Sachin Tendulkar is a hero twice over. He is a hero in the conventional sense in that he slays monsters and makes the impossible look effortless. But in an age where the very idea of a hero is under such systematic attack, he rescues heroism from under the very noses of its enemies.
And that enemy is us. In some nameless implicit way, we are all conspiring to destroy heroes and the very idea of heroism. We do this by relentlessly testing our heroes, sometimes by tempting them with unimaginable wealth, fame and all that comes tagging along with in an unbelievably short time, and at other times by ruthlessly challenging them on every action. By expecting them to be superhuman every moment of the day, and that too as per our whim and fancy, we set them up for failure. So when they do display superhuman heroism, they are merely doing their job. Anything less and they must be reviled for letting us down.
We dismantle the idea of heroism by reducing our heroes to bite sized pieces that we can consume. We attribute motives to everything they do, celebrate small feats disproportionately, single out individuals selectively and deify people so precipitously that a fall becomes inevitable. In short, we make our heroes dependent on our responses to them and in doing so, reduce them to our size.
Nowhere is this effort more evident than in the case of Sachin. Given that he has proved immune to most blandishments that we have offered him, and shown that what really moves him is still the game and not its incidental perks, we have now focused our energies on carping about every single performance of his and passing judgment on a minute-by-minute basis. So, even after playing a match-winning knock, when he fails in a couple of innings, we hear murmurs about his correct place in the batting order. As a pattern, this is hardly new. He has to fail but a couple of times, and whispers of when he should retire rise in cacophonous synchrony. And this in spite of having carried the fragile self-image of an entire country on his shoulders for as long as he has.
And yet, his batting many times showed us the meaning of heroism that lies beyond the pale of mediocre scrutiny as he blurred the lines between mere greatness and divinity as he stood alone and battled against impossible odds in an incandescent display of magnificent proportions. He humbled us, all of us, regardless of whether we were believers in his sublime powers or not. He made criticism irrelevant for he batted in a language that neither critics nor fans could ever grasp.
And yet, when we have lost matches despite his heroics (remember the recent knock against Australia or the knock against Pakistan in test match), and isn’t that what really matters in the end? Shouldn’t Sachin have finished the job, as a former cricketing greats suggest from the safety of their writing desk? Shouldn’t the others have pitched in? Sport invites these questions, indeed it thrives on them, but in fact it is supremely unimportant whether we win or loose. Victory is the apparent purpose of sport; in truth it is in large part, a quest for heroes. Who cares today whether we won a series against England in 2003? Will we remember the outcome of this series in a few years time? What we do remember is the Sachin Sharjah knock, Sehwag’s triple century and KUmble’s heoic effort against Pakistan. Sport exists to elevate us beyond our existing plane of existence and to generate heroes of a purity that real life can no longer produce.
Such defeats are good for the sport in one way. Had we won, we would have buried the idea of heroism in the shrill rhetoric of triumphalism that comes so naturally to us nowadays. THE TRAGEDY OF THE HERO MAKES THE STORY EPIC. Like sad endings in film, the futility of Sachin’s pursuit makes this story a timeless one. It allows us to focus on the meaning of sport and the heroes it throws up rather than on the statistic of one more win.
The triumph of heroes is that they rise above everything, even our cynical destruction of the very ideal that sustains them. We are more comfortable today with celebrities than with heroes for they are patently the product of the attention we have chosen, sometimes, inexplicably to shower on them. Celebrities are owned commodities, who we can play with and move up and down a ‘power list’. We are confounded by the truly great, but try as we might, we cannot help but be transported into place we have never been and experiences emotions we have never dreamed possible when we encounter a genuine hero.
In a match or two, Sachin will fail and the carping will be back. But in this brief heady interval, let us savour the sweetness that sport can bring and let us exult with the giddy sense of elevation that comes from being in touch with the divine. This is why we love sport. The cheerleaders and their dance moves can wait.
And that enemy is us. In some nameless implicit way, we are all conspiring to destroy heroes and the very idea of heroism. We do this by relentlessly testing our heroes, sometimes by tempting them with unimaginable wealth, fame and all that comes tagging along with in an unbelievably short time, and at other times by ruthlessly challenging them on every action. By expecting them to be superhuman every moment of the day, and that too as per our whim and fancy, we set them up for failure. So when they do display superhuman heroism, they are merely doing their job. Anything less and they must be reviled for letting us down.
We dismantle the idea of heroism by reducing our heroes to bite sized pieces that we can consume. We attribute motives to everything they do, celebrate small feats disproportionately, single out individuals selectively and deify people so precipitously that a fall becomes inevitable. In short, we make our heroes dependent on our responses to them and in doing so, reduce them to our size.
Nowhere is this effort more evident than in the case of Sachin. Given that he has proved immune to most blandishments that we have offered him, and shown that what really moves him is still the game and not its incidental perks, we have now focused our energies on carping about every single performance of his and passing judgment on a minute-by-minute basis. So, even after playing a match-winning knock, when he fails in a couple of innings, we hear murmurs about his correct place in the batting order. As a pattern, this is hardly new. He has to fail but a couple of times, and whispers of when he should retire rise in cacophonous synchrony. And this in spite of having carried the fragile self-image of an entire country on his shoulders for as long as he has.
And yet, his batting many times showed us the meaning of heroism that lies beyond the pale of mediocre scrutiny as he blurred the lines between mere greatness and divinity as he stood alone and battled against impossible odds in an incandescent display of magnificent proportions. He humbled us, all of us, regardless of whether we were believers in his sublime powers or not. He made criticism irrelevant for he batted in a language that neither critics nor fans could ever grasp.
And yet, when we have lost matches despite his heroics (remember the recent knock against Australia or the knock against Pakistan in test match), and isn’t that what really matters in the end? Shouldn’t Sachin have finished the job, as a former cricketing greats suggest from the safety of their writing desk? Shouldn’t the others have pitched in? Sport invites these questions, indeed it thrives on them, but in fact it is supremely unimportant whether we win or loose. Victory is the apparent purpose of sport; in truth it is in large part, a quest for heroes. Who cares today whether we won a series against England in 2003? Will we remember the outcome of this series in a few years time? What we do remember is the Sachin Sharjah knock, Sehwag’s triple century and KUmble’s heoic effort against Pakistan. Sport exists to elevate us beyond our existing plane of existence and to generate heroes of a purity that real life can no longer produce.
Such defeats are good for the sport in one way. Had we won, we would have buried the idea of heroism in the shrill rhetoric of triumphalism that comes so naturally to us nowadays. THE TRAGEDY OF THE HERO MAKES THE STORY EPIC. Like sad endings in film, the futility of Sachin’s pursuit makes this story a timeless one. It allows us to focus on the meaning of sport and the heroes it throws up rather than on the statistic of one more win.
The triumph of heroes is that they rise above everything, even our cynical destruction of the very ideal that sustains them. We are more comfortable today with celebrities than with heroes for they are patently the product of the attention we have chosen, sometimes, inexplicably to shower on them. Celebrities are owned commodities, who we can play with and move up and down a ‘power list’. We are confounded by the truly great, but try as we might, we cannot help but be transported into place we have never been and experiences emotions we have never dreamed possible when we encounter a genuine hero.
In a match or two, Sachin will fail and the carping will be back. But in this brief heady interval, let us savour the sweetness that sport can bring and let us exult with the giddy sense of elevation that comes from being in touch with the divine. This is why we love sport. The cheerleaders and their dance moves can wait.
