The archetypal distressed genius, Maradona, who
wrote the shimmering lines of his life with his left foot (and left hand), died
on November 25 at the age of 60. He always courted skirmishes on and off the
field. Beginning as a cheeky burglar involved in daylight robbery, the destiny
catapulted him to become the audacious marauder playing tricks with feigns,
passing steps and acceleration and stops and side turns. It flummoxed the
opponents.
He had a tendency to steer around the normal as much
as he veered around the defenders. To him the world itself looked like he was
in a stadium, sidestepping over social norms and sometimes even the law. No
wonder, he remained a pleasant, unbridled, obese trickster even long after he hang
his boots. An unfettered and effervescent spirit, we may say.
The stocky paragon of Argentina pride inspired a
fierce devotion. To the millions of his followers, it was a quasi-religious
experience. You could love him or hate him, but you couldn’t ignore him. His
innings on this planet has turned out to be a eulogy to a life in tantalizing excess
ranging from superstardom to drugs to domestic abuse to guns to cocaine to
involvement with organized crime: A lotus out of the muddled tumult of muddy
waters. Or we can say, it was an awe-inspiring darkness coupled with the silver-lining
of his genius.
He flirted with football with an impetuous cunningness.
Moderation and discipline wasn’t in his dictionary for it was a testimony to
excess in all he did and thought. A banner sums it up: ‘It does not matter what
you have done with your life, it matters what you have done with our lives.’ He
was indeed a heady rock star who commanded the stage.
‘I am Maradona, who makes goals, who makes mistakes.
I can take it all, I have shoulders big enough to fight with everybody…’ He
gave enough credit to his vaunting words through his Aztecan sorcery with
football at the Mexico stadium.
From winning the 1986 world cup indisputably single
handedly to be unceremoniously kicked out of the 1994 event on doping charges,
he dribbled between glory and ignominy. God was with him through ‘the hand of
the god.’ At one end of his excellence, he is credited with the goal of the
century. But then his gluttony for goals in life included food, alcohol and
drugs also. In fact, Maradona and moderation never fitted in closely. From a
lithe demigod of an athlete, he went on to turn into a sniggering puffed up
drugs addict. From holding the world cup, and the consequent slaloming into
countless hearts, to barely holding his life in his fist after a cocaine-born
heart failure twenty years ago, he had hit crest and trough of life without
injuring his reputation.
The ‘Hand of God’ punching the ball into the English
net during the 1986 world cup quarter finals. His ruggedness was pinching but
his playing style was far more bewitching. In his football mad home country, he
was the quintessential ‘Golden Boy’. Like he out-jumped the England goalkeeper
Peter Shilton, almost twice his height, feigning to head but hoodwinking the
referee by patting the ball with his left hand, to score the ‘Hand of God’ goal,
he jumped over literally all norms to score goals and lead life the way his
free-will dictated.
Who can forget the goal of the century!? Just four
minutes after the ‘hand of god’, he hoodwinked all realistic expectations even
from normal geniuses. His 44 strides in 11 seconds involving 12 touches gave us
the greatest goal of the century. The 1986 Mexico world cup belonged to one man
only. He madly burst into boxes. He crazily brushed off defenders. He
maniacally squared off the ball towards the net. He magically outmuscled his
tall and giant-type markers. His stinging left footers would be drawn to the
net even from the toughest angle. Like a farmer ploughs through soil, his
flicks and dribbles scythed through a slew of defenders and hapless
goalkeepers. The blast of raw energy through his stocky bundle of animalistic
muscles left him an autocrat on the turf.
Polarity melted in the photogenic blizzard of his
dazzling runs. He was an angel as well as a devil, a rogue and a genius in the
same vein. He was too far from the singularity of existence and very near some
unpredictable multitude. He was reckless, brazen, desperado, sublime, elegant
and graceful in a space of few minutes between the ‘Hand of the God’ to the
‘goal of the century’, the latter almost divine in terms of its guts and
audacity. He gathers the ball to his side in the stadium, swings and opens up
two defenders, blazes on like a bursting comet, chest puffed out, his tongue
leering and jeering and cutting across like a knife through butter, cutting the
moorings of a posse of 7 English defenders to romp home to glory. This mesmeric
run is unsurpassed. Those 11 seconds, and a run of 60 yards, beginning from his
yard to the final romping home after rounding the English goalkeeper, involving
stepping on the ball, setting right, left and forward thrusts like a brute
steam engine, the opposition scattered in disarray, he creates history. Just
four years after the Falklands Islands war, where his country lost to the
opponents on the turf now, he had given enough to the entire nation to forget
the bruise and celebrate victory on the playground. The sweet redemption,
almost a kind of salvation for the millions of souls.
The stocky and strangely built spiral of life from a
small shanty town to superstardom had glorious twists as well as dark knots of
drug addiction in his stormy flings with life. He flirted with death with as
much ease as he did with the ball, the crazy behemoth.
As the supernova preparing to die out with a dazzle,
the tantalizing little giant had to be lifted out of his seat as a bloated
behemoth during a world cup match in Russia in 2018.
Imagine his hold on the psyches of fans across
continents. A band of Egyptian bandits freed a group of Argentine tourists
after coming to know that they were from Maradona’s country. A hero for the disadvantaged and
unprivileged, his pics on T-shirts boosted the morale of those who were born in
slums but had stars in their eyes.
His moves, both on the field and in the larger arena
of life, were sublime, uplifting, farcical, even tragic, all mixed in an
out-of-normal concoction. His outspoken tongue gave a good company to his magical
left foot in expressing the bulging life and spirit in him. No wonder he was a
salvation to an entire generation of Argentina.
His
casket lay at the state presidential palace draped in national flag and his
famous number 10 jersey displayed before the final rights. Three days of
national mourning becoming that of a head of the state. Here lay the almost
singular hope of the country throttled by the military junta, economic
backwardness and defeat in the Falklands war. Such full of life men come once
in a rare while. Rest in peace brother Maradona!
