Mourning Phillip Hughes: Would we shed as many tears for a Ranji player?

My colleague stays in Khar, a suburb in Mumbai. While walking to office, the other day he saw a huge Phillip Hughes poster put up just outside his building complex and he did a double take: When did this Australian cricketer become so big in India? Hughes’ death was undeniably tragic. To anyone who watches and cherishes sport – it was a rude shock. A death on the cricket field is rare and words seem inadequate at times like this. But over the last few days – his story was told over and over again, with different angles, anecdotes, deeds… the little stories, the words… so much so that even if we didn’t know him, we identified with him; we felt the emotional connect with his family; we wept with Michael Clarke and felt his hurt too. It all seemed uncomfortably real and close. As they played out a montage of Hughes at his funeral, more than a few eyes in our office teared up. It was a fitting farewell – even India’s PM Narendra Modi was moved. “Heart-rending funeral in Australia. Phil Hughes, we will miss you. Your game & exuberance won you fans all over! RIP,” Modi tweeted. [caption id=“attachment_1832115” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Why can’t we tell the stories of our heroes in the same way? AP[/caption] In the past, when something like this happened – we would talk to our friends, to people who we thought understood our hurt. But now, with social media we are part of a larger family; part of a connected world. So our chances of getting caught up in the emotional whirlwind are much higher. In that sense, the world has truly become a smaller place. There are some who might say that the grieving was perhaps overdone and wonder just how much of this was real. Are we grieving because we want to fit in? Are we grieving because everyone else seems to be doing it? Are we all saying RIP because it seems insensitive not to do so? When Raman Lamba – a former India cricketer – died on the cricket field, did we see a massive outpouring of grief for him? When Peter Biaksangzuala – an Indian footballer – damaged his spinal cord while celebrating his goal and died later, did anyone even bat an eyelid? When our jawans die fighting for us, why don’t we feel the same love or even say RIP? Would we shed as many tears for a Ranji Trophy player? Most of the times, we couldn’t care less. Because the jawans are just a number – a few were attacked in J&K yesterday, before that a few CRPF soldiers died in Sukma and casualties are part and parcel of our war against terrorism. But the attitude of the general public seems to be ‘why do we need to care’. Biaksangzuala was just another Indian footballer – not a known name but he was a sportsman too. We didn’t care about him either. We don’t know them. We don’t know them like we now know Hughes, even though his death was much farther from home. The streets of Hughes’ hometown, Macksville, were strewn with tributes to the cricketer who died days before his 26th birthday last week. But do we even know where the dead jawans are from? Have we ever bothered to find out or tell their stories? They are just another news item/report. Just a cold, hard fact. The aftermath of Hughes’ death and the manner in which the world rose up in unison to salute him told me one thing: India doesn’t know how to respect it’s heroes… how to tell their stories… how to humanize them. Part of the reason we don’t care is because we don’t know. And Hughes’ death tells us that we must change – we must tell their stories so that they too may live on. The apathy we feel towards the death of Indians in India also shows us how much we really value life. And that for me, is the lesson India needs to learn from Hughes’ death.