Some things change, some stay the same. A statement that’s been uttered often and made more popular by the band Pretenders in their song Hymn to Her. Recently, at the local cafe, I happened to overhear two young vocational education students sipping coffee and shooting the breeze. Change is what they were discussing. At least, one of the pair was expressing doubt as to whether the world had changed all that much since his dad’s time. I was tempted to turn around and ask him which universe he inhabited, but I don’t think that was necessary; his chat mate was doing exactly that.
However, since I’d inadvertently let myself be drawn into their conversation, I couldn’t help but think of my mate Muralidharan. Not that Murali! Although this one in his younger day bowled a mean off spin too. Today he describes himself as a bean counter — head of budgeting in a multinational company. He, like me, had one and only one ambition when growing up: To play cricket for the country and if not for the country then for one’s self. Like me, he had parents who were able to envision a much bigger picture. Meaning his mum and dad, like mine, stood at the front door and pointed firmly in the direction of school, sometimes even walking with us all the way in order to see us safely into class (lest one, like poor Little Red Riding Hood, got attacked by the big bad wolf which had by the time we were schoolkids, morphed into a shiny cricket ball.)
Finish your homework, then go out and play. That was the mantra back then. My mother chanted it, my father (when my mum was keeping a sharp eye on him) chanted it, too; and Murali says his parents were no different.
After secondary school if one dared to imagine there’d be a little breathing space, enough time for a year’s worth of cricket games, those dreams were disclosed as merely that: Fantasies. A triumphant ‘I’ve finished school at last!’ was immediately countered with, ‘And now you’re off to college!’ No rest for the wicked, as my grandpa used to say.
The point is, a career was always first priority; or working hard to acquire one by getting the requisite qualifications. I plunged headlong into literature (with never a regret) and Murali, a decade or so later, putting his spinning arm on ice, ventured into the hallowed halls of economics and commerce and emerged a few years later waving what turned out to be a Master’s degree. Then he got married, PDQ ... which apparently is the modern way of saying ‘pretty damn quick’. Then he got children in PDQ succession, too, a boy first then a girl, and deciding that a boy and a girl was symmetric enough for him, shut the production line down, but went about doing exactly what his parents before him did: Point the way to school and select a career for the children. The boy, Kannan, qualified as a doctor and produced one child, a boy: Stefan (named after Edberg, the Swedish tennis player).
In a commentary on how radically things have changed since Murali’s time, it is Murali now who drives his grandson Stefan (not to school), but to cricket practice every weekday morning, turning up at the oval by 6am sharp. It’s the latest career option, no degree required.
With the Indian Premier League turning youths with barely any chin hair into multimillionaires, parents everywhere have subtly changed their tune. They are singing from a different hymn sheet these days. They may never know the finer points of economics, or literature, but as Murali says, “You’re not going to see too many examples of job satisfaction. This is it. These young cricketers, they are doing something they love and are getting paid for it.”
The world’s come a fair way since my schooldays. That’s what I’d really like to tell the young coffee drinker in the cafe.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
