When Messi Won The World Cup

When Gonzalo Montiel slotted in the final spot kick, Messi fell to his knees, and Leandro Paredes was the first to hug the undisputed GOAT. The redemption was complete. More than a billion people wanted Messi to lift the World Cup. That desire came true exactly a year ago, on 18 December 2022.

I have been a fan of both Italy and Argentina in international football. As a 10-year-old, I watched Italy lose to France in extra time by a 'Golden Goal' in Euro 2000. In 2006, I watched Italy win the World Cup against France. I guess that was the first time I saw a team I was rooting for win a major trophy in any sport. The feeling was surreal. My brother was supporting France, though! The Indian cricket team had yet to win any major trophy in my lifetime.

By the time I started seriously following European football and Barcelona, Messi was an upcoming superstar. My loyalty toward Barcelona naturally translated into strong support for Argentina at the international level.

The 2010 World Cup was the first time I seriously cheered for Argentina. The team was being coached by the legendary Maradona. They had a collection of talented individuals and were expected to perform well. When Argentina was drawn against Germany in the round of 16, the clash was expected to be competitive. What unfolded on 3 July 2010 was pure carnage. Argentina were humbled 4-0 by Germany.

There was a great buildup to the 2022 World Cup. Argentina came to the tournament after winning Copa América and the Finalissima. La Albiceleste were the favorites to win the World Cup. Then came November 22, 2022. Argentina was playing Saudi Arabia. I was at my office, working and watching the match. Argentina was up 1-0, courtesy of a penalty. I went out to have lunch, and I saw, at Pizza Hut, Saudi Arabia score a goal (first or second, I don't remember). Argentina had lost 2-1. It was devastating.

The next game against Mexico was not progressing according to Argentina's wishes. I was tense too. I took out my Argentina jersey—the same one they wore in the final of the 2014 World Cup. A few minutes later, Messi scored! I had found my superstition. After that game, I took a shower before every match, wore the same set of clothes, and sat in a particular position in my chair in my dorm room. I didn't shave or cut my nails throughout the entire tournament. I shaved the night Argentina finally became World Champions.

Argentina won the last group game against Poland quite easily. The round of 16 tie against Australia was going well until about the 70th minute. In the final moments, the game made every Argentina fan a bit edgy. In the end, Argentina set up a quarterfinal clash against the Netherlands.

Argentina had defeated the Netherlands on penalties in the 2014 World Cup semifinal. However, these records hardly mattered. It was supposed to be a tough game. Messi's world-class pass to Molina and his subsequent conversion put Argentina ahead. With a 2-0 lead by the 80th minute, Argentina was cruising in the semifinal until some last-minute heroics from the Dutch forced the game into extra time. Argentina won on penalties again. Croatia was soundly defeated in the semifinal.

The clash for the crown was on 18 December 2022, with Argentina taking on France, the defending champions. France had eliminated Argentina from the 2018 World Cup in the round of 16.

On 18 December 2022, I left my office at 3 PM. The match was to begin at 5 PM Israel Time. I came to my dorm, took a shower, wore the same clothes, and made tea. I refused every offer to watch the game in various public screenings on campus. I was adamant about watching it alone in my room, sitting in a particular position in my chair.

And the game began. Argentina took the lead through Messi's spot kick after Ángel Di María was brought down on the left edge of the box. Nerves had calmed, but Argentina needed at least one more goal to firmly establish control over the game. The second goal was magical. Messi's sublime left-foot flick rolled the ball toward Julian Alvarez, who spotted Alexis Mac Allister running in the French half beyond their defensive lines. Alvarez passed the ball to Mac Allister, who had enough time to look up and spot Di María running unmarked toward the box from the left. He passed it to Di María, and—GOAL!

Argentina was now 2-0 up, and the game seemed to be in their control. Argentina's defensive lines had completely shut out the French attack, and they had zero shots on target. At this point, I received a message from a friend: "So, it's finally happening." And it was happening.

But what came next was unimaginable. It was to turn out to be the greatest World Cup final of all time.

