Musings of a Wandering Mind

The Cricketing Nation

Don’t worry yet, I am not writing about IPL.

Hockey may be India’s national game, but be it a school ground, public play ground or just a small nondescript lane in a corner of the town, it is cricket that dominates. We are a nation that breaths the game and have made it a part of our identity. Young brats put up make-shift wickets in small lanes and play away the summer holidays. Playgrounds that should ideally serve two teams playing against each other usually buckle under the pressure of population, letting in a dozen cricket pitches emerge, occupied by more than hundred people.

Visuals of cricket was never away from me wherever I travelled in the country. When I struck conversations with strangers and told them where I hail from, my city was identified by cricketers who made it home.

I was sitting uncomfortably in a cramped mini-bus that was taking difficult mountain roads of Garhwal, when the man next to me started a friendly talk. When he asked the usual ice-breaker question – “where are you from?” I told him I am from Bangalore.

“Rahul Dravid,” he responded immediately. He seemed a little excited for a moment, and paused for a few seconds. I gently nodded.

“He is from Bangalore, right?” he said, and continued, “so lot of people play cricket in Bangalore? You have many good players from your city.”

Those were the days when Karnataka contributed considerably to the national cricket team, with names like Javagal Sreenath, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and a few more. Needless to say, lot of people indeed played cricket in Bangalore.

“Do you also play?” I asked him to keep the conversation moving, “is cricket very popular here too?”

“Yes of course, everyone enjoys cricket,” he said in a tone that sounded slightly sober, “But we can’t play here. You need level ground to play but there is hardly any place large enough to play. But they do play in the lower regions like Dehradun and Haridwar.”

Garhwal is a mountain region where ‘level ground’ is almost like an oxymoron. The mountainous terrain is always sloping, and any level ground if exists is used for agriculture.

But walking the slopes of Auli next day, I was to find out that what Garhwalis lacked in favourable terrain, they made with their love for the game. At 10,000 feet high in the mountain, a bunch of young men had managed find a gentle slope amidst patches of snow, and had started their game early in the day. It was such a place that if the batsmen hit the ball a little hard or sent it to the wrong place, the ball would take a plunge in the valley and roll down a few hundred meters. But that did not seem to deter them and they were happy just to have something as close as it can get to level ground.

If that is the story in mountains, it is obvious that you will bump into people playing cricket everywhere when you are in the plains. The “Rahul Dravid” identity was visible in many other places, especially in the North. I heard the same exclamation in a few small towns of Rajasthan too, where the cricketing icon was larger than the city itself. Other things that Bangalore is known for – like the technology hub, software enterprises or the traffic jams did not seem to stay in the top of their minds.

And then I got pulled into the game at times during my journeys. Travelling with an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers in a tsunami relief mission in TamilNadu, we had jumped when we saw a bunch of kids playing in the fields and joined then for an hour’s play. Only a few months back I had found myself with a bunch of kids in Aihole village who wanted me to join them in a game. I was walking on the road admiring the archaeological splendors of the village when a kid came running into me with a bat and shouted – “come, join us.” I obliged readily and was delighted when they offered me to bat first. For next 30 minutes, I was a kid among the kids.

When I was walking the lanes of Rishikesh, I bumped into a photographer from London who was searching for his ‘India Shots’ on the streets. We talked for a while and discussed of images we shot in the last few days. As he scrolled through his photos on the camera LCD, he paused at a picture of children playing cricket, looked at me and said, “this is what India means to me – it’s people, the temples, it’s culture, street cricket.. that’s where I see the real India.” I nodded, fully in agreement. That indeed, real India is.

300 and not out

Post number 300 is a meta. Delighted of course, I am. I would not want to bore you with too many narcissist information and stats, so keeping this short. Thank you for having been dropping by and saying good things all the time 🙂

Update: As if to coincide with the occasion, India Travel Blog can now be accessed via All Top Site India.

Earth Day Post

Much as I love to travel, a part of me is always feeling guilty about the footprints left by us travellers. Let’s admit it, travel is hardly anything environment friendly. The least we can do is to try to minimize our footprints, or if possible, go Carbon Neutral.

It would be nice to scribble some tips and then forget it, but it is much better to say what I am trying to do myself. Here are a few things I have been consciously trying to do, things that have happened by themselves and things that I hope to do someday.

* Not to drive. I have cut down on driving trips drastically. Three years back, nearly every trip I made was in my car. Now the passion of driving has weathered down; and I am also consciously cutting down on my driving. Even within the town, I don’t take the car out unless I have absolutely no choice. I even use a bicycle now for short rides around home, which were done with a car earlier. And if I remember correctly, I haven’t made a driving trip since last August.

* Not to Fly. Flying is one of the least fuel efficient ways to travel. From the usual habit of flying everywhere(when I travel to North), I have started taking trains. It it not entirely successful, the basic reason being that train journeys require lot of planning in advance. And my return journeys are usually open, which makes things more difficult. When I travelled to Rajasthan this February, I managed to take the train to Delhi. But when I was ready to return, I could not find seats in any trains, forcing me to fly back. But abstaining from flying is not entirely by choice. Since I have not been working 9 to 5 these days, I try to keep spending to minimum.

* Simple things – like behaving properly in environmentally sensitive regions is something I have been doing for a very long time now. Things like dispose garbage properly, take care of your consumption, avoid being noisy in the jungles or burning wood, etc. I once stopped consumption of tea(once part of my daily diet) and switched over to coffee(which is also destructive, but to a lesser degree), when I was disturbed by seeing sprawling tea estates in erstwhile thick jungles of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

* Some thing that I strongly hope to do in the next few years is to go Carbon Neutral. The strategy is simple – buy land and start growing trees there and do little else. A few people have been doing this already, and this is a project I am very keen to do once I have some extra money in hand. And then, as and when there is surplus money, expand the periphery of the forest. I am not sure when I can begin on it, but hopefully in less than 3-4 years from now. Ah, I can just imaging my private forest and going there birding every morning, makes me smile.. 🙂

* Another thing I hope to do, but don’t know when and how I can start – to volunteer in our National Parks and surrounding villages in projects aiding conservation. I nearly teamed up with folks at Eaglenest last year but had to drop out due to some constraints.