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In a republic with a short history and a thin national narrative, cricket and Bollywood are India's baseball and apple pie. Rahul makes air quotes and says, "Indian culture."
I'm dreading the usual chaos of an Indian airport.
But once inside, I am transported. Is this the future? The place is new and serene. The floors are shiny. A fancy coffee kiosk teems with under-caffeinated commuters. The food court has a Subway, a Baskin-Robbins, a McDonald's, a Yo!China. There's a bookstore. A bronze elephant towers in the lobby.
That's when I see it.
There's a restaurant named Dilli Streat. It's a take on Delhi's famous street-food scene. It has slightly dressed-up versions of blue-collar classics. The concept is an ironic mixture of old and new, with a winking nod to a past seen as quaint yet valuable. Cynicism and irony, on back-to-back days.
India is changing at lightning speed.
I think of Jane Leavy's magnificent book about Mickey Mantle, and her documenting the moment when Americans began viewing our idols differently. India, it seems, is approaching that day. Another question about Tendulkar arises: Is he the final star athlete created by that deeply earnest society, the one with its suspension of disbelief fully intact?
Is he the last hero?
The thirst of a tabloid reporter and the love of a starstruck child are fruit from the same tree. Maybe the difference is intent, and maybe it's innocence, which sounds like the pitter-patter of tiny feet on marble floors. Kids chase their favorite cricketers around the hotel. Their joy restores faith, washes away cynicism. Maybe the soul of cricket can survive this landslide of change.
They seem so confident, not people who need any outside validation. Maybe Sachin isn't needed any longer. Maybe Sehwag is more representative. That hasn't occurred to me until now. Later I'll talk to an Indian journalist, Vaibhav Vats, who is writing about cricket as a window into national self-esteem. He thinks Sachin isn't as important as he used to be.
"It's about wealth," Vats says. "So you don't look for external things to shore up your own sense of identity. There isn't the identity crisis there was then."
Other kids take blue paint and, emulating a famous billboard around the country, tag themselves "Bleed Blue". Sports marketing creating fan behaviour creating more sports marketing: a snake eating its tail.
Andy saw a game in this stadium on television once, India versus Pakistan, and the cacophony when an Indian player bowled his opponent seemed to come out of his television and transport his London home across two oceans and several lesser seas. That noise is something he cannot forget. He's chasing that ghost, left a wife and two kids at home for six weeks to chase it halfway around the world.
Sunil begat Sachin begat Sehwag. From insecurity to confidence to aggression.
A feeling arises, a rare one, that you are part of a group watching something special. The power of sport is that, on occasion, it redeems the messes we create around it. Cricket can be stronger than the forces changing it. Victories are fleeting, but the poems are what matters. I don't know if cricket is about to be ruined, or if Sachin is no longer needed, if he's retiring or if he'll defy expectations and play 10 more years. These are things we can guess about but never know.
I do know this: I am a fan. I am sunburned but do not care. I lose track of time. That's not a narrative flourish. Hours seem like moments.
Rapture comes to the people here. I see Sachin constructing a score, and I understand the planning, and the years of experience, that lead a man to this field on this day, and to the artistry he now holds as part of himself, like a chamber of his heart. We are congregants in a church. We are watching the son of a poet. The stand-up comedian is serious. This is a perfect at-bat, Andy tells me. This is art, and I am lucky to see it. Soon, Sachin will be gone. This feeling will be gone. Right now, it is alive. It has the power of a name, immortal and pure.
Two pitches, two sixes. The air is sucked out of the stadium, and Bon Jovi is played again. But now, incredibly, the crowd noise is louder than the sound system. The real finally trumps the fake.
He's done it. A century. I've never been in a stadium that feels like this one. Hindus and Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, people from different castes and classes, speakers of a dozen languages, all citizens in the Republic of Sachin. The stern cops give wide smiles and thumbs-ups. The chant goes from "Sachin! Sachin!" to "Hoo… ha… IN-DI-A!" They are interchangeable.
The team is a proxy for the nation, so what does an Indian collapse tell them about India? About India without Sachin?
Now 59 from 48. Then India gets a wicket. Then a second in a row. The crowd comes alive. What does this revival tell them about their nation? About themselves?
Sachin Tendulkar says goodbye and closes his door, while, in every direction, a vast nation sees its hopes and dreams in him, for at least a little while longer. I step into the elevator, then a car, then three flights, then my car, then my house. I return from blind alleys and brightly lit fields, having found my moment of rapture and, at the end, the man who created it. I've found both the riddle and the answer, and I wonder what it must cost someone to be both of those things. One part of my conversation with Tendulkar will return to me every time India plays in this World Cup.
His agent told me he's aware of what he means to people, of the symbolic importance of being both the beginning and end of something. He is a bridge, and it is vital to the psyche of a nation that he remains intact. He gets it. That's why he never loses focus. Nothing, it turns out, is effortless. In his room, he seems tired, worn out mentally and physically. He needs a break. I ask when was the last time he had 20 days off in a row with nothing to do. No balls to hit or billions to represent.
"I'm waiting for that time to come," he says.
