IN DEFENCE OF IDOLS

I spent an entire childhood wishing I had been a Muslim and a pathan like my idol was, and wished I could bowl like him, bat like him, and above all, inspire pride, unite and lead like him. From the Australasia Cup in 1986 till about that World Cup game in 1996, India would habitually lose to Pakistan or any other team with teeth, while Imran and his team, bristling with passion and pride, would bring the world to its cricketing knees. As a South Asian who wanted to bowl fast and hit hard, I couldn’t find role models who could inspire me within the Indian team. But right across the border, Imran rose like a colossus. He bowled faster than the West Indians and swatted away their short pitched angst with the grace and power of an immortal Achilles.

In those days while the Indian team was a fractured unit, picking at its own regional seam, under Imran’s flag the Pakistanis played, for their king and country, and immortal glory and so was I wrong to find my hero in the land my country had come to hate.

I had always believed in the articulate intelligence of the man off the field as much as I believed in his abilities on it and when he entered politics, I was convinced that he would make Pakistan a better nation and a better neighbour. My friends would remind me that Imran had allegedly remarked during the 1987 India tour, that let India and Pakistan, instead of going to war over Kashmir, fight it out on the pitch instead. So what, I say? If disputes really could be settled over a game instead of a blood bath, is it really such a bad deal?

Some might say that Imran said so, if he did, because in spite of his Oxford education, Imran is a tribal at heart. And like his brothers from the gun-toting badlands around the Khyber often settle clan disputes by pitting two fighting mountain mastiffs from each clan against each other, instead of shedding human blood, Imran too might have thought it a fair, if impractical idea.

I stood by him, defending my idol when my mother who had hitherto admired him, said she was disappointed to learn of the Sita White episode (Imran and Ms. White had a love child who he was initially reluctant to accept as his own), defending him from my own conscience when I learnt he loved hunting grouse and partridge. I realised he was only a man, and not a god, and yet what a man he was, and is…

So when I first heard that Imran, the bold, Imran, the fearless, Imran, that lion who couldn’t be cowed, had refused to come and speak at the India Today conclave because it also had a certain Salman Rushdie amongst the list of invitees, like many others, I too was disappointed. It isn’t about Mr Rushdie’s book which I haven’t read, but would definitely like to, if only to know why it irked so many so much. It is about a man reneging on an unspoken promise that he made to those who believed in him and believed he was going to take Pakistan beyond religious and cultural bigotry and help it become a modern functional democracy whose people have the right to both express and reject ideas without fearing death and mob hysteria. If he wilted so soon, in the face of so little, would Imran Khan have the courage to finish this battle with his values intact?

“Oh come on! You expect him to stand up and share the lectern with Salman Rushdie and still hope to win elections in Pakistan? The poor man has no choice!” she said. ‘She’, is a colleague of mine and a fan. And I was inclined to agree, but since she is a woman and most of you would fall victim to the usual sexist and chauvinistic assumptions about how little women might understand of either cricket or politics, I went to the library and picked out a few books about the great Khan, one of them in his own hand and titled ‘Pakistan: A personal history’.

As I flipped the pages, I got to know the man beyond the game. The shy playboy, the philandering philanthrophist, the urbane tribal and other such enigmas leaped out of the pages and then faded away behind the tragic sometimes towering-but often ridiculed figure of a king without a kingdom. In the last half decade, Imran Khan, the greatest modern icon, sporting or otherwise, of his country has endured being roughed up by politically radicalised mobs, arrested, jailed and threatened with death and worse. He has seen the women in his family being humiliated by those in power, in a manner which in his ancestral pashtun villages would have led to blood feuds. He has been called ‘a political non-entity’, a politically motivated (or frustrated) born again Muslim.

And then to add insult to injury, he gets called ‘Im, the dim!’ by arguably one of the greatest writers of our times. Salman Rushdie’s upset about being treated like a socio-religious pariah by a man who by virtue of his education and stature should have had the courage to accept, if not celebrate the presence of the man who wrote the ‘Satanic Verses’. Or so we think, for sitting right next to him, moderating the discussion was Aatish Taseer, the man who should have told the world that “it isn’t easy.”

