Are Swimming Coaches the Real Water Monsters?

Can you truly call yourself a ’90s kid if your folks didn’t bundle you off for cycling, karate, or swimming every summer? Indian parents did not want their kids wasting time watching Cartoon Network all day, so they came up with a checklist to create a master race, and the way to do that was to teach the subjects a new skill during every vacation.

First, I started with cycling, because I live in a Gujarati family and it was the cheapest investment. The next year, The Karate Kid was a huge hit, and I was screaming, “Hu! Ha!” every morning in a white robe with the confidence of Bruce Lee and the ability of a ’90s-era Adnan Sami. Once land was conquered, it was time to venture into Poseidon’s realm, and master the art of swimming.

My father believed in the old-school instruction method of throwing me into a slow-moving river and hoping for the best. After definitely swallowing a few litres of dirty water and probably a few small fish, he gave up the DIY tutorial. It was time to approach the experts, and I was enrolled in a 21-day swimming camp close to our house.

The excitement of buying a colourful swimsuit and fancy goggles immediately disappears when you’re first faced with the tang of chlorine and the scary depths of the adults’ pool. Your nerves are then calmed with the sight of floats around, and the swimming teacher and lifeguards all seem like nice and helpful people.

But then, even a totalitarian state once burst with hope and positivity in the air when it all began, which is the same feeling you get during the first few days of swimming lessons. Your float is reassuringly tied to your back, you’re happily splashing water on your new friends, and the only exercises are leg movements in the baby pool. About a week later, things start to escalate. The swimming coach becomes more dangerous in the water than a coked-up crocodile. Scared toddlers are thrown from the diving board and horrified kids are set adrift without floats, struggling for their lives and gulping down weird-tasting water. After swimming class, I always hoped the strange taste was from the chlorine, and not from someone emptying their bladders into the pool in fear.

A prerequisite for being a swimming coach is that you must be a strict asshole with no empathy or humanity left in you. Everyone should be terrified of you all the time. I secretly believe all the glowering, fierce extras playing soldiers in Border were swimming coaches on their winter break. If you could make up the perfect swimming teacher, you’d use Amitabh Bachchan’s authoritarian baritone, Rajnikanth’s bristling mooch, and Hulk Hogan’s bright, technicolour chaddis. I was so terrified of my coach that whenever I saw him outside the pool, in the market or at a fair, I’d pretend not to have noticed him.

I suppose their despotism has some roots. When you are trying to bully a skill into children, there is no place for sympathy, or human rights. How do you think the Chinese ended up with 100 medals at the Beijing Olympics? Dictatorships only work when people subscribe to a method or system, and it’s no different for water dictatorships.

When the 21 days of hell were over, parents were invited to the mujra to watch their kids glide across water like mermaids. It was a simple exam – you had to jump from the diving board, swim the length of the pool, and voila! You’ve cleared your test. It sounded simple enough, but when the time came to jump, I was too scared and held on tightly to my mom’s chunni. I even turned on the waterworks, hoping my tears would save the day with all the adults around. But dictators don’t get to the top by being soft or showing mercy.

The cold-blooded dictator sent one of his executioners, also known as lifeguards, to forcibly drag me away from my mom and carry me to the diving board. Like an animal being sacrificed on Eid, he handed me over to the dictator, who gently held me by the neck, and then threw a helpless seven-year-old into a 13-foot-deep pool from a height of 25 feet, in front of an entire audience of adults who all stood and watched in silence.

This is not a story of redemption with a background score by Hans Zimmer, where the swimming teacher’s tough love finally paid off, and I discovered I could swim like Kandivali’s Michael Phelps once I hit the water. Instead, I struggled and feverishly flapped my hands for about a minute before drowning and eventually being rescued. The teacher’s disappointed look made me feel like I just missed the DU cut-off by three marks. But for me, it was a bit like watching Bodyguard, I was just glad it was over. Thanks to my coach, I was scared of going near a pool for years. I would look at water the same way Jaadu from Koi Mil Gaya looked at darkness.

Screw Gabbar Singh. Maybe the punchline to our childhood horror stories should be, “So jao, varna swimming coach aa jaayega…”

Luka Modrić: The Man Who Embodies Everything Sport Should Be About

The visual of Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović trying to console a sobbing Luka Modrić after their side’s 4-2 loss to France in the World Cup final is going to stay with me – and I am certain I speak for many who love and follow football with ardent devotion. It was irrelevant whether you supported Croatia, France, or were a neutral spectator. Watching a grown man cry after a game is heartbreaking. More so, when it is Luka Modrić, a player you just cannot not love.

