Cantankerous Sons Versus Composed Daughters

Cantankerous Sons Versus Composed Daughters

Oh! my God, I thought, you don’t need a gym to lose weight,
you only need sons, who are up and running -- literally -- without serving any notice.

My daughter turned thirteen last December. When Sachin Tendulkar was struggling to get his 100^th 100, many people simply consoled themselves by saying after all, 100 is just a number. But try telling that to my daughter that 13 is after all just a number! The four alphabets t-e-e-n which translate into teen is what got her going. It is just so incredible how much kids want to grow up fast, and even more incredibly, after a few years they wish they hadn’t grown up. That’s the game life plays with unsuspecting humans.

It is also incredible how quickly kids grow up. She is 13, so what’s my age? Well, let’s not bother, simply because children these days not only push your age consciousness hard, but also push you hard as a parent. But really, I am not the right person to make statements about just how difficult parenting is, simply because I am a single child parent, and that too of a daughter, who grew up without much noise and fuss. 

For a while, I really thought parenting was easy, till I ran into live situations of parents managing their son or sons. Oh! my God, I thought, you don’t need a gym to lose weight, you only need sons, who are up and running – literally – almost even before they have learnt crawling – exaggerating of course, but you got the essence of it, right?

I don’t know who is from Mars and who is from Venus, but one thing’s for sure, sons and daughters, in their growing up years, seem to be motivated by diametrically opposite sets of objectives. Sons are cantankerous, loud, and masters of the art and science of `misbehavior` (the English language is so funny, it attaches `mis` to describe behavior, though the female gender is actually the more composed one), whereas daughters are comparatively more composed and caring -- of course, here I am discounting the views of parents with cantankerous, son-like-behavior daughters, or those with daughter-like-behaviour sons (Uff, it is quite complicated to put exceptions in perspective!). 

A lot of couples these days pray for a daughter as their first child – and very often for many the only child – as they feel the girl child is more understanding and more likely to take care of her parents in their old age. I know, I know, that’s not a fair statement on all the wonderful sons who are taking care of their old parents. But then why complain if after centuries of male domination women are beginning to assert their identity, or are at least enjoying the benefit of better perceptions? 

Based on my limited observations about growing up children’s behavior, I have come to the conclusion that boys belong to a highly vibrant and unique club called `keep my parents on their toes`, whereas  daughters – the elder sisters that is -- seem to belong to a club called `why my parents can’t handle my brother all by themselves`. You will hardly come across parents who say that their son help manage their daughter’s tantrums. If the sister is younger, she is advised not to behave like her elder brother – poor soul! The culprit and victim and are more or less determined at birth itself.  

The joke for some time has been that it is better to have daughters as they would get married and move into another family, whereas sons would not only stay on but also fight for your property. Clearly, the male folks need a serious image makeover.   

While sons and daughters display distinct kinesthetic behaviours, one thing however is common; with their FI (Fantastic Intelligence), IAS (Information Assimilation Ability) and TQ (Technology Quotient), they push the limits of their parents’ FI, IAS and TQ, very often causing embarrassment to people of my generation, whose ability, or the lack of it, to come to terms with the dynamics of living whose context is set by the youth can potentially cause a self esteem crisis. Sons and daughters alike today are razor sharp, communicate effortlessly and hate the word `stereotype`.

I think, irrespective of whether you are a parent of a son or a daughter, it is a privilege to be blessed with such children, whose combined energies can create a world of substance way beyond our collective imaginations. The tide has turned friends, children are our vibrant, fast paced teachers and we their reluctant-to-change, slow paced students! Every day spent with your child is like being in school at home. 

It’s not just parenting anymore folks; school has come home. 

Rahul Dravid – A Legacy Of Classical Batsmanship

Rahul Dravid – A Legacy Of Classical Batsmanship

`The Wall` has left behind a legacy of batsmanship where he taught the world,
well left is also well played!

 

Rahul Dravid’s exit has not created a vacuum just at the No 3 position, it is also a vacuum of classical batsmanship. Dravid based his entire game around the twin foundations of technique and temperament. In that sense, he emerged as the true batting successor to Sunil Gavaskar. The talent was there, but it was asked to flower under the stewardship of technique. While technique is a means to an end, for Gavaskar and Dravid, the means were also critical, for they had based their ability to score runs entirely on the way their feet moved, the way the bat met the ball, the way the body swayed to a short delivery, etc. 

For Dravid, spending time at the crease and scoring runs were equally important – that was his game and he stuck to that even as he saw a certain Tendulkar and a certain Sehwag maul the opposition with audacious strokeplay on their day. Dravid’s soul lay in just the joy of executing his craft on the 22 yards for long hours. 

