Saif Ali Khan is not keen to discuss his very private feelings on his father the iconic cricketer Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, whose birth anniversary falls on January 5.
After much convincing Saif speaks on the subject. “I will say this ,when a parent is gone and you miss him, for his wisdom and for what he might have contributed to you now … it’s nice to be able to watch old interview where they show who the parent was and how he thought. Something like Superman watching holograms of Jor-el after Krypton has been destroyed.”
Whenever he misses his father Saif finds himself drawn to old articles and videos on his father. “I find myself reading or watching things about Tiger from time to time when I miss him. When I was younger you could pick up any book on cricket and flip to the index and find where the two Pataudis, my father and his father, are featured; and I would be very proud. He achieved some incredible feats with one eye( or two eyes for that matter !) .”
Speaking on what his father was like in person, Saif recalls, “As a person he was cool under fire, very calm at all times. He told the funniest stories and his quiet support would mean the world to us, his children, as it did to his teammates.”
Wondering what it would have been like to have the Legend around on the cricket field, Saif says, “I think if he had played today , the media would have loved him and that quiet but stellar demeanour of his, that unique open batting stance, with the bat lifting unorthodoxly towards the gully but magically straightening at the last moment before contacting the ball. And that hat he wore rakishly angled across his bad eye . No one in the history of the sport has ever come back from that kind of accident and got hundreds against England and Australia . It’s the greatest sporting comeback in the history of the game .”
Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi’s legacy is timeless for Saif. “ His legacy to us, his family, is always with us: a sense of honour and poise; style and dignity with all things. His had an incredible life I think : from the jungles and palaces of Bhopal to the rarefied atmosphere of Winchester and Oxford , to the great cricket grounds all over the world to his home in Delhi where he would lounge in his kurta lungi , reading and watching birds and squirrels in the garden through his window “
Saif ends with words from his father’s book Tiger’s Tale. “I find his words in his book to be so apt: ‘They say in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king ! But not so in the keen eyed world of cricket , where I have had to settle for something less than the perfection (!!) I once sought. But still, lucky me; to have travelled this world and played this great game in the company of giants!”
Says Saif, “Rest in peace Tiger Pataudi , Abba , we love you and miss you.”