Fan: n. a fan, sometimes also called aficionado or supporter, is a person who is enthusiastically devoted to something, such as a band, a sports team or entertainer. The degree of devotion can range from simple admiration to the deluded belief that they have a special relationship with the star which does not exist. This is the story of just such a belief.
The 21st of June, 2002 was a yellow hot day at
school. It had been two weeks since the summer vacations had gotten over and
the thrill of reaching the 5th standard had already begun to fade. We were sitting
in the computer lab. We were usually excited to be there but that day something
was different. Nobody seemed to be paying attention. There was a constant
low-key buzz of discontent hovering about the class. The computer teacher
pretended it was just the hum of the AC’s and continued teaching.
I looked around me. All the boys were whispering. I could
hear snatches of conversation.
“..Against Brazil! I didn’t want to come today...”
“He’s playing...”
“Bastard that’s my pen!”
“They’ll fuckin win, I’m fuckin’ tellin you!”
“Why should I ask him? You ask him na...”
“Fine!” said Rajiv Job and got up from his seat, “Sir,
excuse me sir?”
“Yes?” said the computer teacher.
“Can you take us to the AV room? We want to see the match”
said Job unflinchingly.
“What match?” said the computer teacher.
“The World Cup, sir. England v/s Brazil, sir.”
The computer teacher’s eyes bulged. He’d never seen such brazen
impetuosity from a student before.
“What! What nonsense is this? What is all this about
matches. Sit down and be quiet!” he sputtered.
“But sir!” whined Rajiv, “David Beckham is playing!”
And with the mention of that name the whole class began
shrieking and shouting. The computer teacher had never seen such commotion. He
barked and stamped and flapped his arms but the mutiny had grown too rampant.
He looked around bewildered and finally darted out of the room locking the door
behind him. He couldn’t understand it. What was wrong with these boys? Why did they want to watch this match so
badly? And who on earth was this David Beckham?
It was on that hot, afternoon in the computer lab that I
first heard the name of the man who would become my idol and a counterpart of
destiny for the next decade.
* * *
In 2003, my family moved from Lower Parel to suburban Thane.
My father had gotten a new job and it meant being uprooted and hauled away to a
new town and a new school. It was terrible. My 11 year old world lay in ruins.
I hadn’t wanted to shift but like anyone was going to listen to me. So I did
what any hormonal, surly, unable-to-adjust, ticked-off pre-adolescent would do
– I threw a fit. I rebelled. I refused to allow happiness within 50 feet of me.
It was all very rain-soaked and melancholy.
Then one morning, I opened the newspaper and saw a small
headline: DAVID BECKHAM LEAVES MANCHESTER UNITED FOR REAL MADRID.
Hmm, I thought to myself, I wonder if Beckham has trouble
making new friends.
Almost instantly, I had found in him a strange kinship; it
was as if, far, far away albeit on a ridiculously different level, Beckham too
might be going through the same alienation and distress that I was feeling.
He had hardly been a few months in Spain when the false (not
even alleged. I’m a fan and objectivity has no place here) allegations of his
affair broke. If he hadn’t been it before, now Beckham was definitely as distraught
as I. To compound matters Madrid had a woeful season and his year ended
trophy-less just as mine ended with me moored somewhere at the bottom of the
class. Clearly we were thinking the same thing: we were better off without
moving.
* * *
It’s not easy being a fan. When I look back at how I reached
the point where I wore a hair band to school just to recreate his late 2003
look, I’m surprised at the long and bumpy road to fanaticism. You do not become
a die-hard hero-worshipper overnight. It takes time and patience and then if
you’re lucky, you are granted the opportunity to enter into fandom.
It is a tough screening process and rightly so, because at
the end of the initiation, your devotion will be there for life – unshakeable,
unceasing and for the most part unreasonable. This is not something that should
happen lightly. For most fans, it takes years to cultivate that germ of a
positive feeling into the full-blown mania that it eventually becomes.
Take my adulation for Beckham. It started with the
irrational link that I threaded between our coincidental migrations. That
fortunate moment led me to follow his career more closely and that meant taking
an interest in football. Seeing that I was finally doing something other than
stuffing my face with potato chips and sulking, my father decided to fan those
football flames. He bought me Beckham’s autobiography, “My Side” and a jersey.
I read the book and found that I liked this person even more – so I began
wearing the jersey.
