Lalit Modi the consummate Socialite. There is not a single instance that comes to mind, of anyone having made it so fast so high up the Socialite ladder, as he did. At that time his urgency suggested it would break all barriers of speed, yet he made it look so graceful at ease, that we are strained to concede it to him. He was a classic case of how a Socialite must rise & be loved by everyone.
To plum it, he also succeeded inimitably at his task, becoming the most powerful man in the game of cricket. But he forgot to discover the rest. More important than rising up, is standing your ground once up there. He floundered badly. To top it he engaged in a public spat with the most respected Shashi Tharoor & the most powerful Congress Party. If he thought he could win, well, he gave himself a bit too much credit there. Yet, we strongly believe that if someone can come back from the ashes (clichéd) he leads the queue.
No one imagined in their living dreams that IPL would touch such heights. Lalit managed to achieve the unfathomable. He knit together celebrities, entertainment, viewership and cricket, to create a property that no one believed in when he first set out to build.
Opinions are formed in a progression of open discourse. If no opportunity for forming opinion exists then it is left to the moods of the masses & influential individuals. People stick to opinions either in a self congratulatory belief of having arrived at it themselves or because they take great pride in the pain they endured to genuinely grasp it. In any case each one spell of vanity. Applies aptly to Lalit’s case, mostly against him.
Allow your memory to jog around in the recent past. Shashi Tharoor started it all with a tweet which eventually led to his downfall so forcefully, never mind that he seized Lalit Modi with him. Lalit followed with the same oversight when he tweeted about Chris Cairns match fixing at ICL. Less than 24 hours ago Cairns won a seven-day libel lawsuit against him that has set him back £1.5 million in damages. His passport stands cancelled, he has notices against him world-wide and now a lost lawsuit.
But as we know now, he should be back soon. That is what counts for cricket and for him. Stay glued for we have some more coming soon. On our part we are at it, keenly scrapping away the surface dirt. While you may entertain that he has one up his nose, he is working the one up his sleeve.
Photo credit: OutlookIndia.com