In a republic with a short history and a thin national narrative, cricket and Bollywood are India's baseball and apple pie. Rahul makes air quotes and says, "Indian culture."
I'm dreading the usual chaos of an Indian airport.
But once inside, I am transported. Is this the future? The place is new and serene. The floors are shiny. A fancy coffee kiosk teems with under-caffeinated commuters. The food court has a Subway, a Baskin-Robbins, a McDonald's, a Yo!China. There's a bookstore. A bronze elephant towers in the lobby.
That's when I see it.
There's a restaurant named Dilli Streat. It's a take on Delhi's famous street-food scene. It has slightly dressed-up versions of blue-collar classics. The concept is an ironic mixture of old and new, with a winking nod to a past seen as quaint yet valuable. Cynicism and irony, on back-to-back days.
India is changing at lightning speed.
I think of Jane Leavy's magnificent book about Mickey Mantle, and her documenting the moment when Americans began viewing our idols differently. India, it seems, is approaching that day. Another question about Tendulkar arises: Is he the final star athlete created by that deeply earnest society, the one with its suspension of disbelief fully intact?
Is he the last hero?
The thirst of a tabloid reporter and the love of a starstruck child are fruit from the same tree. Maybe the difference is intent, and maybe it's innocence, which sounds like the pitter-patter of tiny feet on marble floors. Kids chase their favorite cricketers around the hotel. Their joy restores faith, washes away cynicism. Maybe the soul of cricket can survive this landslide of change.
They seem so confident, not people who need any outside validation. Maybe Sachin isn't needed any longer. Maybe Sehwag is more representative. That hasn't occurred to me until now. Later I'll talk to an Indian journalist, Vaibhav Vats, who is writing about cricket as a window into national self-esteem. He thinks Sachin isn't as important as he used to be.
"It's about wealth," Vats says. "So you don't look for external things to shore up your own sense of identity. There isn't the identity crisis there was then."
Other kids take blue paint and, emulating a famous billboard around the country, tag themselves "Bleed Blue". Sports marketing creating fan behaviour creating more sports marketing: a snake eating its tail.
Andy saw a game in this stadium on television once, India versus Pakistan, and the cacophony when an Indian player bowled his opponent seemed to come out of his television and transport his London home across two oceans and several lesser seas. That noise is something he cannot forget. He's chasing that ghost, left a wife and two kids at home for six weeks to chase it halfway around the world.
Sunil begat Sachin begat Sehwag. From insecurity to confidence to aggression.
A feeling arises, a rare one, that you are part of a group watching something special. The power of sport is that, on occasion, it redeems the messes we create around it. Cricket can be stronger than the forces changing it. Victories are fleeting, but the poems are what matters. I don't know if cricket is about to be ruined, or if Sachin is no longer needed, if he's retiring or if he'll defy expectations and play 10 more years. These are things we can guess about but never know.
I do know this: I am a fan. I am sunburned but do not care. I lose track of time. That's not a narrative flourish. Hours seem like moments.
Rapture comes to the people here. I see Sachin constructing a score, and I understand the planning, and the years of experience, that lead a man to this field on this day, and to the artistry he now holds as part of himself, like a chamber of his heart. We are congregants in a church. We are watching the son of a poet. The stand-up comedian is serious. This is a perfect at-bat, Andy tells me. This is art, and I am lucky to see it. Soon, Sachin will be gone. This feeling will be gone. Right now, it is alive. It has the power of a name, immortal and pure.
Two pitches, two sixes. The air is sucked out of the stadium, and Bon Jovi is played again. But now, incredibly, the crowd noise is louder than the sound system. The real finally trumps the fake.
He's done it. A century. I've never been in a stadium that feels like this one. Hindus and Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, people from different castes and classes, speakers of a dozen languages, all citizens in the Republic of Sachin. The stern cops give wide smiles and thumbs-ups. The chant goes from "Sachin! Sachin!" to "Hoo… ha… IN-DI-A!" They are interchangeable.
The team is a proxy for the nation, so what does an Indian collapse tell them about India? About India without Sachin?
Now 59 from 48. Then India gets a wicket. Then a second in a row. The crowd comes alive. What does this revival tell them about their nation? About themselves?
Sachin Tendulkar says goodbye and closes his door, while, in every direction, a vast nation sees its hopes and dreams in him, for at least a little while longer. I step into the elevator, then a car, then three flights, then my car, then my house. I return from blind alleys and brightly lit fields, having found my moment of rapture and, at the end, the man who created it. I've found both the riddle and the answer, and I wonder what it must cost someone to be both of those things. One part of my conversation with Tendulkar will return to me every time India plays in this World Cup.
His agent told me he's aware of what he means to people, of the symbolic importance of being both the beginning and end of something. He is a bridge, and it is vital to the psyche of a nation that he remains intact. He gets it. That's why he never loses focus. Nothing, it turns out, is effortless. In his room, he seems tired, worn out mentally and physically. He needs a break. I ask when was the last time he had 20 days off in a row with nothing to do. No balls to hit or billions to represent.
"I'm waiting for that time to come," he says.
