by Arunabha Sengupta
Raman Fielding of The Moor’s Last Sigh is supposedly modelled on Bal Thackeray. However, the name of the character has a completely different origin.
In the novel it is said that Fielding’s name is derived, “according to legend from a cricket-mad father, a street-wise Bombay ragamuffin who hung around the Bombay Gymkhana, pleading to be given a chance.” He used to beg for a turn on the field, “Please, Babujis, you give this poor chokra one batting? One bowling only? Okay, okay-then just one fielding?”
In fact CK Nayudu (misspelt Naidu in the novel) recognised him later at the Gymkhana and joked, “So my little just-one-fielding … you sure grew up to take some expert catches.”
After that he was always known as JO Fielding and was proud of it.
Rushdie even makes Fielding convert cricket into a communal affair. “In his bizarre conception of cricket as a fundamentally communalist game, essentially Hindu but with its Hindu-ness constantly under threat from the country’s other treacherous communities, lay the origins of his political philosophy, and the ‘Mumbai Axis’ itself… Cricket, most individualistic of all team sports, ironically became the basis of the rigidly hierarchic, neo-Stalinistic inner structures of ‘Mumbai Axis’.”
In his works Rushdie frequently ventures into the realms of magic realism—and if we keep the ‘realism’ bit on a tight leash so did, in a manner of speaking, Neville Cardus.
And the insight ‘most individualistic of team sports’ was divined by his formidable intellect far more accurately than the plenty of supposed cricket fans who chant ‘individual vs team’ in a distinctly Animal Farmish ‘four-legs-good-two-legs-bad’ chorus.
The author himself was quite devoted to the game as a kid. He supposedly played street cricket in front of Devonshire House off Warden Road in the 1950s, and would not let go of the bat or the ball easily. Not that he was very good with those two pieces of equipment, but he was reportedly a good fielder.
The Moor’s Last Sigh is not the only book where cricket makes its appearance. In Midnight’s Children, a young Saleem Sinai is ridiculed by other kids because of his huge nose, and finds refuge in the solitude of a washing chest. And magic fiction takes over when he starts seeing the world from inside the cramped quarters of the chest. During one of his magical journeys he finds himself at the crease with Polly Umrigar at the Brabourne Stadium.
It was the 1988 novel Satanic Verses that resulted in the fatwa being issued the year following its publication. Rushdie had been scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Since he could not do it, he asked the playwright Harold Pinter, a great fan of his. Pinter delivered the lecture amidst a serious ring of police protection and television coverage.
When he finished, Pinter was guided to the telephone by the ICA staff. An undisclosed number was dialled and suddenly he was speaking to Rushdie. “Harold, next time you write the lecture and I'll deliver it,” the voice, extremely jovial in the circumstances, rang through the line. Pinter thought it was terrifically cool.
Pinter, of course, was a cricket tragic. Every summer he would bring his own cricket team, the Gaeities, to Gunnersbury for the annual match against the Guardian. Rushdie wondered if he could come.
In fact, he did. With the fatwa still in vogue, two members of the Special Branch accompanied him. When later in the day the Guardian ended up a player short, Rushdie agreed to substitute for him on the field. Thirty years after his Warden Road days.
According to the late Pinter’s widow and celebrated author Antonia Fraser, “The ball, in its devilish way, sought him out, and every time he rose up to catch it, I saw the Special Branch duo rise to their feet as though he were under threat.”
It seems Rushdie did not let the fatwa hold him back from enjoying his life … or cricket. He is on the Al Qaeeda hit list as well. And probably he does not let it bother him either.
Salman Rushdie was born on 19 June 1947.
Illustration Maha