France scored one goal through Mbappé's 80th-minute penalty kick. I became nervous, closed the lid of my laptop, and stepped out onto my balcony to smoke a cigarette. In the quietness of the surroundings, I heard a loud 'YES,' followed by a cheering shout. I suspected it was coming from a lone French supporter somewhere nearby. In a hurry, I stepped into my room, started my laptop, and scattered a handful of cigarette ash on the keyboard. France had scored again, making it 2-2. My heart was pounding. I switched off my phone, put down the laptop's screen, and went to bed. I wasn’t in a position to watch the game any further, and I didn’t want any calls or messages about it. I could hear my heartbeat lying in bed, covered in a quilt in that dark room.

The next time I got up to watch, the regular 90 minutes plus stoppage time was over. I watched the highlight of Messi's 97th-minute on-target shot being pushed above the bar by Lloris.

I did talk to a friend during the break, and he urged me to watch the game. I couldn't. I went to bed again. The next time I had the courage to watch, Mbappé was getting ready to take a penalty. I hurriedly looked at the scoreline: 3-2 in favor of Argentina. Mbappé scored that penalty, and I went back to bed again. Another friend called and urged me to watch the penalty shoot-out. By the time I opened the laptop to watch it, Messi was running in to take the first penalty. He scored, and I sat in my chair to watch the rest. And as it was written in the stars, Argentina won.

I shouted, cried, and talked to friends. My pulse was back to normal. I was relieved.

I made some tea

Picture Credit: Internet

My Anton Zeilinger Story

Today, the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2022 was announced. The prize was awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities, and pioneering quantum information science.” The award was long overdue.

On 13 June this year, I casually walked into a lecture hall after lunch. I walked in because I saw some activity outside the hall. I saw Prof. Zeilinger lecturing there. I sat there for the rest of his lecture. His lecture was part of the Wolf Prize lectures. I didn't understand a word, but his enthusiasm was remarkable. I knew that I was watching a future Nobel laureate. At some point during the lecture, when asked why he did something the way he did, he said that he was a curious man.

Sunset

I had never watched a sunset at the beach before today. I was planning to watch the sun go down over water for quite sometime. I went to watch a sunset on 30 June but we left for the beach quite late and missed it.

Today was the day, the evening of 2 July 2022, when I stood by the Mediterranean in Haifa and watched my first sunset at the beach.

It was soothing. I never ever imagined that one day I will be watching the sun go down over Mediterranean. I never imagined the things that happened to me over the last seven years. 

I remember something from Kafka on the Shore by Murakami.

"And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.”

I am not sure whether the storm is really over but certainly there is a lull before the next storm. Life, anyways, is all about moving from one storm to the next. I hope the next storm won't be as long as the last one ( 13 August 2015 to 9 April 2022).

02 July 2022 (Sunset at  Carmel Beach)

कश्ती भी नहीं बदली दरिया भी नहीं बदला 
और डूबने वालों का जज़्बा भी नहीं बदला 

- ग़ुलाम मोहम्मद क़ासिर

Memories of Diwali

I love Diwali. Diwali is my favourite festival. My first memories of Diwali is from 1994. I grew up in a place littered with British era bungalows. The government allotted  house to my maternal grandfather was huge for a four year old kid. That was the house where I was brought to after coming into this world. I still remember almost everything about that house — the arrangement of furniture in every room, the trees, the British era graveyard 20 steps from my favorite Litchi tree and much more.

I have few recollections of Diwali of 1994. The house was being painted, old things were being disposed of, the roof was being waterproofed, weeds and unwanted plants were being uprooted (I did this a lot). As a kid, I had my own mini Khurpi (Hand Shovel) and I used to take great interest in gardening. I learnt this from my Nana Ji.

My Nani Ma had this huge cache of old glass bottles which would be used as Diyas  for the roof. These bottles had to fitted with wicks made out of old clothes and I used to contribute toward this effort. We had a huge number of earthen diyas to be placed in every corner of the house. These diyas used to be soaked in water for a day and then dried in the sun. The wicks of diyas were made from cotton pads by rolling them on the palms. I used to do this. Now, we get ready-made cotton wicks in the markets but these were old times. The next step was to place these wicks in the diyas and fill the diyas with mustard oil. All was exciting for me up to this stage. When it came to dipping the mouth of the wick in the mustard oil, I used to avoid that. I have never liked the way oil felt on my fingertips (I still don not like it). There used to be Chaumukha Diya which was used for Lakshmi Puja. (These memories are scattered from 1994 to 2001, with the exception of the years 1995-98. That is why I have not been careful with the tenses.)