What started with spending hours on the pitch trying to
replicate his crosses, gave way to spending hours in front of the mirror trying
to replicate his hairstyles. I can safely say that David Beckham introduced me
to hair gel. When you’re a teenager, you’re trying a dozen personalities a day
to see which fits and I found that I really liked the way Beckham’s seemed to
look on me. I copied the way he smiled (lips straight and wide with no curl on
the sides), the way he walked (heel first, moderate swing on the arms) and even
the way he scowled (with one eyebrow raised high enough to look like a hairy
upside down Nike tick on his face). In those days, I really did believe I was the outsourced Indian version of David
Beckham, a special edition made solely for my school football team. The funny
thing is that no matter how disparate a fan and his fancy may seem at first,
just by sheer repetition and brute assertions, people around them begin seeing
the similarities too. I was referred to as Beckham in the school team even
though I wasn’t allowed to take a single free-kick and my crosses were more
wayward than most weather reports. I did however take corners and for me that
was proof enough that I was the school team’s resident Beckham.
* * *
The next few years went by humdrum and dispiritingly devoid
of any major achievement for us both. Beckham failed to win a major trophy and
I didn’t even contest for one. That was until 2006. It was the year I reached
the tenth standard; the last year of my school life, at the beginning of which
I had not an inkling of the turbulence and triumph that was to follow. I’m sure
Beckham was just as blissfully unaware of the fast-approaching terror when he
captained the England Football team at the World Cup.
Almost uncannily, our year crumbled at around the same time
with the same rapidity. England lost in the quarterfinal and Beckham’s
leadership and ability were questioned. In a dignified and tearful press
conference, he announced that he was stepping down as England captain. Back at
his club, the news was no more cheerful. The then manager of Real Madrid made
it publicly known that Beckham would not be playing another game for the club.
It was seemingly the end.
As for me, I played alrightish in school tournaments but we
never managed to win anything. The cruellest defeat of all was losing in the
final at a tournament held in our own school ground. I was doing just as
woefully in my studies; finding tenth standard a major drag. There were just
too many tuitions and too much at stake to enjoy studying. My overwhelming passion
for football wasn’t helping matters either. Consequently, I was served an ultimatum
by my mother: You will never play for the school team again. Sound familiar?
The quality I admired most in David Beckham was his dogged
determination. There are only two ways that you can react to a setback: one is
to blame the universe and cry and crib and the second is to accept the mess
you’re in and heave and shove you’re way out. Beckham kept quiet and showed up
to training with his resolve unshaken. He was a winner and he was hell-bent on
avoiding ignominy. I looked at the depressing daily news clippings of his progress
and couldn’t help but get inspired. Put your head down and keep working. Luck
will change, I told myself, you see it will.
And things did turn around after Christmas; our luck did
change! That winter Real Madrid sat a few points below Barcelona. It looked as
if the rivals were going to get away with the league. The coach went back on
his decision and brought Beckham into the team and they never looked back
since. Beckham wasn’t the sole reason for their resurgent form but he sure
played with the most hunger: an unpleasant, gnawing emotion vital to success.
I studied for my boards with equal fervour. My prelims
notwithstanding, I couldn’t help but feel that the unfriendly times were
rolling back. Something beautiful was around the corner and just like Beckham
all I had to do was keep working hard. I wrapped up my Boards in April and Real
Madrid wrapped up the title in May.
Madrid won the title on the last game of the season – a week
before I got my results. It had been an incredible year; almost miraculous, in
the small and large ways those miracles tend to work. I looked at the relieved,
ecstatic and all-conquering face of Beckham, beamed into my drawing room on the
night they won the title and couldn’t help but feel the same. We had overcome.
He was now leaving a happy man for a new challenge and sure enough, so was I.
* * *
Beckham was never the greatest football player. You couldn’t
have said he was an equal to Pele or Maradona without causing a lot of people
to choke on their drinks with laughter. Flaws, he had aplenty; the biggest and
most glaring one being his missing left foot. In his distinguished career
Beckham must have used his left foot fewer times than a person living on the
twentieth floor uses the stairs. His speed, though acceptable wasn’t especially
rapacious by winger standards.
But Beckham was never a man of his shortcomings. He never
seemed unduly bothered by the limitations of his abilities. He chose the
magnification of his strengths instead. My respect for Beckham rests on clouds
because he was simply put – and in his own words – a hardworking footballer.
