Chorus from Hellas, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, on the London Underground

Spent fifteen minutes or so staring at these words on the London Underground:

The world`s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faith and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore... 

This poem is Chorus from Hellas, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, an explicitly political piece. At the time it was written, Greece had been an Ottoman colony for over three hundred years, and was fighting for independence. The English romantic poets were deeply exercised by the Greek cause.

Shelley wrote these words while raising money for Greek partisans, showing a strong pan-European sensibility; it's possible to read this poem as a creation hymn for the European Union, written one hundred and thirty years before the Treaty of Rome. Unfortunately, now, "wreaks of a dissolving dream" also bring to mind the financial havoc in Greece, and the dissolving dream of Europe.   

Thank you to Transport For London for making room for Shelley on the tube. It would have been so easy to fill this space with yet another advert. 

Maria Sharapova finding her way back to the top is special

Nike, one of Maria Sharapova’s main sponsors, just brought out a new advert to celebrate their girl’s return to grand slam glory and the #1 ranking. It reads “Those Who Belong at the Top Never Forget Their Way Back”. Nike have got the story the precisely the wrong way around. Maria’s return to the top after years in the wilderness is so thrilling, so heartening, because so many who belong at the top lose their footing momentarily, and then never find their way back. The complete narrative arc - of young glory, years in the wilderness, and a triumphant return – is rare. Returning to the top is even harder than staying at the top. The natural course is for young glory to melt away into a career of middling mediocrity, or worse.

Perhaps I’m conditioned to expect gifted youngsters to go slip-slidin’ away into nothing because of the scars I carry as a long-suffering supporter of the Indian cricket team.

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan

To me, one of the greatest moments in cricket history happened in the Benson and Hedges Cup finals at the MCG in 1985, when Javed Miandad was stumped by Sadanand Vishwanath off Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, to top off a glorious Australian campaign for both young men. India beat Pakistan, Sunil Gavaskar held aloft the trophy, the team lapped the MCG in Ravi Shastri’s Audi...all of creation was shouting out that the Sadanand and Siva belonged at the top. Yet, after that golden start, both Sadanand and LS tragically lost their way, like Maninder Singh, Raman Lamba, Surinder Amarnath, Vinod Kambli, Salil Ankola, Abey Kuruvilla, Vivek Razdan, Sadagoppan Ramesh, Praveen Amre and Narendra Hirwani, potentially like Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma and Sreesanth. I’m painfully used to seeing talented youngsters, who had glorious starts to their careers, burn out or fade away.

Tracy Austin

Tennis too has had its share of shining young stars who don’t go on to achieve very much. Tracy Austin once looked like Chris Evert’s heir. Chris Evert won eighteen slams, Tracy won her second and last grand slam when she was nineteen. Andrea Jeager, another of Chris Evert's heirs, didn’t manage even one. Gabriela Sabatini won just one slam, disappointing for someone long considered Steffi Graf's peer. Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic rose to world #1 and fell back into the pack without winning a single slam, Ana Ivanovic managed one. Anastasia Myskina pipped Maria Sharapova to become the first Russian to win a slam when she won the French Open in 2004, a month before Maria beat Serena Williams to win Wimbledon. Anastasia Myskina hasn’t won a slam since, and hasn’t played professional tennis since 2007.

There are exceptions, of course. Zaheer Khan returned from the wilderness to spearhead India to the #1 test ranking and the World Cup. Jennifer Capriati showed real character in winning three slams after kicking her well-reported drug problems. Kim Clisters is justly one of tennis’ favourite players, for coming back from retirement, and motherhood, to win back-to-back US Opens. Regardless, the pattern of young stars quickly fading away is strong and persistent.

