Roger Federer: The ageing dancer

- this backdated post has been shifted here from Facebook as an idea of what's to be expected on the "sport" page! -

Wimbledon 2017 - Final
Roger Federer v Marin Cilic
(6-3, 6-1, 6-4)

Tonight his ageing feet remembered a dance step - and dance he did.

In recent years Federer has borne the image of a tired hero riding off into the sunset. Except this year, at 35, he fought his way into the Wimbledon final for the 11th time, having earlier stunned fans by winning the Australian Open back in January. He has challenged the assumed narrative; he has found the dawn in the dusk; he ensures this piece is not so much one on sport as much as it is about a man defying Time.

Poets have long made the trope of Time one of their greatest fascinations. At the onset of his decline Federer was himself dubbed the 'misspelling poet'. For periods, he has looked like the perennial frustrated artist. Yet in 2017 he has done all but passively accept mortality like Dickinson - no, in every one-handed backhand gift of a spectacle he's like Thomas raging against the dying of the light.

I watch and play football, basketball, and (sometimes) table tennis, but tennis is that sport I watch but have never played. That means my awe may be overstated - like that of a tourist marveling at the sight of the Merlion, which isn't actually that majestic. Conversely, it could be understated, since I have absolutely no idea just how difficult it is for Federer to execute those deft flicks (that's if it's possible to comprehend at all).

What I do know, is that some of the best writing I've ever read have appeared in columns on Federer's exploits - written for print or online by the likes of Phillips, Wallace, Shekhar, and locally, Brijnath. These writers are legends themselves, but sometimes I wonder if the beauty of their writing is merely a corollary of the man's craft, which alone ensures that any piece written on him automatically summons the best words and transposes them into the best order. When I watch him, this seems highly probable. Writing about Federer isn't hard. Not when he plays with such embroidery and such invention. Not when he graces us all with an eternal elegance that privileges our very existence. Not when he inflicts to afflict. Not when he affects to effect.

Teachers or editors that I've worked with often said that sometimes my writing meanders its way about, and that it's a lot of passion but no point. I've very consciously tried to work on that ever since, but for this one time, I've not edited anything above, I've not set out to be concise - these words are all raw, and so is the emotion with which Federer plays.

The paradox of Wimbledon (and of Federer at Wimbledon), is that the craft, his craft - for those moments between services - commands a silence that honours the genius at play, and yet it is the same craft that sets the stands alight in raging applause when the point has been won. Wimbledon, where he has arguably been at his most successful in a 19-year career, is where an all-white dress code already lands players in a certain position of poise. Federer goes one further, and with an artistry of nerve and sinew, lands himself in the imagination of all who watch. Such is the capacity of his style to inspire and move that I'm very sure he must have made Theresa May - sat there in the stands today - feel, for the first time ever, what it's like to be human.

There comes a point when we will run out of tomorrows - that much we must accept - but then Federer has shown us that he still lives, aging feet and all, even if just today.

(Photo by AFP)

干杯

like cups inverted,

like sides of a coin; like hay-

stacks hiding needles.

Veerasamy Road

A billion faces in tandem with a hundred different tongues 

in a thousand different towns; India was never so little that it could fit

into the map of my mind.

At the foot of my grandma's flat are 

dozens of bare feet treading the pavements, 

the asphalt, the double yellow lines whose homes

we could never name; sole on plain Earth,

soul in plain sight - telephone lines thousands of 

miles away offer a voice to cling onto,

because a loquacity not quite localised is the way

to rise above all that foreignness of a land

that hides you away in its folded corners,

as if pages look better with creases. For every 

road kerb romance, street side slow dance and tales 

tall as that multi-storied carpark, there are men not alone

but lonely, men wistfully wishful, men

with garlands of grace but then confined

by race - they should have known:

their feet would not keep up.

--

"Tell them to return to their leeches and floods / but not before they have raised our buildings and children" - The Marooned Island by Alfian Sa'at

Note to younger self

Inspired by Ernie Johnson's (one of my favourite people) "Advice For His Younger Self".

Weather forecasts are like promises that were never meant to be kept. There are days you feel more rain than sunshine - even if it's only supposed to be partly cloudy. Age serves to tell us that no one actually takes pinky swears seriously. The weather man only looks at pictures, anyway - which is a problem, because a thousand words often isn't quite enough.

You love finding the words for things, especially if it's something that you can feel, but sometimes you either can't, or you don't actually have to. Is there a word for when you've so much to say to someone, and yet so little you can deliver? Is there a word for that feeling when you're running after a bus, and it finally stops, but you get on and it isn't actually going anywhere? If we had the words for everything - the right words - then there would not be anymore spaces in between to fill. Or feel.

