Smoked salmon. It isn’t every other day I come across this delicacy in Delhi. No irritatingly weird herbs, no crass garnishing, firm yet crisp, and that subtle flavour that gently touches your palette as the grains break, a delight, straight and simple. Don’t even order coffee if you want to keep the taste. But always, the mouth goes sour.

Just like that day, watching that Fernando off-cutter to the Little Master, and Sachin Tendulkar, allowing that inside edge, and the leg stump went. My gawd! I had said to myself. And I was sitting there, looking pretty stupid. Stupider, I believe, than Big Boy Joe, at that table to my right, beer mug midway from the table, eyes popping out and a funny grin on his face. A grin? Oh, never mind.

The mouth goes sour, when the allegations troop in, when the buck passes quick, when Greg Chappell’s stock plummets, when the same Sachin speaks out in aggro, when Team India is falling apart, when our pride and joy is gone, when Chappell is gone too. In this restaurant today, dipping my thoughts in lager, I believe there must be more to life, to preserve, just like the salmon. I turn around, they are deep into the stock markets, into cricket’s mud-slinging, into rapid change in viewpoints. Where is the sport?  

Thoughts drift. I was the last reporter to have interviewed the great Col Mushtaq Ali before he passed away. His legacy is an asterix in memory now, and what I remember most is the way he described a cricketer. He had this un-urbane attitude to it: “What you call one-day cricket today, I, and we, used to play for five days in a Test then. It was all about enjoying it, all about pride, all about your lachakta hua kamar.” Basically, all about class, style, a natural aura of superiority, very un-proletariat. But, at 90, I saw the Colonel, tall, ramrod straight, proud as hell. “I did come from a poor family, but I mixed with the Holkars, imbibed royal taste, dedication to honour.”  

... contd.