The sad tale of Mohammad Amir
If I asked you to imagine a cannibal, what picture do you get in your mind?
Is it something like the image in the blog?
I once learnt that cannibalism was practiced by several tribes across various parts of the world as part of mourning at a funeral. The flesh these particular tribes ate was of someone who had died. More over, they didn’t cook it like some exotic dish, they actually burnt it till it was charred. The point was that the enormity of death meant that such a symbolic and rather drastic measure was required to provide meaning to the whole phenomenon. This obviously appears quite drastic and unpleasant. But take a moment, if you please, and you will realise that it also underscores something else. It is important to truly grieve something as enormous as the death of a loved one.
Similarly, it is important to grieve the loss of the things you love. Because doing so allows you to deal with those feelings and be able to learn something from the process.
A few days ago, I was writing an earlier version of this blog. I was writing it the day after the fourth one-day international (ODI) between England and Pakistan. Those of you following the series would understand that it was a particularly emotional time.
My plea at the time was that amidst all the controversy, we were forgetting the quality of the cricket being played. I never finished that post, and then the series was over, and other things came up, both in my life and the national conscience.