Maestro

On one weekend of September, 2022, Roger Federer, my role model since I was a teen, retired from professional tennis. He gave us fans the best farewell we could ever ask for. He and Nadal, playing together, the crowd cheering them on from the stands and from countless living rooms, from social media feeds. All of us knew that a big, beautiful part of our lives was coming to a close. And as my mind was giving me the flashback of the times in this amazing, so-close-to-my-heart journey, I knew that many others were going through the same.

Growing up, I used to read the sports section of the newspaper and that’s how I came to know about Feddy. I remember that he was THE guy at the top, the one everyone wanted to beat. The first match I watched was the Australian Open Final against Nadal, I remember seeing him cry for being so close to equalising Pete Sampras' count of 14 GS titles and not making it. And the way Nadal comforted him and told him that he’s going to break that record soon for sure. I can vouch that there has never been such a beautiful rivalry in sports like that of Feddy and Nadal. You just have to google the word ‘Fedal’ and you’ll know what I mean.

That early morning Sunday felt special because my sister was alongside me. We lived this journey together. We would collect newspaper clippings of Federer, we would skip reading the newspaper the day after he lost any match, we used to google the score and refresh the page when we weren’t able to watch the match. And as I write all this, those days seem so much more real than just memories of the yesteryears. And Feddy was almost everyone’s favourite at home. I remember watching a documentary on him with my family(Nanima was staying with us that time) and we were having homemade Pizza. Feddy reminds us of our Nanaji, a glimpse of him. So Feddy always felt like family. We were so happy when he got married and then had when his two sets of twins were born. My mother was happy that he too was a parent to four children. 

There certainly is something about him that makes everyone root for him. And the more I got to know about his life, the more my admiration for him grew. The way he adapted himself and was open to improvement in his early days showed the growth he went through. And then how he almost gave up playing tennis after his coach’s passing in a car crash in South Africa(I prefer using ‘untimely demise’ but I am not the person to say what ‘timely demise’ is and so I decided to refrain from using that phrase. This I decided after one of the many recent conversations that I’ve had) The love he has for the sport that kept him going, the way he always publicly acknowledged the fact that he couldn’t have continued to play if it weren’t for his family’s support, and then his philanthropic work in Africa - all of this makes me lucky to be alive in the time when he is alive. I am sure throughout history there will be people to whom other people will look up to and I am lucky to have find my role model so early in my life.

Watching him play tennis made me realise how the score card doesn’t really say which player dominated the majority of the match, it also taught me that it matters when one makes a mistake, that not all errors are penalised the same way, that luck, good and bad, will definitely play a role and one can do nothing but accept it. I’ll particularly remember the Wimbledon Final of 2019,mostly because it was on my 25th birthday, Federer had championship points but he could not convert them. I felt bad and sad that time, but I was okay and this was definitely not how my younger self would have reacted. I felt lucky to witness him play, victory and defeat didn't matter. The numbers don’t matter after you reach a certain point. 

I wonder if I am a person who someone, particularly my younger self, would want to grow up to be. And I will never get the answer to this question. I would want to ask Federer what made him decide Tennis over Football, a decision which shaped his entire life, and I am sure he would not have imagined how crucial this decision would be. But I am sure his life would still have been amazing. I wonder if he thinks about the points which he thinks he shouldn;t have missed, if he thinks about the what-ifs, and I think he does sometimes. One of my friends says that we cannot stop things from happening, that it is futile to think about the alternate reality that would have been if few things that happened didn’t happen the way that they happened. But I cannot help but think about the alternative realities of a few life changing events in my life.

How does one know what is the best reality for someone? How does one not lose oneself in the mundanity of life and think about oneself and not make it all about oneself? Is it selfish for someone who has not asked oneself what they want in a real long time to start pondering on that question, knowing fully well that what they want and what they need may be entirely different? I know one thing for sure: I want to watch Federer play from the stands, and I will definitely attend his exhibition matches(fun fact: he played an exhibition match in New Delhi).

What do you want?

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