At 32, Luka Modrić might have played his last game at a World Cup for Croatia, taking them to the finals and winning the Golden Ball in the process. In his own words, it was a “bittersweet moment,” because personal glory is pale in comparison to winning the ultimate prize for the team. It tells you everything you need to know about the Croatian captain.

With three Man of the Match awards in seven games, Croatia’s midfield general had a stellar tournament. It is rather fitting that the biggest stage of them all, was graced by his tiny, dignified, and unassuming presence.  

In the time span that Modrić receives a pass and passes the ball to the next player, football seems to be the easiest sport on the planet. Everything seems simple, clear, and evident. “That’s what I would have done,” you think. Why doesn’t everyone play like him?

The football world idolises pace, dribbling, and trickery. We love watching Cristiano Ronaldo embarrass a defender with a nutmeg, we love watching Lionel Messi go past half the team with quick feet, we love watching Kylian Mbappé run at 45 kmph. In a world that is premised on speed, Luka Modrić has mastered the art of the pause. Of waiting for the right moment. Of moulding space and time on the football pitch.

At any moment in the game, Modrić is aware where every one of his teammates is, almost like an aerial cam is feeding his brain. He always has an extra second on him, to make a decision, and it always seems to be the right one, like a chess grandmaster who has perfected the end-game. He knows when to make a pass and the precise weight it should carry. He knows when someone around will make a run and what it’ll lead to. Modrić has the rare ability that very few in the game have, of knowing what’s going to happen in the next three seconds.

The reason Luka Modrić is adored in the world of football, is because there’s no nonsense associated with him. He doesn’t roll over like a drama queen every 15 seconds, he doesn’t have a flashy signature celebration or any headline sponsors. He never walks into an interview and says outrageous things. There’s an underrated professionalism and dignity with which he carries himself, that we all love. There’s nothing about him that says “Look at me!”

He quietly takes the pitch every game, runs more than anyone, touches the ball more than anyone, and creates chances more than anyone, doing the job for the team. That’s what Modrić is all about: He creates chances so his teammates can score and he intercepts play so that his defenders are shielded. A team man, a leader, and one of the best box-to-box midfielders in the game.

Croatia’s dream World Cup campaign will be remembered for its comebacks and its modest group of players, consistently punching above weight. A war survivor, a child refugee, a “shy kid who was too timid” to play football, Modrić also kept making comebacks from adversity and punched above weight, to become one of the most loved players on the planet.

In the words of commentator Peter Dury, “There isn’t a person who embodies their country, much like Luka Modrić”. In him, we see everything we want sport to be about.

Diego Maradona, Always The Man of the Match

There are many things Diego Maradona could have done after his stint as the world’s greatest footballer of all time. He could have, like other legends from the world of sport, chosen a dignified, greying life spent in a suit throwing instructions at footballers from the other side of the touchline, he could become a football pundit on TV, or he could have simply posed for photographs while doing humanitarian work across the globe.

But that’s not who Diego Maradona is.

Maradona’s entire life has been a Mountain Dew commercial – full throttle, filled with thrill and adventure. If his life were to be summarised as an inanimate object, it would be a Formula One car. It moves at speed, there’s a lot of thrill, but a permanent risk that things could come crashing down any moment. He is Argentina’s comic star, action hero, and chocolate boy all rolled into one.

When he’s not busy smoking pot, sporting a Che Guevara tattoo, and trying out a funky hairstyle, he’s pissing people off on Twitter with his comments and engaging in a verbal barrage with Pele. A heart attack survivor and drug addict, he lives life to the fullest. A footballing Charlie Sheen, if you will.

When Lionel Messi’s Argentina were sweating it out on the field in a must-win game against Nigeria at the World Cup yesterday, Maradona danced with a Nigerian fan in the stands, posed with a saint-like image of himself, looked up to the heavens every 18 seconds, enacted the Wakanda sign, showed someone the finger, and then had to be carried away to a hospital at the end of the game. While the internet exploded with his antics, Maradona would probably call it, just another Tuesday.

While everyone else saw a football game, Maradona lived his life during those 90 minutes. The ups and downs, the heartbreak and the jubilation mimicked his existence. Cameramen and photographs were probably more in love with him than Messi. With every miss and every foul, the lens panned to the stands for his reaction. Even if you missed the game, you could feel the twists and turns with his changing expressions through the course of the game. The world wide web erupted as the greatest footballer of the current generation scored on the pitch and the greatest footballer of the previous generation cheered for him from the stands, in the manner that only he could.

