It’s not all cricket! Shakespeare and Ghālib trade poetic punches

It’s not all cricket!

Shakespeare and Ghālib trade poetic punches

Sudhanshu Mani

Once upon a time, the cricketing saga between India and England was as bitter as an unripe lemon, as colonial echoes reverberated through the rivalry like an outdated playlist. But the times have changed! It all kicked off in '71 when Ajit Wadekar's squad waltzed into England and left with a victorious swagger. Fast forward to July 2002, and we witnessed the rather funny image of Sourav Ganguly celebrating a NatWest series win by twirling his jersey like a cricket-themed Beyoncé on the Lord's balcony as the mighty target of 326 in the final over crumbled like a poorly constructed sandcastle.

 

Over the years, more than a hundred ODIs have been waged, and oh, the drama! Tempers flared hotter than any Indian curry, banter flowed smoother than tea at a British garden party, and competitiveness hung in the air like a well-tossed googly. But by the time the recent Cricket World Cup approached, the tables had turned faster than a spinning cricket ball. India, the undisputed powerhouse, towered over England, who found themselves languishing at the bottom of the points table, contemplating their fate like a Shakespearean tragedy. The once-mighty inventors of cricket now pale in comparison to the cricketing behemoth that India has become. The rivalry has mellowed, and those who once introduced Indians to cricket are now but a feeble shadow of the game's original architects.

 

Ah, imagine the celestial bleachers where the cricket gods sit, munching on divine popcorn, and having a good laugh at the sitcom that is cricket! But wait, let's peek into the VVIP pavilion where my great-uncle Shakespeare and chachā (uncle) Ghālib are sipping on their cosmic drinks and dissecting the drama. Shakespeare, bless his quill, seems to be in a bit of denial, sporting a perplexed expression as he contemplates the underdogs showing the original masters a thing or two whereas Ghālib is in the swagger zone, is all bluster and bravado, rubbing salt in the Shakespearean wound. If cricket had soliloquies, we would have Shakespeare passionately soliloquizing about the existential crisis of a yorker, while Ghālib drops rhymes so smooth on cover drives that even the cricket ball starts blushing. Was it a mere cricket stadium? Not at all, it was an ecumenical comedy club where the universe itself is the audience, and the laughter echoes through the Milky Way. It was an uplifting spectacle for me, with a touch of literary finesse embellishing the cricketing circus, and while I traded cricketing thunderbolts for belly laughs, I recount, verbatim, the exchanges from this cerebral match made in the heavens, where bat meets pen, and the result is a for you to enjoy:

 

Shakespeare: Greetings, oh master of swagger, Gaulib, as my chappie Hamlet would say "To be or not to be” on top or the bottom of the Points’ Table is all a chimera. Do not gloat, remember these words of Macbeth which I ever so slightly modify, “Victory’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. Cricket is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” India's supremacy is as uncertain as your poetic swagger. It's not a matter of if, but a matter of when who will conquer the cricketing cosmos and who will bite the dust.

Ghālib: Wah, Billee Barad, Wah (Bravo Billy the bard, Bravo), what a brave attempt to belittle India’s glory! And disparaging the glorious game of cricket itself. What a damp squib was the match between the Angrez aur Hindustanis (the Englishmen and the Indiana).

 

Thī ḳhabar garm ki angrezon ke uḌeñge purze

dekhne ham bhī ga.e aur bus tamāshā hī huā

(purze: parts, tamāshā: spectacle. The news that the Englishmen would be ravaged was hot and I also rolled up to see the spectacle, which it sure turned out to be.)

 

Haiñ aur bhī duniyā meñ cricketer bahut achchhe

kahte haiñ ki India kā hai andāz-e-sayāñ aur

(sayāñ: watchmanship, preservation. There be many good cricketers in the world but the style of preservation of Indians is unique.)

 

Brace yourself, mere angrez habiib (my English friend), for we have outplayed you at your own game. Consider this victory a souvenir from the land of spice and everything nice!"

 

Shakespeare: Oh my dervish buddy, in the cricketing tapestry, defeat is but a fleeting sonnet for my compatriots,. What seems a tragedy today may birth a comedy on the morrow. Our game, a stage, and we mere players. Were we not the champions last time round? Do read what the sagacious Helena says in All’s Well that Ends Well, “...great floods have flown From simple sources, and great seas have dried...Oft expectation fails and most oft there Where most it promises, and oft it hits Where hope is coldest and despair most fits.”

 

Ghālib: Oh, ShaKHs-e-Peer KHabiis (O, mean old man), as I said, glory, is no longer an English exclusive, ignominy is. Let me throw at you your own Claudio from Measure for Measure, “...The miserable have no other medicine But only hope...”. Cricket is now a universal Indian ghazal, penned in the ink of boundaries and sixers, recited by the bat on the grand stage of the pitch, woven in a wondrous fabric by spinners with dazzling lustre added by pacers". Look at our great players!. Our batters believe in sending the ball over the boundary with poetic cadence to match your sonnets:

 

Zamiin meñ dauḌte phirne ke ham nahīñ qaa.il

jab tak pa.De na chhakkā to phir cricket kyā hai

(Zamiin: ground, qaa.il: supportive, chhakkā: sixer. We are not impressed by the ball racing on the ground, it is no cricket unless we hit the ball for a sixer.)

 

And our bowlers? Sub.haan-allaah (Bravo, Glory be to God). How they trap the batsmen in their net!

 

Hai josh-e-gul bahār meñ yaañ tak ki har taraf

uḌte hue ulajhte haiñ murġh-e-chaman ke paañv

(josh-e-gul; excitement of flower, murġh-e-chaman: birds of the garden. Spring has such frenzied excitement among flowers that it acts like a net and the birds of the garden get tripped and ensnared while taking flight.)

 

Shakespeare: Mock us, if you must, my desi (Indian) brother, but I have spoken wisely through my characters, like the bloke Richmond in Richard III, “...True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings. Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.” We will be back, soon.

 

Ghālib: Behtar, mere dost (Better, my friend) Shakku. Ummiid (hope)!

 

Hazāroñ ḳhvāhisheñ aisī ki har ḳhvāhish pe dam nikle

bahut nikle tire armān lekin phir bhī kam nikle

(ḳhvāhisheñ: wishes, desires. You had thousands of yearnings such that over each of them your breath would spurt forth. Many of these desires were fulfilled yet so many remained unaddressed.)

 

Talking of false hope, grandiose speak and hell, I bung at you Falstaff from the climax of The Merry Wives of Windsor. With horned head, he calls for help from ‘hot-blooded gods’, drools in expectancy and proposes to both the women who appear, ‘magnanimously’. When the two women run off, Falstaff thinks hell itself has a hand in preventing his sexual misadventures, and says, "I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire. He would never else cross me thus."

 

At this point, try to find some solace in make-believe merit from your exit from the world cup, just as a humiliated lover tries to console himself unsuccessfully, painting himself and the beloved in a cosmological prelacy:

 

Nikalnā ḳhuld se aadam kā sunte aa.e haiñ lekin

bahut be-ābrū ho kar tire kūche se ham nikle

(ḳhuld: paradise, eternity, aadam: Adam, be-ābrū: disgraced, kūche: lane. One had heard of Adam's shame at being bunged out of the garden of Eden but this exit is perhaps more disgraceful)

 

Shakespeare: Well, Mirza Gilboy, you are incorrigible. I leave you to your vaunts and exultations and head to the English dressing room. Our players do need a shoulder to cry on.

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