I suspect Dravid called it quits not just because he perhaps felt he may not be able score runs heavily and consistently anymore, but maybe also because he felt he would no longer be able to romance the cricket pitch for as many hours as he could at the peak of his prowess. The smell of the cricket pitch and the red cherry when he met it close to his body must be the elixir he looked forward to while participating in the drama of a cricket match.  

Yes, Dravid was not just in love with the game of cricket, but also equally intensely with his craft – the Dravidian art of batting. Right from the time he took guard, the technician in him took over. Everything -- his stance, the tap of the bat as the bowler ran into bowl, the shuffle, the movement of his hands and legs, hand-eye coordination, timing, ability to leave the ball and duck, the classical cover drive and straight drive, the flick through midwicket, and many more -- had a technical base and batting education attached. It was almost like while many of his colleagues chose to play the game the commercial cinema way, Dravid seemed to have come out of the National School of Drama to practice his craft not in the song and dance way, but in the `boring` but meaningful arena of parallel cinema.

While he shared the same 22 yards with his team-mates, he seemed to be batting on a different wicket, sometimes almost giving a feeling that he did not belong, as his piercing drives would find the fielder, whereas some of the other batsmen would simply hit through the line or even over the top. When they got it right, Dravid looked less talented and unexciting, but when they got out and Dravid pulled the team out of yet another crisis, his copybook style and classical batsmanship got vindicated. 

Others often inspired, but Dravid mostly educated. He belonged to a genre of batsmen who survived the rigours of long years of test cricket ultimately not just because of their talent and reflexes, but because of the school of batsmanship they represented. Reflex players will always be more exciting to watch, but due to lack of a game based on technique, they may be found wanting when their reflexes slow down. Technique is an insurance against a longish period of decline, which every sportsman and every human being in life goes through. If you are technically correct, you can limit the damage and even bounce back with greater competence.

Dravid has left cricket, but has left behind a legacy of batsmanship where he taught the world, well left is also well played!

Take a bow, Rahul Dravid.    

Sachin Tendulkar -- History, Historic, Hysteric

Sachin Tendulkar  -- History, Historic, Hysteric

On the day of the Union Budget, Sachin resolves one of the biggest contemporary national problems – his 100^th 100 

None of the pumped up reactions after reaching a sport’s greatest milestone. Just a grateful look at the bat that scored that all important 100^th run, an intense look towards the heaven, and the customary but very important acknowledgements to his team-mates and spectators. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar was as dignified in glory as he was when under intense pressure for the last twelve months to satiate the appetite of a record crazy nation.

What is it about great people that they can come back ever so strongly to answer back critics or doubters in the same manner in which they built their credibility in the first place – through professional excellence? Sachin belongs to a nation which has a poor ability to handle failure. A typical Indian reaction to failure is apathy, a sense of resignation, and bitterness towards self and others who let them down on their expectations. Sachin, over 22 years of his international career has seen it all – the highs, the lows, extreme adulation and extreme criticism. We are a country which can create an incredible aura around people, and incredibly, even before they figure out the reason behind the exaggerated sense of adulation, `put them in their place`. So, no wonder that Sachin’s external demeanor was one of quiet acceptance, though internally, he would have been relieved and happy like perhaps never before in his life. 

In the past year, Sachin had `failed` not just by his standards, but more by the standards the nation’s media and people had set for him when he scored his 99^th international hundred in the 2011 World Cup. There ensued a raging debate regarding whether the nation’s highest honour, the Bharat Ratna, should be conferred on him. The whole nation got talking on the 100th 100 as well as the Bharat Ratna, except one man – Tendulkar himself. He had seen it all. He perhaps knew he was just a few failures away from being demonized, and that’s what happened; he failed over twelve months – not given as a sanction to people like Tendulkar who feed the nation with success way beyond their own expectations. But ironically, Sachin, through his achievements seemed to have constructed a `demon of success`, which he himself found difficult to deal with in the past year. 

But there is no denying that the longish wait for the 100^th 100 had the nation breathing uneasy. It had become a problem of monumental proportions. There seemed something seriously missing in the daily life of India. In terms of daily life, which is full of struggle in our country for lakhs of people, Sachin’s 100^th ton is a tonic which is all three -- history, historic, and hysteric. He has just added himself to the list of immortals who rule the consciousness of the country. He was already an institution, but he has now perhaps placed himself in a league of people like Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Lata Mangeshkar and Amitabh Bachchan who reached a summit in life where no man may ever reach.  

But if you think the nation is finished expecting things from Sachin, wait a minute! He still has unfinished business. Today, he scored his 49^th One Day International (ODI) hundred. Waiting for his 50^th, which will make it 50 in test matches and 50 in ODIs. A perfect icing on the cake I suppose! 

Congrats Sachin, Congrats India.