The Embers Of 2020 Part 03

It is December 04, 2020. This is Part 03 of my embers series. Embers are hot pieces of coal, wood, charcoal, dry leaves, and tight balls of coir, cotton and wool. Embers are red. The embers are glowing brighter today. They are burning hotter. The embers have been rekindled. I chose to look back at Lagaan. It’s a day lost in reminiscing but a whole lot of wisdom gained through reverie.

Lagaan is a 2001 Hindi movie. Lagaan means tax. This is tax that citizens paid the ruler or the government. This is tax that the British Raj collected from the citizens of Champaner. Champaner is a protectorate of the British, India’s colonisers. In exchange for a combination and an independent identity and protection, the king of Champaner – Raja Puran Singh – is required to pay tax. Tax in Lagaan is protection money. We pay; we live. We don’t pay; we don’t live.

Music and cricket

The movie is set in 1893, long after the Boston Tea Party and America’s War of Independence. It is set in distant India from an Oscar and an American perspective. Lagaan was India’s entry in the foreign films category. 

It was released internationally as Lagaan: Once Upon A Time In India. It has been described as an epic musical and a sports movie. India loves movie songs and cricket. Lagaan has both.

Lagaan’s sensational compositions and its background score are A.R. Rahman’s amazing works of performing art. Lagaan did not fetch Rahman an Oscar. Sad. Seven years later, Rahman would win two Oscars – one for the best original score and the other for the best original song – at the 81st Academy Awards in 2009. These were for Slumdog Millionaire, a 2008 movie.  

Let us get back to Lagaan. Aamir Khan is the movie’s principal actor. He is the hero. He plays the role of Bhuvan. He is the producer too. He is known the world over as a talented and versatile actor. Amitabh Bachchan – the hugely admired Bollywood thespian and revered veteran – does the narration.

Provocation and leadership

Bhuvan has no business to be what he is in this movie. He has no responsibility or duty to rise to do what he does. He’s just an ordinary farmer and an ordinary bloke. He’s an ordinary bloke first provoked by a British army officer, Captain Arnold Russell.

Bhuvan is an affected citizen next when Captain Russell sets out a framework that monetises the outcomes of a “challenge cricket match”. The challenge cricket match would be between (1) a well-trained cricket team comprising British army officers and (2) a bunch of cricket-ignorant village blokes.

The framework is a “tree diagram” that we usually draw to explain and to envisage the future, the likely scenarios, our actions and the likely outcomes. It is up to Bhuvan to accept or to reject Captain Russell’s challenge.

Play, outcomes, payoffs

First, if Bhuvan turns a coward and rejects the challenge, Champaner will pay twice as much tax in 1893 because Champaner has unpaid tax dues from 1892. Please gaze at 1893. Please shuffle the digits in 1893. You will get 1983 as one of the shuffled combinations. Does 1983 ring some bells? Think of Kapil Dev and Tunbridge Wells.

Second, if Bhuvan accepts the challenge, he has to play the match. His opponents would be a team comprising British army officers.

Third, Bhuvan has then to get a team in place. The teammates have to be taught cricket! Then they will have to be trained. There is plenty of work to do.

Fourth, if Bhuvan’s team wins, Champaner will not have to pay any tax. The tax due and the current period tax will be cancelled.

Fifth, if Bhuvan’s team loses, Champaner will have to pay three times the tax.

Undaunted by uncertainty

The stakes are high. Monsoon-starved, rain-starved, crop-starved and cash-starved Champaner is unable to pay protection money to the British. Bhuvan accepts the challenge. Bhuvan is not Champaner’s king. Yet he accepts the challenge. Bhuvan does not know who in Champaner will play cricket. Yet he accepts the challenge. He accepts the challenge on behalf of his people. There is naive hope and raw resoluteness.

Bhuvan accepts the challenge for two reasons. First, certain defeat is worse than uncertain defeat. Had Bhuvan meekly discarded Captain Russell’s offer – and Captain Russell is a great man because he made the offer – Champaner would have been in miserable debt forever. It would have to pay back tax and the current period tax. This is the certainty equivalent, 2X, where X is the annual tax due.

After accepting the challenge, Bhuvan will have to expend a whole lot of managerial, mentoring and motivational effort to get the team match-ready. Then the match will have to be played against the well-trained British team comprising army officers. Who will be the captain of this cricket team? Captain: Captain Russell!  

Match day

Let us move to the match day. If Bhuvan’s Champaner wins, the tax due and tax payable would be set to zero. However, if Bhuvan’s Champaner loses, the tax payable would be three times. It would be 3X.

How Bhuvan reacts to these is the essence of Part 03 of the embers series. An uncertain loss is more desirable than an estimable loss. An uncertain loss signals the prospect of an uncertain win.

An uncertain win is more valuable than an estimable loss. Committing to the probable obligation of paying three times the tax due – 3X, upon losing the match – seemed an affordable future payment in order to pursue a probable redemption and exemption through a win.

Bhuvan valued the joys and the gains arising from an uncertain win. Playing with a yet-to-be-created team and then winning with a yet-to-be-trained team seemed to possess immense prospects and payoffs compared with meek acquiescence.

The cost of meek and cowardly acquiescence: 2X. The probable loss from accepting the challenge and losing the match: 3X. The uncertain gain from playing and winning the match: exemption from tax and the joys of doing the impossible. There is a pleasant tweak and an immense payoff here. Captain Russell gets to know on match day that he would have to pay 2X if Bhuvan’s Champaner goes on to win. Bhuvan’s Champaner goes on to win!

Lagaan and SARS-CoV-2 

The world has refused to acquiesce meekly to SARS-CoV-2. Every nation has stirred thousands of Bhuvans (please ignore the gender bias) within its population.

The lockdowns, the social distancing, the partial opening up, resource planning, resource allocation and the research towards getting a vaccine are the real-life equivalents of the fictional events in Lagaan.

Mr. Ravunniarath Karthik Menon and I have been friends for over 25 years. He is a reputed business strategist. We plan to collaborate on comparing the real-life equivalents emerging from SARS-CoV-2 with the  fictional events in Lagaan. The mapping of reality on to fiction will constitute a part of the embers series.