The grey bleak skies of Bombay (that’s what it was called then) threatened to turn darker by the minute. Rain was predicted, and the organisers scampered around to look for tarpaulins to cover the courts.
The final match of the 1992 satellite tournament held at the MSLTA courts was under a big question mark. Will the rain wet all play and hopes? Suddenly, as if divine intervention was on call, the clouds blew away into the Arabian Sea and the sun danced through to light up the courts. The other bright spot was the way a young tennis star played his heart out to win the final and come forward to take his prize. It was Leander Paes, who was to create history for next two decades.
A spanking new Hero Puch (for the uninitiated this was a mini bike that packed a punch) was to be handed over to the winner. I stood close to the bike, handing over the keys to a young lad, who smiled from ear to ear, restless and waiting to stick the key in and kick to life the machine. The sudden thrust of power from a rather small-framed bike did surprise Leander. The winner that day had a wry smile and said, “Gosh….this is like me…. May be small but packs a mean punch.”
Yes, that was my first meeting with Lee. As we walked away from the prize distribution area, Lee spotted my sandals. These were the embroidered Baluchi ones, not so easily seen or available in India. He stopped in his tracks, and with a grin said, “Navroze, how about a fair exchange…. You take my tennis shoes, and I take your sandals?” We plonked ourselves on the parapet and quickly did the swap but unfortunately the shoe sizes were not the same. He was sorely disappointed.
After a year, I visited Pakistan, and when I returned I got a special pair of sandals for Lee, put them in a box and posted them to his home in Calcutta. When we next met I asked him if he liked his sandals. Unfortunately, they never reached Lee, and I am sure some lucky postman must be walking down the Park Street and Chowringhee in those Baluchi clods.
When Leander was just a baby, he didn’t crawl. He zipped and dashed about the house on all fours so fast that his dad thought he was a “wind-up toy”. Vece Paes, a bronze-medal winner of the Indian hockey team that went to the Munich Olympics and his wife Jennifer, Indian women’s basketball team captain, were zapped by the little bundle of joy they had produced. According to Vece, “Leander could never sit still. He dashed about the house, whether crawling or running. I had read an article in Span about children in East Germany taking to sport at the age of three, and experimented with Lee.” They got him multi-coloured balls, and would shout out instructions to the two-year old… “go for green... and Lee would run and kick the green... go for the blue and Lee would zip across with a burst of speed for the blue,” said Vece. The balls got bigger, and the kicks stronger. One day Lee ran in from the bedroom and kicked one of the balls so hard that it smashed the glass of a showcase in the drawing room. The senior Paes did not get that repaired for a long time almost showing it off to the visitors home, of how a Lee left-footer had left that gaping hole.
Growing up in Calcutta and not enjoying playing football would be blasphemy. And that’s what it would be for Leander.
Though he enjoyed other sports, his passion for football grew by leaps and bounds. “Each evening, he would play in the slushy football field at the CC&FC and come back drenched and mucked up….. falling off to sleep with his dirty football boots on his pillow” said Vece. This passion mushroomed till one day Lee got hit by an Epileptic attack. The eight-year old was told by his doctor “no physical contact sport….. actually no sport….. it could be dangerous for the lad.”
With no football, and no sport, Lee was getting restless. The parents were even more depressed. The son of two sports stars was not allowed to play?
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