THE STAR WARS

A few days ago, yet another controversy was sparked off in the cricketing world with Adam Gilchrist’s harsh comments on the master blaster Sachin Tendulkar, in his autobiography. As revealed by the Aussie media during its review, the book named true colors, had Gilly writing about Tendulkar as, "hard to find for a changing room handshake after we have beaten India". The wicketkeeper-batsman also questioned Sachin’s honesty in the whole monkey gate incident which had taken place down under earlier this year.

Now this was enough to ignite the whole nation. The media thrives on this kind of spice and got going as usual. In fact one could just imagine them licking their lips in shear delight when such news items break. Well, all of the news channels were in ‘breaking news’ mode. Each one had a different headline, which was made as attractive and exaggerated as possible to draw attention. Their respective experts were thoroughly interviewed with each and every possible aspect of this incident. Most of these former cricketers, who were hired by these networks for a grand fortune, intentionally or unintentionally opined against Gilchrist. Within minutes, the dangerous left-hander had become a villainous figure in India.

If we turn a few pages back in history, then we find that this is the same Adam Gilchrist who has walked on numerous occasions, before being adjudged as ‘out’ by the umpire thereby giving a fair chance to many an opposition like India and risking his own team’s chances. The episode that stands out is the one against Sri Lanka in the semi-finals of world cup 2003 owing to the magnitude of the occasion. Now, a simple little question- After maintaining a fantastic track record of being honest under the most testing conditions, will he be lying in his book?

In the hindsight of this event I would like to put forward a question – Are we giving too much importance to our celebrities? Most of us seem to really enjoy following our favorite stars. What they are wearing, what they are eating, what they have to say about what and who and so on. People sometimes really go overboard in giving these stars a demigod status. It was this demigod status of Sachin that was probably the reason behind the recent pandemonium. Had there been worse allegations against some lesser star, then I don’t think many would have raised an eyebrow. But in a country where cricket is religion and Sachin its god, the fact that the god himself is under the scanner is a bit difficult for the devotees to comprehend. So the people were very fast to react, in a negative way that is. The media reiterated there speediness and as usual somehow managed to find a mini-mob with banners against the miscreant. Well, they were successful in making Gilly voluntarily or involuntarily take back his words and come up with a diplomatic explanation. Sachin continued to reign and Adam Gilchrist’s image was perhaps tarnished to quite an extent at least in India.

With churchy (that’s Adam Gilchrist’s nick name) stepping back from his statements, the chances of those allegations being true, also went into oblivion. Now what if those allegations were true? Then most probably a major section of people, with the exception of the true followers would have lost faith not only on Sachin but also on cricket. There would have been question marks on Sachin’s personality, his status, his nature and maybe his cricketing prowess as well. That is the unfortunate part about this whole stardom thing. When it hits back, it hits very hard. One prime example is that of Mohammed Azzharuddin- A fantastic cricketer with gifted shots and to add the icing on the cake, a dynamic captain as well. But it took one match-fixing scandal againt him to lose all that he had earned in terms of respect and popularity by working hard over the years. In fact there were also some ridiculous talks of erasing or deleting all his records. How on the earth is that possible? The person has been a servant of the nation as a cricketer for a significant time and nobody can take it away from him howsoever disloyal he turns out to be. Well, Azhar has not got a second chance to be close to his favorite game ever since. Another one guilty under the same accusation, perhaps to a worse degree than the former, Hansie Cronje is no longer there to even try for a chance.

So there we are. It’s the people who make the stars and also break them. The stars enjoy their godly status to the maximum therefore reiterating the fact that they are actually humans. But is all this actually necessary? They are only going about doing their jobs. It’s true that their jobs are dream jobs and take some task to earn. But preying them and emulating them has rarely done any good to anyone. Instead, we should try to take a leaf out of their books and motivate ourselves to work hard and honestly in whatever we are best at. In this way we will not only do a world of good to ourselves, but also to the so called celebrities as well. This will also increase the popularity of several unsung jobs manifold. After all, there is no such thing as a born star and if there is, then everyone is a born star.