Reminiscing about a birth

The oldest member of the ‘July gang’, Gavaskar, shall celebrate his 70th birthday on Friday, July 10. But what comes to mind every time his birthday is talked about is the anecdote the Little Master shared in his book — Sunny Days, which was published in 1976 by Rupa Publications.

In the book, Gavaskar recounts how he may never have become a cricketer if not for his eagle-eyed relative, Narayan Masurekar, one Gavaskar called ‘Nan Kaka’. The story goes that when Nan-Kaka had visited the newly born baby Gavaskar in the hospital, he had noticed a little hole near the top of Gavaskar’s left ear lobe. The next day, however, when he picked up the baby, who was placed in the crib next to Gavaskar’s mother, he discovered that the baby’s left ear lobe did not have the hole he had spotted the day before.

“A frantic search of all cribs in the hospital followed, and I was eventually located sleeping blissfully beside a fisherwoman, totally oblivious of the commotion I had caused! The mix-up, it appears, followed after the babies had been given their bath,” Gavaskar says in the book.

Gavaskar goes on to add how he has often wondered what would have happened to him if nature had not marked him out with that tiny hole on his ear lobe, and if his Nan-Kaka had not noticed the abnormality.

“Perhaps I would have grown up to be an obscure fisherman, toiling somewhere along the West Coast.

And what about the baby who, for a spell, took my place? I do not know if he is interested in cricket, or whether he will ever read this book. I can only hope that, if he does, he will start taking a little more interest in Sunil Gavaskar,” the book says.