Champion in the making

Hyderabad has an enviable record of producing sportspersons of international calibre. I can recall some names: cricketers like C.K. Nayudu from my school days, and Mohammed Azharuddin from the later years. Tennis players like Ghaus Mohammed and Khanum Haji from my years in college. Azhar still draws media attention, but for reasons other than cricket. Ghaus disappeared from the scene. I heard rumours about him hitting the bottle soon after he ceased to be India’s tennis ace. I don’t know if he is still around. Khanum Haji I remember vividly as an athletic young lass bouncing about the court, and, to the delight of Indians, thrashing memsahibs on her way to winning tournaments. She went through a succession of husbands, all non-Muslims. She must be around somewhere. Of all the Hyderabadi sportspersons, the one who has become the heart-throb of India, old and young, is the lovely Sania Mirza, Asia’s number-one woman player who has entered the top-30s in the ATP rankings. She has done her country and community proud. It is ironic that she should beat the receiving end of fundoo bigotry and decide not to play in India to avoid further controversy. My reaction was an outburst of rage: “dung in the mouths of all fundoos”. They are a disgrace to their community and to the nation. Instead of carping about trivialities — how she was photographed or the short tennis-skirt she has to wear (she can’t play in burqa) — you should be praying that this beautiful daughter of India may soon become world’s numero uno.

Social drama with a punch

Among the many things we learnt from our association with the English was the art of creating cartoons with political and social messages. And having mastered the art, we produced some of the best cartoonists in the world: Shankar, R.K. Laxman, Mario Miranda, Rajinder Puri, Sudhir Dar, Sudhir Telang. The names of Indian pioneers have now become a faded memory. Mushirul Hasan, vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia, has unearthed a couple in his Avadh Punch: Wit and Humour in Colonial North India.

The inspiration came from London’s weekly magazine, Punch (1841-2002), which was widely read by our British rulers and by the English-educated Indian elite. It was picked up by Munshi Sajjad Husain of Lucknow who started publishing Avadh Punch in Urdu in 1877. It lasted till 1936. It was largely imitatory, beginning with the name Punch taken from the Punch and Judy show, common in English sea-side resorts till this day. Englishmen are depicted as John Bull with their bulldogs, or as Punch with hooked noses, women as kaisers in spiked helmets, Russians as bears, the Turkish Caliph in a fez cap, India represented as a mother figure. The themes depicted are almost entirely political. There are a few digs at our foreign rulers, keeping their touchiness in mind. A contemporary of Munshi Sajjad Husain, whose name is hardly known to the present generation, was a satirical writer, Wilayat Ali Bambooque. The book makes for a pleasant, informative reading.

Believe it or not

“Purnam Rama Shastri had been studying meditation for many years,” sub-inspector of police, Md. Osman, told an inquest in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, “and recently claimed to have mastered the ancient yogic practice of Jala Stambanam. That is the art of defying the body’s normal physical limits, and he hoped to become head of a new spiritual movement by performing miracles in public.

“On Wednesday night, he invited a crowd to watch him jump from the top of a two-storey building, and despite sustaining mild concussion and a sprained ankle, he claimed to have defied gravity. Intoxicated with his success, he then invited the crowd to watch him descend into a well at midnight, assuring his family that Jala Stambanam would enable him to breathe under water, and that he would be unharmed when they winched him up next morning. After lowering Purnam Rama Shastri into the well, they all went home, marvelling at his miraculous powers. But when they returned to the well next morning, they found that he had drowned, and his body had to be fished out by police divers. In the interests of public health, we recommend that nobody should drink unboiled water from the well for seven days.”

(Courtesy: Private Eye, Feb 21, 2008)

Everything and nothing

I was going over an anthology of Urdu poetry when I came across a verse of Babar Ali Anees (1804-1874), which I had marked earlier. I am not sure if I have translated and published it in these column; so I had a go at it because I liked the sentiment behind it:

Dunya bhee ajab serai faanee
deykhee
Har cheez yahaan kee aanee jaanee
deykhee
Jo aa kay na jaaye voh burhaapa
deykha
Jo jaa kay na aaye voh jawaanee
deykhee

The world is a strange kind of inn
for a short stay
Everything there comes and then
goes its way
Only youth when gone never comes
back
And old age comes and stays to the
last day.