Imran, a sad parody of his younger self
When Imran Khan became the prime minister of Pakistan three years back, former India captain Bishan Singh Bedi told this writer: “Hope he will work for peace. He was a great cricketer.”
Bedi sahab then related a memory from a match they played in Pakistan in 1978: Imran had bowled with tigerish hostility through the day; when evening fell, the great Khan was seen jogging around the field of play, not resting with his feet up. “He’s a determined man and fair-minded sportsman,” said Bedi.
That’s true, for almost every cricketer he played with acknowledges these qualities of Imran. But alas, since he became the prime minister, what Salman Rushdie said, in 2012, about the great cricketer rings truer with each passing day — “When Imran was a playboy in London, he was called Im the dim.”
Dim as in dim-witted, a bit slow in the mental department. That does sound harsh and very impolite, but Imran seems determined to prove the assessment to be accurate. His comments in recent weeks and months betray a regressive, pre-modern thought process — in April, he blamed sexual violence against women on “vulgarity” in dressing: “Not every man has willpower. If you keep on increasing vulgarity, it will have consequences.” Two weeks ago, in an interview with an Australian journalist, he said: “If a woman is wearing very few clothes, it will have an impact on the men unless they are robots. It’s common sense.” Since no man is a robot, women better protect themselves from them — that’s the message the prime minister of Pakistan peddles.
Imran rails against the broken family system of the ‘immoral’ West but has gone through two divorces himself. In his playboy days, Imran Khan is said to have dated actresses and socialites, some of whom he’d now probably describe as ‘vulgarly’ dressed. He fathered a daughter in Britain but has never acknowledged her publicly; his ex-wife, Jemima Goldsmith — who has Christian and Jewish ancestry — possesses a better moral compass than him, as is evident from her taking Imran’s daughter under her care.
The journalists who knew him in the Britain of the 1970s and 1980s relate stories about his philandering. What has changed now? Is the explanation in biology — hormonal depletion — or psychology, i.e. age effect due to increasing fear of mortality? Maybe both. It’s perhaps this that brought him to the dargah of Baba Fariduddin Ganjshakar in Pakpattan, where he met his future wife, Bushra Bibi, a Sufi pirni known as Ms Pinki in the region. It is maybe religiosity that makes him admire Turkic invaders and call Osama bin Laden a martyr.
Or maybe, it’s his political compulsions that make him play to the gallery in a deeply religious country.
Whatever the reason, the Old Khan has become a sad parody of the Young Khan, who had the self-control to hang out with women in ‘vulgar’ clothing without jumping at them.
When a western journalist recently asked him about his being vocal about ‘Islamophobia’ in the West and silence on the atrocities on the Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province, he said: “Whatever issues we have with the Chinese, we speak to them behind closed doors.”
Soon after that, Imran spoke publicly — perhaps under pressure from Beijing — to Chinese journalists, whom he told: “Because of our extreme proximity and relationship with China, we actually accept the Chinese version.” The implication is that if China had not been investing heavily in Pakistan, he may have paid heed to the overwhelming evidence about the ‘re-education’ of the Uighur Muslims by China. No more “behind closed doors” speaking to China, then?
Ageing gracefully
Talking of ageing gracelessly, let’s discuss Roger Federer, who isn’t losing much grace a month before his 40th birthday. Returning to Wimbledon two years after losing the final to Novak Djokovic, Federer is still finding his feet following two knee surgeries last year. In his first two matches at Wimbledon, which he won, at times he looked vulnerable as never before. But also evident were beauty and grace, which distinguish him from his two great peers, Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Their numbers may vary when they’re done, but as greats, they stand together: Djokovic has the best mental strength, Nadal the best physical strength — and Federer has beauty.
