Banyan Tree Adventures

by Keith Forrester

  Once we had found an open entrance gate, a bored but kindly security guard allowed us to wander around the stadium, up to the top seats and then down to the pitch where I walked for a few minutes along the boundary grass. I was paying my respects. It was quite spooky, all alone in the giant stadium with my childhood memories of the frenzied spectators.

  I had the same ‘spooky’ feeling at another famous cricket stadium in India. This was at the Brabourne Stadium in Churchgate, Bombay in February 2013 where India was hosting the tenth Women’s Cricket World Cup. It’s a lovely old colonial ground, built around 1936 with the three public stands and their huge overhanging roofs, all facing the clubhouse. It was built on land reclaimed from the sea and is situated alongside Marine Drive, perhaps the most famous thoroughfare in Bombay. I knew the World Cup was happening – I had been reading about it back in England before my arrival. There was, however, no bunting or flags welcoming participants from around the world at the airport when I arrived, no banners in the streets and no fanfare at the Brabourne Stadium which I walked around trying to find an office to buy tickets. A kindly woman, probably a participant, eventually helped, telling me to turn up at a particular gate and walk in. Entrance was free. As my hotel was just across the dual carriageway from the Stadium, I had a very pleasant week watching various matches in between rests in the hotel room when escaping the heat.

  As a spectator watching the cricket in the middle, however, I was almost alone in this vast cavernous stadium – very spooky. The opening game involved the Indian team. Groups of young schoolchildren were enjoying themselves, running around between the empty seats and above all trying to catch the attention of the match camera. Apart from the schoolkids, there were few other spectators. The next game involved the English team – no schoolkids and a smattering of spectators, maybe a dozen in all. In a country which is fanatical about cricket like no other country, I was a little surprised. Maybe things picked up somewhat later in the tournament. I got talking to an Indian man sitting along from me. He had nipped out from work for an hour or two to watch the action. No, he said, it was not that surprising that so few people were interested. This was women’s cricket, he reminded me and had received little coverage or excitement in the city or nationwide. He was aware that things were slowly getting better in England and hoped that India too would begin to support women’s cricket with more money, media coverage, grassroot initiatives and organisation but he was not too hopeful. My new friend’s pessimism was echoed in an article the following year on cricinfo – the cricket Internet site – that detailed how Indian women’s cricket continues to lag behind other countries, both on and off the field. We grumbled to each other for a while and then he had to get back to work leaving me with no one within thousands of empty seats to chat with; good cricket though.

  Memories of my 2013 visit to the Brabourne Stadium flooded back when I read that the English cricket team were using the Stadium for practice in November 2016 before the start of their five Test Match series against the Indian team. How I wish I was back there.

  Jeff was one of the travellers that I interviewed back in 2013 and he is mad keen on cricket. He has visited India around twelve times. His first visit was in 1997. “I first came simply because I had heard from friends over the years what a fascinating place this was. It was. It was the nearest thing to another planet compared to what I had been brought up with,” he said. Although from England, Jeff works as a freelance tourist guide in Munich, Germany and is able to plan his time and visits to India. He tends to stay around five weeks on each visit although he might combine these visits with trips to other countries. He has been all over India and has twice followed the cricket involving England around the country. “Originally, it’s taken me to places I might not have got to like Chandigarh (high up in north-west India close to the Pakistan border) and Allahabad (up north, mid-country in the Ganges plain). I went to the World Cup two years ago. That took me up to Jaipur and I stopped off in Hyderabad on my way down to Bangalore.

  The things I tend to remember,” he continued, “are simply those things that are so different to what I was used to. But I am changing. I used to like cities, especially Calcutta. Now I’m less tolerant of the noise and rubbish. I’m getting older! I’ve been to all the big cities – Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore, Hyderabad. I used to love the madness and chaos.”

