Spaceman: The Legacy of Sachin Tendulkar
Sachin Tendulkar
This too shall has passed.
In the nostalgic concert halls of a timeless Wankhede, amidst the weary melee of misty-eyed adoration sweeping every blade of grass in the land, a little God crooned a bewitching swansong as he took his final steps within the hallowed corridors of ancient brilliance, walked past the sepia-toned gates of history and vanished into the enchanted chambers of peerless immortality. The sands have finally slipped through our hands. The clocks have finally stopped ticking. The birds have finally stopped chirping. The music has finally stopped playing. In this eerie quiet amidst this madding chaos, the sun, it seems, has finally set.
There is no way of softening the blow. There are no royal cushions to soothe the pain or mystical concoctions to make us forget the unforgettable. It will stare at us forever and it is staring at us right now. Sachin Tendulkar has retired. Life, whether you walk in space, win a million dollar lottery or discover an endless supply of bubble-wrap, will still be a poorer place tomorrow. Unless a benevolent soul gifts the world a functioning time machine or a wandering soul chances upon the fountain of youth, come tomorrow, what are we then left with? Before walking past that door, what, if anything, has Sachin left behind?
Memories? Yes, memories. Printed onto the back of our minds with the sort of tattoo ink that, even if you cross the seven seas, take a dip in the Bermuda Triangle and come back to rid the world of hunger, poverty and pop music, is never erased. Those kinds of memories.
“Another world, where the birds always sing
Another world, where the sun always shines
Another world, where nothing ever dies…”
It’s been, what, 25 years? I feel like I’ve been watching Sachin forever. Well, I’m only 22. The entirety of my life then. It’s been a journey so long and so complete that there is a real danger of losing yourself in its memory. It is better than reality. It is sweeter than reality. This journey with Sachin, following even from a thousand miles away, is still closer than reality.
Every single moment spent with him, in all these years – in a life running in parallel to our lives, is one to cherish. There is not a single blemish, a single disappointment, a single letdown. If there really is a workaholic God who had his hands full for the whole week, we now know what he did on the seventh day.
We have ended up with one of the most beautifully written scripts the divine ink could write. It’s a surreal story which has been carved so artistically, so flawlessly and one which is now resigned to an alternate reality – guarded within the meadows of our memories. If Robert Smith really did believe in a world where the birds always sing, this is it.
But is that all? Just a panorama of striking images that caress you, excite you and then smother you and your very soul? Is everything that Sachin has done in all these years now resigned to dusty old tapes and an engaging mind full of joyous sorrow and melodious nostalgia? Are the monumental feats of this tiny man, like most other athletes of the land, really that limited in their wider significance?