To Dravid, With Love - Diary of an Indian Sports fan

The year is 2012, the place Bangalore. We are driving down a high-end street in Indira nagar, looking for a bungalow named “Srishti”. The roads are pretty deserted, and yet we have asked a couple of people for directions – they have not been very specific, just pointed to a random cluster of houses in the distance. Baba spots this gorgeous bungalow somewhere there, complete with ornate pillars, lavish balconies,and a sprawling lawn.

“That must be it, “ he exclaims.

I see a nearer bungalow on the opposite side of the road. It is elegant, no doubt, but in a more well-kept, prim, understated way.

“No, that one,” I say, and sure enough, as we drive nearer, the name “Srishti” on a simple marble nameplate stares back at us.

“How could you know?” Baba asks, taken aback.

“It’s Rahul Dravid’s house, Baba,” I say, taking out my camera with a beaming smile, “It has to be like the man…”

(Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman after the 376-run partnership against Australia at Eden Gardens in 2001)

This is not an attempt to brag. I was not doing all this because this is what I wanted to be as a person, but because I wanted to be like you in every way. Initially, it felt great – it gave me a kind of self-fabricated telepathic connection to you.

However, it has not always been smooth sailing with you. When you declared the innings with against Pakistan, the whole country was in an uproar – nobody could believe that an indubitable character like you could court such controversy. And though I have defended you in every discussion that followed regarding this, personally it has been a hard decision to accept – agreed Tendulkar becomes pretty selfish when he approaches a milestone (not everyone is blessed with the raw swag of Virender Sehwag), but how long would it have taken to score merely six more runs?

Personally, however, the worst phase of them all was the entire Chappell-Ganguly controversy. The whole of Bengal (and even people outside Bengal) was livid with the unceremonious dumping of Ganguly from a side that he had literally built from scratch – and for once, they were justified. And even before I could recover from this shock, Chappell had appointed you skipper, and the very people who had celebrated you as the most selfless player ever, were now accusing you of siding with Chappell to fulfill some ulterior motive.

The allegations against you were excruciating to say the least – that you had always wanted the captain’s baton; that you were jealous of the other two pillars of the team; that you had turned against the very person who was considered your closest friend in the side. I remember praying every morning that you would do something dramatic to silence these people – maybe step down or speak up against the autocrat. That was probably the first time your impeccable decency and your motto of “keep playing, and let the detractors keep talking” enraged me. The memory of the India-South Africa ODI at Eden Gardens, where the entire stadium chanted slogans against you and Chappell, still haunts me. I remember picking up a heated argument with an elderly uncle that day, who sort of represented the collective Bengali sentiment of the hour.

“It was gross injustice. It deserves a protest in exactly this scale,” he said.

“Team before individual, every single time. It is the gospel of every sport, and it has to be honoured,” I retaliated, much to the awe of relatives who had hardly ever heard my raised voice before.

But then, what is a decades-old relationship without a blemish or two, here and there?

This tribute was never meant to be an ode to the cricketer Rahul Dravid; not to your readiness to don the keeper’s gloves when the team needed an extra batsman; nor to your completely uncharacteristic (it still remains the second fastest ODI half-century by an Indian); nor to your aggressive stroke-making when in your late 200s against Pakistan at Rawalpindi, ignoring the glorious opportunity of becoming only the second Indian cricketer to score a 300 in Test cricket; nor your choosing to retire quietly before the beginning of a series, thus relinquishing the opportunity to have the glorious farewell that you so thoroughly deserved; nor your refusal to join the BCCI's Board of Advisors, and instead choosing to make a difference at the grass-root level by coaching the Indian U-19s – all these have not been the emphasis of this article. Instead, I want to thank you.

I thank you for moments of pure, unadulterated ecstasy - the kind that are so intense that they can be locked up in your mind, and recalled in melancholy with un-mildewed accuracy, like that winning boundary you hit in the epic . I thank you for inculcating in me a minimum amount of patience – it is only in the desire to revere you that an inherently impetuous and edgy person like me repeatedly attempts to show at least a semblance of serenity even in the face of ultimate exasperation. I thank you for making me a slightly better person than I would have been if I had been ignorant of you, slightly more dependable at least..

But most of all, I thank you for the pride that I get in being your fan – a sort of reflected glory that this satellite of yours basks in every time your name is uttered.

"Where are you? Your Dravid is retiring..."

Your Dravid. Thank you, for letting me be the owner of the legacy of these two powerful words. For millions may share it with me, but for each and every one of us, they mean something different - they mean their own personal world.

(Read about the sports memories of an Indian female sports fan)