So, when Maria Sharapova won back to-back slams in 2008, had shoulder surgery, and vanished from view, I assumed she was following that established pattern. This was an especially easy assumption to make about Maria, since she had every opportunity to follow in the footsteps of her compatriot Anna Kournikova, and settle for the plush life of an A-list celebrity, earning many millions endorsing designer handbags and wrist watches. I darkly suspect Caroline Wozniacki is making peace with that kind of mediocrity: she just launched a range of designer undergarments, branded the Caroline Wozniacki Collection.

Fortunately for tennis, Maria didn’t settle for mediocrity. She looked within, and said yeh dil maange more. Fortunately for tennis, Maria Sharapova found the spunk, the guts, the gumption and the game to deliver on her fierce desire. Ave Maria!

Is Mark Zuckerberg richer than Mr Darcy?

This picture of Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding with Priscilla Chan was one of the few truly heart warming images from the last few weeks. This picture was so heart-warming because I learnt something new: I didn’t know Zuckerberg’s girlfriend was Asian. This knowledge re-framed the Zuckerberg wedding for me, as a fellow Asian. This isn’t just another wedding photo any more. It is now the picture of every Tiger Mom’s most fervent dream coming true. Dennis and Yvonne Chan, ex-refugee immigrants who ran a Chinese takeaway in Boston, must be so happy with their multi-billionaire son-in-law. How nice for them!

As my heart warmed to the Chan family’s good fortune, I started slipping into an authentic Tiger Mom mindset, and some more tough-minded thoughts took shape. A good Tiger Mom would do some rigorous competitive benchmarking. She would ask herself, “Mark Zuckerberg is a nice boy, but is he really rich enough for Priscilla? Is he as rich as Mrs. Bennet's son-in-law, Mr. Darcy? You know, the one they want to marry Elizabeth off to?”

It turns out Mrs Chan need not have worried, her son-in-law compares very well with Mrs Bennet’s son-in-law. Jane Austen tells us that Mr Darcy had an income of ten thousand pounds per year, in 1810, in England. Converted into today’s money, that is about $600,000 per year. That is a tidy income, but feels distinctly imaginable, more affluent-professional than masters-of-the-universe, certainly not the kind of money that animates the Occupy Wall Street movement. A self respecting Tiger Mom would wish more for her children.

So, is that game, set and match to Mrs Chan? Was Mr Darcy really no better off than assorted corporate vice presidents? Mr Darcy owned half of Derbyshire and employed a vast domestic staff, but he couldn’t buy an asprin, or watch the World Cup finals on HDTV. Can one really compare his situation to ours? To whatever extent comparisons are possible, it seems like our living standards have improved so much that millions of upper middle class professionals enjoy a quality of life that is equivalent to that of the most privileged landed aristocrats just two hundred years ago, which is a comforting thought in these troubled times.

Mrs. Bennet’s partisans might argue that relative income matters more than absolute income. This is reasonable. Behavioural economics and evolutionary biology suggest that people care more about status than about absolute living standards. Mr Darcy was high status, certainly higher status than the armies of contemporary upper middle class professionals who share his living standards. But how does his relative income or status compare with Mark Zuckerberg?

The American academic James Heldman tells us that Mr Darcy’s income of 10,000 pounds per year was 300 times the per capita income in his day. The per capita income in today’s America is $48,000, so a contemporary Mr Darcy would make approximately $15 million per annum, which is starting to feel appropriately rarified. Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune is at least $10 billion. If that earns risk free returns of 2% p.a., that is an income of $200 million, which is an order of magnitude more than what our contemporary Mr Darcy makes.

James Heldman also refers to the economic historian G.E. Mingay, who estimates that there were only 400 families among the landed gentry of England with an income in the range of 5,000 to 50,000 pounds per annum, with the average being about 10,000. To keep things simple, lets say that puts Mr Darcy in at about the 200th richest man in his England. Mark Zuckerberg is the 14th richest person in his America, trumping Mr Darcy once again, without any fiddly adjustments for the larger population in today’s America. However one looks at the numbers, our contemporary Tiger Mom Mrs. Chan has outperformed the proto-Tiger Mom Mrs. Bennet.

