New Zealand vs England as experienced from the back of a taxi in Chennai
Aditya Iyer09-Nov-2024When I start watching the game on my mobile phone in Liyaqath’s taxi shortly after dusk, New Zealand’s reply is underway. Opener Devon Conway is batting at one end. At the other stands the relatively unknown Rachin Ravindra. In his previous seven ODIs, all played in 2023, the curly-mopped left-hander hasn’t batted higher than No. 6. But something about Ravindra’s top score of 61 in a 100-run loss to England at Lord’s in the lead-up to this World Cup made the New Zealand team management promote him to No. 3 in Ahmedabad. It seems to have paid off instantly.With a few quick clicks on chronological time-stamps, Liyaqath and I watch all that we’ve missed in the innings. Just as we go live, Ravindra welcomes us back with a terrific hook off the speedy Mark Wood, where he gets inside the line of the bouncer and almost casually swats it away over square leg for six. There’s a slow-motion clatter of the ball against an electronic hoarding in Motera and a louder crash just in front of us in Guindy, for Liyaqath, in his eagerness to catch the replay, has nudged the car in front of him as we move halfway up the choked flyover. He slams hard on the brake pedal, but the damage has been done.Through the columns of water being displaced on the windscreen, we can see that the right taillight of the Maruti S-Presso ahead of us has been hit. Liyaqath steps out to inspect both cars. Two men emerge from the S-Presso to do the same. One of them is in regular office clothes, a shirt tucked into his trousers, but the other wears a crisp black and a diaphanous black shirt, a very specific kind of combination that only devotees of Sabarimalai Ayappan tend to wear, and immediately I fear that this situation could well take a communal turn; Liyaqath, with his beard under a moustache-free upper lip, is very evidently Muslim.But they just blink at each other in the falling rain, pointing at what I suppose are dents and nicks on both vehicles. I can’t hear what they are saying, but their gestures are pretty self-explanatory: nods and sighs and pursed lips and hands on hips. The man in black walks back to his car and re-emerges with his phone. He shelters the device with a palm and punches in whatever Liyaqath is dictating to him. Missed calls are made, photos of number plates clicked, heads shaken and nodded. That’s it, fracas over. Liyaqath is drenched by the time he heaves himself into the driver’s seat and sighs heavily over the sounds of pelting rain. The S-Presso is now part of the indistinguishable swarm ahead.
I catch the strains of Tamil commentary. I follow the sound and identify three flower-sellers as the ones listening to it, squatting in a line on the sand as they arrange strings of jasmine in coir baskets
Liyaqath is grumpy, muttering and castigating himself for his carelessness. “Please, I want to stop at a tea after this flyover, I just need to compose myself. Only if you don’t mind, please, okay?” he says. In a short while, we are parked beside ashop from whose awning hang many hands of bananas so ripe that they have lost all nutritional value. It is a stationery store, tobacco shop, confectionery stall, tea halt and shopkeeper’s living room all rolled into one. A woman sits on a red plastic stool, watching the World Cup game on a small TV on the green wall.We duck under the suspended bananas and Liyaqath lifts two fingers at the shopkeeper, who in turn whistles at a working the kettle by the backroom stove, who nods and exaggerates the motion of his pour into two paper cups, mainly to incite fresh froth in the milk chai. We slurp into the rising steam, watching the rain. “It was completely my fault,” says Liyaqath, looking bitterly into his hot beverage. I tell him that I’m just glad the hullabaloo didn’t acquire a communal shade. Liyaqath gives me a quizzical look. Then he throws his head back and laughs, deep, jolly rumbles emanating from his stomach. We now have the shopkeeper’s attention.”This is not your Delhi or Bombay, sir. This is Tamil Nadu, and our politicians might constantly stir other stupid things but they don’t do this Hindu-Muslim-Christian division here,” Liyaqath says. The shopkeeper nods along. “All of us coexist happily, what do you say ?” makes a perfect circle with his head a few times in agreement. Liyaqath likes the validation, the response, the power of telling off an outsider in front of his own, teaching a complete stranger the ways of this land, his land. “Unlike in the north, where widespread illiteracy allows the leaders to take advantage and polarise the people, the south is largely literate. Tougher to turn us against each other. Religion in the south of India, be it here or Kerala, or even Andhra Pradesh, is there to give us believers strength. It doesn’t make us weaker. We can be from any religion but here we are Tamil first, correct ?”The rain has stopped just as suddenly as it had started, and the winding roads leading up to the bay are bathed in the phosphorescent yellow hue of the dim streetlights. About a hundred metres short of Elliot’s Beach, the Uber stops next to a permanent -painted entryway to an apartment block in Besant Nagar, so named after Britisheducationist Annie Besant, who established the Theosophical Society a stone’s throw from where I stand. I learn that my friend, whose apartment I will be staying in until the end of India’s match in Chennai, is a good two hours away from getting home. I drag my strolley over the wet pavement towards the beach for a lonely wait. But then Liyaqath, parked at the intersection of the residential avenue and the beach road, calls out to me once again.He has pushed his seat back as far as possible and is smoking a herb. Potent, aromatic coils waft from the window as he enquires where I’m headed. On finding out that I’m at a loose end, he says: “Come come, sit inside. Want to try? It is very good, from Idukki.”Penguin Random House”Sure. But can we go to the beach? I happen to have a bottle of whisky that I got for my friend. Would you like to try some of that?”Each of us having accepted the invitation to indulge in the other man’s poison, we sit on the low peripheral wall around the Kaj Schmidt Memorial, a monument consisting of a single archway to remember a Dutch man who died while saving a British girl from drowning in undivided India. That was when this city was very much still Madras. The tide is low and calm, and it laps gently against the receding shore. Watching it, we smoke and drink, drink and smoke.In the silence, we hear two young lovers close by, their faces hidden under a thick jacket, giggle and playfully admonish each other for getting too frisky. I also catch the strains ofTamil commentary from the Ahmedabad match. I follow the sound and identify three flower-sellers as the ones listening to it, squatting in a line on the sand as they arrange strings of jasmine in coir baskets.Just as the might of the intoxication kicks in, Liyaqath nudges me in the ribs with his elbow and holds out his phone, showing me a picture of a girl no older than five, maybe six. “My daughter. Mahira.”I nod my spinning head.”I named her after Thala.”It doesn’t strike me immediately, so he smiles and pokes me again.”What, sir? Didn’t get the connection? Dhoni, sir! Mahi, sir! That is how I chose the name.”We are now lying on the sand, hands behind heads, looking up at the inky sky in our dizzy silence. Two boys in college uniforms trudge past us with their noses stuck into a mobilescreen. I yell out to them for the score. “Over, over, all over,” one of them shouts back. “Ravindra hundred. Conway 150. Both not out.”Somewhere in the far west of this vast, vast country, the World Cup has well and truly begun. A nation will live and breathe nothing else over the next six weeks, one deep lungful at a time.