IRA MATH­UR

Car­olyn Gupte, whose moth­er is Trinida­di­an and fa­ther is In­di­an, is a Mum­bai-born, Trinidad Lon­don-trained jour­nal­ist (Lon­don School of Jour­nal­ism) who has self-pub­lished a novel­la ti­tled Love With­out Bound­aries–the 49-year part­ner­ship of Sub­hash and Car­ol Gupte–a homage to her par­ents.

The book chron­i­cles the ro­man­tic ad­ven­tures of her fa­ther, the In­di­an crick­et leg­end Sub­hash Gupte and his Trinida­di­an wife, Car­ol (nee Gob­erd­han), who owned and op­er­at­ed a pri­vate pri­ma­ry school in San Fer­nan­do from 1972-2002 (AC Gob­erd­han Memo­r­i­al School was named in ho­n­our of her fa­ther, An­drew C Gob­erd­han, a School In­spec­tor.) Guptes’s fa­ther, Sub­hash Chan­dra Pand­har­i­nath “Fer­gie” Gupte (11 De­cem­ber 1929-31 May 2002), was con­sid­ered among Test crick­et’s finest spin bowlers. Sir Gar­ry Sobers, EAS Prasan­na and Jim Lak­er re­port­ed­ly pro­nounced him the best leg spin­ner they had seen. The West In­di­ans who toured In­dia in 1958/9 reck­oned that Gupte could turn the ball on glass. Gupte played for Ben­gal, Bom­bay and Ra­jasthan in In­dia and Rish­ton, Hey­wood and Lan­cast­er in the UK. He re­ceived the C K Nayudu Life­time Achieve­ment Award in 2000, the high­est ho­n­our be­stowed on a for­mer play­er by BC­CI. (Wikipedia)

Pre­am­ble to Love With­out Bound­aries–the 49-year part­ner­ship of Sub­hash and Car­ol Gupte

“My par­ent’s sto­ry be­gan here in Trinidad but quick­ly spread be­yond our bound­aries, from Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, to Shiv­a­ji Park, Mum­bai, from the Queen’s Park Oval to the Crick­et Club of In­dia, from Mara­cas Bay to Dadar Beach, from a two-week whirl­wind is­land ad­ven­ture that turned in­to a forty-nine-year part­ner­ship.

“The 1953 in­au­gur­al tour of the first In­di­an crick­et team to vis­it the West In­dies and British Guiana was of im­mense his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance. Crick­et, as we all know, is one of the strongest bonds be­tween In­dia and T&T, and one can imag­ine the ex­cite­ment felt by crick­et lovers in the In­di­an di­as­po­ra to see their he­roes in ac­tion. Vil­lagers, many of whom were 1st gen­er­a­tion (for­mer) in­den­tured labour­ers, lined the streets, ea­ger to glimpse “the home boys from the Moth­er­land” as they whizzed past in tour bus­es. The an­tic­i­pa­tion was pal­pa­ble, with many pool­ing their re­sources to buy tick­ets, char­ter taxis or trav­el by train to the venues. Against this back­drop, the team’s ris­ing star, spin bowler my fa­ther, Sub­hash Gupte, was in­tro­duced to the crick­et-mad Trinida­di­an pub­lic.”

In telling her par­ents’ love sto­ry, Gupte says they “mocked con­ven­tion­al­i­ty, tossed tra­di­tions out of the win­dow”, and faced op­po­si­tion to their mar­riage.

The Gob­erd­hans, a promi­nent, con­ser­v­a­tive Pres­by­ter­ian fam­i­ly, threat­ened to dis­own her moth­er for get­ting in­volved with “a for­eign­er, a Hin­du, a crick­eter!”. Gupte’s par­ents had sim­i­lar reser­va­tions about their son’s choice in In­dia.

