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 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.