Swansong of The God

March 2^nd, 1996 was the day. A usual day in the life of a usual child… amidst the splattered layout of my memories of those times, I can distinctly recollect that day. Unkind weather outside restricted me in front of the Television, I was never a television person… it confines and confounds my imagination, still does…

Nevertheless I was there staring at the colourful pictures with paltry attention. My grandfather was sitting obstinately watching the television, unresponsive of his surroundings and getting stirred momentarily with emotions of joy, chagrin, hysteria and anticipation.

I remained indifferent, involved in unproductive, unyielding undertakings to feed my unrest… till I heard a chant… a hymn… almost like a mantra echoing in a synchrony…

Impossible to ignore, it was. It was like a psalm being sung in respect of a God. But I saw no godly figure with a laminating halo, no heavenly body with a spinning chakra in his hand… I saw a mere mortal, short in height… armoured in all manners of protective gears… a curiosity sparked in me and I asked my grandfather…

“Who is that?”

My grandfather smiled and replied, “That my child… is a master”

Since that day I have been curious about that sport and especially that little man my grandfather called ‘The Master’. 19 years have passed since then and that man turned from ‘Master’ to ‘Legend’ and finally ‘God’.

The sport kept changing every day, every possible way to an extent that all my eagerness to follow it drowned… but that man… that very man stuck to his duty, stuck to his dedication, ignoring the baleful jabbers and palavers of his naysayers and sycophants alike.

It’s the 16^th of November today, and I hear those chants again… for the last time perchance… I hear those fanatics painted in the essence of their god… I see them crying, laughing, cheering, and shouting… all for the last time… he may be the one hanging up his boots, but his fanatics are the one feeling a hanging pain in their heart… forlorn and forever lasting…

There is a lump in my throat… and I am an iron blood man immune to emotions and concerns… but there a dryness I feel in my throat, a dreariness in my body… those chants will end today, I knew he never heard me… I was never in the crowd, I never wore his colours but I spoke those words time and time again…

I was never a stern believer of gods, but you believe in a God when you see one… and this one you didn’t have to serve, he served us…

I shall gather all my strength, hold firmly to my emotions and chant in his name again… one last time, I know this time again he won’t be able to hear me but that never stopped me before so why should it stop me now…

So here’s to you ‘Little Master’… 

here’s to ‘The Legend’… 

here’s to the only single ‘God’ I knew... and adulated…

“SACHINNN… SACHINNN…

SACHINNN… SACHINNN…

SACHINNN… SACHINNN…”