Mahendra Singh Dhoni...

The year is 1998 and the month is April. I am 15, which for guys has never really been a sweet age. The Class X board results are on their way out, causing me to wonder if the one above is indeed benevolent and merciful. Dreams and nightmares, take turns to haunt me every night. A mere mention of the date, when the results might be announced, inspires in me an unknowable dread. Every now and then I can feel my throat parched and the approaching summer is not to be blamed alone.

Making my overweening cup of misery spill over, are the toppers in my group, some even incredibly suggesting two weeks into the vacation that they are bored and rather have the results out the next day. Few people in my life have been condemned with worse. If not for some cataclysmic event – a blazing fire, a breathtaking question paper scam – I know that it is an inevitability that can only be delayed, not denied.

The time is also ripe for germination of that question, which is to follow me and succeeding generations, which no man has been able to answer without mumbling. "What do you plan to do with your life?" and seemingly innocuous versions of it. The question itself has acquired the trait of stealth, being administered without a warning. It has ominous forebodings.

This was my first toxic brush with reality.

Respite came from expected quarters. My taste in music was still in its infancy and not much of a help, but what a succour it would later provide! Reading was restricted to Chemistry or Physics tomes, any of which could be used to stop doors on a particularly windy day. What could a teenager from the dustfields of what was still then Bihar immerse himself into? Cricket, of course, as we had always done…

Sachin…  God, saviour, heartbreaker, career-wrecker, dream-weaver was demolishing Australia in what was then known as the pressure cooker, Sharjah. Our nails were being perennially bitten down to the cuticles. As Warne and I suffered nightmares – for entirely separate reasons – I felt what salvation was like, before Judgement Day was thrust on us. Unbeknown to him, he was carrying the weight of those, who longed for a flight of fancy, from the onerous burdens of ground reality. But this is not about Sachin. This is just to show what cricket and Sachin meant to us then.

However, during those days, in our school assembly ground – that holy entrance to the hallowed torcher-chamber that school is – we were discussing another name. He was closer home, in fact in school. Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s name would come up. Two years senior to me – never seen, only heard and spoken of. The Hindi newspapers could always be trusted to cover the inter-school cricket matches. To spare you the details; he was the DUDE. “Mahendra Singh Dhoni ka balla chamka; DAV champion,” was the headline when he had scored 236 not out runs of 125 balls, taking our school to victory single-handedly, ending the monopoly of Central Academy/ Kendriya Vidyalaya. Rumour had it that the batsman coming in next had padded up all day long, waiting for his time in the sun.  

Much later in life, my close friends from other schools who were better at cricket than I was, would brag how far Dhoni had hit them for a six.

Truth be told, we had grave doubts that he would ever make it to the state XI, let alone to the national side. And to take the liberty to think he could one day captain India was not permissible, irresponsible. For one he was still a student and hence would be conscripted into engineering or medical or worse soon enough. If fortunately he was not found good at academics, and was foolish enough to pursue his passion, he’d soon be the ensnared by the twin scourges of regionalism and favouritism.

Still, through him we had the opportunity to live vicariously. Those endless days of shadow practice, miming, fretting over the leg-glance, and indulging in the near hysterical feeling of taking India to victory alone by a freakish act of cricketing daredevilry was all a reality for us now; for one among us. By this time we had begun to lay claim to the charmed circle of acquaintances he never possessed.           

After that there was the lull and without discussing it much, we got on with our lives. With no news forthcoming we took it that he too had fallen prey to competitive exams, wisely become practical. I had by this time moved out of Ranchi to Hyderabad.

Then one day during my summer vacations of 2001, which were spent in Ranchi, I read his name in the Jharkhand state’s cricket team. Ironically, I felt sad for him. He was still scoring the runs (more than many frontline batsmen) and at a scorching pace, but how high could he fly from here. I worried about his finances 10 years from then and wondered if BCCI had a pension plan.

His name started appearing more and more. Disturbingly. A familiar anxiety gripped me. Could he, of course not? Scoring 236 not out of bowlers who’d later brag about being hit for sixes was one thing; was he good enough for international cricket?

However, the cricketing scenario had taken a drastic turn; match-fixing had brought in Sourav Ganguly as a brash young leader who sought to infuse his side with his kind of players. For once, regionalism was on the retreat.

Then, for the first time I saw him on TV in an inter-zonal match. He seemed powerfully built for a wicket-keeper (all our previous wicket-keepers, for inexplicable reasons had been puny). He had an unmistakable swagger, which has been tempered by time. His hair… cringe. “Is the swagger not enough,” I thought, “must he also have hair like a caveman?” khair majaa aa gaya.

Being Bengali, I predicted why Sourav Ganguly will pick-up Dhoni. And he was selected. And when he scored that 183* against Sri Lanka in Vizag in his second match, I called up my friend Ramya in Vizag and reminded her that he was from my school – hear that not state or city but school. I would remind complete strangers (and countless others) on the train of this very fact and expected to be congratulated and applauded in return. All our fears were allayed. He was here to stay, for good. The rest as they say, is hysteria.