Rant 103: Let's all take a step back on Jose Mourinho

It could be the biggest signing Manchester United ever make for the new season. It could be the worst. I'm not here to lay down stats, or argue about formations, or debate where Wayne Rooney should play under Jose Mourinho.
But a feeling in me says I cannot automatically tag trophies onto Manchester United just because we have Mourinho at the helm. Sure, Mourinho's track record is brilliant - well, that is if you don't count his last season with Chelsea, who were in relegation danger no less.
Mourinho is a big club man through and through. I can't ever see him doing a Rafa Benitez and taking on a Newcastle-esque challenge. Mourinho moves to a big club and makes them bigger, of that I have no doubt. But the clubs he has been at have always had to reconcile their own style and personality with the professional ego that Mourinho employs. It is an ego that has served Mourinho well, but has also caused conflict.

Louis van Gaal, after United's defeat to Boro

Examples?
His first spell at Chelsea - won titles, but rumours of player unrest, player power in the dressing room, battles with the owner
Inter Milan - again, titles won but more player unrest, including with a certain Samuel Eto'o
Real Madrid - good times, but further battles with players, eventually leaving on a sour note
Second spell at Chelsea - well, you can probably see where this is heading. Although to some credit, it wasn't so much player unrest as much as Chelsea's bad performances that led to his eventual exit. However, not sure how much the controversy over Eva Carneiro helped.

Don't get me wrong. I have every reason to believe we at Manchester United will win games under Mourinho. He gets the results. Whether or not we will suddenly remember to play with style and flair is a doubt. Louis van Gaal's tactics left me bored, but I liked the man. He knew he was in a tough environment and he fought back. He also knew what the limitations were. I remember being in the press conference after United lost to Middlesbrough in the League Cup in late 2015. Van Gaal walked in, sat down and was asked his first question. His response began with a heavy sigh. Here was a man trying to employ his style, but which didn't quite work. To his immense credit, he left with FA Cup glory, and with the legacy of bringing several youngsters into the first-team fold. Also, don't forget he signed Anthony Martial not for himself but for "the next manager" - read story here . So if Martial continues to fire, Mourinho will probably be saying several silent "thank yous".

But coming back to Mourinho the personality. Indeed, the best word is perhaps 'character'. For that is what he is, and in all honesty that is what the Premier League needs, more characters. They liven up the game, they bring their own views and opinions to the fore, and they provide their own form of entertainment. Sometimes, that can go horribly wrong, as Mourinho has proven with a few PR mistakes from last season - Carneiro controversy being one of them. I could feel the Chelsea fans cringing - possibly - every time you heard of a fresh incident/controversy/PR nightmare involving Mourinho. Backed up by some disappointing results, it was not a good reflection on the club.

Characters are important for a club like United

Character is good for a club like Manchester United, who have always employed an amazing cocktail of style and substance. Think Sir Alex Ferguson, think George Best, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo,
It's whether the character that Jose Mourinho brings is a good fit for Manchester United. Mourinho described United as a 'monster club'. Mourinho himself is a 'monster' of a manager based on his track record. Who consumes who will be a good question to answer.

Rant 102: Walking away - A short story

They had not spoken in two years, not in real life anyway. She spent months agonising about whether to see him again. Then months spent imagining this day, she had hoped to see him for longer. The meeting lasted 10 minutes.
He looked to have much to say, or did she wish it were so? Perhaps it was his stare. He sat calm and composed - seemingly not aware of the people around them. People generally seemed lost in their own little world.
"Would you like to sit down?" he at last said.
She shook her head. His appearance had changed much, but his voice still had that quality of making you feel wanted.
"Have you been doing well?". Another general query. For god's sake, I wish he'd ask me something real.
"Yes, I'm alright," she heard herself say. "A bit tired, but otherwise good." She had driven three hours straight. She felt like she had been driving all day. The sea air was doing her some good so far. She hoped he wouldn't be able to smell the alcohol on her breath.


