Sachin Tendulkar's frivolous endeavours belie his iconic status

Bharat Ratna  Sachin Tendulkar is a man on whom fame and wealth sit lightly. There is an endearing sobriety about him.He is  among the few who are both symbols and living examples. The country’s youth whose many heroes have died, still look up to him. 

 But at the young age of 42, Sachin Tendulkar’s “larger’’ life is over. That seems to be the way he is looking at it. Does he think that he has exhausted the limits of the possible?

That could be the only reason why on the second last day of Parliament  when law makers were arguing over some crucial bills,  Sachin was in a BMW promotional event in a role we have never seen him: as a car mechanic. His role was to play mechanic while the dandy dudes who own  BMWs drove  in with their toys. A report said that he was good at it and knew the nuts and bolts of a BMW and how to crank it up. But which job wasn’t Sachin good at so far?

While this act can be a big boost for the notion of dignity of labour, Sachin was definitely not doing it to inspire young men to turn into mechanics.

Surely a Bharat Ratna awardee has nobler functions to perform  than sell BMWs or any such product which Sachin endorses. All jobs are noble but few get the chance to rise above the hopeless clatter of the mundane. Sachin’s lowly commercial promotional work  belittles the country’s highest civilian award. All such awards come tagged with higher responsibility. But sadly, Sachin has scorned such higher tasks and even hinted that he has no interest in attending Parliament, a total snubbing of the biggest institution we have. 
 

On the first day itself Sachin wrote away the accommodation that government gives to MPs, (here too betraying a scorn) clearly hinting that he has better things to do, or better places to stay. Now close to a year since he was made MP, Sachin has attended Parliament thrice, and taken  a long leave since there is a minimum number of days MPs have to attend or face suspension.  He has spoken at various smaller and silly functions quite willingly and nicely too during this period but has baulked at the very idea of speaking in the highest forum the country has to offer.  In this one year’s time Sachin could have easily transformed himself into a  voice of sanity in the time of mayhem. His voice could have floated above the narrow confines of political expediency and sectoral conflicts that dog our daily life. 

True, transitions are not easy. Especially this transition from a stadium hero to an official national symbol, from a skilled professional to a concerned independent national voice of sanity is a tough ask. But all doors are open to Sachin and he must walk through them for our sake. Some do make this transition, like my former journalist colleague Derek O’ Brien who has worked hard at his political and parliamentary task and made crucial interventions in Parliament, making him now an important voice. 

This utter disregard for a higher calling, this reluctance to accept the  greatness that a nation deprived of true heroes has thrust upon him,  is  scandalous.  Other cricketers who entered Parliament have taken their jobs seriously. Mohammed Azharuddin, despite the fact that he  is not  a Vajpayee in oratory,  attended Parliament religiously and so has Kirti Azad – now a senior BJP leader now -- and even earlier, Chetan Chauhan. 

Sachin’s increasing and worrying decline into frivolous gigs when  the larger role is his for the taking, is a matter of concern.  Even in cricket he was seen hanging around the dugout of Mumbai Indians with no clear role to play since Ricky Ponting is the chief coach anyway. Is it all just a post-stardom blur -- a failure to understand the value of the platform on which he stands? Or is it that he shirks responsible positions like he did the Indian captaincy?

This shying away from national duty of a higher kind can be seen as Sachin’s gradual moving away from the ideals espoused by his father Ramesh Tendulkar. Among the very few available references to senior Tendulkar’s Marathi poems is this by Ravindra Tome in a blog: “His poems are short  but full of thoughts and picturesque. They present the reader a different perspective of routine things, about the struggle and sufferings of the common man and his efforts to survive in hard times.”  Physical struggles form an enduring idiom in his father’s poems but so does the long journey that life is, when he wrote: “ The road is so beautiful that I want to be its beloved,” suggesting the endless nature of struggle and life’s journey itself. But Sachin, the very picture of contentment and a satiated super hero, has opted for lesser joys. 

All this could be blamed on reinvention or rebranding problems. But why should a Bharat Ratna winner be branded as anything else? Any way you look at it, Sachin’s BMW  promo when he could have  sat in Parliament where momentous bills were being taken up is an insult to Parliament and a devaluation of the great civilian award. He is possibly the only Bharat Ratna who got to sit in Parliament after the award. Any award gets added value when it is strung round the great person who in turn takes the award to another level through his words and continuing labour. 

It however can be said in Sachin’s favour that many nominated members have  performed as poorly. For instance, the late M.F Husain never spoke and film actress Rekha at present briefly breezes through Parliament to act as a selfie-promoter. 

Among the glorious send-offs that Sachin got after his final Test was this one from Mukul Kesavan who took a rare flight into poetry  in ESPNcricinfo.com (though prose would have sufficed):
 
“Immortals can't cite age as their excuse,

Swansongs must scale the summits of their pomp;

To fail is to invite unhinged abuse

From second-hand men who dimly romp

Through heroes' lives and will go starkly mad

Without that brilliant youth we never had.”

When his Parliament term ends there will be no poetry to accompany Sachin as he departs  from those hallowed halls. That will be a terrible decline for Sachin. The country would have lost a hero. 

The writer is a senior journalist