You can't win all the time - no one ever does. There are times you feel like you've lost even though you've won, and when you feel like you've won even as you've lost.

Humans are sometimes more rants and rockets so if hatred consumes, people take a call to arms, and nobody is doing the work of love - go do it. Because this world is divided along lines and borders but we all share the same lines on our skin.

Beyond the night sky is a spectacular series of births and deaths that we will never see. The world is also a spectacular series of births and deaths that we will never see. When someone's light goes out, millions across the globe will not even know of it - do not accord yourself too much of an importance, and yet know that we all still existed spectacularly, but only as a series.

The most beautiful thing around here is the human smile - that's why you should always make people laugh. The greatest gift of comedy is the smile.

You will find yourself performing autopsies on conversations you've had and yet there are some silences that you'll be happy to be familiar with. Learn to remember them, and maybe, you'll put the coroner out of a job.

Many a time it's the people who make it all worth the trouble. There are those who stand on stilts and walk on water but there are also those who will pull you over the line; the ones that will be the little pick-me-ups when you're nothing but a get-you-down. These people will tell you remarkable things in remarkable ways - they make the best of days.

Keep writing, because it's the only way you know how.

--
It's easy to do all this "Note to Younger Self"  kind of thing sounding like you're wiser and clearer about things. The truth is, 18 years hardly gives you all the answers - and perhaps even 80 years won't either. I guess if we had the answers then there would be no need for questions, and no need to do the all the living that could be done.

He shoots, he scores (but sometimes he misses)

They are in the Final. Year on year we went back to that same sports hall in that same far-flung place with the same people and their same antics, thinking hoping willing that in time to come, it would be our turn. For them, now a six-year-old dream is now a reality.

And like all six-year-olds, it tells me the darned'est things. I am not sure how, throughout this period of watching them compete on that stage, this six-year-old - in its wondrous capacity for questions people may never be able to answer - asks me how I feel. 

There are parts of you that obviously wish you could be there, running, screaming, fighting - diving into every single loose ball. But there is also that all-consuming, immense thing inside when you see those guys you went to the same sports hall in that same far-flung place with, doing what they do in that same sports hall in that same far-flung place six years later - some kind of overwhelming glow of light that comes on and gets you thinking, "These are the same guys. This is how far they've come." You cheer, you get up on your feet, you endure some nail-biting moments and if push comes to shove - if push comes to shove you clench your fists and pummel them through the air; a boxer running out of things to hit, and still giving it the fight.

To be injured is to set it in stone that the hurt is never all that simple. Too often I have found myself following the cadences of a bouncing basketball - I always have - except this past year it has taken on an illusory nature, and as the sound fades, you can almost make out the surface that it is bouncing on from the little inflexions and metres; how it feels its way around, how it absorbs the shock, how - despite your best intentions - its direction may sometimes be unpredictable, no matter how masterful your control.

It is hard to think that people were not made to move, or that this court was not made to be a stage. People were made to move in all its 28 by 15 metres of glory; for four - sometimes five - times a week, we would feint, slide, leap, roll, pirouette - run, with that reckless abandon which comes with space. To be your very self.

Evanescence is best served cold but you would think I could deal with it; the same guys you've made at least a thousand passes to at the same training sessions at the same court, the same one that was built to be a home - you've seen them at their best and their worst, as they have seen you too. The intensity ensures that for four hours of up and down, up and down - just as the ball bounces we go up and down the lengths of the court - people are on the brink of breaking apart; you, are on the brink of breaking apart. When people feel at their lowest, when they think they haven't got anything left inside, they're tempted to cheat tempted to blame tempted to yell at everyone in their way

please, only your mind needs to know there is in fact so much left - so often that's proven true; when that knee feels like it's about to collapse but you want to make that last lap, when you are no longer sure about the air in your lungs but you are sure of the shared mettle in your minds

No - sometimes the mind is not enough. Sometimes you can only watch from the side, helpless but hopeful, as six-year-olds grow up before you.

--

I recently performed a piece at a spoken word event - and it's all still rather surreal - with my friend Kim. You can check out the transcript here.

Ground Control to Major Tom

He peeked at his watch - not that he needed to; no, he just wanted to be sure he knew something.

She took a glance at the mirror - not like she had not done so a thousand times before; she just needed to believe it was still her.

They checked out the lyrics of a song - not that they had forgotten the words; they just had to know whether they meant what they sang.

We looked up at the sky - not because we weren't sure if it was there, but because we wondered
we really wondered
what was holding it all up.

--
Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Wasteland

Sometimes I wish for the Earth to stop spinning
for the sheer madness to hold
for people to give less of a fuck
and give more
more

of themselves

We're all more or less
                                           dying