  Throughout our conversation, Jeff kept up with a steady stream of anecdotes and stories. It seemed to me that for him India and cricket were fused, an interrelated whole. Maybe it was my questions as he was also keen on his Indian cuisine but it is cricket that I most associate with Jeff. “The first time I went I flew from Delhi to Chandigarh where there was this Test Match. December never really gets warm. The sun was out for a few hours and it was only a few months after 9/11 so security was kind of top alert. Lighters and cigarettes weren’t allowed in the ground so everyone put them under their hats to get in. It worked every time. The young kids at the match were very boisterous. In fact the forty year olds were very boisterous as well. Being a Test Match, it wasn’t that well supported as with the one-dayers which is a great shame. It’s a completely different experience from watching a game in the UK – very noisy and boisterous. There’s usually around 60–70 English supporters in the crowd. This was this one time when it was a dry period (no alcohol) in Chandigarh because of the elections. We were in this place outside the cricket ground. I was actually caught with a beer in a metal beaker, trying to disguise it. I hadn’t noticed these two police. All the staff scarpered and they came over. I ended up in the police station for about three hours. The police made up a statement for us and told us that we were to stay in our hotel, come back tomorrow and in half an hour all the formalities will be done. We can then have our passports back. It actually took six hours with endless cups of chai. We were very polite to him. Kumar Patel was his name I think.”

  I was impressed with Jeff’s memory. His overall grasp of detail from long ago was excellent. Some things though are that epic at least for cricket lovers, that it is easy to recall. “The first game I saw in India was at Chennai. India was playing Australia. This was the long-awaited confrontation between Sachin Tendulkar and Shane Warne. Warne took a wicket with the fifth ball of his first over, caught at first slip by Mark Taylor. India were two wickets down and the there was this huge roar which meant that Sachin was coming in. The first ball he received from Warne, he cover drove for four. Tell a lie, Tendulkar played a few defensive shots and the last ball Warne got him. In the second innings, he smashed 164 not out which was great.”

  And it was cricket that resulted in Jeff visiting Pakistan. “In 2005 I was in Pakistan. It was not at all dangerous. I first watched a game in Islamabad and then afterwards in Lahore. I had a day or two before the game so I went to the Murree Brewery – the one and only in the country. Very drinkable beer.” I had never heard of this brewery or beer but soon was engrossed in the long, colourful history of Pakistan’s only major alcohol producer and “oldest continuing enterprise in Pakistan.” Established in 1860 by the British to quench the thirst of its army, it has survived (just) hairy historical episodes such as the creation of the new country and, later, the total alcohol prohibition in 1977 (later amended) and the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq. In addition to beer, the brewery also produces varieties of gin, vodka and, above all, malt whiskies. Few countries like their whiskies more than Pakistan and India.

  Why cricket and why India?

  Indian cricket today has moved a long way from its colonial days. As Ramachandra Guha quotes in his wonderful A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport, an account of a game in 1850 noted that Indians: “were rather apt to look on a cricket match as proof of the lunatic propensities of their masters the sahibs, and to wonder what possible enjoyment they could find in running about in the sun all day after a leather ball.”

  No more, not by a long shot, no more. India today sits astride world cricket, calling
the shots and making all the plays. Although unrecognised at the time, it was 1983 that signalled the beginnings of far-reaching changes in the power and finance of world cricket. On the 28th June 1983, India won the World Cup at Lord’s, London under the leadership of the wonderful Kapil Dev. As Debanjan Chakrabarti recalls from that day, “Indian cricket, egged on by the full-throated chant of almost a billion fans, surged ahead whose apt culmination (or nadir, depending on your perspective) was the Indian Premier League – IPL for short – an orgy of fast-forward cricket laced with Bollywood razzmatazz, draped with oomphy cheerleaders in skimpy outfits, making the show every marketing person’s wet dream.” Today it is the Indian IPL that provides the bedrock for the funding and direction of world cricket, and all under the control (at the time of writing) of the cement magnate Narayanaswami Srinivasan – President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), owner of the IPL’s Chennai Super Kings, and more importantly, President of the International Cricket Council (ICC). A wonderful article by Rahul Bhatia in The Caravan in 2014 provides a detailed portrayal – much of it unsavoury – of the murky financial world of Indian and international cricket today. The two other representatives from England and Australia on the ICC obediently follow India along. In an ironic historical twist, an elite English sport is today controlled by a former colony. For many of the fanatic Indian cricket fans, none of this murkiness matters. As Chakrabarti notes, for nearly two months every year, “a cricket addict nation goes on a booze-addled, fast-food fuelled binge of cricket every evening where the ratings of all other television channels apart from the IPL broadcaster Sony Entertainment plummet to zilch.”

