When composer Shantanu Moitra met god
Shantanu Moitra
On the Wings of Music is a collection of reminiscences, anecdotes and self-revelations from composer Shantanu Moitra’s life. Delightful vignettes that chart the growth of a timid, self-effacing boy into a music composer of international repute. Here, Moitra recounts his chance meeting with an icon and the resultant excitement. After all, he may be a musician, but he is also a Bengali.
I am an extremely absent-minded chap. And this trait of mine has taken a heavy toll on me on innumerable occasions. The list of things I have lost is so long that I’d rather leave it for another story. But the loss of my mobile phone has left a wound so raw and deep that I cannot wish it away. I try to pat it and stroke it to sleep but, every now and then, it opens a malicious eye and peeps at me through the box that lies to the left of my chest, following which a deep depression assails me.
I lost the mobile in Italy, while waiting at Milan airport, to catch a connecting flight to Amsterdam, where I was to attend the premiere show of Parineeta. The time was 4 a.m. and the airport was practically deserted. About half a dozen people sat scattered in ones and twos. I decided to spend some of my waiting time window shopping and, entering a watch shop, asked to see the latest Swatch models. There was someone standing next to me. I threw him a brief glance, then went back to my examination of the watches. After a few minutes, a thought came to my head. I had seen that face before. I was sure of it. This time I looked up and, with an astonishing lack of manners, stared full into his face. Oh my god! I almost screamed. The god of football was standing beside me. The living legend, Diego Maradona.
Imagine seeing god with your own eyes. That too in utter seclusion with no devotees crowding and clamouring around you. No security. No fans. The world hadn’t come to an end. It was still spinning around the sun. Yet, here was Diego Maradona standing beside me. My heart tumbled, over and over, in my ribcage. What could I do? What could I say? I must say something, I thought feverishly. I can’t let this opportunity pass.
I called my friend Partho in Mumbai. ‘Guess who’s standing next to me?’ I whispered. My voice was choked with emotion and my heart pulsed and pounded so hard I thought it would burst. ‘Maradona re! Diego Maradona!’ Partho, the most ardent of Maradona’s devotees, one who wouldn’t mind drinking the water he washed his feet in, snapped back angrily, ‘What nonsense is this! So early in the morning! Don’t you have anything better to do? Go find someone in Amsterdam to play the fool with.’ And he banged down the phone. The bang hit my chest as hard as a brick. Tchha, I thought disgustedly. The guy doesn’t believe me! But Partho’s reaction gave me a modicum of courage and brought me closer to my resolve of speaking with Maradona.
‘Er … I mean to say…’ I coughed and stuttered. ‘You’re … you’re a great player.’ It was the stupidest thing I could have said and Maradona wasn’t impressed in the least. His face hardened and he said briskly, ‘No press. No press.’
At that moment I wanted only one thing. To stay in the great man’s vicinity and talk to him. Picking up a notepad from the glass case in front of me, I made a sketch. It depicted Maradona shooting a goal in the quarter-final of the 1986 FIFA World Cup. In scoring it — the most famous goal in the history of football — he had floored five famous players of the English team and even hoodwinked the hawk- eyed goalkeeper Peter Shelton. Maradona glanced at the sketch and murmured, ‘My best goal.’ By then he had realized that I was neither a journalist nor a member of the paparazzi. Only an ardent fan.
Then, to my great surprise, he smiled and asked if I would like a photograph with him. This can’t be true, I thought pinching myself, I must be dreaming. But I wasn’t. Here I was, standing at Milan airport, and Diego Maradona was smiling down at me. Handing my mobile phone to the Chinese shop assistant, I requested her to take a shot. Before my amazed eyes, the sluice gates of Destiny opened wide. Maradona passed an arm around my shoulder and the camera clicked rapidly. Words tumbled out of me all through the photo session. I told him I was from India and that there were at least a million fans of his in my country. ‘India is a beautiful country,’ Maradona said, though he hadn’t set foot in it till then.
The time we spent together was special, though it lasted only a few minutes. We both talked quite a lot. Not that we understood each other fully. But that was the least of it for me, at least. Just being with the magic man whose foot could make a ball shoot against the sky like a comet was enough. My eyes, my mind, and the grey matter in my head spun like the spinning ball.
Suddenly, when I least expected it, the fairytale ended. A group of fans recognized him and, leaping towards him like a pack of baying wolves, shattered the tranquillity of the Italian dawn. Maradona started to run, and I with him, for the simple reason that my hand was still clasped in his. Suddenly, as though springing up from the ground, four ferocious-looking bodyguards appeared and surrounded him. My hand was wrenched away from his. I stared with dazed eyes as they bore him away. A knife in my heart twisted cruelly. I felt as though a friend had deserted me. We Bengalis are like that. Reserve Banks of emotion.
But, rising above the despair of losing him, my heart sang a little tune as I sat in the plane and felt myself being borne away on the clouds. Then, suddenly, it did a somersault. I had left my mobile phone behind me in the airport! On the counter where the Chinese shop assistant was showing me watches. My brief encounter with God, captured in the shots of the cell camera, were lost to me. All proof of the historic meeting was erased. And it was owing to my own carelessness. Upon reaching Amsterdam, I tried to call Milan airport and contact the shop girl, but to no avail. What remains is in my mind. Maradona’s words, his touch are mine. Mine alone. As wise men have said, God gives you a chance … but only one.
On the Wings of Music: A Book of Journeys
Shantanu Moitra with Aruna Chakravarti
