When Andy Roddick lost to Roger Federer at Wimbledon 2009 finals, he sat down dripping with sweat while Federer took a victorious stroll around the Centre Court.
Despite one of his best fights, Roddick had lost to Federer for the third time at SW19 and fourth time in a Grand Slam.
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Her humour was many-layered. The essence would lay hidden between the layers, above them, beneath them and everywhere else. Her repertoire of anecdotes, folk songs, free verses, ditties and wisecracks was so rich that each time we prodded her a little, she would burst forth with many more juicy tales and no one would ever give it a miss.
My grandmother had stories about people and animals and people and animals connected to those people and animals and so on and so forth. She knew so many people, their personal histories, their faces and characteristic tics; the way they dressed, walked, ate, sat down and stood up—details, details, details and details.
No one complained. They just listened. And laughed.
Wrinkled and wizened, her mind would take a stroll down the past so effortlessly that she would come back with many more vignettes and memoirs and nuggets of wisdom. For her, the art of storytelling would come as easy as plucking flowers.
Sounds like a nice person? You may be wrong. She was spiteful and so casteist that she would not let anyone beyond her caste touch her. She would scream whenever a child darted out from nowhere, touched her accidentally and ran off (frightened). I remember how she used to clutch at her walking stick and point at my friends viciously meaning: “I will hit you so hard that you won’t look at the direction I sit”.
I could not invite my friends home. I hated that. Continue reading
There was incredible shot-making, high-impact assault and nonstop dread.
The semi-finals between Federer and Nadal at Indian Wells had oodles and oodles of high-strung drama. And, more.
But this time, it was the Spaniard who was at the receiving end, although not before Federer put himself through the familiar gut-wrenching tension each time he heard the murmurs of the demons somewhere in the back of his mind.
The demons of yesterday, as usual, had walked in with Federer to the court, striking him at crucial junctures.
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The celebrations of the truly epic final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal at the 2012 Australian Open had just begun. Firecrackers were lighting up the sky. Champagne corks were popping. Djokovic was being elevated to the highest ranks. Tombstones were being erected for Maestro Roger Federer.
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Pic source: Getty Images-B/R
Medicine is perhaps the only sphere where we forget our social conditioning about shame. This is where secrets vanish. Morality dies. Theists find new gods, atheists turn agnostic and agnostics turn theists.
Some of these are possibilities, if not certainties.
Beneath all such life-changing events lies pain, something nobody can define convincingly. If you look up dictionaries for the meaning of ‘pain’, you will know what I mean.
We go to doctors with this indefinable pain, looking for a definite solution, succour and what not. But a lot of anomalies can happen in between because very few doctors admit their fallibility and thus, refuse to grow beyond generalisations to offer anything called diagnosis. Continue reading
Every day is Woman’s Day. Thankfully, we have women like Saalumarada Thimmakka, organic farming activist Papamma of Kolar and many such women to remind us of this fact.
ENDLESSLY GREEN 