  Cricket was above all the game associated most closely with the imperial empire of the British. A very credible and detailed analysis and understanding of India could be provided by tracing the development of this sport in the country. The great historical narratives of nationalism, communalism and political struggle are all present in the rise of Indian cricket and the domination today of world cricket by India. The Caribbean writer CLR James was the first to recognise cricket as a platform for political struggle many decades ago in perhaps the most important book ever written on the sport, Beyond a Boundary. But it wasn’t only cricket. As a number of commentators have pointed out, in the training and practices of the British imperial class athleticism and imperialism were integrally part of the whole. Sport, any sport and competition was seen as integral to the ‘civilising’ mission of the Empire, as Fahad Mustafa points out in his analysis of cricket and globalisation. Embedded within nineteenth century institutions of British fee-paying education, elite universities, the clergy and the monarchy, competitive ‘games’ were seen as building sound character, moral fortitude and promoting good sense. It was cricket, however, that had pride of place in the development of imperial culture. It was cricket that provided the vehicle for the imperial masters in their search for an educating and civilising mission. Yet a hundred years later in a series of deliciously contradictory narratives, India is today master of the cricket world. Usurping those very claims of identity and nation state enthusiastically promoted by the imperial elite, India has successfully appropriated and commercialised global cricket. Asserting nationhood on the cricket fields for the benefits of a post-colonial India including its huge diaspora has proved a winning formula. The move from West to East in the twenty-first century has been complete and breathtaking. Global cricket has been transformed from ‘a gentleman’s game’ to that of assertive ethnicity. The colonised have turned the tables on the colonisers. Today Southeast Asia is the home of cricket with India calling the shots.

  I really enjoyed listening to Jeff and Helle’s stories and experiences of visiting India. I remember chuckling a lot as they raced through their adventures and could have spent a lot more time quizzing them for greater detail. I have discovered a new interest – Bollywood – and hope soon to watch in India a Test Match with the all-conquering Indian team. On the other hand, their experiences did little to clarify my problem of understanding ‘being a tourist’. Maybe Helle and Jeff were examples on being ‘anti-tourists’; they do a lot of things that other tourists do but they do a lot more. But I don’t know and maybe I’m not alone. I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that there seemed to be a continuous effort by scholars to nail down this issue. I can’t pretend to understand most of their thinking or conclusions but I found their formulations and insights suggestive. I also found it frustrating because, after all, they were discussing and arguing about me and Helle and Jeff and the others that I talked to.