Aatish Taseer’s father, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer was gunned down by his own security officer for opposing Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law, as was Clement Shahzad Butti (a minorities minister with the PPP government in Pakistan). Religious radicals operate with impunity in a country reduced to anarchy. Anybody who stands up to them has to be prepared for death, injury or worse. Families of those who oppose these radicals have to run away or go underground or put up with insults and a mob hysteria that could lead to damaged property, public lynching and even gruesome murders.

To expect a man seeking public office, having already sampled a slice of politically motivated mob justice, to jeopardise his whole future, both political and personal, for a cause he didn’t believe in, is more than merely naïve. And I say it’s a cause Imran didn’t believe in because in 1989, when the book first came out, Imran couldn’t give two hoots either way about the controversy surrounding the verses. But when large sections of the Muslim world boiled over, leading to death and destruction affecting countries as far apart as Japan and Norway, Imran Khan and other moderate Muslims living in the West became victims of the reverse fundamentalism of the ‘liberal West’. And Imran Khan resented that. Interviews he gave more than two decades ago, when he was a mere cricketer and as some say, a celebrity play-boy, would say so.

Imran Khan wasn’t being a hypocrite when he said Salman Rushdie had caused “immeasureable hurt” to all Muslims. For right or wrong, Imran Khan believed what he said. He didn’t bay for Rushdie’s head. He just said he chose not to share a platform with him. What’s wrong with that?

In exchange he got called ‘Im, the dim.’ Th at’s not fair. It’s easy to ridicule a man not present. I can think of a dozen ‘Sal-man?’ and ‘Rush-die’ jokes. Th at’s in poor taste, I agree, and my sincerest apologies to a man I salute for his prowess with the pen, as much as for his wit and wisdom. But the point is why pick on the poor guy when there were bigger fish in the pot to fry. Pranab Mukherjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Omar Abdullah stayed away from the conclave and all Rushdie could say was he was disappointed. All his indignation was spent on a ‘political minnow’ from across the border who is too dignified to cuss and too civilised to kill.

You are my hero too, O teller of tales of magic and meaning. I hold you too high to see you stoop even a little low. Your erudition ought to pick on those more deserving of your ire.

As for Imran, remember the 1992 World Cup, when he batted with uncharacteristic restraint to protect an injured shoulder and a fragile batting line up. He bided his time till the pitch was flat and the sun shone bright, and then he let loose all his might. Inspired by his example, young turks like Inzamam-ul-Haque and Waseem Akram put their weight behind him and lo and behold, the Cup came home.

The Imran of today is doing much the same. He gathers strength as he waits, when he knows its time, he will flood the gates and for that day, his country waits...

HARD MEN PLAY HARD BALL!

If you trust certain quarters, they would tell you that Russia owes its greatness not to Communism or the Kalashnikov but to an unassuming hunk of iron that now lay at my feet.

So this was the secret weapon that had forged the men who won wars, medals and pride for Mother Russia? This was the ‘heavy artillery’ that made Supermen out of mere mortals and supposedly built nations, character and muscles, all with one ‘heave ho’? For something as awesome as all the literature around it proclaims, the kettlebell (that’s what it’s called, for it looks like an iron kettle without a spout), is a rather elusive and little known fitness apparatus. In fact, most sports and fitness stores in the country, and in most countries outside Eastern Europe and the United States wouldn’t know a kettlebell from George Orwell. So how good is a kettlebell at doing what it does, which is transforming the merely ordinary into the truly exceptional, be it people or countries? Well, posterity can decide about the latter, I was keen to know about the former... in other words, could this hunk of iron make an extraordinary hunk of a very ordinary me too?

History would seem to suggest so… In Russia, everyone, from weak and unhealthy teenagers who could barely lift a ‘bell’ - kettlebells, unlike dumbbells, have fixed weights that jump from 8kgs (half pood) to 16kgs (one pood) all the way to 48 kgs (three poods)- right up to old time champion wrestlers like Ivan Poddubny, was lift ing giryas (that’s what they call a kettlebell in the fatherland) and becoming stronger and fitter and healthier than they had ever been.

American and English circus strongmen, the kinds who you might come across in sepia toned pictures, standing in breeches, fire hose arms folded across a massive chest, hair and moustache waxed shiny, with a far away look in the eyes, would use kettlebells to develop the ‘flexible strength’ they needed for their strong man acts. Arthur Saxon and Eugene Sandow swore by them too.

