Diwali

Sweets, snacks, gin

Happy Diwali, everyone! I hope this week has brought you joy, light, and the best food.

Joy is pretty much my default emotion during the festive period. It kicks in like muscle memory, like the lyrics to a favourite song. And it has been that way for as long as I can remember.

Growing up, I'd track the gap between our first-term exams and the first day of Durga Pujo like a hawk sizing up its prey. I couldn’t wait to submit my last paper and disappear from the classroom. Nature conspired in our favour too: exams folded away by the third week of September, leaving the entire Durga Pujo period untouched. Cue: longer play-hours, cricket season, football season, and a general carnival atmosphere.

There is also a distinct change in the air that arrives with late September in Delhi, as the sugarcane flowers scatter their scent across the cooling winds. The blanket of heat begins to slip off, people lose their abrasive summer skin, food tastes better. The spices in the kitchen suddenly speak a language you'd forgotten through the summer. Good times.

I’ll come clean - a lot of this is nostalgia. Today’s late-autumn Delhi is a portrait in industrial brown. Just this week, someone from Okhla reported an AQI of 1500ish. But there was a time, not so long ago, when Delhi wasn’t the proud host of the annual Coughalympics. It actually transformed to a thing of beauty between September and February. As if to compliment the friendly weather, every corner of the city would light up. It was a six-month celebration. And the setup started in the week leading up to Diwali.

I have never been a fan of the olympian effort required in climbing up stools and mounting fairy lights on walls. It is unnecessary sweat on a holiday. Try saying that to your folks as a ten-year-old, though. Every year, I’d waste a few hours going from wall to wall - placing, knotting, mounting, unmounting. All for an extra glass of orange juice. Ugh. Yet, each year, as darkness fell and the lights bloomed against the night sky, I was hypnotised by their magic. That bit is not nostalgia. I am still amazed by how incredible a thin row of tiny LED lamps can look against the backdrop of a thousand similarly lit houses and a dark sky.

As long as you’re not mounting those RBG disco lights with brightness set to a few thousand kilowatts - that shit is a jailable offence, I’m sorry - your room and house probably looks worthy of an entire Instagram scroll.

I will wager that India is at its prettiest during the Diwali week. This year, I was surrounded by that kind of beauty.

I’d like to take credit for setting them up, but if this essay ever reaches my friends, I might have a few kebab skewers thrown my way.

Which, if they’re not filled to the brim with meat, I’d rather dodge. As you read this, my body is 50% grilled meat and 40% desserts. The rest 10% is taken by coffee-flavoured gin, which I discovered this week, and I can confirm right now that it tastes as good as it sounds.

In the spirit of joy and light, I’d like to serve you an assortment of my favourite longform essays.¹ ² They pivot around sport, but, in truth, they are about so much more. They explore people and places in a way that adds colour to sport. Some of you will like them, others will see through the thin veil and chuckle at the utter laziness of dishing out a recommendation list on new-issue day. Either way, here we go.

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• Sea of Crises by Brian Phillips - I was always going to start with him, hah. Some years back, Phillips went to Japan to write a story on Hakuho, the great sumo wrestler. While navigating through Japan’s wrestling culture, Phillips found a man called Hiroyasu Koga, who was sentenced to prison for committing murder.

• How New Zealand made Edmund Hillary by Spencer Hall - We all know of Edmund Hillary and his life’s highest moment. But how much do we know about him? Why did he choose to scale the unscalable peak?

• The Women Who Nod at Death and Say Let’s Go by Barry Petchesky - If you’re a bronc rider, you will be well-advised to get medical and life insurance policies with the widest possible net and highest possible cover. Injuries aren’t just a part of the sport, they are a guarantee. Death can be considered an occupational hazard. Women’s bronc riding was been taken off the mainstream calendar in 1929, when a rider died after being thrown off her horse. But that’s just officially. There are many who, like the title suggests, look at the perils and say, “let’s go.”

• Lady Leadfoot by Amy Wallace - A profile of Denise McCluggage, once America’s fastest woman.

• Watching Rocky II With Muhammed Ali - Roger Ebert, Ali, just read.

• Life’s Swell by Susan Orlean - Susan Orlean travels to Maui to find out about surfing’s cultural footprint, and the Maui women who live on a surfboard.

• The Meaning of Serena Williams by Claudia Rankine - Even beginning to describe Serena Williams’ importance would take a few thousand words. She eventually became a symbol of all things great, but it didn’t come easy. This piece is as close as one can get to perfection at drawing her portrait.

• Michael Jordan, A History of Fight by Wright Thompson - The doyen of longform sportswriting brings us MJ’s origin story. An all-time great writer on an all-time great athlete.

• Fly Lara Fly by Rahul Bhattacharya - Less an essay and more a painting. Rahul Bhattacharya goes back to a couple of Lara epics, and finds out everything he can about the answer to the question, “What if Picasso was a cricketer?”

• After the Flame by Wayne Drehs and Mariana Lajolo - World Cups and Olympics are thought of as carnivals. You see the broadcast and you see swathes of colour sweeping across your screen. The entire country seems to be hosting a grand party. But not every country has the capacity for one. This is an exceptional report of the cost that Brazil’s population had to play for the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Wait, wait. You never have just one helping of sweets and snacks on Diwali, do you? I’d be a bad host if I closed the counter at a mere ten recommendations. Here’s a second round.

• Roger Federer as Religious Experience by David Foster Wallace - Masterclass in writing, profiling, and building a story about a popular subject. This was written in August 2006, as Federer was on his ascent to greatness. It reads fresh today, and it will read just as good eighteen years from now.

• Portrait of a Serial Winner by Wright Thompson - Our man travels to Uruguay to find out more about Luis Suarez. He returns with this tour de force on a polarising, flawed, emotional genius.

• Desert Rose by Sidharth Monga - Even in 2015, there were clear signs that the Afghanistan men’s cricket team was a special group. On the eve of their first ever ODI World Cup, Monga spoke to many who laid the first bricks.

• All The World is Staged by Brett Forest - Football is often called The Beautiful Game. The reality could not be more different. Brett Forest uncovers the depth of football’s trouble with match-fixing and betting. It is a difficult read, because you will see the sport differently once you’re done.

• Out in the Great Alone by Brian Phillips - Only fair we should end how we started - with a Brian Phillips gem. Phillips tracks the Idiatrod Trail Sled Dog Race, and finds out the insanity of the event held in the depths of Alaska’s ice deserts.

I hope you are having an exceptional festive period, and the last two months of 2024 light up your life in every way possible. I’ll be back next week with a story (and not a listicle, I promise). In the meanwhile, if you have recommendations for me, the comment section is wide open!

Cheers.

1. You will find that a lot of these to be ‘happy’ stories. Some explore cultures, so may go through a few dimly-lit roads. For this edition - for the festive air alone - I have tried to select from a specific feel-good shelf. And that choice has omitted a few exceptional writers, like, say, Sharda Ugra.

Sport, like most of our world, is a rather bleak place. Sharda’s best work digs out the truth concealed under the neatly-manicured grass. A lot of Wright Thompson’s best work leaves you gutted by the time you finish reading. I will keep that shelf for another Sunday.

2. This list is purely from memory. For every item here, there are probably three or four equally great pieces I am forgetting. Which means I need coffee, but it also means I should be better at archiving my favourite articles. Suggestions and help, most welcome.