Passion & Addiction
On Old Loves and New
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
It has been years since I felt this way. I am distracted during the day and restless at night. I don’t know what to do about these new feelings, these illicit desires. I have not told anyone about it, not even my wife — but I think she knows. On more than one occasion, she has caught me staring out of the window muttering — ‘Caress it, caress it’ — to myself. I have noticed the look on her face when she asks me why I am ogling at my phone and I hurriedly lock the screen. I often lose myself in fantasies and my arm, acting of its own accord, carves a graceful arc through the air before colliding with her unsuspecting head, and I am compelled to claim I was swatting a fly.
It’s a crush. I am experiencing the all-consuming, overwhelming ardour of a new crush. Only this one is tainted by betrayal. It is streaked with shame and reeks of guilt. I had given my heart away when I was young and I did not believe it was mine to lose again — and yet, losing it I am. Like Shah Rukh Khan in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I used to profess that in a single lifetime love can only ever be a unitary pursuit — unique and irreplaceable. But like Shah Rukh Khan in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I am a colossal hypocrite.
My actions belie my words. I have abandoned a decades-old relationship to stoke the fires of a weeks-old fling. A familiar and stolid affection is being upstaged by the hot rush of novelty. I am ashamed to admit this, Father, but I am cheating on my beloved.
I have forsaken Football for Padel.1
When my thamma (paternal grandmother) passed away a few weeks ago, I remembered the UEFA Euro 2000 PC game she bought me when I was in middle school. This memory was chased by contrition. Did our relationship amount to just a video game? What of all our conversations about books, about her itinerant life and her passion for travel? She took a proprietary pride in my reading, convinced that my bibliophilia was her bequest. She was ever eager to hear stories of the countries I’ve visited, and never shy of urging me to explore the distant corners of my own. Surely these other moments were more valuable than an ordinary CD gifted years ago?
It is, I suppose, the problem of attribution. Perhaps her genetic legacy is indeed what attracted me to my first Tintin comic, and perhaps my restless feet do owe their existence to her roving soul. Or, perhaps not. Causality, in these cases, is shrouded in the mysteries of nature and nurture. But with football, there is rare clarity. I can trace my enduring love for the sport to a precise moment: when she handed me that fateful UEFA Euro 2000 computer game.
In the months that followed, I grew obsessed with the game. Under my able stewardship, every European nation lifted the Euro 2000 trophy, even the 150-something-ranked republic of San Marino. I became a master of the keyboard controls, scoring at will and devising new ways to execute flamboyant tricks. Soon, the pixelated triumphs on the screen felt insufficient. I wanted a taste of the real thing.
As with romances, in sports too, there is a honeymoon period. Beginnings, after all, are always filled with hope and the promise of possibilities. The first time you set foot on a football field, it is easy to imagine you may possess the virtuoso talent of a Messi or a Maradona. When your prodigious skill refuses to animate your passing, you still hold out hope. Maybe all you need is a little tuning, perhaps some practice will unleash your true potential. But with every subsequent session — when your progress plateaus and you begin to resemble a marionette controlled by a convulsive puppeteer — this illusion chokes to death. Eventually, you make peace with the fact that your athletic peak is about as high as an anthill.
I do not remember when I realised I possess no talent for football. It couldn’t have taken me too long because my right foot — my ‘stronger’ foot — generates as much power as a windmill on a windless day. And my left foot avoids the ball as if it were the bubonic plague. These constraints, however, never dimmed my adoration for the sport. If anything, it made me all the more committed, more determined when flying into mistimed tackles.
Over twenty-five years, I have played thousands of games, letting zeal compensate for meagre ability. I have won, and lost, amateur tournaments and corporate competitions. Football has led me to my tribe, in school and beyond (Lex United FC for life!). If it were not for age and injury, I would still be lacing up to get my fix on week-nights and weekend mornings — and, more to the point, I would not have gotten enamoured with padel.
