The God of All Things Ajay Kamath My son Rahul calls, at around 3.30 in the afternoon. “He’s in”, he says tersely. I rush out in my hospital scrubs, heart in mouth, to the doctor’s lounge where the roar on the television makes it sound like an amphitheatre in Rome, only more affectionate. There is a guard of honour by the West Indies team but no discernible emotion from the great man as he strides briskly out. I sit in my usual position…edge of the seat, hands clasped tightly, mouth dry, heart pounding…..and a part of me, deep down, knows that this is to be the last time. It is impossible to compress twenty four years into a few lines or pages or anything at all,, so I musnt try. It is also quite impossible for me to convey the sense of utter desolation and despair I now feel as I write this, knowing that its over but that the pain is for me….and maybe a few million others… to bear. Each of those millions, however, is completely certain that his pain is unique, that no one else can truly understand it. Each of those worthies is completely right. There is a sweep to fine leg for one oh God, such a relief, he wont do a Bradman. And then there is a square cut for four and a few of the million butterflies within me settle…. A career in retrospect is a series of snapshots, of images imprinted deep within the consciousness of the obsessive fan. It is time today, for me, to recall them. Curiously enough, it took me a few years to warm to this boy child. I admired him, yes, but my heart only began to beat in resonance with his in the early nineties. There was a moment, in the Hero cup final of 1993, when he hit the top of Brian Lara’s middle stump with an inswinger. Another, in the 96 World Cup when he hit McGrath back over his head and nobody could quite believe it. Now he drives Shillingford against the spin through the covers and the years have rolled back and he did this to Murali so often, in a time when his feet were quicksilver and his mind free. I have wanted so much to watch this with Rahul today but I dare not rise from this seat, for I will surely get him out. And so I speak to Rahul, who is similarly perched on the edge of another sofa at home, on the phone and he says…what a shot! Why is Tendulkar different? It isn’t the numbers alone, though to a statistics and individual achievement obsessed nation, that is a huge part of the story. It is the dignity and modesty with which he carried himself off the field, while flaying attacks on it. For all our braggadocio at times, as a nation we like our heroes to be a little unassuming. It is our privilege to make them larger than life, our choice, not theirs. So Tendulkar must be a little shy, he must be assertive but quietly so, he must answer a verbal sledge with a telling riposte from his bat. Then we shall love him more and revere him and make him God. And when he drives straight, twice, Dale Steyn, in that dismissive, pose holding, manner….he is. God. And now he 38 not out and, as he walks back unbeaten, he gives me, one final time, the ultimate happiness….Tendulkar unbeaten overnight. So now, through the evening, with delicate frissons of delight, I can remind myself that tomorrow he will walk out again to do battle. How many times has this happened over twenty four years? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? And now, it happens one last time. So how, then, shall we remember him, this Sachin Tendulkar? As the man who danced down the pitch to Warne to hit him into the stands at Chennai? As the curly haired kid who cut Merv Hughes and McDermott to ribbons at Perth? As the marauder who bludgeoned Shoaib Akhtar into submission at the Wanderers? Or, as Ramachandra Guha so caustically put it,” a winner in the land of a billion losers”? Too many memories, too many years….tears against Pakistan at Chennai, ecstasy at the Wankhede in 2011, the great rearguard action at Old Trafford, the taming of Alan Donald at Cape Town. Oh, there is too much but it isn’t enough, not by a long shot. How can you leave now? Whom will we watch? Progress from 38 is serene and beautiful. Tendulkar treats us to everything, as he drives and cuts and laps and flicks with serenity. In the cauldron that is the Wankhede, he is calm, allowing the madness and the noise to wash over him. He reaches fifty with a magnificent straight drive and then plays another cover drive that sears the grass and rolls the years back. And then he cuts to slip and is caught. Oh, the enormity of that catch…its over, it really is. He looks up one last time and a shocked, silenced crowd finds voice and feet as it stands to the Master. And now, when the dust has settled, I try to make sense of this thing that is Tendulkar and I cannot. I try to understand why it is that tears blur my eyes as I type this, why it feels like a part of me has been wrenched away and I cannot. There are only snapshots of the strokes he played again and again. There is only that eternal cry of Sachiiin, Sachin that will echo forever. There is only that certainty that something massive has ended today, that my life will never be the same again….