From 1995 to 1998, there were no Diwali celebrations because of untimely deaths in our family. There was no Lakshimi Puja, no diyas, nothing. Maybe just one symbolic diya. Diwali day was just like any ordinary day in those years. I have some memories that in 1995 my Nana Ji got me a box of Phuljharis and I did some fireworks in spite of the household abstaining from the celebration. My concept of grief and mourning was yet to develop. The Diwali of 1997 came and went without us noticing. The houses in the neighbourood were lit up on that day and we were in gloom. The worst was yet to come. In 1998, my maternal grandfather passed away on 10 October. That Diwali was really dark.

Diwali returned to our home in all its glory in 1999. I have no specific memory of that year but we celebrated it and had fun. Since 1999, I had few special Diwali and a few terrible ones. The Diwali of 2006 was very special to me. I abstained from bursting crackers  from 2003 to 2005. In 2006, I actively enjoyed fireworks before abandoning it for good. It was special for other reasons as well. 2009 and 2010 were decent. I had returned home from college to celebrate Diwali. The Diwali of 2011 was my first and last in BHU. It was wonderful. We spent time cleaning and decorating our hostel, Ramakrishna Hostel. We went out to watch a movie that night. It is another thing that the movie — Ra One — was terrible.

Photos of Ramakrishna Hostel, Banaras Hindu University (Diwali 2011)

The Diwali of 2012 was my first at IISER Mohali and it was joyful. I have no memory of what happened the following year. In 2014, Diwali was on 23 October. It was a mix of despair and hope. My prospective PhD supervisor had confirmed his betrayal over a call on the day of Diwali or a day before.

I spent the Diwali evening of 2016 watching "Before The Flood".  In 2017, I spent my Diwali evening smoking Marlboro Reds at almost deserted Connaught Place. 2018. 2019 & 2020 were quite good and I celebrated them in peace.

This year Diwali fell on 4 November. 4 November is a heartbreaking day for me. In 2006, I had represented my school in the West Zone Chess Tournament in Delhi. I had won my first three games and I was just one game away from winning the West Zone tournament. I lost the last game on 4 November 2006. It was shattering. I went home cried for an hour and slept for four hours. I was really emotional about chess back then.

My Nani Ma passed away on March 2 this year. The maternal side didn't celebrate the festival. However, we celebrated it. She lived a full life. There is no point mourning over the loss of someone who lived a full life. Moreover, my earliest memories of this beautiful festival are associated with her. It would have been a disservice to her if I had not celebrated the festival.

Diwali gives me hope. I look forward to this festival. When I analyzed why I get excited before Diwali, I could think of only one reason —  maybe I am making up for those I missed during my childhood.

The Hopper Connection

Last night I discovered an interesting connection. Road to Perdition is one of my favourite movies. The Wikipedia says — "To establish the lighting of scenes in Road to Perdition, Mendes drew from the paintings of Edward Hopper as a source of inspiration, particularly Hopper's New York Movie (1939)". Mendes is Sam Mendes !

The cinematography in Road to Perdition was done by Conrad Hall who won a total of three Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, the last one of which came posthumously for Road to Perdition.

Road to Perdition is a cinematic marvel. I still remember being in awe of the movie after I watched it and thinking about how brilliant the cinematography was. Then, when I read about the movie a little more, I came to know that a lot of people feel about it the same way. I guess I have some knack for appreciating good art. One of the scenes is etched in my memory forever. The scene where Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) kills John Rooney (Paul Newman) is one of the finest pieces of cinematography ever done (In my humble opinion !).

So last night, after, I googled Edward Hopper and saw a few paintings of him. A few paintings seemed familiar. I had seen them before. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out where I had seen them. In December 2020, I had come across an artcile, "The Spanish 1918 Flu and the COVID-19 Disease: The Art of Remembering and Foreshadowing Pandemics" by Joseph L.Goldstein, Nobel laureate in physiology in 1985. Goldstein discusses how the works of art serve as a tool to remember as well as foreshadow pandemics or any other tragedy. He discusses how Edvard Munch, after surviving Spanish Flu, depicted his experience in a painting, "Self-Portrait with the Spanish Flu". Munch's most famous work is "The Scream".

