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I could not understand why they were not smiling and applauding. I had put on my nothing-new-this-happens-everyday look, and was ambling nonchalantly towards the green. This four-ball (that’s golfese for four individuals who have decided to take on the course as a united gang) must be a melancholy lot. The expressions on their faces spanned the full range of nuances from acute annoyance to outraged shock. Well, fine! Be that way if you like, seethed my triumphant pride. You are obviously taking your putting bloopers too seriously, and my spectacular success irks you. Lighten up, will you!
As my bold approach brought me closer, our eyes met, and I detected an uneasy fidgeting among the envious group. Warning bells began to ring, and my brain broke into an inexplicable cold sweat. Something was not quite right here. The first crack in the ice appeared as I reached the edge of the fast (wouldn’t it be simpler to call it “sloping”?) green. With an avuncular grin on his creased face, the seventy-odd year old leader of the gang exclaimed in a booming voice, “What’s the matter with you, young man?” The younger henchmen looked like they would have preferred a robust, physical engagement that would have presented painful inconveniences to my person, given the size and youth of these lads. “Good afternoon, Sir, hello gentlemen! Nice day for a good round, isn’t it? Oh, it’s just luck, I guess. It’s the third hole-in-one I’ve had this week.” At this point, my caddy arrived at a bothered sprint. “Wrong green, Sir. Very bad, very bad!”
Oh rats! I’ll never play at playing golf again. What rescued me was the dramatic change in the mood on the green. All except my caddy broke into the kind of honest laughter that forgives all transgressions. My caddy seemed to feel that, to separate his own reputation from mine as a matter of professional necessity, he must maintain a pugilistic demeanour.
Many a time I have driven or walked past Zimbabwe’s many rolling golf courses and wondered why they were always crowded with a mix of Zimbabweans and people from all over the world. The aesthetic appeal of the green fairways was obvious enough, but hey, one could always stroll in the lush Botanical Gardens in Harare, and learn that the learned name for the mutondo tree is julbernadia globiflora, that that for the musasa tree is brachystegia speciformis, and the blue gum is more properly addressed as eucalyptus globulus. Swinging at, and missing, an inferior looking ball seemed to me to be hardly worth the public embarrassment, especially considering that a bigger ball could be chased by more people in front of larger crowds containing more of your sympathizers at Rufaro or Barbourfields Stadiums (shouldn’t it be stadia?) in Harare and Bulawayo respectively. Thank you India for opening my eyes to what I have in my own country but never really valued. You see, after being virtually pushed onto the course by a conspiring mix of diplomatic colleagues (who hinted that if I did not go I would be my only friend), friends in the Government of India who kept asking me what my handicap was (they always looked puzzled when I said it was my temper) and CEOs of corporates who kept inviting me to play nine holes (I am familiar with riddles of plane geometry, but how the chipendani1 does one play a vacuous hole?), I have discovered to my consternation that golf is not about a ball of any size, but about life. A mystery that eluded me for years of diplomatic life in North America and Europe has been revealed in this land of biryani, computers, maestro Ravi Shankar’s sitar recitals, reflection and sophistry. To know everything you need to know about the meaning of it all, all you need is eighteen holes.
At the course near Qutub Minar I learnt two lessons. The first was that it is the wise individual who distrusts the compliments of his friends. It was there that I first swung a driver (why not call it a chizarura2 or knobkerrie as our hunting ancestors did?). My friend Vinay3 exclaimed “What a shot! You connect like a real pro.” A few minutes later, my caddy pulled me aside to inform me that he was closely acquainted with people who had used that strange swing of mine who, following months of painful hospitalization, had not been spotted in the vicinity of a golf course ever again. Was I crazy, he enquired as he grew more agitated and less discreet. My affronted retort that even Tigers had their pet quirks was greeted with unbridled and articulate contempt, with some epithets pronounced under the furious caddy’s breath.
