April 19, 1999
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TOUCH OF TENNIS Serving Family The Krishnans tell their story but we want more. By Rohit Brijnath A TOUCH OF TENNIS
And the reason quite simply has been the family. Almost every tennis player who has donned a Davis Cup jacket will tell you that while the system failed them, their families -- through terrific hardship -- pushed them through. I once remember Vece Paes sprawled on his sofa at 2 a.m., distraught as he wondered how he would fund a young Leander's next trip abroad. The tennis association was the last place he would go to. In the same way Maggie Amritraj pushed her sons Anand, Vijay and Ashok, Akhtar Ali formed Zeeshan, Nandu Natekar made Gaurav, Abdul Ismail drove Asif ... the list is endless. Yet of all families the most triumphant story is of the Krishnans, father Ramanathan and son Ramesh who were fortunate to be guided by Ramanathan's father, T.K. Ramanathan or TKR. It is fascinating that a man who was qualified in typewriting, shorthand and accountancy, could produce a world No. 3 and double Wimbledon semi-finalist and then a generation later a Wimbledon and US Open quarter-finalist with a world ranking of 23. Discipline was TKR's mantra, a man who believed children with loose milk teeth should not visit dentists but be attended to with pliers. He would berate his charges during practice, labelling his son a yerai pambu (python rendered immobile after a big meal), even caning Ramesh on one occasion. It was disciplining that would stand them in good stead. These wonderful vignettes arrive from a fine book written by Ramanathan and Ramesh with the assistance of The Hindu tennis correspondent Nirmal Shekar, who knows them better than most. I remember Ramesh was reluctant about being the subject of a book and wondering who would read it. His daughters, I told him for starters. India produces too few sporting biographies. It is a shame, for history and great deeds are forgotten with time. The book is a trifle short at 173 pages, but it is a smooth read, replete with wonderful anecdotes of life on the tour and detailing well the making of two fine tennis players. If I have a complaint, and this is only nit-picking, it is that important matches have been reduced to one paragraph. In 1987, Ramesh played arguably the most important match of his life when he defeated Wally Masur in the Davis Cup semi-final in Australia. What went through his mind, technically how he dismantled Masur, this is missing. A humble man perhaps finds it against his art to speak of the greatness of his deed. Nevertheless, his book will embellish any shelf. Fictive She Fathoming the depths of the female experience. By Mita Bhatnagar THE STREAM WITHIN This is an impressive collection of 13 short stories written by contemporary Bengali women. Writers like Sabitri Roy, Sulskha Sanyal, Chhabi Basu and Mahasweta Devi have actively participated in the Indian People's Theatre Association to promote literature and art dealing with basic problems like hunger and poverty, social backwardness and political subjugation. For a variety of reasons -- historical development, psychological characteristics -- women as poets, philosophers and historians have proved on the whole inferior to men. But in the art of fiction they can certainly claim equality. By virtue of their femininity, they bring into prose certain qualities in which they excel, and in which men as a rule are deficient. Stories in The Stream Within illustrate themes directly related to women, their repression and deprivation, and struggles that keep them alive. Among the more acclaimed names in this collection are those of Ashapurna Devi and Mahasweta Devi. Ashapurna (1904-94) had her first short story published at only 13. Her story "The Subalterns" is about the relationship between two working women and between a mother and daughter. The majority of the stories in this selection focus on the urban middle class woman's experience. Even so, five stories (Jahanara Imam's "The Weapon" among them) centre on the lives of the rural poor. Mahasweta's and Anita Agnihotri's stories are about the marginalised and dispossessed section of Indian society, whose agony can only be understood in terms of the complex network of gender, class and caste. A terse style, a tightly knit structure, a twist in the tale: all good hallmarks of a short story, all good reasons to recommend this book. |
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The story of Indian tennis is about the failure of
the system and the triumph of the family. The sport has remained stuck in an amateur
stance. Kids in India lack sponsors, coaches, fitness trainers and exposure; in contrast,
in the professional world of American and European tennis there are academies that offer
video analyses, computerised diets, scientific fitness schedules, not to mention a surfeit
of gifted practice partners. That we have produced tennis players is itself a miracle. 