At this point, the top performing Tiger Mom in the jungle would need to pause, offer the other Tiger Moms a cup of tea, and initiate a conversation about how money doesn’t really matter, that there are many qualitative things like character and compatiability that make a marriage successful. This blog would like to join the Tiger Moms in drinking a cup of tea. This blog would also like to wish all happiness to the newlyweds Mark and Priscilla. May they play many Limca Cuts.

Why Rafael Nadal is like a Black Swan

"Black Swan" is business-speak for a single observation that demolishes a previously plausible theory. 

The phrase comes from Nassim Taleb's excellent book - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Suppose one had a theory that "all swans are white". This would have been a really solid theory for a while, it would have been consistent with available evidence, robust to skeptical inquiry. The theory would have held until Australia was discovered, and black swans were observed, at which point the theory is toast. Personally, I find the metaphor a little awkward. But now that it has become a part of the language, it is quite helpful in talking about the limitations of statistics, and the problems that come from looking in the rear view mirror to get a view of the road ahead.

Taleb's book is about finance, but his concept applies to any aspect of life, including tennis. 

Peter Bodo's preview of the 2012 French Open in Tennis magazine talks about why Rafael Nadal is a black swan (though he doesn't use that phrase).  Until Rafa burst on the scene, the prevailing theory was that Bjorn Borg would be the last dominant French Open champion. After Bjorn Borg, who played with a wooden Donnay racquet, French Open champions had been a succession of one-slam-wonders.

"There were solid, well thought out, inter-related reasons for this. The men's field was getting deeper and deeper. At the same time, advances in racquet and string technology gave everyone a boost of power and a more lethal return game. Combine these comparably superior and fit athletes with more powerful weapons, and put them to work on a relatively slow court, and it was a bit like tennis roulette.

It seemed that Roland Garros had been transformed from the tournament that only the best and most consistent players could win into the one that anybody could win. And that was only heightened by the fact that so many of its more successful players were developed on clay in emerging tennis nations like Spain, Sweden, France, and Argentina. When you looked back upon the Borg years, you were apt to think, "We'll not see the likes of him again. . ."

And when Bruguera, who had even more radical technique than Borg, was unable to add to his Roland Garros haul of two, it seemed that the days when style-of-play and particularly vicious topspin might yield a huge advantage were definitely over. 

Well, Nadal has exposed all that as just so much fancy-pants theorizing..."

Good luck in Paris to the King of Clay.

Peri Lyons' Psychic Technique: Radical Empathy

I hate fortune tellers. This feeling isn't mild, amused scepticism, but fierce antipathy, and comes from Indian upbringing. Back in India, fortune-tellers are not innocent fair-ground amusements. They are serious and powerful people, jyotishtis, seers who can divine the fates on account of their spiritual attainment. Conveniently, these seers can also intervene with the fates on a client's behalf, to prevent dark and dire events that have been foretold from coming to pass.

The conversation between the seer and the client develops along the lines "I see the possibility of a glorious future...but...I also see terrible dangers...the divinity x needs to be appeased with sop y ...to protect your loved ones from these dangers...". Sop y generally contributes to the jyotishti's well-being. The client gradually learns to be dependent on the seer and loses autonomy, as he wins her over with honest trifles and betrays her in matters of the deepest consequence. Divination becomes an extortion racket, reinforced by the Stockholm syndrome.

I find the extortion practiced by jyotishtis more distressing than the simple violent extortion practiced by gangland bosses or cops on the beat. These "god men" are preying on the sacred, on faith, on hope - on human faculties that could be so life-enhancing if they were not abused. So, in my moral hierarchy, fortune-tellers, psychics, seers, astrologers, soothsayers and their ilk fall below common or garden charlatans like Bernie Madoff or Adam Stanford. They sit closer to JRR Tolkien's Grima Wormtongue, whose murmurs and whispers rob Lord Theoden of Rohan of his vitality, or JK Rowling's dementors, killers who do their business not through violence but by robbing their victims of the will to live.  

