If you ever traveled on a budget before the advent of the iPhone, you’ve probably seen a lonely planet book. Distinctly blue, with small and dense typography and enough pages to qualify as what a stereotypical Punjabi mother in law would call “healthy”.
I saw one for Andalucia in the ‘for sale’ shelf at my local library, a few days ago. It was like a mental flight back to some of the backpacker friendly spots I frequented in my 20s. Be it a terrace of a dingy cafe called Gecko in Mahabalipuram (‘Mahabs’) or a bar that served old monk in tumblers in Varkala.
It was predictable enough to be part of an IKEA catalogue. A glass table or a book shelf. Made from cane. The contents would be 15-30 frayed paperbacks including the customary lonely planet. In addition to English, maybe German, French and the odd Japanese book. Half of these libraries were just books donated by patrons when they were passing through.
My trying to read and finish one of those books was a ritual. Kind of like this brief period where my friend and I would go get shaves and a head massage after day drinking. While that would culminate in finding a master of the craft like that small salon in Arpora, finding the right book on a holiday has been just as memorable.
A copy of ‘The beach’ by Alex Garland that I found at Om beach in Gokarna. The book that was immortalized on screen by Leonardo DiCaprio (and 3 pounds of hair gel). It rained the whole weekend we were there and I read it from cover to cover. “Holidays in hell” by PJ O Rourke, that I read one weekend in Varkala. A collection of essays on travelling that the columnist had done for work. PJ was a conservative humorist, at a time when that may not have been an oxymoron.
And the one to top them all, ‘Open’ by Andre Agassi. It was in a small beach town in Turkey. It was one of the only English books on the shelf. A few weeks before it was warm enough to have fun on the beach and a few months before you could get into the water without getting hypothermia.
It’s one of the best written books I’ve read. Ghost written as I would later learn. Not only did it draw me in fully to understand his career and legacy but also more about professional tennis. His experience as a child of an immigrant who is thrust into the limelight. And the role of hot spots like Florida in training future champions. It also rekindled an interest in a sport that I had completely erased from my life.
And this was because, I like Agassi claimed he did in the book, disliked tennis. As a child, my exposure to it was the same as my brother. Names that we would hear from our parents. Or the faces on the posters that were enclosed in the latest edition of Sports Star.
Agassi. Edberg. Sampras. Graf.
As we got older, this interest in the sport was tested by enrolling both of us in Tennis class.
Kaushik, like with every other sport he played, seemed like a natural. His batting eye had carried over to Tennis. Within less than a year, he was able to add some top spin to his loopy forehand. He had a good first serve and a reliable second serve.
I on the other hand, added another sport to my list that would be grist for the miil that forced me to develop a sense of humour. The starkest point for our converging skills was probably when we were at the same class at the Koramangala club. We had become members as our father’s office was further down the same road.
We were a part of a class that featured:
My brother
Marwari twins called ridhika/siddhika or meeta/geeta who seemed destined to be voted “most likely to be married by 21” in a class poll in Jain college
The son of the owner of all saints bakery near by who would occasionally give us free snacks if he won (I got a lot of snacks)
The most morose 13 year old I’d met who would go on to be a musician>MBA>startup founder (I know because I met him again as an adult and realized it was the same person when his pathos chilled my beer)
Me
The coach gave up on me a little after I had given up on myself. As I cut short every rally with either a Sixer or a ball in the net my skills only came in handy for the sprints that we did as a team during the cool down after the lesson.
My introduction to competing in the sport was not as a participant but as a part of Kaushik’s entourage, when he went for some local tournaments. They would either be a race to fifteen points or one set to win and progress in a tournament.
Like that one in Bowring club on St Marks Road. I was accompanying him along with my grandfather who was allowed to use the club because of his membership in Chennai. I was wilting in the stands like the ORS packet court side on the plastic chair. The day wore on as Kaushik won a match and then lost the next one in the hot sun.
I silently made up my mind to not go to anymore. Seemingly so had my granddad although it seemed to hinge more on how bad the lime juice was at the club compared to Chennai. Kaushik also wound his play down to focus on academics.
The next time I’d see tennis live was at the Bangalore Open. It was held at the Tennis academy started by the Bhupati family on the edge of Cubbon Park.
I was now in college. I can remember the floodlights and seeing former CM SM Krishna’s wig blinding me. The finals featured Sania Mirza losing to Serena Williams. Serena had come to India during a brief trough in her career while Sania had just begun to break into the top 200.
If I hadn’t read the Agassi book, it may have been the last tennis match I saw live. I would not have known that this was a smaller tournament with much fewer points (unlike a 500 point tournament or Masters 1000 tournament which won the champ a 1000 points).
It would have almost led me to think it was normal for a point to get interrupted with chants of “SAA-NYA” “SAA-NYA” or “Jeetega bhai jeetega”
I was fully plugged into the tennis calendar again. Starting with the Australian Open and ending with the World championships. From watching Nadal lose the Wimbledon final in a hotel room in Trivandrum to watching him win the US open a few years later in an empty bar where I was given the remote.
That may have been the main reason I bought tickets to watch the Barcelona open when I was living there. It’s a smaller tournament but part of the clay court run up to the French open.
A fancy members only club in a quiet and verdant part of town was the venue for the tournament. It was a window for me into how the richer half of Spain lived, for the sum of 35 euros. White polo T shirts and Rolexes glinting in the sunlight.
A little bit of the Bangalore open energy spilled out of me when I walked across a doubles match in the 2nd largest court and saw a familiar face. I yelled “Macha Bangalore” just as Bopanna was serving, causing him to land it square in the net. I beat a hasty retreat and maintained a stoic silence for the rest of the day except when Nadal won a game, set or match.
When I left that tournament, if you had told me the next tennis tournament I would witness live, would be in Canada, with a daughter in tow, I would have laughed louder than my opponent in a tennis match in 1998.
And yet, that’s exactly what happened a year ago. At the age of 2, she came with us to see the final of the Toronto open live. A tune up for the US open, a masters 1000 tournament. Winners in the past have included Nadal, Djokovic and Federer.
And here we were, with my parents (who were visiting) and Amal watching a tournament, that was a metro ride from our apartment. Fellow attendees were shocked not just at how quiet and attentive this 2 year old was but also how its possible to spill 60% of an ice cream cone. We saw Jannik Sinner win his first Masters 1000 title.
This year, we went again to catch the Women’s tennis tournament. Every year, the mens and womens tournaments are split across Toronto and Montreal. Many more snacks were consumed and considerably more noise was made by Amal. And yet, she feels like a seamless fit to the atmosphere.
Like that volunteer who was asking me to buy a lucky draw ticket for achance to win free Masters 1000 tickets in other locations like Rome.
“I’m sure you want to contribute so you can support future champions like your daughter”
Amal? A future champion? Why not? My mind raced with the possibilities. She had been exposed early on, Mali and I had played Tennis in the first months of her pregnancy. She had now seen both male and female tennis champions live before she had reached Kindergarten. She was a short flight away and in the same timezone as Florida, a.k.a the Kota of tennis training.
That warm fuzzy feeling that the volunteer had suckered me with so I bought a ticket wore off a little bit but I did feel that I would want to expose Amal to more tennis. I was also briefly grateful to be in Toronto which squeezes out half your money for you to exist within 50 km of it, but provides you access to these events every little while.
As I noted in the feedback survey that was mailed to me as after the event because I had signed up for the draw. My reviews were generally positive. In the section that said additional feedback I signed off with “Lime juice could be better”.
Nice one Deepak. Here's to our future tennis champ!