If you come away from India not overwhelmed, you’re doing it wrong. Or, like Christopher Columbus, you got lost and ended up somewhere else.
TELFORD VICE in Cape Town
AFTER everything conjured about India by outsiders, from EM Forster to Elizabeth Gilbert to Steven Spielberg to Danny Boyle, in millions of words and images slung around the world in the course of hundreds of years, it took Donald Trump only a few syllables to stoop to a hitherto unplumbed low. How difficult can it be for anyone to pronounce the names of Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli something like properly? Surely not as hard as calling them “Soochin Tendulkerrr and Virot Kohleee”, as Trump did at Motera Stadium in Ahmedabad last month. Civilians might be forgiven, but not the orangutang who has access to the nuclear codes. And to the best dialogue coaching money can buy.
Name-mangling is far from an exclusively American sport. While Trump would no doubt argue to the contrary like a two-year-old, he is not the greatest world champion name-mangler of them all ever. Here in Africa, for instance, white tongues distort black names and black tongues distort white names with equal impunity. As South Africans, we understand that we don’t understand each other at all well at cultural and human levels. And that anyone who says they do is a liar trying to be elected to political office.
So why do we, along with all other non-Indians, keep trying to understand India and Indians? We’ve been attempting to make sense of the place and its people since Megasthenes, a Greek serving as an ambassador in the court of Syria’s Seleucus Nikator, popped over to the subcontinent to visit emperor Chandragupta Maurya more than 2,300 years ago. Of course, Megasthenes wrote a book about his visit: Indica. And so an obsession was born that has begat A Passage to India, Eat, Pray, Love, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Slumdog Millionaire, among many others of lesser and greater merit. Find a cricketminded non-Asian who says they like Bollywood movies and they probably mean they’ve seen Lagaan. They enjoyed it, but what’s with all those songs? You would be shocked, gentle Indian reader, to learn how many people not of your kin do not know yoga emerged in the Indus-Sarasvati civilisation in northern India some 5,000 years ago. What? You mean it’s not from California? Or Cape Town?
India is too big, too complex and too established on its own special journey to make sense to those of us not from there. It is not too other: that’s the easy, flawed way out taken by Western anthropology through the ages. There is much about India that anyone from anywhere will recognise as part of the global human experience — good food is good food, regardless of where it comes from. But India is too much. Of everything. If you come away from the country not overwhelmed, every time you visit, you’re doing it wrong. Or, like Christopher Columbus, you got lost and ended up somewhere else instead.
“Welcome to pittsville.” – Jacques Kallis at the end of his first tour to India.
Whether Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis have seen Lagaan doesn’t matter. We can be sure we won’t find them in a yoga studio anytime soon and that, like the rest of us, they don’t understand India. But, unlike most of us, they do understand how to win there. Both were part of the side that claimed South Africa’s first series victory of any kind in India, in February and March 2000 when Hansie Cronjé’s team won in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Those were Tendulkar’s last Tests as India’s captain, and the exposure of Cronjé’s dramatic fall from grace into the hell of matchfixing began not long afterwards. But Boucher still lists his 27 not out at Wankhede Stadium, where he took guard on a turning pitch with South Africa six down needing 35 to win and the great Anil Kumble having already claimed four, as his most memorable performance in 467 matches as an international. Boucher’s method was, surely, madness: he bristled with attacking intent and reeled off six boundaries, four of them pulled or swept off the debuting Murali Kartik. The bloke at the other end took a different approach: he batted for more than three hours and faced 129 balls — easily the weightiest stay of the innings in both terms — for his unbeaten 36. He was Kallis. Beaten in three days, India had little hope of unscrambling their minds before the second Test started five days later. This time they lost by an innings with Kallis’ 95 among South Africa’s five half-centuries and Nicky Bojé taking match figures of 7/93. India saved some face by winning three of the first four games of the subsequent ODI series, which they claimed with a match to spare.
The country left its mark on its visitors, as was apparent from the comments attributed to them in a parting shot billed as a “postcard from India” and that can still be found online. Cronjé: “Different!” Bojé: “Unbelievable, smashing, lovely, beautiful, tremendous, an experience to behold.” Shaun Pollock: “Thank you India! Alanis Morissette was right!” Pieter Strydom: “I never thought people could be so fanatical about cricket.” Gary Kirsten: “I’m looking forward to getting home. The travel has been over-the-top. No Delhi belly and not a single club sandwich. I did not get on the golf course but the fact that we had such a brilliant manager [Goolam Rajah] made the tour. And winning the Test series was a major achievement.” Neil McKenzie: “It’s hot, put the A/C on!” Henry Williams: “My first [tour of India] and hopefully not my last.” Thanks to his involvement in the Cronjé scandal it was his last tour anywhere. Mornantau Hayward: “It was a pleasure.” Steve Elworthy: “I’m glad it’s taken me 35 years to get here; definitely my top holiday destination!” Dale Benkenstein: “It’s great to be back in the fold.” Boucher: “Hurricane Hindu.” Lance Klusener: “’n toe bek is ’n heel bek [A shut mouth is an unbroken mouth]. I thank you for your conscientiality [sic], baby.” Kallis: “Welcome to pittsville.” Herschelle Gibbs: “If ever there was a need to experiment.” Derek Crookes: “I have not got sick on this tour. Believe me, this is quite an achievement!” Rajah: “This is my swansong!” Not quite: Rajah served as South Africa’s manager until November 2011. Graham Ford: “A great learning experience. You’ve got to pick the right team at the right time — horses for courses.” Corrie Van Zyl: “I’m definitely sending my wife here for a holiday.” Craig Smith, the physiotherapist: “A good walk spoiled by such exuberant hospitality.”
Clearly, at least some of those opinions have been revised or at least muted. Who among us knew, in 2000, that India would soon be the epicentre of world cricket, and with it the world’s players’ prime paymaster? Any cricketminded non-Asian who claims they saw the IPL coming the early 2000s has a future in politics. Boucher and Kallis played 120 IPL and Champions League T20 games in India, along with 41 more matches for South Africa on subsequent tours there. And there they are again, now as South Africa’s coach and batting consultant. At least, Boucher is there. Kallis became a father on Wednesday and, consequently, has stayed home.
How hard will Boucher lean on the legend of his 27 not out to try and extract the best from his team as they look to add success in the three ODIs they are scheduled to play over the next six days to their 3-0 triumph over Australia? Ordinarily, beating even the Aussies in an arbitrary ODI rubber wouldn’t count for much. But, in the wake of South Africa losing eight of their first dozen completed matches at home this summer, their supporters are hoping hard that they have reached a turning point.
Much has changed about the cricketing relationship between South Africa and India in the 20 years since Kallis and Boucher forged an understanding about how to win in that country. Of the 16 players in Boucher’s current squad only Janneman Malan has not played at a significant level in India before. In 2000, exactly half of the 18 South Africans who featured in the Test and ODI series had not been part of previous tours to India. Then the IPL remained unthought. Now this series is a warm-up for the 2020 edition, if it happens. Ah yes: in 2000 there was no Coronavirus. Twenty years ago India wasn’t yet the global travel and communications leader it has since become, facts that no doubt influenced the more unkind views the players expressed then. That’s not to excuse them. We didn’t understand India then and we don’t now. And it’s not to say that because the South Africans of 2000 worked out how to win there that the knowledge has been retained by succeeding teams: the two white-ball series of 2015 are their only other successful rubbers there. For this series to go their way will need a script like Lagaan. Without the songs.
First published by Cricbuzz.
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