Often referred to as the harshly taxed and politically ignored section of society, the Indian lower middle class has found a surprising backer in the recently retired Indian cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin. He used to be one among them.
Ashwin’s parents belonged to the salaried class with modest means but his cricketing skills and rigour helped the family move up the social ladder. He would go on to play top-flight cricket for about a decade and a half during the time Indian players were handsomely paid but he still carries the angst from the days of struggle.
Days after announcing his retirement, seated in his sea-facing home at Chennai’s poshest neighbourhood, Ashwin is talking to cricketers-turned-podcasters Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain. It’s here he mentions how the world laps up those heart-rending rags to riches sports stories but is generally cold towards the less extreme but equally arduous struggles of middle-class kids burdened with expectations of juggling both sports and academics.
As a bowler, Ashwin repeatedly took up the cause of the bowler, cricket’s historically under-appreciated tribe; now he was doing the same for another much-neglected social strata that he was once part of.
“Of late, there have been many inspiring stories of those coming from a tough background … and then there are the very rich. Most often the forgotten people are us – the low middle class families. We are the forgotten tribe,” Ashwin answers to the other Chennai man on the show, England captain Hussain.
On the face of it, Ashwin’s journey to become a super successful sporting outlier in his academically-inclined Chennai neighbourhood doesn’t have the pathos of Indian opener Yashasvi Jaiswal’s ‘selling golpapaa’ story but it was equally remarkable. Both Ashwin and Yashasvi faced different challenges and their young pre-teen minds had to deal with equally complex adult situations.
R Ashwin said he made a special bond with Yashasvi Jaiswal during the IPL. (Sportzpics)
Yashasvi had to be an adventurer, he had to show incredible enterprise to move out of the remote cricket-denied UP village he grew up in. He went on to do what 99 per cent of the world wouldn’t. Not every 10-year-old from Suriyawan near Bhadohi takes the train to Mumbai to be a cricketer. His cricket craze made Yashasvi take the leap into the unknown. Once in Mumbai, he did odd jobs and stayed with maidan groundsmen in canvas tents.
But Yashasvi’s parents hadn’t set the bar too high for him. There was no pressure on him to study. His father, a small-time shopkeeper, had allowed his son to travel to Mumbai as he didn’t earn enough to feed him. So even if the cricket mad youngster had settled as a street hawker in India’s financial capital, it would still be seen as a social upliftment for the austere family. Had he returned home too, it would have been fine. Many migrants from Suriyawan had found Mumbai far too challenging and taken the train back.
The indefatigable aspiration of the middle class to relentlessly seek a social status update could have been the difference between the two cricketers.
It was when Ashwin was about the same age as Yashasvi was when he moved to Mumbai, that the offie was part of an important family meeting. Father, mother and the lone son had to take a big call – Should he take the educational route or chase his cricket dream? There was a “one in a ten million” chance that a Chennai nuclear family would decide on cricket.
R Ashwin retired from Indian cricket team with 537 Test scalps to his name. His Test wicket tally is the second-highest for India, only behind Anil Kumble’s 619. (Express Photo by Nirmal Harindran)
In the podcast, Ashwin says that in case there was a survey organised for the 10 million kids of his age around his home town, he would easily be the odd one out. “Mostly there would be engineers, doctors, scientists, bank managers … they all took that route. For being the only son of that middle class family my dad had very lofty ambitions,” he says.
Father Ravichandran as a young boy couldn’t pursue his sporting dream, his parents couldn’t even afford a bat. Now, with Ashwin’s career path decided, the family came up with a plan. It was the father’s duty to drive Ashwin to games while mother, who worked for Hindustan Lever, laid the financial foundation for the family. Ashwin, now the father of two young girls, says gone are the days when parents were so ready to sacrifice. “How can you park your selfish interest for a long time just because your son wanted to do something in life,” he says.
Two dedicated parents with well-defined roles can’t guarantee success in a sport that is pursued by virtually every child. When Ashwin was 13, he got a serious hip injury. Back in the day, there was no institutional support for young cricketers, the talented young cricketer was asked to stay away from nets with immediate effect.
R Ashwin with his family during the felicitation ceremony ahead of his 100th Test in Dharamsala.
Ashwin recalls that depressing day when he had made a pair, and was asked to quit playing and had limped back home. That’s when he had a heart-to-heart talk with his mother. “I am not a great student, you guys get called to school often, I flunked a few subjects. I have spent good 5 to 6 years playing cricket and I am not good at that too. I dont know where I’m headed.’
The mother said something deep, the gravitas of which was lost on the young Ashwin but he understands it now. The thinking cricketer repeats what his mother told him that day on the podcast. “I know we are not the most privileged but I will slog to make sure you have some money to live even if you think you are a failure in life. I didn’t get the opportunity to live the way I wanted to. But I want you to tell your children that your parents supported you in the dream that you had.”
There aren’t any weighing scales to measure the hardships of individuals but Ashwin, like Yashasvi, didn’t have it easy. But the stories of those perennially sandwiched between the ‘have alls’ and ‘have nots’ often get overlooked. Both their struggles and success get undermined.
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