Yaadhum oore yaavarum kelir meaning full#

Thus, to arrange your body in a particular manner (as in placing your hands together in the gesture of namaste) is to produce a “text” full of meaning that must then be “read” by your interlocutor (the addressee of your greeting). Of course, to enter with me into an exploration of what I mean here you first have to consent to an expanded definition of “document,” where the term refers not just to something written, or even to a text in the way a film is a text, but rather to any unit in any system of signification or meaning-making. The German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin famously observed, “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Namaste, linked inextricably to the hands-pressed-together gesture that accompanies it, might be an excellent illustration of this thesis. What does it take to isolate the utter beauty of a great sporting event from its political connotations? What does it take to isolate my enjoyment of my own humble goal decades ago on a soccer field in Lagos from the postcolonial context in which it was scored? And what form might a defense of such aesthetic value take? Students of literary criticism will recognize the familiarity of these questions. As the soccer world cup in Brazil concludes, as a fan I want to ask rather about the converse-about what might be called the aesthetics of sports.

Yaadhum oore yaavarum kelir meaning free#

Global sports events, such as the cricket or soccer world cups, can hardly be free of these entanglements-indeed, they might very well be primary modes of establishing and advancing identitarian claims. We know the intimate links sports has with identity-the ways in which, for example, nationalistic decolonizing movements were and are intertwined with sports. Let us just say that the encounter on that Nigerian soccer field was overdetermined.īy now, you might be thinking I want to draw conclusions about sports and geopolitics but, no, this is a blog that heads in another direction.

I was a postcolonial Indian boy in postcolonial Nigeria, not at all a simple thing to be, united with as well as separated from my Nigerian schoolmate in myriad ways by a global colonial history (subject for a future blog). I confess I later, oblivious to the immorality of nuclear weaponization, swelled with pride at this acknowledgement of my prowess on the field. My Nigerian schoolmate, clearly more aware of world news, was alluding to this event in his irate challenge to me. As the teams trudged back to their respective halves for kick-off, a rival player ran up and demanded, “What? You’re scoring nuclear goals now?” It was only after the game that I found out India had detonated an atomic device at Pokhran, thereby announcing its nuclear ambitions to the world.

It was an exhilarating moment of pure physical exertion. I remember one game in particular in which I scored from a half-back position, bursting uncharacteristically through opposing defensive lines to score a goal. Gregory’s, the school I attended in Lagos in the 1970s.