  One aspect though did emerge from these musings. A strong feature of Helle and Jeff’s stories were sensory descriptions of their respective experiences. Smells, dirt and food for example came through strongly in my discussions with them. Helle as a filmmaker I guess would strongly relate to the sensory environment. I haven’t seen her ‘cow film’ but I imagine that this element would be a strong theme. Thinking about their comments together with the other frequent visitors that I interviewed coupled with my difficulties about ‘being a tourist’, I began increasingly to notice mention being made to ‘senses’ and ‘sensations’. This was often in conjunction with a wide range of cultural, artistic and creative activities such as photography, street life, dance or eating – in fact, nearly any aspect of everyday life. Instead of reading, visualising or thinking about the city or the Taj Mahal, we are invited to ‘sense’ the city or the Taj Mahal through the use of our taste, smell, touch as well as visual faculties. Experiencing something is more than a cognitive or intellectual activity seems to be the message. It is not a one-way process, however. The presentation of events, images or even of a country to the tourist market is similarly highly structured and arranged. Certain things are stressed while other things are omitted in an attempt to portray a particular perspective. Similarly, our senses are socially constructed and experienced differently in different cultures and at different historical periods. We usually fall for their messages but sometimes we resist. Yes, our senses are culturally grounded, are fragmentary and undeveloped but with a little bit of practice allow a more nuanced and critical appreciation of ‘seeing’ and ‘experiencing’ as a tourist. India in particular would seem a good place to experience as a ‘sensoryscape’. As every guidebook points out, India is an ‘assault upon the senses’, unlike any other country. We only have a small capacity to appreciate the richness of this ‘assault’ due to our sensory impoverishment – we have forgotten in these modern times how to experience things ‘bodily’. Our capacities are diminished for meaningful engagement with our environment. We are not very good with the smells, sights and sounds around us. But things are changing apparently. There are guided ‘sensory walks’ in some cities and talk of a ‘new urban anthropology of the senses’. Some commentators are speculating on what town planning or an architecture informed by ‘the sensorial revolution’ might entail.

  I am not a ‘bodily’ tourist but I am going to try harder on my next ‘Colaba walk’ as well as raise this issue with Helle next time we meet – never too old to learn.

  Chapter 8

  Getting richer and its problems

  On the move

  On the morning of Wednesday 9th November 2016, I remember sitting at my desk back in England flicking through the news channels on the computer. Two items were the subject of my searching and reading. First as the final voting results were announced, it was clear that Donald Trump was to be the new President of the United States of America. Against all expectations, expert opinion and polling evidence, he had defeated the favourite Hillary Clinton. The second item that I kept an eye on was the opening day of the first Test Match between India and England held in Rajkot. England was beginning a massive series of five Test Matches against India, the number one world-rated cricket team. England had a good opening day, batted first and the Yorkshireman (from down the road from where I was sitting) Joe Root was getting his century. Both stories rekindled thoughts and memories of when I was last
in India. I wished I was there to listen to the reaction of the locals to the stunning and unexpected Trump victory and what it might mean for India, and also, to be watching some of those cricket matches around the country. Seeing and listening to the noise of the cricket fans screaming on their idols out on the pitch is one of my unfulfilled dreams. Maybe another time.

  Thinking about the impact of future American trade policies on the Indian economy as well as about the world number one ranked Indian cricket team are reminders of how far India has travelled in so short a time. It is difficult not to see the changes. Wandering around the downtown areas of most big Indian cities is to witness the affluence and relaxed atmosphere of people confident about themselves, where they are currently and where things are going. And it’s not only downtown – many of the suburban centres are the same. Most of these people seem to be young, returning from school or meeting with friends after work for a drink or gossip. Coffee and cake shops are popular. Large department stores are busy as are their cafes. The poor and homeless are not that visible. There are quieter, less harassed areas to make home than in posh downtown areas. The daily newspapers and especially the weekend press are full of fashion advice, the latest film reviews, and best places and restaurants to visit, just like everywhere else in the world. Numerous pages of course are given over to stories or interviews with this or that Bollywood film star. The numerous bookshops are busy. Prominent displays in their windows (or the plastic sheets on the pavements for copied versions) are given to the latest fiction and non-fiction titles from India and from around the world. The more popular television channels seem to reflect this ambience, affluence and relaxed lifestyle. Everywhere – in the home, in the countryside, in the cities – is spotlessly clean and modern in these programmes. Apart from the celebrities, the TV advertisements are not dissimilar to those from Europe, or probably anywhere else in the world. There seem to be more of them but the products advertised are familiar.