A Sportsweek Miracle
One day in 1972, my dad went to his school, St Vincent’s (Asansol), to interview Leslie Claudius Jr, son of Indian hockey player and Olympian Leslie Claudius. St Vincent’s, unlike its more scholarly counterpart St Patrick’s, was (is?) known for its sporting traditions. Photos and stories of St Vincent’s surface regularly on Facebook, looking back on the playing fields, the Brothers, the tuck shop — think of a boarding-cum-day school straight out of Wodehouse or Kipling, if you will — all with the benefit of nostalgia. The vast grounds of St Vincent’s are the stuff of legend, not to be compared with the thin strips of land that pose as playgrounds in our schools now.
Leslie had just been adjudged “one of the ten best players” at a national tournament, when Dad decided he would make a good interview subject and set off immediately on his bicycle to interview him. An old boy by then, he still had strong ties with the school (actually, still does). He reached school and asked Reverend Brother Harrison, a master at hockey, cricket, and football himself, for permission to interview Leslie. Brother Harrison consented readily and off went Dad to speak to Leslie, who was lounging opposite the tech building with their mutual friend Sujit Chaudhuri. Leslie was shy and took a while to get comfortable, but Dad finally got what he was looking for.
He turned the interview into an article and sent it to Sportsweek soon after. He didn’t know of its acceptance until one December afternoon, coming out of a cricket session, he met a friend who told him that the article had been published. Dad bought a copy of the magazine, delighted to see his name in print for the first time! A cheque for the princely sum of Rs 40 followed soon.
Dad preserved his copy of the magazine for a long time, but it was lost during one of his numerous transfers, which was a major disappointment: for, which writer doesn’t cherish their first published work, the result of a trembling step on what they hope is a long journey, like a jewel? Losing it is like losing a piece of oneself.
I don’t think we tried to find a replacement copy. Sportsweek was launched in 1968 and ceased publication just over twenty years later. In non-Internet times and living in places where major newspapers reached us two days late, searching for leads to a magazine that no longer existed didn’t sound sensible.
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Last Saturday, Dad sent me a message: “Got in touch with Gulu Ezekiel today. He has promised to check whether he has a copy of the Sportsweek that carried my article.”
Exciting news! Mr Ezekiel is the first sports journalist I remember: he turned up unfailingly on NDTV’s Good Morning India in the nineties, his eager updates playing in the background as I got ready for school. He went on to write several books and was a household name.
Having come across an article about Sportsweek which mentioned Mr Ezekiel’s collections, Dad wrote to him on Facebook. Mr Ezekiel responded immediately and the conversation soon moved to WhatsApp, Sportsweek messages interspersed with memories of West Bengal and childhood. Though Dad didn’t know the month of publication, Mr Ezekiel looked through the 1972 copies he had, but with no result. Then Sujit reminded Dad that the interview had taken place sometime around Durga Puja, which was immensely helpful in narrowing down the potential publication period to the months of October, November, and December. Upon discovering that he didn’t have the December editions, Mr Ezekiel reached out to collector friends, who immediately got to work.
And what do you know — Naresh Dudani, a senior journalist in Ahmedabad, found it! Signed “S S Vasan”, the article appeared in the December 3 edition of Sportsweek. This afternoon, Mr Ezekiel forwarded it to Dad, and you can be sure that we’re all celebrating the recovery of an article almost fifty years old!
“He called out to me: Chitra! Chitra! And I had no idea what was happening,” said Amma, as she described the moment of discovery and we danced a mini-jig in our respective houses. Mr Ezekiel and his collector friends had wrought a miracle, bringing back the joys of long-ago triumphs and making them real all over again.
Mr Ezekiel kindly consented to his name being mentioned in this piece. He says he has helped many people find their articles and is happy to do so. Thanks to him and his collector friends, we have one utterly thrilled family in Chennai today. May their tribe increase!