My second lesson came a few days later when a caddy suggested authoritatively that I skip the second hole for now and play the third, as the course was all backed up. “Hit!, he ordered, and in unquestioning obedience I teed off. Immediately, a lank and irate executive (judging by his liberal employment of choice expletives, he had to be an executive of note) emerged from the bushes. “Who gave you permission to play this hole? Who allowed you to do this?” I wanted to suggest to him that he convert his enquiry to a multiple-choice question to remove its rhetorical overtones. What came out was a much less assertive “I have no idea what you are saying.” My expression must have suggested that I was a worthless source of the definitive information required, for the man turned his ire on my caddy. I do not know whether the two resorted to the original Sanskrit, because I could not work out the gist of what they were saying at a progressively escalating decibel level. All I know is that ultimately the caddy pointed at me, and the confrontation resolved into pitying shakes of the head all round. The ritual was so infectious that I thought it politic to join in. I rather doubt that the caddy told the angry executive that I am a descendant of the great Emperor Munhumutapa who ruled a goodly chunk of Southern Africa and was bosom buddies with folks in Goa, and that it was therefore not a breach of protocol to let me pass. I nurse a gnawing suspicion that he said something about mental health. The big lesson I learnt, however, was that in life, one must hurry to blame one’s caddy before one’s caddy blames one4.
At Delhi Golf Course at the fourth hole of the ‘B’ Course, I had a flash of aha learning: some things in life, once lost, simply can’t be found again. In keeping with expectations, I was playing a branded ball, which I pummeled with a seven iron to release my pent-up frustration over the unwarranted direction the ball had taken in response to my previous, expertly postured stroke. It will take great skill to dissuade me from the conviction that the manufacturer is at the very least partially liable for the shameful behaviour of his ball at my second stroke. “I play golf six years”, exclaimed my caddy, “and Sir, I never see anything like this!” I confess I had not seen anything like it either, even in my nightmares. The ball shot up vertically, and could have rivaled the Sukhoi that delights us as it flies over the celebration grounds on Republic Day in Delhi. We never saw it again, and my mind keeps speculating on the possibility of it having been a well-behaved ball that went straight to heaven.
At the fifth and sixth holes on the same course, I was taught humility. For some reason or other, we humans like to think that we are the most significant presence on earth. It took a really close meeting with Pavo Cristatus – the National Bird of the Republic of India, to introduce some doubt in my mind on the validity of this presumption. It appeared that the peacock wanted a more critical look at the stroke I was preparing for, so he walked to within a yard of where I was performing that peculiar golfer’s dance that’s supposed to make the course play ball. I poised my three wood, moved back a smidgeon, bowed to the ball and was about to strike, when the bird let out a disapproving shriek, and slid a smidgeon to the right. I see, I thought without thinking, moved a little to the right, and prepared to execute the stroke. This time he said nothing, so I hit the ball. I have never been keen on fire crackers, but in that moment I understood the deafening enthusiasm advertised in Delhi whenever the cricket team wins. I wanted noise so deafening that Oliver Mutukudzi5, whose fans are LOUD, would be envious. I wanted to switch off the sun and burst the fire crackers for an hour. From a distance of one hundred and eighty yards, I had hit the pin! I started to dance, and stopped in mid wiggle. My avian coach had beaten me to it. He fanned his dazzling plumage to a span of what looked like five feet or more, and was demonstrating how it should be done with overwhelming authority and grace. I was mesmerized, and the only thought that ran through my mind was and we think we’re the man! Later, I was to be reminded of the man who, while strolling in Zimbabwe’s beautiful savannah grass, was kicked by an ostrich (yes, that bird packs quite a punch), flying his unticketed frame a good fifty yards through Zimbabwean air space and straight into the arms of the lady he ended up marrying. Their romance sprouted during a relaxing period of recuperation at the local clinic. Oh, and the one about the secretary bird strolling majestically near Chivhu…..well, let’s reserve that story for another time.
The birds do not need the assistance of the bees to teach us things. At the Seventh at DLF Golf and Country Club, I said wait a minute, did you fly without a chart? Amazingly, I was looking at a pair of Dendrocopos Macei, the fulvous-breasted woodpecker, a bird that is supposed to confine itself to the Eastern and North Eastern regions of India. Their assertion of full citizenship was, however, not the lesson. The didactic point was: what’s yours is yours and you must defend it with all your might, no matter how big those who want to take it from you are, and in that endeavour, those who are threatened must band together. A large crow was fleeing from the spirited assault of two small birds which were defending their nest. On several golf courses, I have seen this point emphasised again and again by the poikilotherms6. On many occasions, I had to assure alert cobras that I was interested only in retrieving my ball from the thick bush and had no ambitions regarding real estate. Twice or thrice, this process of persuasion involved some running.
