Treating Old Wounds through Movies....
4 decades of trauma, and the movie "83"
This is not a movie review. This is not a cricket story. I am about as turned off by both Bollywood and cricket (or Bolly-ket) as an average Indian is turned on by them. This is slightly autobiographical, with a hint of Bollywood and an aftertaste of cricket.
Let me clarify, I do not intend to make light of people who have suffered real trauma. My trauma was a different kind, losing nothing but a potential fan of Indian cricket.
The story starts with my Dad. He was a keen follower of every sport under the sun. Had played cricket at the university level, too. I don't recall him watching chess or golf, but every other sport would see him glued to the TV (or the radio, before we got the telly). I recall him twiddling the knobs on the big Philips valve radio, to get a faint BBC commentary of an Ashes match. Or a county match, for that matter. And somehow that old set came alive to catch Grand Slam and Davis cup broadcasts!
In 1983, on that historical day (or evening, in IST) of 25th June, we had to board a train! I honestly cannot recall why my Dad booked the ticket so (probably ran out of leaves, or like everyone else except Kapil Paaji, did not expect the Indian team to reach the finals). As we were about to board the train at Howrah Station, the last news my Dad got was of India all out at 183, and the great Richards knocking the ball all over the map.
I honestly don't know if he slept that night, but early the next morning, waking up when the train was stopped at a station in Bihar, what do I see but my Old Man jumping into the compartment, grinning from ear to ear, shouting like a madman, glasses askew, clothes dishevelled, clutching a rather torn Hindi newspaper. He had fought with several people to get the copy with its banner headlines announcing the impossible.
That summer morning, on board a 3-tier non-AC sleeping coach, I believe, was the pinnacle of my Dad's sports fandom!
So, when the current World Champions took on the former ones in the first Test Match at Green Park in Kanpur, our home town, my Dad pulled several strings to get a couple of tickets for both of us.
And that test match was the deepest canyon of my Dad's sports fandom. Defeat by an innings and 83 runs! The vaunted Kapil's Devils thrashed mercilessly by the Windies' pace attack and superb batting! The great Gavaskar failing in his in-laws' town!
He didn't lose hope. Kept twiddling the old Philips set to get the commentaries of the remaining 5 tests and 5 ODIs. We were crushed in 3 of the tests, and in all 5 ODIs, the same format where we had performed so excellently in the World Cup. The statistics are too painful to repeat here. The two bright sparks, Kapil Paaji's 9 for 83 at Ahmedabad, and Sunny's 236 at Chennai (surpassing the Don in total test runs) did nothing to clear the dark clouds hovering over India's cricket skies, which had been so bright and sunny just a few months ago.
My Dad managed a couple of more World Cups where there were "a few slips between the cup and the lip". He, unfortunately, didn't live to see Dhoni's boys lift the Cup in 2011.
As for me, I cried, along with my Dad, when the last ball of the first test was bowled. Cried all the way home in a cycle rickshaw. And the sight of heroes being pelted with banana skins and crumpled popcorn cones caused trauma that showed no signs of abating, even with the 2011 victory.
I avoided cricket. Unless a visitor insisted, or a host watched. Even then, I tried to block out the sounds, facing away from the screen. The prostitution of a great game via IPL worsened my mild PTSD. Like the British, Australian, and other cricket journalists and followers, I thought that a great fluke had occurred on that 25th of June, 1983.
And then I happened to watch the movie 83.
A fluke, really. My family was watching it on Amazon Prime, and I sat down as I had no calls or meetings.
And I realised why that 25th of June, 1983 was not a fluke. I realised what Kapil's Devils had gone through to reach that height of cricketing glory. The English, famously, have a bulldog mentality - just hang on, and keep fighting. The Indian Cricket team, in 1983, out-bulldogged the English bulldogs (and everybody else), in England.
Now for a tiny bit of a review.
Ranveer Singh, probably for the first time, exhibiting his acting chops and not his muscles. Playing a down-to-earth Kapil Paaji and not a psychotic Khilji or a hyperactive gangster.
The way the cast resembled the real-life heroes. Kapil could have been a bit fatter, but the dental prosthetics did the job perfectly! Mohinder Amarnath playing his father, the great Lala Amarnath, complete with the pipe, takes the cake! And of course, the super-hero, Kapil Paaji himself, in a tiny appearance as an audience member. Two more sons playing their fathers - Sandeep Patil and Malcolm Marshall.
The black and white press shots and Doordarshan clips of the real heroes.
How sensitive topics are handled. There is, for example, no great speech about Indians facing racism and fighting it, which they did. Subtle clues, like smug grins of the ICC clerks when the manager Prithvi Raj Man Singh (another superb casting choice) questions about his pass not including the Lord's ground, and his gentle namaskar to the same clerks when he gets the pass for Lord's, with his team in the finals. The post-credit shots of the real life Man Singh speaking about how the English cricket journalist "literally ate his words", recited in the delightful Hyderabadi accent so accurately depicted by his film alter-ego.
The Indian fans, led by the motor mechanic Sardarji, drastically failing the Tebbit test, taking on the beer-guzzling English hooligans. The immigrant barman, keeping his emotions in check, out of fear of his customers. The Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, exhibiting her political skills by using a cricket match to stop riots. And the rioting city united by a cricket match and a great victory. The Pakistani army refraining from shelling Indian Army posts on the day and night of the finals. The small boy making a flag to wave for Kapil. The sight of that homemade flag among hundreds of West Indian banners, like the flash of sunlight forcing its way through dark, stormy clouds.
All of these may be, and probably are, apocryphal, but it makes the point. Not very subtle, but far more than normal Bollywood.
The movie takes us back to a time when the trope of cricket being a gentlemen's game was true to a large extent. Sledging consisted of "too fast for you, eh?" and not the proper unprintables used today. You can vaguely make out that Gavaskar isn't happy with being replaced as Captain, but he does not make a big issue out of it (unlike another sports movie, Chak De India). Probably that's what Sunny would have done in real life, being pretty high on his dignity.
The old days, when Rs. 25,000 for winning a World Cup (about Rs. 380,000 today) was an unbelievable sum. When your wife visiting did not get you an entire resort to yourself, just that your bachelor teammates had to share, 3 of them to a room. When the manager fought with the Board to get tickets postponed, and paid for excess baggage from his own pocket.
When being ditched by your fiancee did not matter, neither did STD (acidity). When you played for your country and not the auction amount. When you didn't know the words of the National Anthem, like the half-Scottish Roger Michael Humphrey Binny, but you played like a hero for your country. When Kris Srikkanth pretended to be a bachelor to get dosas, and refrained from using the restroom (and smoking!) till his captain scored a world record 175.
A time when my Dad was justifiably an ardent follower of a team that could never win until it did, and how!
Praising Kapil's Devils for another hundred years, or a thousand, is not enough, but now a small share of the kudos belongs to Kabir Khan and the excellent team behind 83!
As an underdog sports story, 83 can rank right up there with Rocky. No Indian sports movie has made me emotional (that is left to war movies, Indian or foreign), but this one did.
Now, BCCI just needs to shut down IPL, and I'll become a cricket fan!
Comments
Post a Comment