By Swetha Kannan
When Rahul Dravid politely declined an honorary doctorate bestowed upon him, everyone went gaga over his simplicity and humility. Now, Dravid may not understand what the fuss is all about, but his fans will.
As a woman in my mid-thirties, I am a bit embarrassed writing about my teenage fangirl moments in the mid-nineties when Jammy, as Dravid was fondly called, broke into the scene dominated by Sachin Tendulkar. All the boys in my class, who didn’t quite get it, naively assumed that girls were drawn to Dravid for his looks. Well, they were not totally off the mark, but that wasn’t the only endearing quality about him.
Rumour had it that Dravid read a lot — and that was a big plus in my books! He also seemed to be a sincere, straightforward and hardworking cricketer who didn’t take his talent for granted, who didn’t throw any tantrums. He was the kind of boy whose posters mothers didn’t mind adorning their teenage daughters’ wall. I used to wait eagerly every week for Sportstar (a sports magazine published by The Hindu) just for the pull-out poster it used to carry in the middle. For weeks, I had prayed for a poster of Dravid and my joy knew no bounds when my prayers were finally answered.
At a time when girls had posters of rockstars in leather jackets and spiked hair in their rooms, a rather stripped-down poster of a clean-shaven Dravid in a white-and-black checked shirt, with a stiff smile, adorned my wardrobe door. I still remember the caption on the poster said ‘steeped in technique’.
Back then, my access to English music was restricted to Channel V, MTV and the good old FM radio. The best part of the FM channel in Chennai (where I lived) was its dial-in programme where callers called in with their song requests and ‘dedicated’ songs to their near and dear. For days on end, I pressed the ‘redial’ button on my ‘landline’ from 7 to 9 in the evening. My fingers turned red and sore but I couldn’t get through. And when I finally did one day, my heart soared with pure joy. After dutifully rattling out a string of names of friends and cousins, I ended the list with Dravid’s name. Ah satisfaction.
It didn’t stop there. I may or may not have posted a glittery letter to Shehnaz Treasurywala (who hosted MTV Select) with yet another Dravid dedication. And let’s not get into the story of me and my friend trying to post a letter to Dravid who, someone told us, lived in II Stage, Indiranagar, Bangalore or the time when a bunch of us from journalism school gatecrashed a cricket awards ceremony in Chennai at a five-star hotel. That would make it hard to convince you that I was no deranged fan, but an intelligent and sensible girl with a hopeless crush on a handsome gentlemanly cricketer.
Many years later, when my infatuation had mellowed as I stepped into my thirties, I got the opportunity to meet Dravid at a corporate event in Chennai, which I was covering as a journalist. Did my heart prance around hopelessly? Well, not really (I wasn’t that lovesick teenage fan anymore). But I was happy that I had finally met my childhood hero, who was as courteous and suave as I had imagined him to be. This obviously more than made up for the fact that I was working on a Sunday.