Of Baghdatis, the pain of losing, triumphalism and destruction

When Marcos Baghdatis broke four rackets in the most shocking, pitable and outrageous  show of  self-flagellation ever seen in sport, it  would have made the more than two million people who watched it and  replayed it wonder about the very nature of sport. What is the big deal if you lost a set and a game? As Rahul Dravid once famously remarked at the overwhelming  sense of gloom after India lost: “Well no one died, isn’t it?” In the unending choreography of life, death is passé. Modern world has taught us that to win is everything. It is around winners that  the new world is being constructed. Songs are no longer sung for failed lovers, nor for the oarsman who failed to reach the other shore. Baghdatis must have felt that when sitting on the side benches last Wednesday as he took out one racket after another from his bag and smashed them on the court. He can be seen pausing  in between covering his face in a towel to hide the rage swelling within him. Then, unable to rationalise his own performance within himself, unable to come to terms with his loss in the previous two sets,  he pulls out one racket after another to smash them. [caption id=“attachment_189535” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] He should have made a victory lap with the broken rackets. Then, at least, we would know that there is some triumphalism in defeat as well. But at the Australian Open victory is everything.  If you are not Roger Federer who is waving out to the crowd after yet another clinical display of how to chase and attain victory, not the chest-thumping French power house Tsonga to jump around like the Tarzan of old, then you are nothing. All you can do is sit at the side chair and wonder why you lost. What is it that you did not have ? And is the future lost too? To conquer the other, is what it is all about. So the Cypriot  Baghdatis, a brilliant player  who reached the Australian Open final in 2006, must be used to losing as much as he was to winning. Then why did he have that one-minute meltdown?  The Cypriot had his goals straight last year when he said: “ My goal is to improve physically, improve every time, because I think if I improve in that area then the results will come. That is the way I have to approach things.” Very poised and focused. Then suddenly he lost it in the match against  Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka and  destroyed four rackets. He was  later slammed with a fine of $1,250 for racket abuse, went on to win the third set but then lost the match. In the history of anger there have been worse things, but nothing that was as demonstrative of how much man is not in control of himself.  Baghdatis could have yelled, showed the middle finger (as Indian cricketers prefer doing),  and also tried the divine yogic option of calming himself down. Yet he chose the destructive option: to pulverise the very weapon that  gave his success all this while. Don’t we all?  We destroy out of anger.  In fact, there are more technologies of destruction around than there is of creation. Beating a tennis racket (cost per racket:  Rs 15,000 approx) to smithereens before the world now seems such a terrible act  and the two million and more who watch that tape will rate it as the Cypriot’s best ever act because he held a mirror to our own deformities, and having done that showed how fragile we all are.  He lost, yes. But in showing us all what not to do, he embedded a lesson in us. For  many,  destruction itself is a form of triumphalism. That could be why many of us watched the replay of the Baghdatis act. Many tennis players have broken rackets before  but none in such a brutal and calculated way. Anyone who plays tennis would have flung his racket in anger. But Baghdatis was showing how much we loath failure . That will be the abiding image of this year’s Australian Open and will be viewed much more than either Federer or Nadal or Djokovic lifting the trophy. So did Baghdatis finally win? Will he regret it and tell the young ones not to copy this style of tennis? The question we all have to face is: Is defeat all that galling? When we tot up our achievements do we banish the images of our defeat and anger? Or do they linger? In one of the best pieces of journalism immortalised in Time magazine’s 85 Years of Great Writing, Pico Iyer writes about his house being burnt down and thus losing everything in a forest fire. He talks of destruction too and in the end finds succour in the words of a 17th century Japanese wanderer  Basho who wrote: My house burned down Now I can better see The rising moon. Baghdatis can say something like this in future: My rackets destroyed Now I can better see The next ace.