A bird cried out, the pitch straining her ears. She winced slightly at its last shriek. He smiled. She wished she'd accepted his offer of a seat.
"I've missed you," he said. At last, something real. This was the first real thing she had heard him say in over two years. She nearly burst into tears. She nearly hit him.
But all she could do was say, "So have I."
"I was hoping we could meet up," he began again. "But I don't really know where I want to go from here."
I know, it's my fault. It's always been my fault, and I can't begin to say how sorry I am.
She said: "To be honest, I wasn't sure what today was going to be like. I'm still afraid of how this looks. I've not told my parents about this, of course."
"I understand."
"To be honest, I don't speak to my parents much."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
He had maintained his voice thus far. She marvelled at his composure. Then again, that night two years ago as well, he had seemed composed, nay, resigned to his fate. Her own shrieks were entrenched in memory, not so much of his, if any.
They had left him for dead, on the steps leading up to the railway station. Did they intend for her to find him? Face down, and lying on his right cheek, he was conscious as she helped him to a sitting position. Unrecognisable, but that had much to do with the blood from his head wound. She cried for help. He told her not to worry. Then he passed out. The doctors had been a godsend.
"Your parents must be worried about you?" he continued.
"They always worry about me. Mostly about who I'm seen with." Now she could feel her strength returning. The large whisky she had drunk earlier in the morning had helped - not to mention the refill - but the anger at her own flesh and blood now brewing inside her was the real fuel.
"Then perhaps today was ill-advised."
"No!" she retorted. "I wanted this. I wanted today to happen. It was a choice between this, or another day without saying what I really wanted to say that night."
"Which was..."
"I'm sorry. I fucked up."
The words seemed to echo inside her own head. She felt relieved, almost happy, at having finally uttered them.
She felt him walking away. "It's okay," he said. After a pause he added: "I suppose I needed to hear an apology of some sort from someone. But really, I never held you responsible for anything. Apart from stealing my heart, of course! And in any case, I'm in a much happier place now. So all is forgiven."
I know. And I'm happy you're happy.
Slowly, she laid the flowers near his headstone. There was nothing left to do but walk away.

Rant 101: Plane and simple - the story behind the picture

It's funny how many of my pictures that evoke emotion in me are actually tapping into emotion from my childhood. A previous story-behind-the-picture piece I wrote for this blog looked at my childhood love of playing tennis alongside a photograph taken more than two decades on. You can read it here.
Today, I talk about aircraft.
My wife, son and I visited the Yorkshire Air Museum today. It was my son's first visit, though Kirstie and I have visited several times before. It is a fascinating place full of history, and filled with winged technology to enthral people of all ages.

Gritty, robust, and classy - all at the same time

This picture you see on the right was taken in a huge hangar at the air museum complex, and is of an
aircraft propeller. It looks antique, some would say ancient! But that's exactly what attracted me to it. The elegance, the craft, the engraving on metal of "Scott" filled with blue, the wooden blade with their own two respective markings at either end, the metal bits stained by years of being worked on, repaired, used, and then repaired again. It was as if whatever workshop this aircraft came out of, I could smell the hard work and effort that went into making one of these. Then again, perhaps this "workshop" I speak of is not too much in the realm of fantasy.

And this is where my childhood comes in. As with many children, I too fell in love with aircrafts and the wonders of flight. I never took my first flight till the age of 16 but as a child, I had a friend from school whose family were big into aircraft. They owned several businesses, and had interests in the aircraft business as well. What that translated to for my friend was that he and his brother were huge fans of model aircraft. Not the frilly, dime-a-dozen, plastic-feel kind you get these days. His were gritty, robust, and classy all at the same time. They made a lot of noise, sometimes emitted smoke (which we all agreed was both a good and a bad thing) and when they flew my heart would leap with them. Funnily enough, I never saw their planes actually fly more than a few times. In fact, my best memories of them are just all of us sitting down and watching my friend's brother work on it, fix things little by little, add a bit of fuel here, tighten a screw there, and just focus all of his energies for that period on this model aircraft. It was like watching an artist at work.

So, in a very simple way, when I saw this propeller set at the Yorkshire Air Museum, I was - as with my tennis session - taken back to a simpler time! I must apologise as I don't actually remember what kind of aircraft this belongs to. Reason being that I was so taken in by the propeller and its looks and the memories that I forgot to have a read of the information board. 

Rant 100: Why I love tennis - the story behind the picture

I’ve often thought about doing a full blog post about the pictures that I click and share on my photography page (click here if you want to have a scroll). For one reason or another I’ve never been able to. But this being my 100th Rant, I thought I’d take the plunge.

So, to set the scene - I’d finished work at 7pm, and was torn between going to the gym or playing tennis with a friend. As it turned out my friend was not available to play. And so I ended up on my own at the tennis court.

And suddenly, I was a five-year-old again!

