It is simple, all India is in love with Sachin Tendulkan

Sachin Tendulkar tiptoed with some difficulty down the steps of the Wankhede Stadium pavilion, loaded with two sets of pads, a helmet and two bats as a lone kid, invited to watch practice, stretched his arm up from behind the partition grille, hoping for the autograph that every Indian boy wants.

It did not look promising yet somehow Tendulkar managed to extricate one hand to sign and make another dream come true. As usual. The way in which the boy's look of desperation turned to melting joy could have stood for a nation's mood of anxiety and pleasure. Please, Sachin, just one more time.

Thursday will mark the start of the 40 year-old's farewell to cricket in India's second Test against West Indies, an event of such magnitude here in the little titan's home city of Mumbai that it is impossible to credit the fever, fervour, high emotion - and, yes, plain silliness - that is being generated. It feels like sport's most spectacular act of veneration.

As the murals of that cherubic face were being painted along with the faces of his craziest fans, an armoured personnel carrier was leading the Indian team bus into the Wankhede for practice with hundreds sprinting and screaming alongside, thrusting arms aloft brandishing mobile phone cameras just for an image of their God.

Meanwhile, the man himself was looking shyly out the window, having thought he must have seen it all now. He certainly had not heard it all, for in a hotel across the city, a surreal whole day's homage, called the Salaam Sachin Conclave, was underway, featuring a non-stop series of luminaries, like Brian Lara and Sunil Gavaskar, pontificating about Tendulkar's greatness. For hour upon hour. As the newspapers here ran a story about an Albert Einstein-lookalike who collects Tendulkar's autographs - current total, 150 - the rolling 'breaking news' bars on the 24-hour news channels were running items like "ALLAN DONALD: SACHIN WAS THE PRIZE WICKET".

Quite, quite mad. No wonder Tendulkar must have felt a largely empty Wankhede was an escape, of sorts. Still, he could hardly pretend this was any normal week as he prepared for his 200th and final Test with his 14-year-old son Arjun - who is already bigger than him - given permission by the team to join the old man at practice one last time, while slinging down a few left-arm bouncers. Sachin seemed engrossed in giving his boy a bit of advice while all around the stadium, 51 vast banners were being hung from the rafters, detailing each of his dad's Test hundreds. Some tickets worth 1,500 rupees have supposedly already been on the black market for about 60,000 rupees, which represents four months' wages for the average Mumbaikar. They would doubtless swear it was worth every rupee if banner No52 could be hoisted.

Tendulkar has been given 500 tickets himself to give away. One was for his disabled mother, Rajni, and he was so determined that she would be able to see him play in a stadium for the first time that he made arrangements for a new wheelchair ramp to be installed at the Wankhede. Then on the Thursday of Diwali, Tendulkar turned up out of the blue at the home of his first coach and biggest influence, Ramakant Achrekar, to invite him too. The venerated coach is 82 now and cannot speak because of partial paralysis down his right side but his daughter Kalpana explained how her father was moved to tears when he had first heard Sachin was retiring because he had always hoped that day would never come while he was alive.

"My dad can still understand everything and it made him so happy when Sachin came and said: 'Please come to the game, Achrekar sir. My wife Anjali will come and collect you'," says Kalpana. "It was a very emotional meeting. Dad had five daughters but his two sons died young so he treats Sachin as if he were his own son. I think he might shed a few more tears this week." Achrekar is fabled for placing a rupee on the top of the bails and inviting the teenage Tendulkar to defend his stumps for an entire net session. If no bowler could knock off that rupee, Sachin could keep it and the 13 coins he won remain his most treasured possessions.

This would all happen at Shivaji Park, the little green oasis amid what was then higgledy-piggledy Bombay clutter, about 15 minutes from Tendulkar's old school of Sharadashram Vidyamandir, where Achrekar would preside with astonishment over this boy's incredible appetite for practice, which would often stretch to 12 hours a day. So where are the would-be Sachins in today's Shivaji? Everywhere, apparently. At 8am yesterday, more than 1,000 youngsters, from a four year-old swinging a bat almost as big as him to a group of girls playing on the very square where Tendulkar would practise, were already practically filling every available inch of space with maybe 20 games or net sessions. In Sachin's schooldays, it was never a teeming hive like this, explains the school's coach, Naresh Churi. Only now does it truly feel like the park - and the field of dreams - that Sachin built. "He is a source of inspiration for our nation of cricket," says Yash Kanade, a baby-faced, curly-haired 14-year-old opener who arrived here at 6.45am.

"I'm proud to be in the school that Sachin went to," he intones. "We have a room there with pictures of him and it is a room of memories of Sachin, which is an inspiration to us all." At Sharadashram Vidyamandir, they call this room the 'Stars Gallery' and it is so precious and private to them that there had to be a high-level management discussion before the Telegraph was even allowed a peek. It is delightfully simple. Just 24 evocative photos dotted around an old schoolroom, including one of Sachin with Vinod Kambli, who put on a world-record unbeaten partnership of 664 together, Kambli scoring 349 and Tendulkar flagging dismally on a mere 326. It should have been 329, Tendulkar often complains with a smile, except the scorers took away three of his runs to make the total add up correctly. They say here now that Kambli's application never matched his great talent. He played only 17 Tests and now only dazzles in ropey reality TV while Tendulkar, all patience and dedication, is a legend on 199. Sachin could also teach all today's wannabes a lesson in life, says his old maths teacher and now the school principal, K J Shirsat. "Instant fame and IPL riches," he wonders.

"Too many boys want to become famous without putting in the effort. That's wrong. People now only see Sachin's centuries but they forget about the incredible efforts he put in." There is another striking shot in the school gallery, of the teenage Tendulkar gazing into space, along with the caption, "Young vibrant Sachin with dreams in his eyes." Today, you can chart the path of those dreams by travelling the few miles from the modest fourth-floor flat in the suburb of Bandra East, where he was brought up, to the new 8 million pounds palatial residence in the Bollywood belt of Bandra West, which was guarded by one security man and six policemen on our arrival.

At his childhood home, where his elder brother Ajit, who introduced him to the game, now lives, the locals point out the dusty playground next to the car park where Sachin got into trouble for smashing a neighbour's window with a mighty pull through midwicket. At his incredible new pad, however, there is no prospect of that with an indoor net installed there, as well as a swimming pool, a movie theatre and space for his growing collection of cars. Oh yes, and a temple. One of his oldest pals, Atul Ranade, the kid Sachin used to bowl bouncers at with a golf ball in the school corridor and the man who Tendulkar now jokingly calls "Mike Brearley" for his cerebral leadership of Mumbai Customs XI, swears a nation begrudges his mate none of this gilded life. "He means the world to the country, more than being a mere cricketer," says Ranade.

"He is like the son of the whole country and the whole country embraces him like a mother. "So when he comes into bat this week, even in this diverse country with its many languages and changing landscape and rivalries, he can bring a feeling of togetherness in a way nobody else can. "From here in Mumbai, to Kashmir in the north to Chennai and Kolkata in the east right down to Kanyakumari in the south, everybody wishes him well on Thursday. It's simple, we all love him."