Macavity

I can't stop raving about Dhoni in the new Pepsi ad. With the handle bar moustache and buzz cut, as he gyrates to 'gatak gatak' (and looks Oh, so deadly handsome!), Raina, Harbhajan, and whoever else is there, become non entities. It is the ultimate 'yennada, rascala?' Chennai's Super King look and the eyes are only for D! What were the others doing in the ad? It probably has to do with Pepsi's Men in Blue campaign. But this ain't the only one in which Dhoni has more than just him in the ad and where without him the frame is incomplete. It is not without reason. It is the Dhoni persona. He is part of the crowd, just as much as he is a legion by himself. "If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, If you can walk with Kings and not lose the common touch..."-Kipling I pause to think. When did he become so statuesquely? When did he emerge to outshine  greats like Sachin without ever trampling upon their space? Since when did he begin to...

MKG just popped into my head. I was trying to help India attain Independence all over again when I stumbled upon something that he said. "I travel because I fancy that the masses want to meet me. I certainly want to meet them. I deliver my simple message to them in few words and they and I are satisfied. It penetrates the mass mind slowly but surely."  Somewhere MKG and I struck a chord. I have always been averse to people and situations being portrayed as ideal and flawless. It is pretty depressing, to say the least. To say the worst, it is inhuman! We are not God because we are flawed and that's just how we must stay. Well, you see, God really doesn't have the luxury of going wrong, while we, humans, are entitled to sin!  My learning today was that MKG was yet another bloke, vain and with vice. And if identification at the level of vanity were grounds to forge bonds, I'd  shake hands with him. There are people with calibre to change things around, and they ...