Gupte re­calls her par­ent’s pas­sion­ate re­la­tion­ship and her fa­ther’s “con­stant rib-teas­ing with my moth­er on what he saw as the grad­ual de­cline of West In­di­an su­prema­cy and the sub­se­quent rise of In­dia’s dom­i­nance of the game pro­vid­ed many amus­ing and live­ly ‘de­bates’ be­tween them. He loved this game with a bound­less pas­sion. He en­joyed shar­ing his sto­ries and ad­vis­ing many young vis­it­ing crick­eters–usu­al­ly from Team In­dia–who made the al­most ‘holy’ pil­grim­age to our home.”

Gupte wrote the book af­ter rum­mag­ing through her fa­ther’s tat­tered scrap­books, care­ful­ly han­dling brit­tle news­pa­per clip­pings, scan­ning and restor­ing fad­ed pho­tographs, restor­ing mem­o­ries of her child­hood spent play­ing with her old­er broth­er and cousins on the ter­raced rooftop of her grand­par­ents’ mod­est Mum­bai home or go­ing for an evening stroll with her moth­er to Dadar Beach, ten min­utes away.

Ex­tract 1: San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad 1953

Un­for­get­table

… Look­ing at the sights of her coun­try through his eyes made her feel as though she, too, was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing these things for the first time. Like the time when she sti­fled

her laugh­ter when he came face to face with a hops and black pud­ding sand­wich–his ini­tial ex­pres­sion of dis­gust and hor­ror was price­less, but in the spir­it of “I must try all things Trinida­di­an,” he valiant­ly took a bite but im­me­di­ate­ly spat it out! Or

his shocked re­ac­tion when he grad­u­al­ly un­der­stood the dou­ble-en­ten­dre lyrics

found in some of the more risqué ca­lyp­sos of the day.

Ex­tract 2: Bom­bay, In­dia–1957

Spin­ning Top in Mud

Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Sub­hash was on top of his game. To­day, how­ev­er, while sit­ting in

the ve­ran­dah of his favourite Bom­bay hang­out, the very pri­vate and ex­clu­sive

Crick­et Club of In­dia (CCI), he once again cast his mind to that splen­did tour of the

West In­dies in 1953, and to the Test Match played in Trinidad, where he cap­tured sev­en wick­ets for 162 runs off 66 overs. That was the turn­ing point in his ca­reer had re­al­ly tak­en flight. That was when every­thing changed–pro­fes­sion­al­ly and

per­son­al­ly …

… As his eyes scanned the length and breadth of the mag­nif­i­cent Brabourne

Sta­di­um and its famed grounds–home to so many es­sen­tial crick­et tour­na­ments–he knew that the time had come to make his next move.

Ex­tract 3: Bom­bay, In­dia–1957

A Pitch-Per­fect Day

It was Wed­ding Day–April 1 st, 1957, at Par­na Ku­ti, and the liv­ing room was abuzz

with ex­cite­ment as those gath­ered anx­ious­ly await­ed the ar­rival of the Pun­dit.

Every­thing about this day lent it­self to cre­at­ing an at­mos­phere of joy, beau­ty and love. The sight of dozens of hand-made white lily gar­lands in­ter­twined with fra­grant or­ange marigolds and suc­cu­lent man­go leaves placed strate­gi­cal­ly through­out the main floor formed a sig­nif­i­cant part of the dec­o­ra­tions. Gar­lands were strung on the doors and win­dows, sig­ni­fy­ing to passers-by that a cel­e­bra­tion was sched­uled for that day …”­

_End of ex­tract

Gupte, who at­tend­ed Na­pari­ma Girls’ school and briefly pe­ri­od worked in ad­ver­tis­ing in Trinidad (Mc­Cann-Er­ick­son Ltd), is al­so a po­et and says of this work, “Writ­ing about my par­ents al­lowed me to con­nect to In­dia out to long-lost fam­i­ly mem­bers and for­got­ten friends, es­pe­cial­ly those in the crick­et com­mu­ni­ty.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian colum­nist and the win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023. www.iras­room.org

Email iras­room@gmail.com