Goldstein elaborates upon the work of Edward Hopper with regards to COVID-19. I will reproduce Goldstein's  take on Hopper's work.

Cape Cod Morning (1950)

Goldstein's interpretaion of the above painting: "In the painting entitled Cape Cod Morning, a woman gazes out of the bay window, her arms tense and her grip locked tight on the table in front of her. Her focus is forward and to the outside world, yet she seems imprisoned in her own home, anxiously staring toward an uncertain future and hoping that the lockdown will end soon".

That is certainly an interesting take but this is only one of the interpretations of the work and the not the objective truth. An art's interpretation is slave to the intellectual history and disposition of the observer. I don't know about the original motivations of Hopper and his own view of this work, what led him to paint this or what he thought of it after the work was finished.

I can have my own interpretation of this work. In my opinion, this could very well describe a woman in rural America waiting for her husband or her young son to return home who has been missing in action. It has been five years since the end of the World War 2. She wakes up every morning to look out of the window and probe the horizon in the hope that her son/husband might be walking towards her. My interpretation can be completely wrong as I have zero knowledge about rural America, its vegetation, the types of homes they have over there. Do they even have these windows in rural American homes? I brought in World War 2 only because this painting is from 1950 and that seemed a reasonable assumption to make.

Nevertheless, Goldstein's interpretation is very interesting for our times.

Car Chair (1965)

Goldstein's interpretation of the above painting: "Traveling by train or airplane is typically conducive to conversations and interactions among the passengers. But that is not the case in Hopper’s painting entitled Chair Car (1965), in which four travelers are shown inside a commuter train. The inside space is dreary with no decorations. The travelers appear isolated from one another, each lost within his or her own world. The painting evokes a feeling of cold unpleasantness that anticipates our current practice of social distancing".

I don't have my own interpretation of this as of now !

Acknowledgement: The paintings have been taken from WIKIARTS.

Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.

Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt — writes J.M. Coetzee in Waiting for the Barbarians. This one line has stayed with me from the time I read that novel. This was the third novel of Coetzee I was reading and I haven't read him since the day, 25 August 2014, I finished it. I have been on a break from Coetzee and I hope to read Disgrace once again soon.

Coetzee had answered a question, through this line, which had been nagging me for some time. I always wondered about my inclinations and biases when it came to pick a book. In my teenage, which lasted up to the age of 23, I always picked up books which were emotionally lacerating. My instincts led me to choose books which made me blank with their last line.

"There were three thousand six hundred and fifty three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days. The three extra days were for leap years." — wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Ivan is an ordinary prisoner in a Soviet labour camp in the 1950s, in Stalin's USSR. This single line is haunting beyond measure once you arrive at it which coincides with Ivan's bedtime in gulag.

I never felt a need to relate with any of the characters of the books I read. Their pain did the job. Pain is universal, happiness is inherently subjective and local. A woman losing her child at birth, a son grieving over the death of his mother, or a father losing his grown-up son; the pain is the same irrespective of the geography, anthropology and politics. It will be the same in the USA or Burma or Liberia. How one deals with that pain is something very local, having evolved over centuries guided by traditions and exigencies.

What I find strange is the way society limits and regulates the expression of pain. I am not aware of the restrictions placed upon the expression of  agony across different cultures but I can talk about what happens (used to happen) in the western state of Rajasthan, India. The villages in Rajasthan have Rudaalis who are professional mourners. These women, who live at the margins of the village ecosystem, are summoned when an upper caste male of the village dies. The womenfolk of the so-called upper castes are prohibited to display their emotions in public. These Rudaalis are hired to cry on their behalf, to represent their grief and to broadcast their wailing through their voice in the community. I wonder what makes Rudaalis so good at their job.

Pain is a very grand word. But what exactly it means? The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as — "An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage".  Coetzee certainly didn't have this definition in his mind when he declared the truth of pain above everything. A sprained neck or a bruised toe is certainly painful and we do have the ability to verbalize these kinds of obvious 'painful' experiences. Even a baby who doesn't have the ability to express the physical pain through words can do so by crying. But physical pain can be cured.

What can't be cured through modern medicine is anguish frozen deep inside our hearts, a festering wound of an indelible past. I reserve the word 'pain' for physical sufferings. I prefer to use the words — anguish, agony, heartache, grief, torment and affliction for various shades of mental sufferings.

