A few months before news broke that Tom Alter is battling skin cancer, he happened to be in the building that houses the mid-day office
A few months before news broke that Tom Alter is battling skin cancer, he happened to be in the building that houses the mid-day office. He had just finished a promotional event for the film Sargoshiyan in which he played Alan Alter. He came by to inquire if I was in, and was told that I was busy in the edit meeting. I was most disappointed to miss him.
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Tom and I first met at The Marine Sports bookshop in Dadar where I worked in the late 1980s. The establishment was the one-stop destination for sporting literature, but we didn't have what Tom wanted -- Jesse Owens' book, My Life As A Black Man and White Man.
I had an extract from the book, the very section Tom needed. I offered to lend it to him. His urgency saw me sitting in a taxi with him (he always travelled in a black and yellow) to my Prabhadevi home.
I also showed him a few 1971 issues of Sportsweek which I had just found during a trip to Pune. Tom was impressed. They were from an era in which his love for sport was at its peak. He asked if I would part with them. I couldn't and he fully understood why.
I was stunned by his modesty and how polite he could be to someone who didn't know him. That was the measure of the man.
Tom loved his sport. That love and obsession came shining through in his writing. His profile series in Sportweek & Lifestyle magazine with photographer Anil Sharma was sports writing at its best. Playing sport got him to better appreciate skill, labour and values. He didn't enjoy weaving threads of controversy in his writing.
I didn't see Tom wield the willow or bowl his outswingers, but Bharat Kunderan, the brother of Test star Budhi, reckoned he would have been a successful cricketer on the Mumbai club circuit. In the early 1970s, Tom would come to Khar Gymkhana to practise with Bharat. In the later years, he was a regular in an invitation team for the over-40s, eight-a-side tournament held there.
Tom's video interview with Sachin Tendulkar for Grandstand, a video magazine which rolled out from the mid-day group, has become one of the most watched Tendulkar clips on YouTube. Like us, he followed Tendulkar's career closely. Despite his tight schedule, Tom wanted to witness some part of the batting icon's final Test at Wankhede in 2013. He didn't mind waiting for me to arrive at his Bombay Central residence late one night to hand over a ticket to him. Little did I know that it would be my last meeting with Tom although we kept in touch over the phone. He didn't carry a cell phone but he'd never fail to return a call made to his landline and he would always remember how we worked together for a television show called Sportlight.
Only recently, I discovered I had a few spares of the Sportsweek 1971 issues Tom wanted 30 years ago. It didn't dawn on me that he would have still loved to have them. It's the same regret I feel for not being able to meet him in May.
Tom played the game of life in the right spirit. Like a good sportsman, he worked hard at his game, pleased his audience and showed grit in a crisis. He deserves nothing short of a standing ovation.
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