Storyline: “Mohammed Shahid, the master dribbler, played hockey with a painter’s brush….” “There will never be another you.” Shahid died last week at the age of 56.
20th July, 2016 in the passages of time is nothing but a mere 24 hours in the celestial orbit of our solar system. If a few on either side of the Pacific are celebrating a vacation with their families, another few were donning the suits and neatly polished shoes are hovering over the football pitch in and around Europe making the last moment arrangements before if only to kick-start another football season.
If that’s what the beautiful game is all about, then, sir, you are true. But, sir, there are quite a few in the category of games and many an athlete too.
For a boy like me, who have been grain-fed on the sub-continental pitches, Hockey, it’s Kho-Kho and Kabaddi that occupy the soft palate of boredom and of ecstasies. Now then, ladies and gentlemen I’d love to make a point on a personal note.
Mohammad Shahid in his youth, (photo, thehindu.com)
As a left back in the field of hockey, I am destined to whack the ball into the back of the net. My heroes and legends and inspiration truly and wholly are Dhanraj Pillay, M M Somayya, Shankar Laxman, Leo Pinto, and Mohammad Shahid, for whom this note is dedicated. I remember one moron saying,”Indians are emotional fools!” Not really true, but, yes! The memories and the good times of the lost ones will forever be sepulchered silently during anytime of the day. A few say, times have changed.
Are they? Really?
Am not I being sorry for not saying sorry, but, I’ve found that the foolishness and the recklessness of the modern-day generation have sky-rocketed, but, not the changing of the times. On that day, that aforementioned day in July, we were chap-fallen, gutted, and dolorous in our attires as a few tears bored the burden and travelled the farthest distance from the lacrimal pomatum onto our cheeks.
“If I were 2 die today, I would spend my last breath telling U how much U mean 2 me, & go 2 sleep peacefully in your arms.” In the pages of my dictionary and diction and metaphor I mean, I’d love to enter the my grave reminiscing the immortality of Mohammad Shahid, and many a hero, who hoisted the Indian on the top of the world sport.
Courtesy: sportswallah.com
Columnist, Sundeep Mishra, wrote: “Mohammed Shahid, the master dribbler who played hockey with a painter’s brush.” If you ask me, dear sir, in Shahid, new wings forever began to take wing in his imagination. As silence likes a poultice comes to heal the blows of the wound, I’ve waited then, waited now, and will forever wait till the blows of the bruised, battered, and dismantled wound will heal as the mask, which underneath has many a tear only my pillow know. Bold and free from all the controversial pettifogging, we’ve gone through dismal porch of death.
That said and done, life, they say, has to move on. Gleams of sunlight, bewildered like ourselves, struggled, surprised, through the mist are all now disappeared. Panegyric eulogies and cornball elegies occupy the many a page in the print media. Rugged & Inaccessible, his dribbling with the hockey ball is an art that would forever turn simpletons & nincompoops to the precocious & perspicacious.
One columnist wrote, “On behalf of the thousands, whose lives you touched with your artistry, indomitable spirit and sheer genius from L.A. to Seoul, with the utmost humility – a big thank you. Mohammed Shahid, there will never be another you!”
I echo him truly and wholeheartedly, ladies and gentlemen. Here’s a small tribute to the legend I hate to miss, in the form of a small poem.
“If;
We envy Shahid’s departure to the heavens,
Speechless, Motionless and Amazed,
Pondering over the scholarly brilliance of his,
Interweaving threads of broken hearts,
Tweaking lovey-dovey sticks to an halting,
Then;
Shahids, L S Bokharis, L Pintos & S Lakshmans,
With immortal dexterity,
Will forever kick the ball beyond the eventide of father time.
Isn’t it, then, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?”
