I distinctly remember the day Sachin retired from international cricket.
It was a sunny winter day, and I was in Ganjam district in Odisha, supposed to work on a project with the Odisha Government. I knew that the series was organised to give Sachin a memorable farewell, and was a little embarrassed with the way BCCI was choosing to flaunt its clout.
The entire series was a farce, with West Indies folding in without a fight. It was on the final day of the Test that a friend messaged me: “Watch match, Sachin is hitting”. I rushed to the canteen and joined the motley crowd in front of the television — cooks and stewards of the guest house, students who’d come for a conference, other guests who nodded at me every morning during breakfast. It was a day when millions of Indians watched Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar in India whites for the final time.
***
Sachin was never an eloquent speaker. Many an interviewer and commentator have tried to pick his brain, but he only replied in clichés and truisms.
And yet, for his final appearance for the country, Sachin came prepared with a chit in his pocket. As people howled and screamed the chant they’d been screaming for decades, Sachin requested them to calm down so he could talk. And went on to deliver a stirring speech for the first time in his life. For the final time in his life.
Fans in the stadium watched as he spoke to them. It was a speech that showed a different aspect of the curly-haired ‘God’. For the first time Sachin let us know about the people close to him. Like somebody had left his kitchen window open by mistake. We got to see him not just as a cricketer, but as a son, brother, husband and father.
There’s one bit from the speech though, that stuck with me for a long, long time.
The speech began with Sachin thanking his father, mother, sister, brother, wife and kids. He then moved on to Mark Mascarenhas, his manager Vinay Nayudu, and his teammates over the last 25 years.
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But it was when he spoke about his relation with his wife that he said something that made me stand up and take notice. It was a bit of the speech that most websites did not carry in their coverage. Some of them tweaked the words a little, while others straight-up omitted it from their reports.
It was when Sachin is talking about his wife Anjali. He confessed: “The most beautiful thing happened to me when I met Anjali in 1990. I know that being a doctor there was a big career in front of her. But she decided that I should continue playing and she took care of the children. Thanks for bearing with all my fuss, all my frustrations, and all sorts of rubbish that I’ve spoken. I normally do. Thanks for bearing with me.”
Right then, Anjali broke down and wiped her tears. It waat this point that Sachin’s breakdown began. By the end of the speech, his voice was shaking with emotions, his face fighting off tears by grimacing.
For the first time in his life, Sachin admitted to doing something wrong.
***
It wasn’t the first time fans of Sachin heard something about their God.
If you’ve followed cricket in India, you’d have heard what I like to call ‘Sachin rumours’. Every idiot from Mumbai and remotely associated with the entertainment industry or cricketing circles used to come up with a different Sachin rumour.
For some reason the rumours all involved Sachin making out with a different set of girls. There were those who claimed that air-hostesses on flights offered him special services, and those that said he took a girl to his room before every match for an adrenaline rush.
As a Sachin fan, I used to be deeply perturbed by these rumours. I dismissed them as a nation feeling rebellious. In the same way that the first adult joke an Indian kid ever hears is about Gandhi, I assumed such rumours gave those guys a sense of stolen heroism, it made them feel like kid who has hidden a caterpillar in his geometry box.
***
On the day Sachin retired, a generation stopped being boys and graduated to becoming men.
Cricket would never be the same again. We would be blown away by the cool genius of Dhoni and the sparkling brilliance of Kohli. But the bittersweet saga of being a Sachin fan, of growing up with him, could never be replaced.
Personally for me, it was the day Sachin became a mortal for the first time. May be behind all the years in the limelight, behind the pressure of being the nation’s adarsh baalak, there was a man as flawed as you and me. A man who lost his temper, said stupid sh*t to his partner, and regretted it for years to come.
On that day, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar became human again. That bit in his speech humanised him. It was akin to Maricha’s curse on Ram, it was Gandhari’s proclamation to Krishna.
On that day, Sachin the God stepped out of the cricket field, and became a human again.
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