Tennis in the Twilight (location: Goole Tennis Centre)

Flashback to the early 90s in Jamshedpur. My father decided to enrol a four-and-a-half-year-old me in tennis lessons. Now, growing up in India, with cricket as the unofficial national sport, I was a bit bemused. In fact, I even resisted. Why would I want to play something like tennis, when I could instead be out playing cricket with my neighbourhood friends? Everybody played cricket, literally everybody. Whether it was at school, or at the local park. Still, my father persisted, and took me on his little green-yellow lambretta scooter to a local recreation centre called “United Club”. Among things like showing movies, food, swimming pool, they had two clay tennis courts.
I can remember it very clearly now, the first time I stepped on to a tennis court. My father was introducing me to the coach, but I was lost in a different world. Somehow, by some stroke of luck, I was transfixed by the court. Red clay, with pristine white lines, and with a net across the middle. It was mesmerising, it really was. And that’s part of the reason why I remember those first few steps so vividly. From then on, I was hooked on tennis.

Tennis is an individual sport, and in many ways it suited me perfectly. I’ve always had my own rebellious streak so perhaps a team sport like cricket or football was not best suited. In tennis, I work for my own win, mistakes are mine to bear, and my creativity is mine alone. I can be as crazy, or as subtle as I want. At the moment of hitting a ball, nobody can tell you how to play the stroke - you play it, and be it on your head. I loved it.

But tennis is also different. And this goes back to the fact that not a lot of people played it - at the time - in Jamshedpur. I was taught the basic strokes, but I would regularly struggle to actually play much. My coach and his colleagues Tillak Sir, Ganesh Bhaiya and others, to their immense credit, seemed to love that I loved the sport so much, and would therefore basket-feed me about 200 balls every day. But that was about it. At the start I was not good enough or old enough to play a proper match against them, though it never stopped me trying, and none of my age-group peers played tennis. I was on my own. And still I played and loved.

In fact it came to a point when even ball-feeding from the coaches stopped, given I used to be the only kid who would rock up every afternoon - couldn’t blame the coaches. But still I came, and grew to love the game even more.

One reason - because even when the coaching stopped, even when the coaches did not emerge from the clubhouse in the 40-degree heat, I continued to play. I would be dropped off by my father at around 3pm - on his way to work - I would be given a tennis ball by the coach, and I would stand at the court baseline and hit against the perimeter wall. I was playing against myself. I would play games of my own. How many shots could I do in one “rally”? How many volleys could I do standing closer to the wall? How many tap-ups could I do in a minute? The stats, as it were, eventually became irrelevant. What mattered was that I was gaining valuable experience of my own limits; I was learning a lot about the proper grip on a racket - the coach would sometimes observe and give a few pointers - I improved my agility and balance, and my movement around the court area. I am still a predominantly baseline player and rely on a strong top-spin game. Basically, those years spent banging against wall, I could do whatever the heck I wanted in that time without being troubled by parents or siblings or friends, and without being judged for it as well.

It helped me find myself at a very young age.

And so I found myself again… 24 years later, on a brisk but sunny evening in Goole, East Yorkshire, nearly 6,000 miles away from those sun-baked courts in Jamshedpur. I stretched, jogged, then started hitting the ball on my own, swung some forehands, some backhands, smashed some serves.

I learned.

Rant 99: My English is apparently very good

There are various ways of being an immigrant these days. You could be seeking a better life, more money, seeking love, or maybe fleeing war and persecution. But whatever label we put on ourselves - or, rather, whatever label society chooses to put on us - the language I speak and how I speak it has had an impact on how I am perceived.

Take English for instance, purely on a basic level. Here is a conversation I have had on several occasions since moving from India to England in 2011.

Other person: “Are you from India?”

Me: “Yes.”

Other person: “Your English is very good.”

Me: “Err… thanks.”

*resists temptation to say “so is yours” *

Now, unless you were my English teacher, or the one who marked my exam papers, I have never really needed validation of my level of English. Case in point, my journalism professor in England once said my spoken English was “impeccable”, which led to an awkward silence in a classroom mostly filled with British students.

I grew up in an English-based school, in a country that is arguably one of the fastest developing in the modern world, and with parents and friends who spoke more English than Hindi. India has embraced many parts of western culture and one of those is certainly the language. Also bear in mind the education system in India is largely a product of the British colonial presence pre-August 1947. Hardly surprising then that the vast majority of urban and suburban children in India grow up with better English than Hindi - or any other regional language. To put it another way, if I had to choose a language to save my life, it would be English. My English is not perfect - no way would I describe it as “impeccable” either - but it does the job for me.

So why do the aforementioned feel compelled to compliment me? I suppose in the case of my journalism professor it’s part of his job, which makes it okay to an extent. In the case of the ‘other person’ - the captain of a village cricket team I was part of - it could be the need to feel superior.