This attitude is why I was surprised to find myself warming to a psychic I came across while flipping through a back issue of the New Yorker.

Peri Lyons

This is Peri Lyons, "the most expensive psychic in New York". She plays by certain rules. Rule #1 is "readings by Peri Lyons are for entertainment purposes only". Also, she only does "good stuff... I very rarely get "bad" stuff. Either I'm way too positive for that, or my spirit guides are really chicken." Those rules take the whole extortion racket out of the equation, thank God. But what I liked, rather than just didn't hate, was her psychic method.

Peri Lyons does not read the stars, or the entrails of animals, or ancient palm leaves or any such thing. She practices "radical empathy". If I've understood what that means, she does with her clients what a method actor does with a character. She gets into the skin of her subject, experiences what they experience, uses that insight to tell her subjects about themselves, and about any self-fulfilling beliefs that she senses. This is not in any way a mysterious or other-worldly faculty. I routinely do this as a sports fan, tuning into the players' psyche, trying to sense their commitment, intensity and confidence. A good psychic just does this tuning-in very well.

Courtney Love

One of Peri Lyons' good friends and client is Courtney Love, who, apparently, "doesn't do soothsayers". I have a hunch that for Courtney Love, the psychic service that matters is just plain empathy, rather than any sort of forecasting.

Peri Lyons also runs a popular class called "How To Be a Psychic Without Even Trying". Maybe Paul the Octopus was one of her graduates.   

Paul, the psychic octopus 

Why I’m glad Saurav Ganguly has come out of retirement

Ganguly, when he was the God of the off-side

“I don’t plan to retire. I will play for India as long as I am selected. If I’m dropped from the Indian team, I’ll play for Bombay. If I’m dropped from the Bombay team, I’ll play for Dadar Union. If I’m dropped from the Dadar Union team I’ll play galli cricket near my house. I’ll play for as long as I can. I’ll never retire.”

This was Sunil Gavaskar’s reply to a journalist who once asked him when he planned to retire. This may have been in a cricket magazine called Sportsweek I used to subscribe to as a child. This was long before the internet, I wasn’t able to Google up the reference. This was also from a time before sportmen had handlers, or image consultants, telling them what to tell journalists to maximize their brand endorsement income. These words probably were a good reflection of what Sunil Gavaskar thought at the time.

Gavaskar drives through the covers

Those words stayed in my mind for so long because that comment, that attitude, epitomizes why Sunil Gavaskar was my first ever hero. By believing that the game was worth playing no matter how humble the setting, Gavaskar was sticking up for every amatuer cricketer, everywhere. Gavaskar was raising a fist for every kid who has stepped up to the crease in a schoolyard, risking humiliation in front of an army of snarky fourteen year olds, for the pleasure of feeling the thonck of bat on ball. The greatest batsman in the world was effectively punching gloves with every Mumbaikar who has ever burnt up a weekend playing Kanga league cricket in the monsoon rain on Shivaji Park maidan, or every Yorkshireman who has braved the bitter cold and howling winds of an English May to play for his village.

There have, of course, been many avatars of Sunil Gavaskar, avatars who don’t always see eye to eye. The sulky blocker who made 36 not out off 174 balls against England in the 1975 World Cup probably wouldn’t shake hands with the furious belligerent of 1983 who scored 100 off 94 balls, in a test match, facing Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding, to equal Sir Donald Bradman’s record of 29 test centuries.

Ultimately, the avatar who refused to retire didn’t win the battle for Gavaskar’s soul. Gavaskar did retire on a high. He stepped down as the Indian captain after winning the 1985 World Championships in Australia, with Ravi Shastri driving the team around the MCG in his Audi. He retired from playing active cricket in 1987, after scoring a century at Lord’s in a five day game to celebrate the MCC’s bicentenary. Gavaskar doesn’t live in Dadar any more, I don’t think he plays galli cricket nowadays outside his swank apartment on the Worli sea face.

