It turns out that the metal rivets holding blade and handle together had been replaced with wooden ones at the instance of his cousin Chandu, who was jealous of Aromal’s popularity. In a duel to the death with rival master Aringodar, Aromal’s sword breaks off at the hilt. Thus, Aromal Chekavar was the invincible scion of Puthuram Veedu in northern Kerala, the greatest Kalari warrior of his day. The heroes are heroic, the womenfolk are beautiful, the villains are demonaic in their malevolence and inevitably, good triumphs over evil. The stories are simplistic, and etched in uncompromising black and white. While wandering the paddy fields of my mother’s ancestral home in Palghat, I had heard workers sing of the storied warriors of Kalaripayattu, the ancient Keralite martial arts form, like Thatcholi Othenan and Aromal Chekavar. It was with the 1989 feature film Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha however that MT really captured my imagination - and at least in my mind, marked himself out as a writer beyond compare. Superb though those novels were, they were hardly unique - other Keralite writers have painted similar pictures with equal, or even greater, skill. That book, and its successors like Asuravithu, resonated with me for the subject matter as much as for the intensely evocative writing: I was reading those stories of the breakdown of the matriarchal system even as I was living it in real life. ‘MT’, who turned 76 today, has spent a lifetime chronicling the breakdown of the Nair tharavad starting with his debut novel titled, appropriately enough, Naalukettu. It is a world - sad, anachronistic, decaying - that readers of the fiction of MT Vasudevan Nair will immediately recognize. Looks are deceptive the home that means the world to me is a ruin waiting to happen, its foundations eaten away by familial squabbling and consequent neglect. Looks nice, doesn’t it - washed clean by rain, with its typical naalukettu facade holding out the promise of much history within? It’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while and I think this last problem I’ve had with my knee has confirmed to me that the time is now right.”Īn aide memoire of what Freddie could do, when he was fit enough to do it: Two of the last four years I’ve spent just in rehabilitation and I just can’t keep doing it for myself, my own sanity, my family and also for the team – because they need to move on as well. “Since 2005 I’ve done two years when I’ve done nothing but rehab from one injury or another. “I’ve been through four ankle operations, I had knee surgery just a couple of months ago and had three jabs in my knee on Monday just to get me right for this Test, so I took that as my body telling me that I can’t cope with the rigours of Test cricket. “My body has told me it’s time to stop,” Flintoff told Press Association Sport. Had he continued to play through this Ashes series, more commentators would likely have joined this chorus as it stands, Flintoff has announced his decision to quit Test cricket, and ensured that the next four Tests will be an extended wake in memory of his once-greatness. Flintoff is a fine cricketer, who will and should play if fit, but his stamp is no longer – if it ever has been – a guarantee of success. Without him, England have won 12 matches in the 23 games that he has played, England have won three. Flintoff has missed 25 of those because of injury. Since 2005, England have played 48 Tests, winning 15, losing 16 and drawing 17. So let us move on from the past and from the notion that Flintoff is a talisman for the England team – as the bare statistics suggest we must. You can give it as many MOTs as you like – and an MOT for Flintoff is another bout of rehabilitation with his physiotherapist and great friend, Dave Roberts – but it is a truism that when you set off on a long journey, you are just not quite sure whether you will reach the destination. Like a second-hand car with plenty of miles on the clock, Flintoff’s body has become unreliable. There is now a general realisation that the talismanic all-rounder of four years ago is not as central to England’s success as before. That is no longer the kind of heretical statement that would, once upon a time, have brought upon the perpetrator the Inquisition. Whisper it, although not if you happen to find yourself in Preston today, but the injury to Andrew Flintoff is not necessarily bad news for England. It is time, Michael Atherton wrote just the other day, for England to admit that Freddie Flintoff is no longer the reliable talisman Simon Barnes painted him to be.
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