It’s no wonder that while other celebrities garner respect, Diego Maradona garners only passion. He is as raw, frank, and as real as it gets. In a world that dictates political correctness for public figures in the limelight, he has no time for it. He speaks what he thinks, emotes what he feels, supports what he likes, and consumes what he wishes, not giving a flying fuck about what anyone thinks of him. He’s football’s darling, who people love seeing at the games, while he has the time of his life, every single time.

As the world’s most passionate Argentinian, he is GOAT at everything he commits himself to, both on and off the field. It’s the only way he knows to live life. And last night he showed us that he isn’t just the world’s greatest footballer. He is also the world’s greatest football fan.

LEAKED! Arvind Subramanian’s Resignation Mail

Dear <insert name of Finance Minister here>,

I don’t know who I should address this mail to, because I’m not sure who the Finance Minister currently is. Are we doing the odd-even thing, where it’s Arun Jaitley on odd days and Piyush Goyal on even days? Anyway, I will address it to Arun Jaitley ji because I don’t know of any other way to say it – I am katti with Piyush Goyal.

I would like to tender my resignation from the post of Chief Economic Advisor after serving almost four years in office. The finance ministry seems to be a “sinking ship” – even Rahul Gandhi knows it – and I don’t want to be around when it hits the iceberg. The economy has hit a rough patch, fuel prices are rising, the rupee is getting weaker and the current account deficit is widening. I was among the world’s top 100 thinkers in 2011 – I can’t have a blip on my CV just because you lot can’t get your shit together.

However, the real truth is, I could’ve stayed a few more months as my term was about to expire anyway. But you never know what Donald Trump is up to; give him a few more days and he’ll even deny green cardholders entry into the United States. I would like to go back and continue my teaching assignment so stupid economists don’t end up in the White House, engaging in trade wars with China.

Endings are also a time for reflection, and now is a good time to look back at my memorable, if patchy, tenure. Yes, it would’ve been preferable if the government canteen served beef curry and we weren’t forced to do yoga every morning. On the bright side, it has made me fitter, although I wish I could say the same about the shape of our economy.

Still, we managed to launch an online education platform Swayam that got lost among the thousands of websites and apps that the government launches every other day. It was a shame that we created more websites than jobs over the last four years. My team also conceptualised the JAM trinity: Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile. Thanks to Venkaiah Naidu ji for that acronymn.

But I don’t think I will get over one of the big disappointments of my term in a hurry: The Economic Survey 2017-18. I was proud of the effort from my team. We put in months of compilation, research, and analysis to publish a beautiful document… and all everyone could talk about was the friggin pink cover. Bunch of penny-wise, pound-foolish noobs. Here’s a tip for my successor – no matter what they do, dear Finance Minister, I hope you’ll ensure that they stick to a generic colour for the Economic Survey cover. Preferably orange.

I also suggested a simplified GST rate, restricting it to a maximum of two-three rates. I’m not saying the present GST structure is complex but along with the restaurant bill, people should also be handed over IIT application forms – because if you can get your head around how GST works, you are probably a genius and can make it to India’s premier institution. My suggestion was obviously ignored, because that’s how advisory roles work. They ask you for advice, pay you for it, and then go on to do whatever the hell they like.

Anyway. New endings, new beginnings. I should be thinking about happy things.

I am excited about going back to my family in the States, and also catching up with Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Panagriya. We’ll do what ex-employees usually do – meet over coffee and bitch about our former employers (except Amit bhai, of course, he has global reach).

I would also like to say thank you to the media that was relatively kind to me but my almost-namesake Subramanian Swamy was relentless. It is amazing how diametrically opposite two people with the same name can be. Rahul Gandhi and Rahul Dravid, Hardik Patel and Hardik Pandya. Narendra, Nirav, and Lalit… ok, maybe not.

Farewell, dear FinMin. I wish my successor the best and I pray for the well-being of my team because my God, you’re going to need it.

Yours Sincerely,

Arvind Subramanian

PS: Jaitley ji, let’s get on call so we can discuss reducing my notice period. Two months is a lot; Modi ji can finish touring six-seven countries in that timeframe.

Does England’s 481 Against Australia Sound the Death Knell for Bowling?

When I played Brian Lara International Cricket on our Pentium 4 PC as a kid, I was an addict who had figured the game out – quite the way Nirav Modi had figured out the loopholes in the banking system. If the computer bowled a good length delivery outside the off stump, I had to move my batsman a bit, press Shift + Right Mouse Button (RMB) and it would go for a six. Every single time. Perhaps it was a game bug but I couldn’t care less as I smashed 250 runs in 20 overs and became the gaming nerd of my society.

