Sublime
You know, this feeling has been nagging me for the last few days now. I cannot ignore it, though I know that this is neither the time nor the place. But how do I let go? My teenage years are long gone, so long that today I can even sit with a cup of cappuccino in the coffee house just by the corner in Kolkata’s College Street and discuss heavy duty books with like minded middle aged souls like me, with my grey hair falling on my forehead, and my big, fat spectacles nestling snugly on the bridge of my nose. I can sit through hours there, discussing everything under the sun. I might have just grown wiser with age, you see! But my nearly half burnt brain fails to dig out any reason to let my mind and heart grow old. I let my nomadic thoughts meander through the dusty lanes of nostalgia, as I hold a steaming cup of coffee in my newly fine wrinkled hands, clouding my present with the aroma of the feelings that I have brewed in my heart for so many years….
The moment is etched in my memory like a star. I see the red ground of Ronald Garros and two athletes in white. I remember the day because that day my father’s friend Mrigen Bharali Uncle had come with his family for dinner. I see me in a white frock with blue flowers, bare-footed and reed thin, as I sat glued to the Onida television for the entire five sets of the French Open, and I saw him lose the match. But man, he won me over…..
I know. I have said all these before. But pardon me my middle-aged foolishness. If all are wise, then how can the foolish survive?
It was just not his looks. Somehow he fascinated me. I read a lot in those days, even my memory was sharper. Like a blotting paper, I soaked in all I could read about him. In a way, it marked the beginning of my love for tennis. Those were the days when glamour was a luxury in tennis. Anna Kournikova had not yet flaunted her beauty, Serena Williams’ colourful wardrobe was absent, and male players were not yet that suave and conscious of their looks. But he was an exception. I started to pick up words like Grand Slam..’Deuce’ and ‘Advantage’ (‘avantage’, as they say it in Rome) became familiar. A few of my friends thought I was being pompous. But how do I convince them that he compelled me to learn?
And his sister and I sharing the same name (Rita is my pet name, you see) added fuel to the fire. I started to become curious about a certain Barbara Steisand, who they said, sang songs. I let my inquisitive mind swim in the azure waters of the ‘Blue Lagoon’ just because a specific Brooke Shields had eyes that fascinated him. Oh yes, I remember Wendy Stewart too, right to the way her lips curved when she smiled. I read about ‘Mike’ Emmanuel Agassi (Emmanuel B. Aghassian) and Elizabeth Dudley, about Tami Agassi, about Philip Agassi..
There are many matches, many battles. But how can I forget Wimbledon 1992? A tall lanky boy-man with a fantastic serve stood against him. Point by point, set by set – it was a journey. I can relive the day again and again. And he cried copiously after he won….And guess what he said, “The men who can cry are the real winners of life”. I do not care if he quoted this, after all, I heard him say this first. And you know what, it takes something more than ordinary grey matter to say something like, “I spent a lot of years in the public eye and said a lot of things about myself that weren’t true because I didn’t know who I was.”
Drugs, divorce, heartbreaks, injury, pain – all made him the man that he ultimately turned out to be. He may have started with ‘Image is everything’, but the later years saw him evolve as a human being, as a husband, as a father…His charities are doing well, he is doing well. Maybe he has been a foolish like me in some ways, and turned lucky as well as wise! Maybe he thumbed down destiny and maybe he just managed to build his own fate.
I thumbed through his best-seller autobiography – ‘Open’. Read it cover to cover. It was worth it you know, this feeling I mean. So I decide to let the feeling brew, even if my coffee cup is now empty. Like a discarded lover getting a second chance with somebody else, I somehow find myself again wandering among the enigmatic traits of this great man. Life is beautiful, they say, and we all need to live till we die. A sublime emotion it is, and it echoes in the in the blue valleys of my memory, this name, that we call Andre Agassi…..
The moment is etched in my memory like a star. I see the red ground of Ronald Garros and two athletes in white. I remember the day because that day my father’s friend Mrigen Bharali Uncle had come with his family for dinner. I see me in a white frock with blue flowers, bare-footed and reed thin, as I sat glued to the Onida television for the entire five sets of the French Open, and I saw him lose the match. But man, he won me over…..
I know. I have said all these before. But pardon me my middle-aged foolishness. If all are wise, then how can the foolish survive?
It was just not his looks. Somehow he fascinated me. I read a lot in those days, even my memory was sharper. Like a blotting paper, I soaked in all I could read about him. In a way, it marked the beginning of my love for tennis. Those were the days when glamour was a luxury in tennis. Anna Kournikova had not yet flaunted her beauty, Serena Williams’ colourful wardrobe was absent, and male players were not yet that suave and conscious of their looks. But he was an exception. I started to pick up words like Grand Slam..’Deuce’ and ‘Advantage’ (‘avantage’, as they say it in Rome) became familiar. A few of my friends thought I was being pompous. But how do I convince them that he compelled me to learn?
And his sister and I sharing the same name (Rita is my pet name, you see) added fuel to the fire. I started to become curious about a certain Barbara Steisand, who they said, sang songs. I let my inquisitive mind swim in the azure waters of the ‘Blue Lagoon’ just because a specific Brooke Shields had eyes that fascinated him. Oh yes, I remember Wendy Stewart too, right to the way her lips curved when she smiled. I read about ‘Mike’ Emmanuel Agassi (Emmanuel B. Aghassian) and Elizabeth Dudley, about Tami Agassi, about Philip Agassi..
There are many matches, many battles. But how can I forget Wimbledon 1992? A tall lanky boy-man with a fantastic serve stood against him. Point by point, set by set – it was a journey. I can relive the day again and again. And he cried copiously after he won….And guess what he said, “The men who can cry are the real winners of life”. I do not care if he quoted this, after all, I heard him say this first. And you know what, it takes something more than ordinary grey matter to say something like, “I spent a lot of years in the public eye and said a lot of things about myself that weren’t true because I didn’t know who I was.”
Drugs, divorce, heartbreaks, injury, pain – all made him the man that he ultimately turned out to be. He may have started with ‘Image is everything’, but the later years saw him evolve as a human being, as a husband, as a father…His charities are doing well, he is doing well. Maybe he has been a foolish like me in some ways, and turned lucky as well as wise! Maybe he thumbed down destiny and maybe he just managed to build his own fate.
I thumbed through his best-seller autobiography – ‘Open’. Read it cover to cover. It was worth it you know, this feeling I mean. So I decide to let the feeling brew, even if my coffee cup is now empty. Like a discarded lover getting a second chance with somebody else, I somehow find myself again wandering among the enigmatic traits of this great man. Life is beautiful, they say, and we all need to live till we die. A sublime emotion it is, and it echoes in the in the blue valleys of my memory, this name, that we call Andre Agassi…..
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