The Hindu Business Line : The hunters get hunted

WILT thou hunt the prey for the lion, or fill the appetite of the young lions, when they couch in their dens, and abide in the covert to lie in wait? Thus, asks the Old Testament, even as I hunt for `hunt' in the holy book. Elsewhere, it speaks of the King of Israel who comes out to seek a flea, "as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains," and I remember only Pataudi and Jhajjar.

I'll send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks, is a snatch from Jeremiah, but wait, "they hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come" cautions a line from Lamentations. "Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven: they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness." And you may say that again, on how the hunters became the hunted after the Wildlife Protection Act tightened its noose on them.

What a far cry from `The Gentleman Nawab' that Partab Ramchand dedicates a chapter for in India's Captains: From Nayudu to Ganguly! Like all princes of his time, Pataudi could be cold, authoritative, stern and uncompromising, narrates Ramchand about the 1946 England tour. "A British Cabinet mission was already then in Delhi discussing the terms of Indian independence," recounts the book.

"Pataudi would take the Indian side to England and prove that 11 Indians — Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsis — properly led, could play together as a team, wiping off the stigma of 1936." That was when "the most unfortunate" tour to England in the history of Indian cricket had taken place, rues Ramchand, though the team was `the best ever side to leave the shores of India.' But, Amarnath had thrown his bat and was sent home for `indiscipline and insolent behaviour,' Beaumont Committee had to inquire into the debacle, and captain Vizzy got the axe.

It seems shortly after his return, Pataudi said in a radio broadcast that he had the good fortune to be skipper of a side, which proved to the world that India was capable of fielding a team. More than half a century has passed, and princes are common citizens now. The royalty might have had hunting as its daily exercise, as the Bard writes in King Henry VI. But, now, the jungle denizens have a law to protect them.

"The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself," from Love's Labour's Lost may fall flat on the ex-captain's ears, even as he's cursing himself for hunting the deer. "The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey, the fields are fragrant and the woods are green," announces Titus Andronicus. "Uncouple here and let us make a bay and wake the emperor and his lovely bride and rouse the prince and ring a hunter's peal, that all the court may echo with the noise." Only, the roused prince finds a different court to enter even as it echoes with the baying of penalty provisions.

If the history of trials is any indication, we may have witnesses turning hostile while the accused are out on bail. Lest you be disheartened by such disappointing development, here is a quote of Otto von Bismarck: "People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in

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The hunters get hunted