October 18, 1990. The day will be forever etched in this schoolboy’s memory. A student of Std XII, I had wrangled a pass to the Eden Gardens that morning. No, there wasn’t a Test match on. A few hours later, as I pushed, shoved, fell down, got up and finally found myself a seat inside the world’s second largest cricket stadium that could then hold over 80,000 people on a normal day, there were at least a hundred thousand people inside, many standing in the aisles. And believe it or not, there were an equal number of people outside. We were all cheering one man, a man most of us had never seen but read about, a man everyone from 18 to 80 considered a hero and a living legend – Nelson Mandela.