Ramaiyaa’s Six

by Tanuj Khosla

[box]A grandson remembers his cricket-crazy grandfather and a six that made a world of a difference. Tanuj Khosla pens a story.[/box]

“Did Ramaiyaa hit a six? Did India win?” asked my grandfather while I was watching the third Ashes Test Match between England and Australia in our living room.

“No dadu. India is not playing today,” I replied warmly.

He appeared forlorn and slowly limped back to his room using his stick.

I continued to gaze in his direction long after he was gone. This was not the first time such a thing had happened. In fact, I used to have a tough time controlling my tears when similar episodes took place on a daily basis about three years ago. However with the passage of my time I had reconciled to the loss of my best friend and the most passionate cricket lover I know –my dadu, Shri Suresh Kalyan Babu.

Dadu was a district level cricket player himself in his youth, but family responsibilities made him switch to a more ‘stable’ career in accountancy. However his zeal for the game remained undiminished. Even today, people in old Calcutta remember a 40-year-old accountant, his forehead painted with the names of Kapil Dev, Gavaskar and Amarnath, running about like a demented man on the streets with the tricolour in his hand, when Indians lifted the World Cup in 1983. The entire neighbourhood was treated by him to unlimited mishti doi that day. He broke his FDs to buy Pavilion tickets for the whole family for the World Cup semi-final between India and Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens in 1996, only to be bedridden with depression for weeks after that day. Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly were his favourites; the former for his cricketing abilities and the latter for being a ‘son of the soil’.

I have no doubt that it was his passion for the game that kept him sane when he lost dadi, chacha and chachi to a violent attack on their village by suspected Naxalities in 2002. Dadu was at Eden Gardens that day to watch a Ranji trophy match between Assam and West Bengal.

He came to stay with us in Delhi after battling loneliness for a few months, much to the displeasure of ma. Dadu and ma didn’t speak much to each other. Since baba was mostly away on tours, there used to be an eerie silence at home most times, broken only by the sound of cricket commentary on TV.

Dadu introduced me to the game, taught me its nuances and recounted fascinating stories of his ‘meetings’ with many famous cricketers. He followed all cricket matches that were televised, even if they were between some remote county teams of England. He was a walking encyclopaedia on the game and its players. As for me, I became hooked instantly and my fondest childhood memories are that of being huddled with him on his bed watching a match. I used to dig my fingers into popcorn while he savoured his favourite mishti doi. How we used to hug each other when India won a close game!

Then on April 22, 2007 everything changed.

Apart from me, there is at least one other person who shall never forget that date – Indian cricket player K.Ramaiyaa. It was on this day that the shy looking off-spinner from Tamil Nadu made his ODI debut against South Africa at Rajkot. The touring team slammed 312 on a flat wicket. The Indians gave a spirited reply and were coasting along until a middle order collapse tilted the scales in South Africa’s favour. Finally it boiled down to 5 runs of the last ball with the last man K.Ramaiyaa on strike. The lanky lad swung across the line with all his might and had the middle stump knocked out of the ground.

Dadu was extremely furious and upset at that same time. Muttering obscenities in Bengali under his breath, he stormed out of the house to perform his weekly chore of getting groceries. Next thing I remember hearing is the deafening sound of screeching tyres. Eye witnesses say that had the bus driver not braked hard, dadu’s body would have been flung at least 20 feet across the street.

The accident broke 13 bones and completely splintered dadu’s right knee. However it had its biggest impact on his brain. His mind totally lost sense of place and time. He remembered us but not the fact that he was in Delhi or dadi was no more, or whether he had eaten lunch or not. He repeated the same thing again and again, each time as enthusiastically as the previous one. Cricket, which used to be his life, was reduced to querying about Ramaiyaa hitting a six to clinch a victory.

Baba and I were completely shattered to see him this way. I thought ma wouldn’t care, but to my utter surprise her attitude towards him changed completely. Today I can proudly say that in the last three and a half years she has tended to him as lovingly as a daughter would have.

I tried to bring my old dadu back by making him watch cricket matches while feeding him mishti doi. But each time he just sat there with a lost expression on his face, occasionally inquiring about Ramaiyaa’s six.

Even cricket couldn’t heal its greatest fan.

Six days after I wrote this, dadu didn’t get up from his sleep. That evening Ramaiyaa hit a last ball six against South Africa in Jaipur to clinch the Premier Cola Cup for India.

Pics: puzzle script – http://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlescript/

t3mujin – http://www.flickr.com/photos/t3mujin/

Tanuj is an MBA by qualification and currently works at a hedge fund in Singapore. Prior to this, he was a banker in India. He has written guest columns for finance journals like CNBC, The Asset, The Hedge Fund Journal, Institutional Investor, International Adviser, Risk.net etc. in the past and was also a regular guest columnist with The Wall Street Journal. He is often quoted in various financial publications like Reuters, CNBC etc. He can be followed on Twitter @Tanuj_Khosla.

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