That is my theory as to why somebody feels the need to point out how good (or bad) my English is - dominance. Is there a perception that an immigrant, or in simpler terms a foreigner, must surely be in a state of perpetual struggle with his new environment and culture? And is there a case that this applies only to foreigners/immigrants from the developing or third-world countries? I’m still searching for a complete answer, but perhaps there is some merit to be given to anecdotal evidence. Why else would somebody feel that he or she must comment on the language of a foreigner, bearing in mind I have never heard the same being said by one Englishman to another? Ah we are of this country so surely we speak our language best, and the fact that you grew up in another country means you can never be as good as us.

Could another theory be that it’s simply ignorance? That the cricket captain - like many others who think my English is “very good” - is just not as aware of the wider world? It feels weird writing a statement like that in the 21st century, but perhaps that is also part of the truth. It doesn’t make it acceptable in any case.

I do not feel that speaking/writing good Hindi is the sole preserve of Indians. In fact, Hindi can boast Sanskrit (central Asia) and Persian influences so who am I to assume that someone in Tajikistan or Iran does not speak impeccable Hindi? Or that if someone from Tajikistan or Iran speaks Hindi to me, that I must make sure he knows how good his Hindi is?

He probably knows how good his Hindi is so, you know, thanks but no thanks!

Rant 98: Born in the wrong country

Identity
I’m not the first person who when asked “where are you from?” falls down a mental black hole of uncertainty and insecurity. I’m also sure I’m not the first person who feels their identity is in a constant flux.

And so the question raises itself again: Where am I truly from?

To clear the basics: I was, I am told, born in the state of Orissa in the south eastern part of India. I am told it was in the summer. I remember growing up in Jamshedpur, in the state of Bihar (now Jharkhand) in eastern India. So, surely, I must identify with that place?

However, a mixture of insecurity during childhood, peer pressure, social embarrassment, bullying, failure to achieve expectations, and a general desire to see the wider world forced me to reject the place I grew up in. Jamshedpur is still the place that I know best - geographically speaking - and it is still the place where I have spent the most amount of time at a single stretch. But I am not from Jamshedpur.

To continue the basics: I did my basic bachelor’s degree in Manipal, in the coastal belt of south west India. I rejected an opportunity to study in the United States and packed off to a university known more for its party scene than its academic prowess. I spent three years doing a degree I had supposedly wanted to do. I made some friends, had some adventures, and eventually scraped through with a degree. However, among the many regrets was the fact that I had wasted three years of my life indulging in forms of excess I had not expected of myself. Add to that more social exclusion, being generally bullied, and rejected in areas of love. All of these add up to more bad memories, more regrets, and more feelings of shame when remembering the past. I am not from Manipal.

I spent the next two-and-a-half years working out of Mangalore, which was just an hour away from Manipal - again on the coast. Here, I found myself professionally. I became good at what I did. I made two very good friends, had some amazing experiences, found love, then lost it, then indulged in excess and then found my future wife. And yet, I do not identify myself as being from Mangalore. This one I am at a loss to explain why.

My then-girlfriend-now-wife had been visiting from England. We fell in love and I eventually came over to the UK to do my Master’s degree. There was a great deal of excitement about being in a totally new country. And an equally exciting prospect was leaving India behind. Not just the land, but all my bad memories. I had resolved to change myself. I had resolved to run away from all that I hated about India, all that I hated about my association with India. I was of the opinion, that if I separated myself by vast oceans and thousands of miles, India would never catch up with me. My past, I hoped, would never resurface. And thankfully, there has never been a major occurrence of that so far.

And so I resolved to change myself. I tried, and I still am trying, to become British. It’s a weird moment in my life when I admit to myself, that I need to begin a new identity. Secret agents perhaps have it easy when changing identities, as it’s part of the job. They don’t necessarily choose having to become someone else. They are required to. I’m choosing to change my identity.

Since late 2011, in fact, I have consciously tried to change my habits, my way of speaking, my way of communicating, my way of cracking jokes, my way of watching television, heck even my way of drinking water.

I do not know if what I am doing is correct. It’s difficult to integrate into a culture that is so vastly different from the one you grew up in. Even in the multicultural world of 2015, there are some things I can just never hope to be; or some things that you just can’t choose into being. On a day-to-day basis, "being British" - or whatever I am doing is called - isn’t easy. I’m sure there are many Brits who say the same thing.

It’s difficult. But I am trying.

I am not from England. But from November 2015 onwards, a part of me has officially staked claim to being from England. A part of my identity has been reborn. And this time, I get the feeling it's the right country.