले वस्त्र पांघरून आपण येथपर्यंत निभावत आलो!"

('स्वामी',1973, 'पिंगळा वेळ', 1977)

What I like in G A's writing most is even when he is writing about utter hopelessness, he never ceases to be grateful.

Getting smothered, Swami too goes away grateful.

Out in My Old Town Love Canoe

Rachel Cooke:

In the end, though, it's difficult to go along with Wolf's central contention, which is that women can only harness their creativity when in a fulfilled sexual relationship – a thesis based largely, it seems, on a reading of Edith Wharton and George Eliot, and the relationship of Georgia O'Keeffe with Alfred Stieglitz. Her evidence is crudely selective, and strangely unimaginative. Hasn't it ever occurred to her that, sometimes, happiness writes white? Didn't she wonder about the sex lives of art's great spinsters? But it's also, I think, an unhappily reductive way of looking at the world. Sex is a huge part of life. But it's not everything, and we do ourselves a disservice if we try to suggest otherwise.

(Guardian, September 16 2012, review of 'Vagina: A New Biography' by Naomi Wolf)

In middle class culture of  Maharashtra, water for recreational purpose is almost absent. Reasons are not hard to figure: Hardly any perennial lakes and rivers.

Contrast that with gardens built by the Mughals in the Islamic style of architecture. Two of their most important features are running water and a pool to reflect the beauties of sky and garden. No Yamuna river, no Taj Mahal perhaps.

When water, canoe, man, woman, moon come together in the night, they mean  romance and its occasional delightful expression such as in the picture below.

Artist: S D Phadnis (शि. द. फडणीस) courtesy: Official website of S D Phadnis

I said romance but not sex.

I recently read "Love Boats: The Delightfully Sinful History of Canoes".

"Before the youth of America fooled around at drive-ins and necked on Lover’s Lane, they coupled in canoes. Boatloads of them. In the early 1900s, canoes offered randy young guys and gals a means of escape to a semi-private setting, away from the prying eyes of their pious Victorian chaperones...

...As further proof that canoeing had become a hotbed for teenage delinquents, in 1913 the Minneapolis Parks Board refused to issue permits for canoes with unpalatable names. Local newspapers published some of the offensive phrases that slipped past the board the previous summer, including “Thehelusa,” “Kumomin Kid,” “Kismekwik,” “Damfino,” “Ilgetu,” “Aw-kom-in,” “G-I-Lov-U,” “Skwizmtyt,” “Ildaryoo,” “Win-kat-us,” “O-U-Q-T,” “What the?,” “Joy-tub,” “Cupid’s Nest,” and “I Would Like to Try It.” The commissioners unanimously agreed to outlaw phrases lacking obvious moral and grammatical standards, though a few of these clever pre-text-message abbreviations clearly had them scratching their heads...

...But this floating, petting paradise would not last. “When motorcars became more available in the early ’20s, courting in canoes sort of fell off,” says (Roger) Young. “Guys were getting into their Model Ts or Model As and going off with girls for a Sunday drive instead of canoeing.” And what went on in the backseats of those cars? Well, that’s a whole different story."

Following picture too has water, canoe, man, woman, moon together. But the desires are less poetic and more carnal than in the picture above!

 

A comic postcard advertising Old Town Canoes makes an open joke of their preferred use. 

Image courtesy: Benson Gray

Go back to Phadnis's picture above. I can't imagine man and woman  in that canoe making out little latter. I feel even suggestion of sex will spoil that mood. But then maybe I am now old.