The collectors of (meaningless) sports records
If you play a sport in pursuit of a record, are you playing?
Part of the ongoing Celebrate Bandra festival that concludes today (20 November) is an exhibition of installation art along Bandra’s Carter Road promenade. Now, I’m not much of an art connoisseur. But I have strolled past these exhibits and stopped to muse over a few.
One installation has a head-sized hole on the side. A head and arm poked through it the other morning, phone at the end of the arm ready to take a selfie. I could have grabbed the phone and strolled on—it looked like it would be several months, at least, until its owner extricated himself and came chasing after me.
Nearby were two large installations, both by the same artist. One was a “Kathakali Chair" and the other featured two Kolhapuri chappals. Both towered intimidatingly over the walkers on the promenade. Both were sized for giants. The Kolhapuris, particularly, were easily 20 times life-size.
When I stopped to read about these exhibits, I learned that both were attempts to set some kind of world record: largest chair, largest Kolhapuris, or maybe the largest when both are juxtaposed, something like that.
But the exhibit also got me nostalgic about, of all things, carrom. The board game, I mean. What is the possible connection between two enormous exhibits on the Carter Road seafront and the game of carrom, you ask? Well, there was a time when I watched someone try to set a world record playing carrom.
Certainly, most Indian kids of about my vintage grew up having played hours upon hours of carrom. The hostels I lived in during my college years had “common rooms" which stored a few carrom boards, and every evening you would find several of us in there, knocking the striker about the board with practised nonchalance, mouthing appreciative kudos for an especially sweet shot. (Unless the shot was from the opposition. Then you would hear mouthed abuse.)
But in all those hours of play, I don’t remember ever thinking there were records to be set in this game. That is, there are other sports that lend themselves to records: the highest score by a batsman in cricket, or the fastest 100m ever run, or the most goals scored in a football season. All reasonable extensions of how the game is played, and all markers of some kind of sporting achievement.
What would a world record in carrom be? The sweetest shot?
Ah, but I hadn’t reckoned with one professor S. Ramesh Babu, who once sat down in a hall in Bengaluru and chased a new world record in carrom. And for long hours, I actually watched his pursuit. This was the record he was after: playing “non-stop solo carrom" for 24 hours.
I am not making this up.
In an airy community hall in Malleswaram, Babu had installed a carrom board on a table, with two chairs on opposite sides.
There were large blackboards to one side, and a few expectant assistants milling about, watching the good professor and scribbling notes.
For his part, Babu sat on a chair and played his heart out, flicking the striker to arrow it across the board, sending the pieces hurtling towards oblivion in the pockets. No opponent, so Babu went after all the pieces himself.
Whenever he cleared the board, he would get up, stretch, flex his fingers and turn his head this way and that to work out any cramps that particular passage of play had induced.
An assistant would scurry over to the blackboards and scrawl numbers below such meaningful headings as “Number of Blacks Before First White" and “Time to Clear Board".
Another assistant would arrange the pieces again in the centre of the board. Flexing and stretching done, Babu would step smartly to the other side of the board, sit down, and resume his pursuit of his world record.
I watched and watched and watched some more. Mostly open-mouthed. I could hardly believe my eyes, hardly believe that someone would actually want to set a “record" in this fashion. For what came to mind was this simple question: What does this exercise have to do with the way carrom is played?
Answer: nothing.
I mean no knock on Babu’s undoubted sincerity in wanting to hold some kind of world record, or even a world record number of world records. According to a pamphlet one of his assistants handed out, he had attempted or set several others as well.
There was his “Inaugural World Record" for “Longest Uninterrupted Table Tennis Tossings, alternatively on both sides of the bat (without changing the position of the feet)". In 1 hour, 5 minutes and 40 seconds, he racked up 9,900 of these tossings.
As a variation, there was his Inaugural World Record for “Longest Uninterrupted Solo Table Tennis Rally"—for which he turned one half of a table tennis table vertical and patted a ball against it for 1 hour, 33 minutes and 53 seconds: 18,737 times.
And if you are wondering “Yo, Prof. Babu, play anything other than carrom and table tennis?", wonder no longer. He also tackled badminton, with an Inaugural World Record for “Longest Uninterrupted Shuttle Tossings, alternatively on both sides of the racket". 1 hour, 30 minutes and 8 seconds for 5,011 such tossings.
I assure you there was plenty more in that pamphlet. (He once cut a cucumber into 120,060 pieces and claimed an Inaugural World Record in “Vegetable Cutting".)
And as I read it all, as I watched him strike and flex and strike again through the evening and night and into the next morning and afternoon, as I began wondering if I could apply for an Inaugural World Record for “Longest Time Spent Watching a World Record Attempt" … yes, through it all that simple question came to mind again and again: what do these records have to do with the way these games—carrom, badminton, table tennis—are played?
Answer again: nothing.
What is the sporting achievement they measure?
Answer: none.
I know very little about art, but it seems to me that you could ask similar questions, and get similar answers, about enormous chairs and Kolhapuris too.
If you produce art in pursuit of a record, is it art? If you play carrom non-stop in pursuit of a record, is it carrom?
Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Final Test: Exit Sachin Tendulkar.
His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun
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