The God who looked like a man

I was unsure of what to feel while watching him walk down in heavy steps with a stump in his hand, for the last time. Never thought it would happen to me but now that I am reminiscing and playing the videotape in my mind of last 16 or so years that I have watched cricket, my throat is having this seldom pain of choking, eyes are just a little bit more moist than usual and a feeling of hollowness is creeping in my mind. I know it's temporary, but what is not.

It's officially over; my childhood, my younger years, the days of standing by the big glass windows of TV shops in school uniform while on the way back home in order not to miss watching him play, the days of continuing the interrupted work after he was out, the days of sadness after he failed to deliver our unrealistic expectations, the days of euphoria after his glorious drives and centuries. Aaah, those precious days. How can one man, whom I have never ever met and probably will never meet, fill my heart with nostalgia and sadness?

The game must go on, in fact it will, maybe with more grace than ever in the footprints of the legend. Coming generations will look at his numbers and might acknowledge his mastery. Maybe these numbers will be surpassed, maybe the records will be broken, maybe new legends will walk the crease but that divine aura, that sheer joy of watching a little humble man wearing those fat pads, that helmet with the flag of a country which I so deeply love and carrying that heavy wooden thing, will be blatantly missing. I will still watch the game, I will sometimes still have those foolish and baseless superstitious rounds of holding my pee, blinking my eyes five times in one second, keeping my fingers tangled in particular constellations and alike, until we win a tense match or while someone special is in the 90s; but certainly that someone special will never be there, he retired today. Sachin is retired. The feeling will take months to sink in, maybe more than that and when it has, I will look back and realize with a sense of unexplainable feeling "I lived in the times of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar".

Thank you very much Tendlya, for being so greedy to play all these years and for giving us a truly memorable childhood and moments. Those memories will be cherished. Thank you so very much from the deepest of my heart.


(Photo taken somewhere from the internet.)

1 comment:

  1. I was expecting you to write about Tendlya. I opened your blog just imagining something like this. (or just this.) He will be missed on the ground for the centuries to come. :(

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