My initial, uncertain foray to India on the Australian team’s 2001 tour was the start of a wondrous relationship I was to develop with the country. The 2001 trip was dubbed by Stephen Waugh, our captain at the time, as his ‘Last Frontier’. This was a reference to his endeavours, after several failed attempts, to lead Australia to its first Test series win in India since Bill Lawry’s side went there in 1969. Waugh failed in his on-field quest – we lost one of the greatest ever Test series 2–1, but he and the rest of the team, finished the tour enriched by extraordinary life experiences.
The 2001 tour was when I met India head-on for the first time. Even before you step off the plane, you are confronted by enthusiastic Indians in transit returning to their homeland. On the plane, as part of the Australian cricket team, you are constantly asked for autographs and photographs, to the point where aircraft cabin crew urge passengers to return to their seats. Of course, they are totally ignored by the cricket-mad commuters.
Passengers would push each other out of the way to snap a picture of the players. It is the personification of Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle’s ‘grab it’ mentality. He once said to me: ‘If you are at a bus stop and an overcrowded bus is about to leave, and there is one small space remaining on the back step, then you run and grab it because if you do not, any one of 20 other people will grab that space. People have to grab it before someone else does.’
The hysteria on the plane is confronting enough; then comes the scene that greets you when you leave the aircraft. Alighting from the Boeing 747, you feel 10,000 sets of eyes upon you – and that is before you even clear customs. People come from everywhere – baggage handlers, security staff, airport officials, custom officers – and they all stand there smiling, pointing and talking.
Then, as you attempt to pick up your baggage, you might be pushed out of the way by another traveller, a person hurriedly wanting to get out of the airport and into the crowded pace of Indian life.
A cricketer, particularly an Australian cricketer, and even more so an Australian cricketer of repute like Brett Lee, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Shane Warne or Stephen Waugh, is absolutely revered.
All your senses are confronted – touch, hearing, smell, sight, taste. Australians are used to personal space in a country that offers space. We have backyards. Generally speaking, our roads work. In the Australian suburbs and country towns, there is silence. You can hear the birds singing and trees moving in the sea breeze.
But there is no personal space in India. Indians are in and around you all of the time and you are taken aback by that, just as an Indian coming to Australia would be astounded by the space, freedom and clear air.
The airport scenes are dramatic. Then there is the journey to your hotel. You are on the bus with your touring party of 15 or 20 people, then all of a sudden another 15 or 20 people join you. You wonder who they are. They might be security officers or have links to the bus driver. And, like everyone at the airport or on the plane, this entourage looks at you in amazement. They just keep staring.
The process happens all over again when you arrive at the hotel – but this time the noise becomes a din as wonderful ceremonial dancers, accompanied by music and drums, greet you. Again a throng of people mingle around you.
You find your way through the masses to the check-in counter, all the while surrounded by many, many sets of eyes. Then you dive for the sanctuary of the lifts, but three or four people dive in with you.
Once you are on your room level, maids and cleaners and butlers and hotel staff line the corridor. The drums have been beating. They know you are coming. Then, at last, you reach the silence of your room.
Even there, as Matthew Hayden has said, it is a fine line between you and your admirers. Matthew once ordered a toasted sandwich, and when he answered the butler’s knock he opened the door to see not only the butler but another 20 people clambering to catch a glimpse of him.
‘Everything is 10 times busier,’ Matthew said in reference to his Indian visits. ‘Look around you now – when you see a person, multiply that person by 10 and you’ll have an idea of what India is like. Mumbai has roughly the same population as Australia, but in area it is probably not as big as Brisbane. It is part of the charm of the place; your affection grows out of the chaos.’
Matthew went on to tell me about a conversation he once had with Rahul Dravid, when Dravid was on tour in Australia. ‘Rahul said he could not walk anywhere in his country without being mobbed, yet when he toured Australia, strangely, he missed that attention. He said he missed the affection of the people, the way they made him and his teammates feel like heroes. He missed the sights, the smells of his homeland.’
Knight Riders all-rounder Ajit Agarkar said that at the height of his international career, Indian cricketers were basically confined to their hotel rooms. ‘Cricket is like a religion; everyone recognises you,’ he said. ‘But it grows on you as you keep playing. It can be a bit overwhelming, but you look at it in a good way, and the attention is not always a bad thing. It depends how you lead your life. For Sachin a normal life is not possible; for most others there are certain restrictions, but you get used to it.’
To try to keep the crowds at bay, the Australian team travelled in cars with tinted windows so people could not peer inside the vehicle. On one occasion I shared a car with Stephen Waugh, headed to a poor community in a suburb of Kolkata. It was dusk, and with the windows tinted, no one could see us. But as we neared our destination, we noticed that people had suddenly started running beside the vehicle.
Word must have got out about Stephen’s impending arrival. Thousands of people were running beside our slow-moving car, all the while not being able to see who was inside. We suspected our driver must have tipped off the district about what was supposed to be a surprise visit by Stephen.
India is a magical, mystical, confronting experience. It is also a place you almost want to leave as soon as you arrive. But you are drawn to it.
India’s history and people are hypnotic. It is magnetic, yet at the same time it can be repulsive because of its poverty, the stagnant canals, and the sickly, skinny animals that wander the streets. It is distressing.
I have been there a dozen times, but I am not sure anything prepares you for the next time you arrive. I feel I could walk down the same street every day for the rest of my life and see something different – both heart-warming and upsetting, and everything in between.
Kolkata, home of the Knight Riders, is a city of 15 to 20 million people. Mumbai has a population of 18 to 22 million. No one is ever quite sure how many people have drifted into the cities and set up their shelters or shanties made out of materials disposed of by those around them.
You can drift through these cities and sense no formal structure or city planning. Then you drive through slums and, out of seemingly poor areas, come well-dressed people in flash cars. There is a real mix of wealth and poverty.
Indians have a huge passion for education. It is a means of escaping their life situation. Indians believe in reincarnation, claiming they will have a better life in the next world if they have bettered themselves in this world. So you see schoolboys come out of these slum areas with crisp, white, pressed shirts, lovely clean pants and ties. The girls are also impeccably dressed and you wonder how it happens. They are so clean and pristine in an unforgiving environment.
Amidst the din of chaos, squalor and despair, hope and beauty somehow make themselves heard. India is truly a most extraordinary life experience.