Football is considered a natural talent in the league of
singing, dancing and playing Ludo blindfolded. Era after era, players dazzle
with their innate genius, their easy ability, the fluid manoeuvring of a body
built for the task. You don’t question the magic of Ronaldhino, the pirouetting
of Zidane, the mad-dash energy of Roberto Carlos. Beckham on the other hand
seemed more human than anyone else on the list of greats. He didn’t do
outrageous tricks, he didn’t turn matches on their heads by sheer will and
wasn’t exactly a goal machine. It was no wonder that his place among the
Galacticos was questioned.
Here was the thing with Beckham: everything that he was
exceptional at came out of effort; out of a desire to improve. Sir Alex
Ferguson identified Hard Work as a talent and in that one aspect David Beckham
was probably the most talented of them all. His mythic right foot crosses and
freekicks were not compliments from God but cooked up on the training pitch –
slowly, painstakingly. If he could bend it like Beckham, it was only because he
practiced like Beckham. He strengthened his accurate passes with intelligence
and creativity. He made up for his lack of pace by having a tireless work
ethic. Long after the lungs of fans were exhausted by mere cheering, Beckham
would still be charging around, busting his own lungs for the cause. It’s a
rare ability to even try that hard.
I wasn’t born with magical gifts either; very few of us are
but I learnt from watching his career that as long as I had the character and
willingness to dig in, to be resolute, to not flinch from the labour – it
really wouldn’t matter. The value of effort has been the most wonderful quality
that I have picked up from David Beckham. It’s probably the most immense gift
one could give a fan.
* * *
I returned to Lower Parel as Beckham flew off to America. I
went to college as he joined the L.A. Galaxy. The years of his decline had
begun. The American league was widely thought of as the children’s riding pen
where old stallions got their final run out. Everybody thought that Beckham’s
move was the first, cascading toward retirement. I held out against this
opinion for a while but his first two seasons were too lacklustre to sustain
any argument. Beckham’s all-mighty hold was loosening over me, as it was over
the larger football community.
As college began and my world flung open to new and
overwhelming experiences, I found my interest in football dissipating. I played
for the college team with some success but as the years ticked by, I played
less and less. My interests took new forms and I found new heroes to look up
to. The football games for which I would wait weeks in advance now became
background noise. I wasn’t eager for results and I wasn’t thrilled by the
spectacle. Beckham’s matches in the United States were telecast at a time too
abnormal for the Indian viewer. There was nothing more to do but give up and
move on.
Junior college ended and I shifted once again to pursue Mass
Media. Unsurprisingly, Beckham moved that year too. He went on loan to A.C.
Milan. The 2010 World Cup was approaching and Beckham was battling tooth and
nail to make the England Squad. His return to Europe and more importantly to a
friendlier broadcast schedule meant that I got an extended look-in at my
boyhood hero. His powers were
diminishing like a candle reaching its base but he still flickered as bright as
ever. I found myself rooting for him; for his chance to make the World Cup
Squad. He deserved his last hurrah.
But though his mind was willing, the body didn’t hold up. I
watched the game against Chievo, when he received the ball, arched to pass and
suddenly stopped short. He hopped in pain before making it to the sideline and
collapsing on the turf. All the years of running, the endless bustle and
non-stop pressure of David Beckham’s life had cruelly caught up with him. He
lay in agony on the side of the pitch, clutching at his left ankle as medics
tended to him. He knew the moment the kicking spasm of pain surged past his
foot that his hopes of reaching the World Cup had snapped with his ligaments.
I couldn’t stop the tears in my own eyes at the heartbreak
of that moment. Even the great David Beckham couldn’t have his way against the
plans that were bigger than all of us.
* * *
He was no Helen of Troy but he had a face that could sell a
thousand products. There was an irresistible pull to Beckham’s face when spread
across a billboard. It pulled out all your money. Hardly any sportstar even
comes close to that hurricane called, “Brand Beckham”. I was sucked into the
eye of the storm too. I have so many studs that at least the next 17
generations of Srivastava’s will not have to buy another pair. I use a Samsung
phone because Beckham asked if I would, over the television. I still prefer
Adidas over Nike because Beckham was its brand ambassador. I’m guilty of being
an unthinking, will-less, droid controlled by the selling power of Beckham. At
least I used to be.
