Book Review: Forgive me Amma: The life and times of Dhanraj Pillay by Sundeep Misra, published by Wisdom Tree.

First ever unauthorized biography of a hockey player in the world, ˜Forgive me Ammaâ, by passionate hockey follower Sundeep Misra of Indianhockey.com fame, gives a clear account of India’s living legend, Dhanraj Pillay.

India have seen a considerable amount of hockey literature flowing from players –“ M.N. Masood in the 30s to M.K. Kaushik in the 90s– but a player’s career told from an outsider, as Misra has done now, is not a routine affair. Misra deserves kudos for the path breaking effort. Alyson Annan’s biography and Sardar Khanâ’s work on M.H. Atif, narrowly missed this honour. From this perspective, it is for good that Misra spurned the reported efforts of Dhanraj wanting to make it an official biography or vice versa, whatever the fact.

After a long long time, a well written, well-packaged and elegantly produced hockey literature is available to sports aficionados at leading book stalls — the last one being Wills Book of Excellence Hockey in the early 80s. It feels nice.

Dhanraj has been the glorious flagbearer of Indian hockey for more than 15 years since the early 90s. Not just his mesmerizing brand of hockey, but also his Activities, antics, emotion, gambit like moves, a nose for trouble and all attracted attention of one and all. It is amazing while every cog in the administrative wheel tried to crush him, Pillay grew in strength in direct proportion to the evils’s efforts like a mythological hero! He is an ever-green personality and event maker to the hilt. The greatest on the turfs is not the nicest and wisest guy away from it. Herein lies the goldmine of information for those who seek, for enterprising journalists to portray him in a myriad ways.

Therefore, Misra definitely has a strong subject to deal with — that too of his liking. A subject that masses can identify with, who will be curious to add more to what they are already familiar with.

Misra’s conscious association with various media tools — from print, web and visual — gave him enough opportunity to be in constant touch with Dhanraj’s career contours over a reasonable period of time. As a result of such close interaction, both private and professional, quite often emotional, he is able to portray the colourful career of Dhanraj in an admirable way. Misra certainly excels in some of his essays esp. Asia Cup, Cologne Champions Trophy and Sydney Olympics.

The 250-page book, hard-bound with jacket, is in essence Misra’s personal account of Dhanraj’s career. As any one who attempts a player’s career cannot escape from the impact of related events that transpire in the period, Misra also faces an enviable task of combining Dhanraj’s career with contemporary history that made Dhanraj of what he is — and also keep the tempo of the book going. It is a tough job, for, profiling has the invariable dangers of overlapping and engulfing facts of history. Else, the profile would get diluted. Misra certainly made his choice right – to walk the tight rope without compromising either the needs of biography or the tenets of history. Forgive me amma therefore had to be anecdotes-based rather than chronological. So it is. As a fallout, certain chapters (Olympic Qualifiers and KL World Cup in particular, dealt in detail, does not connect properly with the profile in question, but serves the purposes of connectivity, lending a semblance of entirety to the topic.

Misra misses a step or two or omits a right connect once or twice in respect of history of times that Dhanraj as a player excelled. But, he lives upto the expectation in portraying the personality of Dhanraj in a delightful and unbiased manner. A job tastefully and nicely done. Hither to unknown and unreported incidents are galore.

This book is an honest account of shrewd persona of Pillay. Neither a vilification campaign nor a garland of glorification. You have both in right measures. Events unfolds truly and the author’s interpretations honest. The book reads well — very well indeed — as the author could maintain his distinct style of prose throughout the narration. Description of umpire Zaidi (he handed out penalty corners to the Koreans as if he was distributing food packets at a relief camp — five in seven minutes), or KPS Gill (he could not keep his massive ego in cold storage, it is not written in the bible that good cops become intelligent hockey federation chiefs) are some instances of his grip of the text. The award for the best of course would go to ‘Without Pillay, watching hockey was as exciting as seeing an 80-year old do a strip tease’.

His grasp of things are also commendable when for instance he speaks about Indian hockey coaches (if only they were to get over competing with their predecessors, India could do so much better) or a postm