WOOLMER’S DEATH

Somewhere far in Indies, in Central America, the first to be found by Columbus the explorer has just exposed what many call a mafia, meaning an organised group of crime doers with explicit economic ends. Poor simple game that was cricket! It was usually paid in the lawns of early imperials and their Indian vassals and schools and later in a flash bloomed into an international craze Oh! Not to play sir, but to watch. Watch in between dazzling ads and sizzling commentaries. Ads brought jingles in cash and it turned into a game of extreme interest, yes, the vested ones. The rules of the new game were of not cricket. Certainly not of the descent game played with imperial British etiquettes. Enterprising Amir Khan made the best of it. The film opened with a coin tossed and spiralled into a momentous tension, spilling energy which circled around and fell flat on the simple choice of heads or tails. Betting was royal. Horse racing is a prime example. Cricket racing just followed. Maybe the earliest was in the mammoth coloseum, which is often depicted as a place to visit. Like a casino. Gaming was an ancient industry and it meant mass betting had grown with history. The element of luck or skills or fate or what we call it as the unknown, the fear of the next, manifested in the excitement, the force to play on by any means to win, to snatch whatever it is the wealth, the power, the women and all other possessions. Gods and demons fought for it in children’s fantasies. Also where they very profound in classics and the folktales where Devas and Asuras and their progenies like the Gods and the Demons fought each other. This simplistic view had no place for the many dimensions which, like ripples generated from the bad evils. Like, My Lord, up to this extent of killing a trainer. A teacher by definition. So it amounts to Guruhatya, the killing of a teacher which was considered a heinous crime both in Greek and Indian traditions. How can it be? Any teacher would ask. Didn’t he teach these boys how to handle the ball? Didn’t they, like school boys, throw a ball at each other to catch as he whistled? Didn’t he share the joys and sorrows of the team? Didn’t he know the under currents? Then why didn’t he leave the job and quit the country? No he can’t. How will a responsible teacher leave his wards in such a time of turmoil? That makes Mr. Woolmer, a martyr of the game. Pranams to him. Pranams to a teacher.