Ganguly b Malinga 16

The Indian player who inherited the best of Gavaskar's spirit is Saurav Ganguly. More than any other player since Sunny, Ganguly is the one who is obviously animated by a fierce pride and an entirely irrational passion for the game.

Saurav's stubbornness, his irrationality, that refusal to just accept reality, is what made it possible for him to take charge of the Indian team after the horrors of Azharuddin, and turn it into a team we were proud to support. That same stubbornness, the same refusal to accept reality was on display yesterday. Saurav's IPL team, the Pune Warriors,were up against the Mumbai Indians. Saurav was awful. He made a laboured 16 off 24 balls before Lasith Malinga cleaned him up. What made it even harder to watch was that he clearly was trying hard, and his crawl probably cost his team the game.

Yet, despite that predictable awfulness, I loved him for having the burning desire to come and play. Saurav will play for as long as they let him. He doesn't need to. His image consultants will tell him not to. He doesn't need the glory or the money. He could settle for a safe job, as a coach, or commentator, or "mentor". But for India's captain Saurav the lion heart, yeh dil maange more.

Whether Pune Warriors did the smart thing by inviting Saurav to come out of retirement and captain their team is an entirely different question. That is a topic for another day.

Showing up: the ingredient that makes the game worth playing, and watching

“80% of success is just showing up” - Woody Allen.

Rafael Nadal steam-rolled Novak Djokovic 6-3 6-1 in the Monte Carlo Masters finals last weekend. Previously, Nadal had lost 7 tournament finals in row to Djokovic, including in some epic matches like the Aussie Open finals. Nadal didn’t play to a new game plan to win so easily in Monte Carlo. Apparently Djokovic was missing some emotional energy, his grandfather died the previous week, and that made all the difference. “I definitely don’t want to take anything away from Rafa’s win” said Djokovic, in his post-match interview. “He was a better player. But it’s a fact that I just didn’t have any emotional energy left in me.” Novak not showing up was totally understandable, my condolences to the Djokovic family.

Yet, despite his personal loss, Djokovic did make the finals of a Masters 1000 event. He beat world #7 Tomasz Berdych, #19 Alexander Dolgopolov and #55 Robin Haase to get there. He was good enough to win these matches without emotional energy, without showing up. But Nole he couldn’t beat Rafa without showing up.

I didn’t watch the game last weekend. I don’t regret missing it.

Tennis, or generally any sport, is not about skill, it is about spirit. It is worth watching when the players on court have showed up, when they have their mojo going, are engaged, fully checked-in, stretched, and are playing like it really matters. When players are clinically dismembering weaker opposition, or when they are passively resigned to their fate, no sport is worth watching, regardless of how skilled the players are. It’s why, during the first week at Wimbledon, qualifiers and lowly non-seeds battling it out on the side courts makes for far more compelling tennis than the stars going through the motions on Centre Court. That spirit, that mojo, is exactly what Nole seems to have been missing.

Surprisingly, the IPL is turning out to be quite watchable because the players are showing up, because the guys on the field are fully present in the contest. This season, I’ve watched stars like Lasith Malinga and Dale Steyn, journeyman pros like Owais Shah and James Franklin, golden oldies like Saurav Ganguly and rookies like Ajinkya Rahane, all show up and give it everything they’ve got. That commitment is what makes the game worth playing, and watching. Format doesn’t really matter as long as the players show up. Sure, the drama on offer in the IPL isn’t ever going to develop into something unforgettable, like, say, the 2005 Ashes. But it isn’t insipid either, like India in England circa 2011.

The IPL is more than a novelty now. It’s a regular part of the cricket scene. And it seems to be working - despite the kitsch, the lurid costumes, the cheerleaders, the “DLF maximums” and the “Citi moments of success” – because the players really are showing up.