Lyon |
Your parents or your teachers can tell you how to lead your life, they cannot teach you about how to live your life. Like many things in life, you
just have to figure it out yourself. You may think you need guidance and
encouragement, your parents and teachers can only tell you the type of vocation
they think is best for you, it is entirely up to you to figure out how you want
to make the best of your attributes. If you have a passion for something, you
really have to go out there and give it all you have. You cannot look for
anyone to believe in you or anything like that. You just have to believe in
yourself as nobody is going to get behind you and pet you and say, “It’s okay,
you can do it.” You just have to do it if you believe in your ability. Period.
Tennis is my favourite
sport and I am constantly amazed by the tenacity demonstrated in the games of
some of the top tennis
professional players. I think it is absolutely a delightful treat to watch
grand slams events and the major tennis tournaments. This July, Wimbledon
season ended with a grand final match between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic.
Two years ago, Rafael Nadal was blown off the lawn court in the second round by
the world no 100, Lukas Rosaol, who was making his Wimbledon debut after losing
in the first round of qualifying five times in a row. Last year Nadal went out
in the first round to Steve Darcis, the world No 135. He was having perennial
knee trouble. He had to play the whole year with anti-inflammatory drugs in
every single match. He was quoted as saying, “All my life it was a real goal
for me to play well on grass. When I started my career a lot of people said :
‘With his style, he won’t be able to play well on grass.’ That really motivates
me even more.” Nadal did win the Grand Slam in Wimbledon in 2008. Of course he
is extraordinary and he has fourteen grand slam single titles. You may say they
are sports professionals but their sheer tenacity is something we should
emulate.
Amsterdam |
Roger Federer is a sport
legend. On 6 July this year , we
watched one of his finest tennis. He did not win Wimbledon final although he
could have. A father to two sets of twins, at nearing 33 years old, Federer
could have been the oldest man in more than a half-century to win Wimbledon but
he did not win the men’s singles. As
an ardent fan of Federer like many other fans around the world, I rooted for Federer to win as my eyes
glued in front of the television watching live telecast. The next day,my
daughters asked if I had displayed the same expression as the Duke and Duchess
of Cambridge who had gasped at the
action on Centre Court last Sunday when Federer lost a key point during his
match with Novak Djokovic. Trailing 5-4 in the fourth set, Federer managed to
hit a serve that turned out to be an ace, one of his 29 in the match. Then he
went on to break in the next game and force a fifth set and thus Djokovic had to regroup when they
headed into a deciding 5th set. It was definitely an awesome match
to watch and the legacy of the
tennis whiz, Roger Federer
continues. His marvelous artistry on grass is dazzling.
Lyon |
Only a very
selected people in this world might have been born with natural talents and not
every talented individual has been blessed with the opportunities to
demonstrate his or her inborn skills as some of these people may have hidden talents
but they probably are never going to develop their special abilities. However
we have to acknowledge that these top
talented players might have
been equipped with the genetic make-up, they definitely practise extremely hard
and they have the concentration and commitment to tackle their grueling
schedules and the right work ethics and attitude in what they are doing best.
