Muhammad Ali the Malayali

Following the sad passing away of boxing icon Muhammed Ali, also known as the Louisville Lip, and christened at birth as Cassius Clay, Sports Minister of Kerala E.P. Jayarajan made an extraordinary claim that “Ali was a prominent name in Kerala’s sporting scene”. While expressing grief over the tragic demise of the great pugilist the minister added, for good measure that, Ali had bagged a gold medal and was instrumental in taking Kerala’s name sky high. As to precisely where the ‘Black Superman’ bagged this medal for Kerala and in which event, the minister was not forthcoming.

Naturally this caused quite a furore in the social media and Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and others of their ilk, were abuzz with this stunning revelation. Doubtless political parties will now get into the act, hurling charges and counter charges at each other as to the veracity of such bizarre statements and their devious hidden agenda. We’ll leave the politicians to their wrangling.

This is not the first time Indians have made such outlandish claims. We have routinely and ingeniously attempted to take credit where credit may or may not be due. Take the case of Shakespeare. It has been convincingly suggested by our elders that old Bill Shakespeare was not the prodigious Bard of Avon that we have all been led to believe by a pernicious western media. He was, in fact, born Seshappan in the village of Thiruvalangadu in Thanjavur District, to an indigent Iyer Brahmin couple, the ninth of ten children. Young Seshappan was a child prodigy and could write an entire play in Tamil in less than 24 hours when he was barely 10 years old.

On growing to man’s estate, Seshappan became Seshappa Iyer, and had already completed an astounding number of Tamil plays and sonnets, many of them enacted on stage across the length and breath of Tamil Nadu. A regular strolling player our young Seshappan was, and he himself played the hero and heroine in the same play on the same evening! Even now the descendants of that generation talk in awed tones of Seshappan’s unforgettable simultaneous portrayals of Othello and Desdemona What a man! And woman!

Then something earth shattering happened.  Like the mathematician Ramanujan, the travel bug caught Seshappan. The lure of England and worldwide fame beckoned and Seshappan, against his parents' express wishes not to cross the seas (considered inauspicious), set sail for England, carrying his manuscripts with him.

He was excommunicated by the village elders, but welcomed with open arms by the clever British. They knew a good thing when they saw one, the British. They did that again, many years later, with Ranjitsinhji. Sly foxes.

Assuring Seshappan of his daily thrice thayir sadam (curd rice) and vadu maanga ( green mango salted and brined), and limitless silver tumblers of filter coffee, which was enshrined in his contract, his London publishing agent convinced him to change his name from Seshappa Iyer to Shakespeare. ‘More contemporary’, assured the agent. All the Tamil plays and sonnets were expertly translated into English and the rest is history. As he could not return to his country of birth, Seshappa Iyer was granted British citizenship, found a nice home in Stratford, married one Anne Hathaway (evidently their horoscopes matched) and lived happily ever after. It was the first recorded inter faith marriage in Indian and British history. That is the legend.

As one traverses the length and breadth of our great country, one comes across many such stories. Some of them may be apocryphal, like the recent one where one G. Murugesan, a bricklayer from Vellore, claimed that the new French Open ladies singles champion, Garbine Muguruza, was born into his family and adopted by a childless Spanish couple some 20 odd years ago from a global adoption agency!

There are many Seshappa Iyer stories that others will be able to narrate. For now, we thank the Hon. Minister of Sports from Kerala for setting off a fertile train of thought that brings Indians untold pride and joy.