There is a hole at the DLF course that I do not wish to mention, because my mind blocks it out. This is ironic, considering that this hole, with the steep fall of one of the traps, reminds me of Zimbabwe’s pride and glory, the Victoria Falls, which are one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and which have been known to bring tears of awe and wonderment to the eyes of visitors. The thing is, you execute the perfect swing, you hear the right swoosh and the connection is right on the money, the ball leaves the tee, and looks like it has crossed the chasm and is well on its way to the pin. Wait! What the mbakumba7 do you think you are doing? The cursed thing hangs in the air for a few moments to survey the terrain. When it spots the thickest tuft of reeds, it executes a spectacular u-turn and dives into the ravine. Goodbye branded ball. May your tribe perish in hell! Our ancient philosophers told us that kumhanya handiko kusvika8.
Talking about arrivals, the ninth hole is one into which you emerge. The word emerge is used advisedly here, as the feeling is that which our clothes must get when they leave the spinning cycle, escape the washing machine and head in the direction of the dryer. Now you don’t care about anything except what she will say when you get home. They act powerless, but these ladies wield the powers of The Private Accountant, a position in which is vested the plenipotentiary authority to frisk your very soul. The important consideration at this point is which truth you will not tell today. You will be caught, of course, because they are cursed with this uncanny instinct that always finds you out, and they employ a peculiar strain of the Socratic Method to assist you in tying the noose around your own neck. Never mind that, like the clothes, you are dripping wet. What you need is to be in a position to answer “no” when she asks you if you lost all the balls again today, all the while praying that she’ll leave it at that. You must therefore not lose the one that’s left from the ten you had when you teed off. For that reason, you play the worst golf of the afternoon. You aim the ball away from the direction of the pin because that is also the direction of the water. You hit it in the belief that it will land slightly to the left of the marine menace. The yell from a neighbouring fairway (it hit him in his breeches as he bent over to take his stroke) therefore comes as a surprise, and you quickly debate the merits of not laying claim to your ball. It is the thought of The Private Accountant that finally seals your fate, and you hurry across to your victim to grovel. Life is however fair, and cuts you a break; it happens to be the fellow whose shot perforated your Greg Norman hat the other day. You achieve the par you failed to achieve on any hole today, and that you most certainly won’t achieve on the ninth.
You shake hands and heads, and then drop your ball for a recovery shot. Normally, you would use a wood for this kind of distance, but you want to play it safe, so you try the six iron. You swing and plow a full foot of lawn behind the ball, but leave the ball itself unfazed. This is embarrassing. You take an angry swing, and the thing pops up briefly, only to settle in thick rough a couple of yards away. Na Mai Rabhi9this is unacceptable! You then make as though poor club choice is to blame, and pull out the eight iron without even knowing it is the eight iron. Fortune favours the fool this time around, and you get your miracle. After a frustrating search of the legitimate fairway, you discover that your ball is sitting on the green, virtually next to the pin. As you move elatedly closer, you realize that it was a matter of perspective (remember that from art class?), and that the ball is in fact a few feet away, but that’s not at all bad. In your enthusiasm, you forget that this is a fast green, and that it slopes into the water. You take your stroke with the putter, and start to run after your branded ball. The laws of physics take over, and as you overtake the ball, your brakes fail, thanks to your superior momentum. The ball might have stopped on the edge, but you put paid to that prospect as your hands flail about for a hold on terra firma and you scoop your last ball into the drink. The rules of protocol have been observed, though, because you went in first. It’s a good thing you took that swimming class. Lesson? No matter how safe you play it, accidents are bound to happen.
Did I say eighteen holes? I am sure I meant nine. As you can see, I have no ball to play on the tenth, although I am certain there are nasty lessons to learn there too.
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