TALES OF TRAVESTY
dR. JITENDRA SINGH
If only Dale Carnidge, the popular early-twentieth century author who churned out a series of best-sellers like “How to win people and make friends”? “How to stop worrying and start living?” etc, was up and around today, he would have certainly felt inspired by the incredible cricketing feat of the Ajit Chandila-Sreesanth-Ankeet Chouvan trio to come out with a monograph titled “How ‘not to win’ a cricket match?”
Reading details of how meticulously, rather with a scientific precision, these three young men handled the cricket ball and bat while at the same time not forgetting to handle their towels and wrist watches also with equal precision, one is convinced that these three youth icons would have made it big in whichever field they chose to devote themselves. They were blessed with focus of mind, consistency of approach and scientific temper to pursue their chosen goal and it is nation’s loss if instead of devoting these attributes for a path breaking research or scientific invention or entrapreneur breakthrough, they were misled to squander these attributes for the benefit of a handful of bookies.
On a different plane, however, it is yet again another vindication of Mahatma Gandhi’s time-tested dictum “means as important as the ends.” If the guiding spirit behind the very concept of IPL was to make big money by putting the players on auction with the owners of various teams openly bidding to quote a price for each individual player depending on his performance potential, then it was inevitable that this thin line of demarcation was to get faded out sooner than later to prompt these same very players to offer themselves for bidding to those who offered to pay them many times more to under-perform or, in other words, to lose rather than win the game.
Another lesson emanating out of this sordid saga is that if sports played with sportsmanship helps one rise above greed and be modest, sports played primarily for money makes one greedy and immodest. Take for example, the case of certain Sreesanth, about to be married in next few months, gifting his hired girl friend a smartphone worth 42 thousand and lavishly entertaining his bookie partners in expensive hotels with choicest women from among struggling starlets. Where are all those girl friends and night life partners now when the going has got tough for these darling boys of IPL? To quote an old adage, friendships made over a bottle of liquor last only as long as the bottle lasts!
Viewed in an overall context, the IPL scam is only a very small manifestation of a larger malaise plaguing the contemporary Indian society with an infectious neo-rich flamboyance sweeping the peninsula. Even as the common man is hand to mouth for his day to day survival, the rich and famous are given to an insatiable appetite for more than they can actually devour. Umapathy sums up this self-destructive phenomenon with the Ghalib cliche “Hazaaron Khwaashen Aisi Ke Har Khwash Pe Dum Nikle….”
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