I have always preferred two Sanskrit words to describe any kind of unintelligible pain —  व्यथा & वेदना. The Buddhist teachings have a vast literature on the word वेदना.

When Kunti went to meet Karna before the impending battle of Mahabharata, she was in deep pain (read anguish). The verses from Rashmirathi beautifully portrays her condition.

सुत की शोभा को देख मोद में फूली,

कुंती क्षण-भर को व्यथा-वेदना भूली.

भर कर ममता-पय से निष्पलक नयन को,

वह खड़ी सींचती रही पुत्र के तन को

When Karna hears out the confession of Kunti and responds, his response exudes the pain that he has lived throughout his life. In Coetzee's framework, all this pain is truth.

डूबते सूर्य को नमन निवेदित करके,

कुन्ती के पद की धूल शीश पर धरके।

राधेय बोलने लगा बड़े ही दुख से,

‘‘तुम मुझे पुत्र कहने आयीं किस मुख से ?

‘‘क्या तुम्हें कर्ण से काम ? सुत है वह तो,

माता के तन का मल, अपूत है वह तो।

तुम बड़े वंश की बेटी, ठकुरानी हो,

अर्जुन की माता, कुरूकुल की रानी हो।

‘‘मैं नाम-गोत्र से हीन, दीन, खोटा हूँ

सारथीपुत्र हूँ मनुज बड़ा छोटा हूँ।

ठकुरानी ! क्या लेकर तुम मुझे करोगी ?

मल को पवित्र गोदी में कहाँ धरोगी ?

‘‘है कथा जन्म की ज्ञात, न बात बढ़ाओ

मन छेड़-छेड़ मेरी पीड़ा उकसाओ।

हूँ खूब जानता, किसने मुझे जना था,

किसके प्राणों पर मैं दुर्भार बना था।

Lama Tsongkhapa (1357 — 1419), who was a great master of Tibetan Buddhism said that there are eight types of suffering.

1.  The suffering of birth.

2.  The suffering of old age.

3.  The suffering of illness.

4.  The suffering of death.

5.  The suffering of encountering what is unpleasant.

6.  The suffering of separation from what is pleasant.

7.  The suffering of not getting what one wants.

8.  The suffering of the five appropriated aggregates.

This neatly encapsulates every kind of pain Coetzee proclaimed to be the truth. But is Coetzee right? Is pain the only truth and everything else is subject to doubt? Literature has its own limits. It does a very good job of portraying the problems but offers no solution. It creates a thirst but offers nothing to quench it.

Can this pain be cured? Advaita Vedanta claims it can be. Isha Upanishad (Mantra 7) says:

यस्मिन् सर्वाणि भूतानि आत्मैवाभूद् विजानतः।

तत्र को मोहः कः शोक एकत्वमनुपश्यतः ॥

"He in whom it is the Self - Being that has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness ?

Buddha showed us the path 2500 years ago. All the pain is merely an outcome of our ignorance. I have personally experienced that the pain can be dissolved with a little maturity and understanding. And that's a relief.

Coetzee is wrong.

उदास’ शब्द ‘उदासी’ की जगह नहीं ले सकता।

— निर्मल वर्मा  

PS: For a more complete description of suffering, one may refer to the editorial, "Bending Low with Load of Life: Meaning of Human Suffering" in the May 2021 issue of  Prabuddha Bharata.

The Dead Squirrel

It was 12 August 2006, my birthday. The day was Saturday, the second Saturday of the month, the day of the parent-teacher meet. I always used to skip this meet because, I, quite frankly, considered it pointless. But on that day, I was in my school practising for the zonal badminton tournament which was less than four weeks away.

I had to come back home in the middle to fetch something — shuttlecock or money, I can't remember. A squirrel came under the front wheel of the rickshaw on my way to the home. It suddenly came out of nowhere and rickshaw puller couldn't apply the brakes in time. The squirrel died in a few seconds spewing a lot of blood. That's probably the first time I saw a living object dying.

Every single time I see a squirrel, I find myself reliving that harrowing moment. Every 12 August, I remember that squirrel.

I have a very muted response to death. Death makes you philosophical, momentarily. Death reminds me of something which I read in my seventh standard English literature textbook by Oxford University Press.

“Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world──the fight for the Liberation of Mankind”

— Nikolai Ostrovsky