To put things in perspective, it was 1999 and these were humble times. A time when good batting line-ups would struggle to chase 250 runs in an ODI game.

As I watched England take Australia to the cleaners at Nottingham yesterday, amassing 481 runs in a 50-over game, I realised that Codemasters, the developers of Brian Lara International Cricket, had actually made a prophecy all those years back. It wasn’t a game bug after all. Every good length ball outside the off stump was quite literally disappearing out of the ground. Only, this time around, it wasn’t a video game. This was real life and the Australian bowlers couldn’t just throw a fit and press “Quit Game”.

In a recent episode of the web show Breakfast With Champions, Afghan sensation Rashid Khan narrated a funny story where he cheekily asked a pitch curator during the IPL to prepare a turning track. The curator told him, “If I make a bowling track, no one will come to watch the game.” The quick-witted Rashid immediately shot back, “If you make a batting track, I won’t be able to come next year.” They both had a good laugh about it but the story captured the popular sentiment quite aptly: Bowlers don’t matter, everyone just wants to see big runs scored.

Cricket is no longer a contest between bat and ball. Remember the old days when tours were promoted as a contest between Imran and Gavaskar, Sachin and Warne, Lara and Murali? Today, cricket is a contest between my batsman and your batsman. It’s a dick-measuring contest. If you can score 350, I can score 351. If you can score 400, I can score 401. It’s Virat Kohli vs Steve Smith vs Joe Root vs Kane Williamson. Bowlers do not exist to create their own legacies, they merely exist as a hindrance to a batsman’s legacy.

The assault on bowling has been institutional and relentless. To paraphrase the poetic brilliance of German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller:

First, they changed the fielding restrictions, and I didn’t speak out. Because I wanted to see more runs.

Then, they allowed bigger, better, wider bats and I didn’t speak out. Because I wanted to see more runs.

Then, they invented the T20 format with shorter boundaries, flat tracks and I didn’t speak out. Because I wanted to see more runs.

Then, they started penalising bowlers with free hits and I didn’t speak out. Because I wanted to see more runs.

Then, there were almost 500 runs scored in an ODI with no one left to speak for the bowlers.

The ICC would quite simply argue that it is giving the fans what they want. If people love Race 3, Bollywood will keep making Race-like movies. If people want to see fours and sixes, fuck the bowlers, we’ll give you fours and sixes. It is a beautiful advertisement for the World Cup to be held in England next year. Come to the stadiums, pay for a ticket, we promise a run feast. As for the bowling, we’ll get cement tracks or replace humans with AI machines if we have to.

Even though the ICC believes it’s market demand and it is good for the game, let me try to argue otherwise. I might perhaps be in the minority, but I’m confident I’ll get you on my side as time passes by. You see, flat tracks and run-scoring machines not only harm bowlers, but they also harm batsmen. Remember when scoring a Test hundred used to mean something? Now, it’s merely a statistic. You had to grit it out in the morning session, counter the early moving ball, and negate spine with sturdy technique.

Test hundreds are now like MBAs: Everyone has one and it’s too easy to get, and so it has now ceased to mean anything. Less than a decade back, it was astonishing when a batsman scored 150+ for the first time in an ODI. And then it started happening every other week. A new Taimur Ali Khan picture gets more eyeballs than a 150 in an ODI.

Soon, 200 will be the new normal, or even 250 perhaps. But cricket as a sport is losing its essence as the audience is normalised to more and more runs.

When you think of exciting moments in cricket, you think of Sachin hitting Shoaib for a six over third man and then Shoaib knocking him over with a bouncer. You think of Shane Watson trying to ride it out against Wahab Riaz on a pacey wicket, or Mitchell Johnson and Kevin Pietersen going hard at each other in the Ashes. The reason these battles stick in our memory is because there was an air of unpredictability about them, and that is what sport is about. Both the batsman and bowler had equal opportunity every single ball, and that made it exciting.

Kids of the future will grow up watching batsmanship being glorified disproportionately. Crowds love batsmen, sponsors love them; they will have the likes of Kohli and Root and Williamson as role models to look up to.

But no bowling heroes, with quality dipping with every generation because of the balance being heavily skewed. My generation had Wasim, Waqar, Warne, Murali, Lee, and Walsh and it seems unlikely that the trend will be replicated over the years. Who wants to be a bowler in this environment? Especially, with every other ball sailing over your head for a maximum.