Sadly, it will be for introducing the cult of superstardom
to football that he will be most remembered for. History will treat him less a
player and more a shirt. He was a good-looking, responsible, successful and
humble human being or as marketers called him, “Bingo!” No emotion looked out
of place on his face: his smile was charming, his glare was intense and his
scowl was sexy. Whatever you wanted Beckham to sell, he could do it with
conviction and disarming sincerity. I’m sure karela would have become the number
one vegetable if Beckham had appeared in a commercial saying, “Karela gives me
a FREE KICK!” Then he would have kicked a karela-shaped ball, smiled and watched
as millions of teenagers fell over each other to get to their nearest
sabjiwallahs.
Such adulation didn’t
come cheap. The megatonnes of media pressure that Beckham lived under would
have crushed another man. He most admirably kept himself sane while living each
minute under a gigantic circus tent of flash and glamour. It’s an achievement
to have maintained his game alongside all the jet-setting and red-carpeting. He
didn’t combust as so many celebrities do; he didn’t self-destroy, didn’t throw
fits and largely respected the jobs of the moth-like paparazzi. As a celebrity
he was the model for what you should do when your every move was served up in
newspapers day after day.
Glitzy and bright as all of it must have been, I’m sure the
footballer that was David Beckham will not know what to make of it all. I’m
sure he’ll also be a little irritated by all the diversionary focus that his
celebrity created; of being trapped in the strange paradox of celebrity: where you
are given more attention but taken less seriously. He was a great, great
footballer and it’s just so easy to forget that.
* * *
Beckham remained largely submerged in the last three years
of his career. He blipped on the radar twice when he won two championships with
the L.A. Galaxy in 2011 and 2012. It vindicated his intention to move to the
United States. 6 years on, he was leaving America not as a celebrity freakshow
but as a muddied, gritty, football champion. The crinkles had increased around
the eyes as he steadfastly maintained that he wanted to play a little longer.
I left college the year Beckham ended his American adventure.
Now at last our paths had reached the diversion: mine headed straight to the
clear fields of possibility and his wound toward the dark forests of oblivion.
Then suddenly in 2013 like a huge humpback whale bursting forth for air he flew
out of inattention and made a massive splash by signing for Paris
Saint-Germain. It was the last charge of an aging hero.
I was delighted. This fan had to make a final journey and
David Beckham had been gracious enough to provide company. And so the last,
protracted weeks went by blithely. Beckham did not embarrass himself. He proved
his worth in a young side. He accepted his reduced role in the team with grace
and when he did play, he played with uninterrupted elegance.
I was slouched on the sofa when I heard the news: “A DOG
THAT BARKS LIKE AN AMBULANCE BUT FIRST DAVID BECKHAM ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT!” I
sat stunned for a while. The day had eventually come. It had been a slow and
inevitable death and though I had known it was coming when it did happen, it
left me gasping for breath. I gathered all the many memories, the sepia moments
from school and the frostiness of recent years and looked at them a last time.
David Beckham does not even know you, I thought to myself, and yet here he is,
pictured in so much of your life.
I wondered what he would do now. Age 38 is young for a first
death but that was what it was. For David Beckham, the footballer was dead. The
ball would find new legs to kick it around. Football is ruthlessly aware of
time. A decade is two generations in sport. In football, careers are on
fast-forward; played out with a high-pitched squiggle and jerky urgency. Yesterday
the player, who had promise, is today the superstar and will tomorrow be
forgotten. The machine will keep whirring. 14 year old children rage over the
internet about a flock of players that already seem as if they don’t match up
to the legends of my era. When I was a schoolboy looking up to Beckham, I
thought I had all the time in the world to grow up. Now Beckham had retired and
growing up was no longer that far away.
I saw Beckham’s last match. He played in the centre of
midfield. He made his trademark long passes, he took a free kick and he ran
with the energy of a man who knew that this was the last bit of running he had
left. I couldn’t focus on the match. Every few seconds I would hear a devilish
little voice in my head say, “Watch this well because this is the last time”.
In the 83rd minute, David Beckham was substituted. He left the field
in tears. He was hugged by all his team mates and he got a standing ovation
from the Parisian crowd. It was the right time. If at the end of your last game
you have brimming measures of dignity and grace, it is the right time.
David Beckham accompanied his little, unknown fan on that
last journey – he into retirement and his fan into maturity. Like Beckham I
knew it was time, I’d just embarrass myself if I held on any longer. So, when
he left, I didn’t just say goodbye to David Beckham; I waved off my own
boyhood. Wherever they go from here, I’m sure they will be United.
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