UNLESS WE ARE CHALLENGED HARD...

Pic.: Chetna Shetty

Immediately after the Mumbai Indians clinched the sensational victory against Rajasthan Royals at Wankhade stadium, last night, I saw on TV this tweet from Amitabh Bachchan.

 WHAT A GAME ! NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE! 

Mumbai Indians at start of IPL had been written off... BUT! What a comeback!

I was watching this match with my dad-in-law. He was just discharged from the hospital a couple of days ago; and, normally, he goes off to bed quite early. But, last night, the match was so compelling, that he watched it till Aditya Tare blasted his last-ball-six... He was on his wheel-chair, trying to stand up... while, I couldn’t get myself to sit!

Yes, it was unbelievable... Yes, impossible is just another word... Yes, anything can be possible in the game of cricket... Yes, Faith can, in deed, move mountains and calm down the stormy seas!

Aditya Tare wasn’t born when a similar dramatic scene had brought the entire cricket-loving world to a standstill: It was the legendary last-ball of the match at Sharjah. And it was an India Vs Pakistan match... and, it was Javed Miandad Vs Chetan Sharma... and, yes, it was a do-or-die situation for both teams. Pakistan needed five runs off that last ball... and as Chetan Sharma sent his last delivery, Miandad wrote history with his six! Even today, everyone talks about it... yes, even after more than three decades and even after so much of a change in the Cricket world! Nothing could eclipse those deeply- etched memories... For India, almost,  nightmarish!

But, last night, the young Mumbai-boy, Aditya Tare, must have succeeded in wiping off those Sharjah memories... Yes, at least, in my opinion. The last ten to twelve deliveries had stopped my heart and I wasn’t breathing, at all!

Good, Mumbai Indians won... Else, who knows!!!

Well, all said and done, it was just a game of cricket. Looking back at it, I am laughing it out loudly!

Many years ago, when his company had gone bankrupt and creditors were hounding him, and, yes, when everyone around had, already, written him off as a dead-meat... Amitabh Bachchan had made a sensational comeback with KBC... and, the whole world, inspired by it, had stood up to give him a hero’s ovation!

Yes, Amitabh Bachchan’s bouncing back was heroic, legendary... Gut-wrenching and inspiring! But, the kind of humble soul that he is, he never ever took-off his jersey and went into a frenzy of ‘I did it’... ‘I showed it’... ‘I shut their mouths’ or whatever of that kind... But, being a die-hard cricket-buff, Big B loved to watch the young-blood Tare doing it, last night...

But, I was remembering what Bachchan sir, my hero, had said in one of his interviews after his unbelievable come-back:

“We, really, do not know what we are capable of achieving

unless we are challenged hard!”

What an apt statement!

After five consecutive losses in Dubai, all of us had written off Mumbai Indians. The kind of comeback they have done – particularly the way they made it into the Play-offs, last night – was just unthinkable. Similarly, after his ship had sunk, all of us had written off Amitabh Bachchan... He wasn’t a young hero anymore... and, his movies were flopping, business venture had tanked, and the brief stint in politics only had damaged his reputation... No one would believe that he had still within him what it took to bounce back, and bounce back in a big, big way...

True, we really do not know how best we can fight... what powers we possess in our souls... unless we are challenged, unless we are driven to the wall...

Last night, as Mumbai Indians were celebrating their victory and as I was reading the legend’s tweet, I knew, I had to believe in what I was seeing in two inspiring bouncing-backs: Mumbai Indian’s and Amitabh Bachchan’s!

GERALD D’CUNHA