And just like that, the fine and nuanced art of bowling will keep getting eroded, approaching its slow and timely death.

“Beta, batsman ban jao, bahut scope hai,” a coach is telling a seven-year-old somewhere.

How to “Whatabout” Your Way Around Every Debate

“Why did you fail in Geography?” the questioning would begin, with me in the hot seat like Mark Zuckerberg. My parents and relatives were everyone else, taking turns to destroy me.

“But dad, what about the fact that the entire class failed?” I would ask. I had no clue where oranges were growing in Maharashtra but even as a 10-year-old, I had mastered the classic Soviet tactic of “whataboutery”, or deflecting the problem by raising another problem, that the New Yorker labelled as “a strategy of false moral equivalences”. If everyone failed then it became acceptable for you also to fail. You don’t have to deal with the larger problem of being poor in the subject if you can raise suspicion over the evil Geography teacher itself. How could she fail everyone?

Make no mistake, I wasn’t the only one in my family doing it. We engage in whataboutery every day, all the time. The other day I was pointing out how dad’s stock investments were tanking like Ravindra Jadeja’s career and his quick comeback was “But what about the windfall profit we made in 2006?” Well, dad, it’s no longer 2006. Mom is a lot subtler and goes for the emotional punch. “But what about all the years that I’ve sacrificed for you? They count for nothing?” All I had just done was pointed out that the dal was missing some salt. If I ask my sister to get me something, her automated response is “Fuck off! What about that time when I asked you to get me XYZ?”

There are no socially acceptable comebacks to any of these statements.

Whataboutery dates back to the 1960s, as this piece headlined “Due West: ‘Whataboutism’ Is Back – and Thriving” points out. “It was used to ironically describe the Soviet Union’s efforts at countering Western criticism. To those who lambasted their human rights record the Soviets would reply with something along the lines of ‘What about America, where they lynch blacks?!’ or ‘What about your unemployment rate? Ordinary people in the US (or the UK or Germany) are denied the basic right to work and pay!’” Of course, this line of logic is familiar to anyone who has spent five minutes on Indian Twitter.

Whataboutery can solve everything. There isn’t a problem you cannot avoid – in politics, social life, crime or history – by bringing up another problem. Everyone from a social media troll to Donald Trump is on it these days. Lately, however, we’ve entered the dark side, plunging to the depths of human decency and moral behaviour.

Asifa’s case breaks your heart? But what about the Hindu girl in Assam? What about rapes by Maulanas? Oh the Unnao rape was by a BJP legislator? How about all the rapes that took place under the last 70 years of Congress rule?

Security issues with Aadhaar? But what about the Facebook data leak? Did you stop using Facebook after that? Communal riots have been on the rise? But what about 1984? What about Muzaffarnagar? Fraudsters are flying out of the country? But what about 2G? What about Coalgate? Certain channels are peddling fake news? But what about NDTV and Barkha with their campaigns to defame India?

Whataboutery is not merely an argument anymore – it’s a competition. It’s my hashtag vs your hashtag, my online army vs your online army. The way to ace it is to be aware of all reference points through which you can bring down your opponent.

Accusing people of selective outrage is the hallmark of great whataboutery. It is practically impossible for everyone to be connected all the time and equally outrage on every single issue in a way that the other side deems fit. So obviously, it is fertile ground for a takedown. “Oh where were you on the third Tuesday of March in 2003 when Ricky Ponting was batting with a spring in his willow?” they ask.

When in doubt, turn to the classics.

“Why didn’t you speak up in 1984?”

“Well I was born in 1992.”

“Ugh, fuck off.”

A faithful companion to whataboutery is the strawman argument, or the spiritedly refuting an argument that wasn’t presented in the first place. “Oh so you want free speech for college students? Then don’t complain when these students destroy the country and we have to give up Kashmir!”.

Another great strategy is to discredit the other side with a counter allegation to insinuate that they have no standing or moral right to ask questions. I might have done something horrid but you also did something bad in the past, which means that you lose all credibility for all time and forfeit the right to question me? Instead, let us both celebrate our inefficiency and mislead the population.

“What about Nirav Modi?”

“But what about Lalit Modi?”

We don’t need intelligent debate and questioning because that runs the risk of exposing our shortcomings and failures. The whole point of whataboutery is to avoid a problem by pointing out a different problem. That way, neither problem gets solved and you win brownie points for your oratory skills.

Always remember, the goal of all whataboutery is to never get to the bottom of difficult questions – and to never ask the right ones.