Imran Khan and Shakespear’s Tempest – Part I

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By Sajjad Suhail-Sindhu, Edited By Adam Rizvi, The India Observer, TIO: I was thinking of how Imran spent his birthday recently, on the 5th of October, which he shares with my son. Long ago, in the early 1980s, the Pakistan cricket team was touring England with Imran Khan as captain. As Imran was handsome in both physique and face, there was much “human” interest in him, as shown by the national magazines and newspapers. I read one such article in the Mirror. Imran was questioned about life’s loves, trials, and tribulations.

I remember reading the article and being very impressed with his commentary, which, at age 30, I found quite compelling. The perspectives he offered on life were of a nature that a 30-year-old today would be hard-pressed to entertain.

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“Cricket,” he had said, “more so than other games, offers both the player and the viewer all that a person experiences in life. Within the timeframe of a Test match, we experience the ups and downs of real life. As in real life, where one lives with hopes and dreams of achieving a positive outcome and sharing that experience with both family, friends, and often complete strangers, mostly in the shape of the daily opposition with whom one competes for life’s treasures, so one experiences the same in the game of cricket—only the game offers it to us in a much condensed form.

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As in real life, we are always competing with opposition who fights you for the prize: the financial, the prestige, and the bragging rights that come with winning. And of course, the disappointment if one loses. So, as in real life, I do my best, and assert upon my players to do likewise—to approach each game having come in the best possible form, physically and emotionally, having practiced each aspect of the game, both on the field, in the nets, and more importantly, in one’s mind.”

Imran also talked about how he relaxes. Movies, it seems, were his go-to form of relaxation. “Movies,” he had said, “are the most complete and powerful art form, incorporating all the arts in them. Unfortunately,” he had continued, “the deeply moving ones that speak to the human heart, that delve into man’s humanity, man’s fallibility, and the consequences thereafter, are very rare.”

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He pointed to Henry Fonda’s last movie, On Golden Pond, as being a great movie that spoke to the elements of a man’s heart, his humanity, his fallibility, and human relationships. Most movies, he had said, were being made about the dark side of humanity and not the light, the very areas of life we experience daily in the news.

In a television program in 1987, where Imran was a guest of honor, BBC’s Terry Wogan talked to Imran about General Zia having called him to ask him to come out of retirement and lead Pakistan into the World Cup that was to be played that year. Terry also discussed Imran’s future post-cricket, and going into politics was one option, which Terry hinted at as being dangerous, as Pakistan had seen her fair share of assassinations, including, as it turned out, General Zia himself, a year later in August of 1988.

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It would be in 1992 that Imran would come to enjoy the prize of winner-takes-all, including prestige, in winning the World Cup of cricket, having led Pakistan in the final against England in Australia. He would also go on to marry, find himself the subject of an assassination attempt that he narrowly survived, and spend his 72nd birthday in jail on politically motivated charges. As he sat in his cell, number 804, and received his well-wishers’ birthday greetings, I thought about those conversations I had read from his interviews and the conversation with Terry Wogan.

As I’ve seen him over the decades pursue ideals expressed by Dr. Allama Iqbal in his many poems, it occurred to me that while Iqbal’s poems have inspired and entertained generations of people in both India and Pakistan, there has never been an individual who transformed himself time and time again to lift the people of Pakistan in line with Iqbal’s dreams.

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In an effort to aid Imran, in the spring of 2018, I had poster prints made, sized 30 inches by 48 inches, with a picture of Imran walking on what I can only imagine are the Karakoram range of snow-covered mountains in the Kashmir Gilgit region, or perhaps near K2 and its surroundings.

In this poster, emblazoned on either side of Imran, I wrote a “free verse” poem consisting of 13 stanzas. The first two describe the decrepit state of the country that is Pakistan, and how its sad state has been arrived at by the malfeasance of the previous two criminal organizations that masqueraded as political parties—each of whom took turns to excel in larcenous activities, enriching themselves and teaching the population the ways of immorality and corruption.

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The later stanzas borrow from past literature, poets, authors, and musicians, whose contemporary and classical works perfectly fit my picturing of the great hero that is Imran Khan. Using lines from their poems and songs, I created a compelling telling of a man whose coming was nothing less than a biblical landmark in the life of Pakistan.

Continued in: Imran Khan and Shakespear’s Tempest – Part II

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Curated and Compiled by Humra Kidwai

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