Padel and I are in the midst of our honeymoon. Our dalliance is new, and every time I hit a ball long or bury it in the net, I am able to convince myself that I’ll get better, that I will not remain terrible forever. (That bitter epiphany is still months away.) But I am already conscious of this sport’s insidious effects.
In the past month, I have bought shoes, socks, shirts, shorts — all exclusively for padel. I have bought a cap and a wristband, and I’m in the market for a racket. Three times a week, I pay four-digit sums to spend two hours in a court with glass-and-cage enclosures. And every few days we buy a new set of balls.
Given these excesses, playing padel has not been easy on the pocket.
When I started playing football as a teenager, shoes were an ostentation. Both in school and in my locality, the purists were bare-footed. ‘Unless you feel the ball with your skin,’ they would preach, as they hobbled off the pitch after a game, ‘you will never know the true joy of football.’ The true joy of football earned me many smashed toenails in my youth, until I sought refuge in a pair of Bata canvas shoes.
After I moved to Mumbai, I upgraded to my first pair of ‘branded’ football boots. Nike, Adidas, Puma — these aspirational brands were now within my economic reach and I discovered that I liked their dazzling colours on my feet. Within a few short years, our football games moved from the muddy, weed-infested grounds of Wadala to the immaculate turfs of Lower Parel and South Bombay. In Kolkata, we would scout for an empty patch in a communal field, use slippers as goalposts, and play until it was too dark to see anything. Football in Mumbai involved a ritual of booking AstroTurfs for specific time-slots and bookending matches with elaborate breakfasts. But these changes did not seem extravagant — the shift felt natural, a progression mirroring our social advancement from insolvent students to solvent professionals.
Perhaps padel, too, is of a piece with my life today. I now spend more on a cup of coffee — pour-over, medium roast, if you please — than what I received as my weekly allowance in University. I own seven pairs of sneakers, which is six more than what I really need. And I have a closet full of sweaters, in a city that knowns no winter. Every new whimsy is examined with an uncritical eye and, more often than not, indulged.
It is no surprise then that I have devoted myself to acquiring all the accoutrements of this new muse. I am besotted not just with padel but all its paraphernalia. I am becoming a by-product of the latest lifestyle obsession.
It wouldn’t be a problem if I weren’t so damn weak. I could, in theory, ignore the folks who turn up with headbands that complement their arm sleeves, the ones who look like they’ve ambled out of an athleisure advert. I could mutter, ‘These Bandra types’, with a disgusted shake of my head and a convenient elision of my own residence. I could shrug and look away — but mimetic desire has its claws deep in me, my head has already been turned.
I want to look stylish when I double fault on my serve. When I lose yet another set, I want to lose it in a pristine, co-ordinated outfit. I want to squander break points while wearing new sunglasses. And I always, always, want to keep buying socks.
‘You are fixating on the cosmetic aspects of the sport,’ Simran chides me. ‘You need to start focussing on just playing, that’s it.’
‘You’re right, you’re right,’ I mumble, abashed.
‘It’s just a game, man. Not a fashion show.’
‘You’re right, you’re right.’
‘You weren’t this way about football. Snap out of it.’
‘You’re right. You’re right.’
‘No more padel-related purchases for you. Learn to play properly first. Have you won any matches yet? I don’t want to be married to a loser.’
Stung, I walk away and start fidgeting with my phone. I do not know how it happened, but an e-commerce app is now open on the screen. A notification pops up reminding me I have a dozen items saved in my shopping cart. It is followed by another notification announcing a 50% sale on socks.
‘I miss football’, I sigh, and let my fingers take over.
Padel is a racket sport that has become ‘India’s new urban obsession’. The single most important fact about padel is that it is NOT pickleball. Do not conflate the two. Padel is the love child of tennis and squash. Pickleball is pensioners dancing ‘the Robot’.
One word: Sacrilege.
Okay, three more: How dare you?
Hahaha really enjoyed this! Been wanting to try padel but end up asking myself if I really need this new expense in my life?! 🤣