MSD on his Fans and Education!!!

'It's A Lose-Lose Situation'

Going through the security check, people stop you for autographs/photographs. If we don't pose for photographs, they'll think we're arrogant. If we do, we can cause delays

How do you handle your fans in Ranchi?

When I land in Ranchi, there's a queue of people outside my house, asking for autographs or wanting me to pose for photos. It's very tough. If you sign just a couple of autographs, others are grievously disappointed. It's better not to sign a single one. And if you are signing, sign at least 15-20, so that no one goes back unhappy.

Is fame a difficult thing to handle?

It is. At times, you're irritated. Normally, we're the last passengers to board the plane. Going through the security check, people stop you for autographs/photographs. The plane gets delayed and the passengers blame us for the delay. If we don't pose for photographs, they'll think we're arrogant. If we do, we can cause delays. It's a lose-lose situation for us.

Come on, it surely feels good as well.

Yes, but you also feel embarrassed. Imagine, you're coming from a long practice session. You have your pads on, two bats in one hand, and your keeping gloves in the other. Then a child stops you for an autograph and you have to put everything down. And if you don't, the kid will think he's such an arrogant man...

Of Cheques And Balances

As national icon, fame and fortune are his. Still, M.S. Dhoni makes a dash for academics.

A day before the start of the Bangalore Test, relaxing in the heavily guarded hotel, Mahendra Singh Dhoni talks about the unreasonable demands some fans make. "People don't make an effort to get into your shoes," he sighs. But that's not an easy task for ordinary mortals like us dragging through our dreary lives—how can we ever know what a Tendulkar goes through? For us, the actions of those who call fame their own are often inexplicable, however mundane the causes. Take Dhoni. He wants to be a graduate—isn't that absurd? He's fabulously successful, intelligent, articulate and wealthy.

Of what use to a man such as him could a scrap of paper certifying a degree in Bachelor of Commerce be?

"The reason is very simple," Dhoni grins, as he talks about having enrolled himself for a graduate course at Ranchi's St. Xavier's College.

"I want to be at least a graduate." For him, it's a degree of respectability, something that only education can confer. And Dhoni is unwilling to go through life without it. "When I have children and when they go to school and say that my father is an undergraduate, it won't be nice," he says.

Perhaps it's his small-town origins that have led him to consider college. Son of a migrant from Kumaon who started a new life in Ranchi as an unskilled worker, Dhoni was taught about the value of education. Yet, studies were not of overriding importance to him in Ranchi's DAV school, because cricket consumed much of his time.

He wasn't, anyway, the type who leapt to their feet to answer questions. He studied when he had to, before exams. "In 10th I got 66 per cent, in 12th 56 per cent—it's up to you to judge how good or bad I was!" Dhoni smiles. "I started playing cricket, my class attendance declined, and it got very tough to catch up."

Perhaps a graduate degree has a salience for famous men from small-town India that we in metros can't comprehend.


For instance, fast bowler R.P. Singh, also from cricketing backwaters, intends to acquire an MBA. As Singh checks his mail on Dhoni's laptop, the Indian ODI captain teases the pace bowler: "He's going to take his degree from MIT (the Massachussetts Institute of Technology in the US)."

As a student, Dhoni himself never aimed that high—he was enrolled in Ranchi's Gossner College for an accountancy honours course. During his first-year exams he started to play professional cricket. "After that, I never got an opportunity to take any exams," Dhoni chuckles. Respectability apart, his belated return to college also testifies to his desire for a fuller life, to not be unidimensional. And time, he says, is running out. "These are the last few years," the 27-year-old says. "I don't want to do it when I'm 34-35. It'll be embarrassing!"

Dhoni is aware that his footprints carry more weight than others, that he could be an example to millions. "There are loads of children who are my fans and it will be a motivational thing for them, to learn that I'm also thinking about studies," he says. "Getting a degree is not merely about getting a degree or studying—it's about wanting to study, doing well in life. It's an important part of life." You could also take a corollary view: wouldn't Dhoni's return to college inspire the proverbial bookworm to walk down to the nearest playground? "There are people who are good at studies but not sports— but they should play some sport to keep fit," Dhoni explains. "They don't really want to be a Leander Paes or a Tendulkar, but sport is essential."

However, Dhoni's return to the classroom hasn't enthused all. For instance, at Gossner College, where Dhoni captained the cricket team, there's some heartburn that he's chosen a rival college. "All we can do is wish St.Xavier's best of luck," Siddharth Kumar Ecka, the principal, told a newspaper.

Dhoni hastens to dismiss the possibility of such collegiate envy. "It's not a fight among two colleges," he says. "The good thing is that I'm still doing my graduation from Ranchi and people should be happy!"

So, is Dhoni as keen a reader as, say, Rahul Dravid is? "It's like, I don't like reading, but at the same time I like reading—because of the subject," he says cryptically. And perhaps because I look a tad confused, he explains, "I'm not a very keen reader of books, I read only things that interest me." Physics doesn't interest him; chemistry he abhors—"I won't even turn the cover page!"

What he reads often is literature on defence. "Army, navy, air force—I'm keen to read about all that," Dhoni declares. "War history, war strategy, ammunition, weapons. I often carry books on these topics." Cricketers, great travellers all of them, can be great readers too—Rahul Dravid or Sunil Gavaskar, for example. Is this useful when playing the game? "What's good for a Dravid may not be good for a Praveen Kumar," Dhoni says. "Every human being is different."

And Dhoni himself will have to be different from other BCom students to secure his degree. The college has exempted him from attending classes as much for the hectic cricketing schedule as for security reasons. He will be supplied detailed study notes to prepare for his studies. For him, we suppose, it would be back to playing the slog overs, so to speak.

"Attending classes may not be possible from a security point of view," Dhoni says. "I mean mobbing, not attacks etc. The students will be distracted, normal schedules would be affected." Ideally, he'd like to visit the college at least once a year, and interact with students. "Perhaps it could be a motivational class...I'm not their age, you know." And one whose ledger balance, till now, accounts for scores settled on the green.