I read Double Fault by the author, Lionel Shriver before reading her orange prize winner :We Need to Talk
about Kevin, the chilling and intense read with horrifying
twists and turns. I have a tendency to carry around with me
the book I happen to be reading wherever I go just in case I have a moment to
read. Many years ago, I had left
the book ‘Double Fault’ in one of the toilets at a shopping mall and when I
returned to the same cubicle to look for it , it was gone. Perhaps another
bibliophile had taken it thinking that the book had been left by a
BookCrosser. Frankly I would be too unwilling to part with any of my books to
participate in BookCrossing and as
much as I love books, I will never touch a book that is left in a public
toilet. After losing my copy of the novel, I had to get a replacement copy to
finish reading the fiction . Double
Fault written by Lionel
Shriver is a love story set on a tennis court. Willy Novinsky, the
female protagonist has been playing tennis since she was four. She falls in
love with Eric Oberdorf, a Princeton maths graduate who only picks up the
racket at age 18. Willy is focused and Eric is fanatic. While Willy’s progress
is steady, it is laborious. Despite a late start, Eric races ahead and his
tennis career skyrockets and Eric is one of those smart and gifted men whom it
is easy to love and hate . The story carries
a not so subtle message that sometimes we may want things too badly that it
does not happen due to lack of emotional strength and psychological
sensibility. The story tells us tennis is a great test of character and it also
makes us look at the battle of the sexes from a renewed angle. Willy is physically and emotionally weaker than
Eric and she lacks the casual assumption of success and the confidence Eric
exudes. She had a head start but her career has taken a downturn after her knee
injury. When she lost a match to
Eric who somehow proved to be a better player, something more than a
tennis match has been lost . Perhaps the fact that her defeatist father was not
supportive of her ambition to turn tennis pro might have put a damper on her
spirit and somehow compelled her to prove her dad wrong desperately. Maybe her dad just wanted to protect his own daughter from failing since he is smarting from
his failed endeavour that probably has prompted him to become practical. As the
story unfolds, Willy’s dad could only have the best intentions for her. This is how Shriver describes Willy.
‘That the institution of
marriage had been thoroughly discredited by the time Willy was born didn’t
delay her acceptance of Eric’s proposal by ten seconds. Granted her own parents
set a poor example;Willy envied neither her glumly patriarchal father nor his
cheerfully submissive sidekick. But she might have envied her parents at their
first meeting, in 1961:when her mother, Colleen , was a flighty modern dance
student, leaping through recitals to the beat bongos inside a helix of scarves,
and her father, Charles, was an undiscouraged beatnick scribbler, whose pockets
bulged from squiggled napkins and leaky ballpoint pens. Willy clung to the
notion that nothing about marriage itself condemned her mother to dismiss an
ambition to dance as vain folly, nor her father to turn on his own credulous
literary aspirations with such a snarl. And surely had she wed in this more
liberal era, the acquiescent Colleen might have told Charles to get a grip and
stop moaning and sometimes gone her own way. Despite overwhelming evidence that
both true love and domestic balance of power were myths, Willy still believed
in the possibility of an ardent, lasting union between equals, much as many
religious skeptics still kept faith in an afterlife because the alternative was
too unbearable.
So all through a militantly
independent young adulthood Willy had been waiting. At last along came Eric
Oberdorf, who radiated the same clear-eyed courage that shone from pictures of
her father in the early sixties-before Charles joined the opposition in
celebrating his own defeat. Willy had inherited her mother’s grace, and given
it structure and purpose. Together she and Eric could rewrite history, which
may have been what children were for ‘
Willy
rang her dad to inform him about her plan to marry Eric.
“Listen. I have someone I want
you to meet.”
“Another brain surgeon?”
“Yes, he’s a tennis player,
Daddy,” she said impatiently. “ But with a degree from Princeton.”
“A tennis player with a
degree!” he exclaimed.”You told me that was impossible.”
Willy almost hung up. ………….
Although
Eric appears to have a much more supportive father who seems to beam at
all his son’s winnings even if
they are not important tournaments, his dad comes across as obnoxious and to
Eric, his dad is bragging about himself even when he is bragging
about him. But Eric is not going to screw up his life just to rebel against his
father. Shriver describes Eric.
One of Eric’s secrets had long been that he did not admit the
possibility of defeat.
Shriver’s
novel narrates a melancholy story of two gifted tennis pro, the male
protagonist being more self possessed than the female character and the
conflicts that they each carry within themselves make their union a tough call.
Willy’s lifelong dream has become her obsession and she comes across as selfish
and self-absorbed. Both are separately vying for success in the tennis world. As the
title of the book indicates, it takes two for the marriage to work or break.
Shriver’s novel makes me think . Since your mind tells you what to believe ,it
is absolutely necessary to believe in your own abilities. Ultimately you have
to figure out yourself as to who your real opponent is and what your nemesis
is.
“Fais de ta vie un rêve, et d'un rêve, une réalité.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Make your life a dream and the dream a reality. Nice quote
indeed.Amsterdam |