Eventually, the strong man acts went the way of the vaudeville theatre and disappeared. With them, the kettlebell too fell from grace and public memory and was lost to the rest of the world for almost a century. But back home in Russia, it became the architect of a new nation. From school children and littérateurs to soldiers and leaders, everybody ‘played’ with the girya to build strength and character – a fixed weight, fixed ‘target repetitions’ and an ungainly weight necessitated the development of correct lift ing technique and a tenacious resolve to not give up until the goal was reached.

Behind the iron curtain, the girya remained a closely guarded secret that powered Russian soldiers at the frontline, behind enemy lines and athletes beyond the finish line. And then the wall came down and a Spetznaz trainer named Pavel Tsatsouline, a hard nosed Russian with something very Jason Statham-ish about him, showed up in the land of milk and honey, his trusted kettlbell tucked in his armpit.

As soon as gym-going Americans and martial artists found out that it was the girya that gave the Spetznaz their wiry strength, it resurrected the girya and triggered a kettlebell revolution of sorts. Today, kettlebells are the deity of choice for a multitude of athletes, special ops warriors and mixed martial artistes. So without much ado, I picked one up and huffed and puffed and waddled my way out of the store.

I began training in earnest and…. Wait! I’m too new to this so no, I don’t quite feel ready just yet to pull my underpants on top of my pants (erase that picture in your head, I know what you’re thinking) and go “Up! Up! And away”. But I do know someone who would look rather nift y if he did choose to wear his underpants like the original man of steel. His name is Steve Cotter, kettlebeller extraordinaire and popular strength training instructor. Pavel describes him as a mutant of a man who performs incredible feats of strength, like lift ing enormous weights hundreds of times, feats that strong men twice his size would find impossible to contemplate.

Steve was in town for a kettlebell workshop for a group of Indian personal trainers and that’s where I met up with him. He took the group through a list of challenging calisthenics like the pistol –one legged squats, lunges and pushups and some kettlebell drills and then he took a short break. The trainees surrounded him and asked for questions and autographs while I waited my turn. Steve noticed, smiled and waved. I smiled and waved back. Once he had patiently answered every question and posed for a few pictures, he came up to me and extended his hand. We shook hands and I asked him if he had a little time. He pulled a chair, smiled and said he had all the time I needed. Such graciousness in most cases is a welcome virtue but in a man so densely muscled, it was almost a relief.

It has been said that pound for pound, Steve Cotter is amongst the strongest athletes in the world. Steve would crank out more squats on one leg in five minutes than the total combined pushups you and I could manage in the same given time. To give you a perspective, 70% of the world’s recreational athletes and gym goers would find it difficult to complete even one pistol, or one-legged squat.

Besides setting kettlebell records, Steve Cotter has spent years learning and teaching Hsing Yi Chuan, an internal martial art similar to Tai Chi Chuan and has training videos that cover body weight training and weight training. So now that you have a measure of the man, here’s what he had to say when I asked him if a kettlebell really was king of the gym heap…

“Kettlebells are tough to beat when it comes to all round fitness. Powerlift ing is best at building low gear strength while running is great for cardiovascular fitness. Yoga will make you more flexible and something else would be great for (developing) agility but kettlebells develop everything, functional strength, muscular endurance, stamina and cardiovascular fitness and a degree of flexibility and agility… they are unique for the way in which they develop all-round fitness.”

Steve and I spoke some more about the fitness industry, his peers, about how he approaches his work as a fitness trainer as an act of service and how he would love to act in Bollywood movies, “preferably as a villain since they seem to have all the fun”, but I will save that for another time.

For now, let this sublime truth sink in that if one wants to acquire extreme all-round fitness in a hurry the kettlebell is tough to beat.

And since I did mention that I had begun training with kettlebells a few weeks ago, in case you are curious to know how far am I from, wearing my underpants on top of my pants, I must confess that I’m still hobbling around with them around my ankles but with perseverance and patience, who knows… I might fly by your window someday… P.S. I must say though that a chronic shoulder injury I picked up while punching a heavy bag, and one that refused to go away no matter what I tried disappeared after a few weeks of kettlebell snatches and presses. So while I can’t vouch for its ability to build super strength just yet, the kettlebell has definitely had a hitherto unclaimed, therapeutic effect on my shoulder.