No, I’m not jealous of Imran Khan, and it’s totally nonsensical of you to say so. I’m not jealous or envious of Khan in the same way that an espresso machine is not jealous of a roll of toilet paper, or in the same way that a cellist is not jealous of an actuary. No matter that the actuary might be earning a lot more than the cellist. No matter how good-looking the toilet paper roll might have been when it was freshly unwrapped as opposed to the now stained and dented coffee maker. The point is that Khan and I did and do different things. Yes, of course, had things gone according to my teenage plans, I would have ended up facing Khan right after he’d got one of our opening batsmen, with or without the help of a patriotic Pakistani umpire. Coming in at one drop for the Indian team of the early ’80s, I would naturally have prevailed — majestically, brutally, and un-prettily — and, in the process, seriously dented Khan’s mascot-boy cricket career, but let’s let that be.
Did I want Khan’s easy way with women? Umm, not really. I knew many smug, vanilla-handsome jerks like him. What about the money and the sports cars? Yes, I cannot lie, I did want those. The friendships with rock stars like Mick Jagger, the wild parties and the groupies? We-ell, I would have taken being pally with Mick and the band. Was I desperate to be known as ‘Im the Dim’ by my Oxford cohort, including Benazir Bhutto? Nah, I suspect I would have passed on that one.
Irritation and admiration
Rather than inciting jealousy or envy, what Khan as a cricketer brought out in an Indian fan like me was a mix of irritation and admiration. The irritation was that Indians were good enough not to fall apart even in the face of Khan’s tremendous bowling talents, it’s just that the Pakistani angle got to our players more than it should have. Later, one realised that this ball swung both ways and the India factor was as nasty for them as the Pakistan factor was for us. The admiration was for the one-man command Khan assumed of Pakistani cricket, where everyone from Zia the Dictator to talented mofussil boy danced to Khan’s ishara . It was feudal and regressive but it was effective, and painful to watch in comparison with the periodic Byzantine squabbles Indian cricket threw up at the top. Khan the cricketer gave us the gifts of Wasim Akram and Inzamam-ul-Haq. The gift of Khan’s retirement in ’92 continued giving — shortly afterwards, the two nasties who hated Im, Javed Miandad and Saleem Malik, also met their sad and humiliating end. With the departure of Khan, Miandad and Malik, it was as if a switch had been flicked: one began to appreciate our brothers from across the border when they skewered some gora team with their (hitherto invisible) talent, flair and fearless panache.
But Im the Dim was an egomaniac, and he was far from done with being in the public eye. There was the cancer hospital dedicated to the memory of his mother, which was commendable. There was the marriage to Jemima (very satisfying to feel hundreds of thousands of Indian women collectively sighing in sadness) who was, of course, an upper-class huntin’-shootin’-fishin’ English gel, but otherwise seemed like a nice person. This union, of course, shot Im into the international tabloid sphere. Lekin chalo , being hungry for greater celebrityhood is hardly the worst crime. But then there was the whole political party thing, Khan’s discovery of a reactionary Islam, his aligning with the most regressive forces in his country, the misogynist, homophobic mullahs, the Taliban, and sections of the army. It was almost as if Khan needed to bowl beamers at his former self, or maybe this was just the flip side of the egomaniacal coin, everything was still about Imself, only with a plastic piety sprayed on.
Recently, women friends on Facebook went ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ about their old lusting after Imran 1.0, even as they sniggered at the photo of his red burkha’d third wife. Their argument was that you could not mix up youthful desire for an icon with political correctness. Anyone who still has memories of having warm stirrings of, say, the young Brigitte Bardot, Jayalalithaa, Hema Malini or Smriti Irani would have to agree — it’s not your fault if the dizziness-inducing poster on your bedroom wall mutates into something out of a nightmare.
Goodbye, playboy days
Having said that, when I see Khan sitting next to Begim No.3, I can’t help feeling an odd frisson of satisfaction. Gone are the playboy days. This is a man who’s saying, ‘The women in my family can show their faces if they want, but that’s not what my wife will do’. When, in some Facebook memes of the Khan wedding photo, I see the face of Nawaz Sharif or Amit Shah faintly showing through the red burkha (the text says: ‘Since we don’t know what Mrs. Khan looks like, she could look like anyone’), my sense of deep anti-envy is complete. No, not for a second would I want to be Imran Khan.
Published - February 25, 2018 12:15 am IST
