The thrilling face of a brave new India
By Shashi Tharoor
Weekly Column "Shashi on Sunday" in "The Times of India"
January 14, 2007

We all know India has changed dramatically in recent years: the country I left when I first went abroad as a student in 1975 would be barely recognisable to the young Indians of today.

To those who remember the old India, there's visible evidence of change all around from the variety of makes of car on the roads to the number of channels on my mother's television set, not to mention the malls now sprouting like mushrooms in chic suburbs that used to be dusty and forlorn mofussils.

But what about the invisible evidence of change? How does one capture the transformation of attitude that's as essential a part of what India has become?

Sometimes a simple event encapsulates something far larger than itself. Journalists are overly fond of 'defining moments', I know. And one should always be wary of making too much of anything that transpires on that theatre of the evanescent, the sports field.

But my epiphany about the new India came last month in just such a setting during the telecast of the first cricket Test against South Africa at the Wanderers' ground in Johannesburg.

India's new bowling hero, Shantakumaran 'Gopu' Sreesanth, was batting, facing the charged-up South African speedster Andri Nel. "As soon as I walked in to bat, Nel said 'I can smell blood, I can smell blood'," Sreesanth later revealed. His first ball beat the Indian tailender all ends-up.

Nel then marched up to the young Indian, taunting him that he didn't have the heart to stand up to the big man's pace bowling. "You don't have the fire, man. You should have a big heart to play me," Nel reportedly said, thumping his own chest in full view of the TV cameras.

"You are like a bunny to me." He then declared that he would 'get' Sreesanth with his next delivery. Nel ostentatiously changed the field for the next ball, moving the short-leg fieldsman to deep square-leg and informing wicket-keeper Mark Boucher, in Sreesanth's hearing, that he would be bowling a bouncer.

The young Indian was not fooled. "I am a fast bowler," Sreesanth said later, "and I was sure that he would bowl a length ball." Sure enough, Nel charged in, believing the batsman was expecting a short-pitched delivery, and bowled a fast, full-length ball on the middle stump.

Sreesanth, having guessed correctly, stepped back and with an almighty swing hit the ball back over the fast bowler's head into the stands for six. What followed is now one of television's most memorable moments.

No one who saw it can forget Sreesanth running down the pitch in triumph, twirling his bat like a bandleader's baton, then breaking into a dance that combined both relief and exhilaration: the relief of the plucky kid on the beach who has kicked sand back into the bully's face, and the exhilaration of one who knows that, after essaying so foolhardy a deed, he had gotten away with it.

Nel was left not merely speechless but defanged; the sheepish expression on his face was worth almost as much as the priceless, laugh-out-loud joy of Sreesanth's impromptu breakdance.

Everything about the episode emblazoned a story of transformational change. In the old India, a tailender, confronted with a fast bowler's aggression, would have been cowed. He would either have backed away from the imminent threat of decapitation, or (at best) have put his head down and attempted to block the next ball.

He would have been grateful to have survived at all; there would have been no doubt that the foreign paceman would have maintained his psychological ascendancy. It would certainly never have occurred to the Indian to think like a fast bowler, and it would have been beyond imagining that he would decide to meet fire with fire.

Sreesanth's extraordinary hit over Nel's head for six encapsulated for me all that is different about the new India: courage, assertiveness, a refusal to be intimidated, a willingness to take risks and ultimately the confidence to stand up to the best that the outside world can fling at us.

This goes well beyond the cricket field. Sreesanth's India is the land that throws out the intruders of Kargil, that acquires Europe's largest steel conglomerate in the face of taunts about 'monkey money', that exports more films abroad than it imports, that challenges the traditional assumption of superiority by others, that wins Booker Prizes and Miss Universe contests.

It doesn't matter, then, that India lost the next Test, in Durban. It doesn't even matter that the entire series 'went south' in Cape Town. Because this is not about cricket any more. It's about a state of mind a state of mind that will also change the Indian state.

What Sreesanth demonstrated was an attitude that has transformed the younger generation into a breed apart from its parents'.

It is the attitude of an India that can hold its nerve and flex its sinews, an India whose self-confidence is rooted in the sober certitude of self-knowledge ("I am a fast bowler," said Sreesanth), an India that says to the future, "come on; I am not afraid of you."

As 2007 gets under way, let us cheer on the prospects of this India an India whose reach and imagination can soar like a six into the skies above.