First things first – allow me a few presumptions.
Provided you haven’t been living under a rock, or perhaps, didn’t enrol in one of the many fancy social media detox courses, odds are high that over the last 24 hours, your timeline has been inundated with mentions, and videos, of the nation’s newest superstar – Rinku Singh.
Albeit, adhering to the sine qua non of journalism, it is only right that we still convey information to the uninitiated – Rinku, a Kolkata Knight Riders batter, struck five consecutive sixes in the last over against Gujarat Titans, on 9 April.
Even by the Indian Premier League (IPL) standards, where unprecedented occurrences are found a dime a dozen, this served as an astonishment beyond comprehension. For those willing to be spellbound again, the video has been embedded below.
Done re-living magic? Good. Now, let’s cut to the chase.
This article is not to provide a detailed analysis of the five sixes – about the batter’s stance, the angle of his bat, the efficacy of his strikes, or that of his wrist-work. This is a personal story, with a time capsule in its prelude – bear with me as I don my HG Wells cape, and take you five years in the past.
Searching for an Escape Amid Academic Dread
We are now in March of 2018.
Unless you are an anomaly, be it in the fortunate sense or the unfortunate, chances are, much of the first eighteen years of your life was spent on fearing, loathing, yet subsequently, diligently preparing for the class XII board examinations.
Had Marvel's script-writing team comprised solitarily Indian school-going teens, Thanos’ famous dialogue would have been – ‘Dread it, run from it,destinyboard exams still arrive.’
For me, it certainly did. And it felt that life had arrived at a dead-end – sadly, a feeling many Indians would relate to.
But if you want to know more about why exam anxiety almost never leaves us, do check out this story by Saadhya Mohan. Or, if you are feeling anxious about your approaching exams, worry not, and find solace in this video, where The Quint’s journalists express how the entire nation is on the same page.
Chasing After Cricketers, and finding Rinku Singh
Our focus here is not the board exams, but Rinku Singh. Too big a deviation to comprehend? Let me contextualise.
Two years before I attended my first lecture on journalism, I had become a journalist. Well, not in the most veracious sense of the word, but I found a few freelancing gigs. I used to write a bit here, and a bit there, but beyond what I wrote, it served as an escape from the monstrosity that exams were, and the imminent doom that knocked on my doors.
At the top of the ambitious checklist was 'take a cricketer's interview,' but only those who have been in the profession will know how strenuous the operation is. No, not the question-formation – that is, in fact, the easiest bit, a cakewalk. But to get to the cricketers, amid the innumerable walls they have around themselves – managers, public relations team, assistants et al, make the operation complex.
Unaware of the complexities, here I was, an edgy 18-year-old, sending interview requests to any and every player under the sun, on their social media handles. If only anyone had informed me about the existence of an entire professional realm called ‘social media managers.’
All hope was gone, both on the academic and the professional front, until it wasn’t. On one such afternoon of monotony, a cricketer from Uttar Pradesh, only a couple of years older than me, replied to my Facebook message, expressing his interest in an interview.
Rinku Singh had just earned an IPL contract with KKR, one that will fetch him Rs 55 lakh, but evidently, the walls of PRs and social media managers were yet to be constructed. Oh to have an IPL player as your first interviewee! Who cared about board exams anymore?
The Arduous Childhood of Rinku
Defying the widely-normalised boundaries between journalists and athletes, ones which are built upon principles of strict temporal guidelines, Rinku spoke his heart out, with the conversation stretching for about an hour.
He shared tales from his childhood – about how he lived in a tiny, two-room tin-roofed house in Aligarh, as an obedient member of a nine-member family. His father worked for an LPG company, doing the taxing job of delivering cylinders. One of his brothers drove an auto-rickshaw.
Not that it was not evident from what he was saying, but being the honest interviewee that he always is, Rinku re-iterated during that conversation “I belong to a poor family.”
Financial hardships, albeit significant, were not the only obstacles he had faced in his then 20-year-old journey. In that interview for another publication, he informed how being good at cricket helped him get admitted to the Delhi Public School in sports quota – a dream his family couldn’t really afford to harbour – but he failed his ninth standard examinations.
With the family drowning in debt, and food on the plate being uncertain, Rinku had to find a job. He got one – as domestic help, and that became his routine – sweeping the bowlers with the willow for one half of the day, and sweeping dust off with the broom on another half.
That, he preferred speaking matter-of-factly, not ashamed to share his frailties, was discernible. What was also conspicuous from the way he spoke, was his unflinching determination to make it big – for he not only was playing for personal accolades, but also to get his family out of the pecuniary abyss they found themselves in.
On Becoming an Idol
Like the macrocosmic perspective, our microcosmic worlds underwent Brobdingnagian transformations over the last five years. Rinku had to wait a couple of years before making his first appearance for KKR, and then, three more before establishing himself as a superstar. I became a journalist – yes, one with a degree, ratifying the nation’s endearment for a piece of paper.
Yet, despite the multifarious alternations, every good knock from Rinku Singh’s knock triggers pleasing reminiscence. For, be it love or interviews, all the firsts in life are inexplicably special.
Back in 2018, Rinku concluded the interview by saying “Life is all about ups and downs, but we should never lose hope. Ek din zaroor aayega, jab poori duniya aapko idol maanenge.”
Wo din aa hi gaya, Rinku.
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