Just too much of saccharine, this Tendulkar20 business.
Deep inside, the Little Master himself must be embarrassed by the mindless hysteria he finds himself in and around him.
His fawning fans in the media have made such a vulgar song and dance of his 20 years in international cricket that I won't be surprised if he comes up with his own version of Karl Marx’s Thank-God-I'm-Not-A-Marxist renouncement.
When someone like Ravi Shastri advocates blanket imprisonment for every Tendulkar critic, you suspect fascism trying to stage a comeback with cricket as its vehicle.
Raj Thackeray can sleep peacefully. Indian cricket is in safe hands.
Elsewhere, the abysmal chumps in the media are foaming at the mouth, trying to convince us how longevity is the lone hallmark of greatness.
You wonder if they have heard about Wilfred Rhodes who had a 31-year-old international career and there are around 14 others as well who lingered for more than 20 years.
A humbug columnist questioned if any other player had hauled a nation from the depth of its sorrow like Tendulkar did by dedicating a century to the Mumbai terror victims.
While a heart-warming gesture it definitely was, the columnist apparently forgot Don Bradman had lifted the entire Australian spirit from the aftermath of the 'Great Depression'.
To be fair to Tendulkar, it's difficult to imagine him appreciating this sick media rush to usurp the milestone and milk some mileage. For, in this avalanche of feel-good interviews and familiar ego-massaging gibberish, objectivity has been sacrificed at the altar of sycophancy.
No sincere effort to gauge why two decades were not enough to silence claims that he did not win enough matches while the likes of Brian Lara won series on their own.
Reams spent on his 175 in Hyderabad against Australia, and rightly so, but not a single honest question on why he played that ugly, irresponsible shot completely unbecoming of a player of his stature.
Or for that matter, what about that steadfast political correctness, the opaqueness of which never allowed us to know actually what goes inside that great mind?
Lest you get me wrong, only fools would doubt Tendulkar's greatness. But the same fools would roam around with a superiority complex when they come across people who refuse to recognize a single grey shade in that pronounced greatness.
If anything, this eulogy deluge has cemented the notion that we are essentially, and probably incorrigibly, a nation of hyperbole and hysteria, which is ready to dump its sense of proportion at the slightest provocation.
Tendulkar once swapped a dear bat for a Mark Knoffler guitar. He has an ear for music. But I'm not sure all that is written and aired about him would come as music to those blushed ears.
(P.S. Read 7 Tendulkar Q & A here.)
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