I don’t wake up at 530am every weekend for our 2 hours of tennis for all the obvious reasons – health, exercise, physical activity.
Tennis for me is much more than that.
I think Shobha knows it too – that this is the only time I have Freedom from Time.
Yes, tennis does that for me. What gets me up in the morning is sheer joy and my love of this game.
Nothing compares.
So, when the doctor pronounced that I need to be off tennis for 8 weeks, I groaned and protested. He said, “I play tennis too, but you seem to really LOVE the game! “I said you do not understand –it’s not a game. It’s what I breathe. It’s my Oxygen not just for the body, but for my soul. And as I lie on this hospital bed and scroll through our precisely ordained daily schedules, I wonder how I will breathe for the next 8 weeks. Yes, it is so much like oxygen – it’s everywhere, but we value it only when we do not get it – and take it for granted until then.
I was young when I learned how sport binds. At St Edwards School in Shimla, I didn’t want to join the pretentious kids on the cricket team and instead spent time playing marbles on the dirt with the children of the petty shopkeepers (reluctantly admitted by the Catholic Brothers to make up the local quota). Hitting that kancha felt as good as getting the prized wicket in the adjoining field. I was hooked, not just by the game but, by the exuberance of the street kids. I could teach them something, I thought, little realising that I learnt a lot more from them. Mostly that all you need is a tiny round object to bring joy to your life.
Soon, I became a bridge for my new friends to cautiously approach the other field. One of them said he loved cricket but was scared to talk to the smartly dressed kids on the other field. I tossed him a cricket ball. He had a seriously wicked leg spin. I mustered up the courage to introduce him to the cricket snobs – who grudgingly gave him a bowl at the nets.
After taking 3 wickets in 8 balls he was in the team for good and went on to captain the team. Something more interesting happened too – the cricket players started wondering why I was spending so much time with these scruffy kids. So, I introduced them to the joys of “kancha” – and discovered that some of these “upper class” kids were pretty darn good at this sport too. And ever since that day, we were all one. Some of us became lifelong friends. It felt good.
A few years later, I tried to get into the cricket team at The Army Public School in Delhi. I could not bat, and I could not bowl – slight handicaps if you wanted to be a cricket player. But I was by far the best short leg and silly point fielder in the team and so was given a spot as the perennial 12th man – just in case someone did not show up. I would stay up after school and hang out with all the cool cricket lads, put on my whites and hope someone would not turn up. It rarely happened. Arun my oldest buddy was cruel and witty as only the best of friends could be. He said, “Yaar, you are never going to be good enough for the team, so why do you want to be a substitute – except he called it “Sab Ki Choot?”
I got the message. I tried Basketball. Captained the team. This felt like so much more than sport – this was poetic movement, almost a dance. I discovered the sheer exhilaration of being airborne. I would walk home with a ball in my hand imagining I was defending Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s sky hook – the most unstoppable shot in history.
In college at SRCC in Delhi, I played badminton every day. I learned the art of surprise to keep the opponent at bay with unexpected turns of the wrist – and mastered the drop shot, that became the feature of my tennis game years later. But I longed to play outdoors.
So, I joined the college football team and learnt for the first time, what good coaching does. As a striker I thought all you needed to do was dash off in a straight line to the opponent’s goal. The Captain and midfielder, properly trained at Modern school, bellowed, “Hey! pass the fucking ball BACK to me!”. I realised then that sport was about vision, about strategy, and more than anything else – about making time.
Every day, on the way home from the football field I would pass the tennis courts and marvel at how the players combined elegance and power in this strange game. I could never dream of affording a tennis racquet so all I ever did was watch them play. I had never hit a ball with a racquet till I reached Korea at the age of 22.
This was different. Yes, it involved a ball and physical activity, but it transcended every sport I had ever played. This was flair, elegance, creativity, movement. More than anything else I loved the geometry – it was like no other sport. The variations seemed endless. This reminded me of the childhood string game of cat’s cradle.
Every stroke was unique and depended on variations of angle, pace, spin, depth, and height. It depended on your opponent – because no other human hit the ball exactly like you, or like anyone else you ever played against. It depended on the surface of the court. Clay grass and hard are all tennis by name but are actually three very different games. It depended on which season you were playing in because air pressure and humidity required you to readjust your skills. It required body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, speed, endurance, and strength.
And that was just the physical part. Mentally it was like no other game I knew. Unlike other racquet sports like table tennis or badminton or squash, the biggest liability in this sport was TIME- not the lack of it, but the preponderance of it. Too much time between points. Too much time during a point. Too much time to THINK. Of all the variables of pace, arc, angle, spin, and speed. In other words, too much time to fuck up your mind.
You have to read not just the ball, but how you THINK your opponent is thinking about his shot, which determines what you plan to do with your next shot. This is what made Rod Laver the greatest champion of his time – despite being a tiny 5ft 7 inches tall.
This was fascinating. I was in love, and unlike first loves, the more mysteries I unraveled, the deeper was my fascination.
When I think of tennis, I think of Bala, my buddy my first coach. Bala was, and is, my first friend. Both of us 22, discovering a new country, and with time on our hands.
Bala and me in front of Martin Luther Kings jail in Memphis.
Bala may have been a child prodigy that the system forgot. He played Cricket for Tamil Nadu schools and played Table Tennis Nationals, then rushed off to study at IIM Ahmedabad when only 19, thus ending his sporting career.
Bala taught me things that I never thought about – anticipation, court positioning, playing to your strengths and exploiting your opponent’s weaknesses, covering your weaknesses, and nullifying your opponent’s strengths.
And both of us are Federer junkies. We could discuss in minute detail Federer matches, games and even specific points he has played over the years. David Foster Wallace surely had us in mind when he wrote “Roger Federer as as Religious Experience”. I had a precious few minutes with Roger Federer in 2010 and has the temerity to give him a copy of this article and that’s all we talked about for 10 minutes. And yes, he also said, ‘ I love this game and love to practice and every single time I step on court I feel I can get better!
Simple inspiration for us lesser mortals who seek to get better not just at tennis , but at any endeavor in life- PRACTISE!
For non tennis followers who might think that subject title is far fetched I invite you to the journey with this video:-
