He could have been a film director, but that would be too direct. He could have been a scientist but that would be too logical. He could have been a motivation speaker but that would mean opening his own mouth and blowing his own trumpet all the time. He could have been a chess master but that would limit his scope to 64 squares and then he wouldn’t be Kiran Haribhau Kulkarni – a man who hates the idea of being definable...a man who gets uncomfortable with the idea of life being comfortable...a man who gets a peaceful expression on his face the moment he sees even the hint of a challenge...and in case there is none, he will surely invent one.

 

So, to stop being labeled only as a film director, or a social scientist, or a motivational speaker or a bureaucrat or a lawyer or a doctorate or a reformer, he decided to be all of the above and a lot more below.

 

If he were a little more flamboyant about his capabilities, he would be the thinking man’s Rajnikanth. How else could he manage to be the ashtavadhani, ashtapailu ashtavidyavibhushit intellectual acrobat that we have seen him become...perform and evolve stronger than ever. But I don’t think he could ever have been a posterboy of any sort; forget being an attention-seeking, self glorified superbeing even as a joke. 

 

Calling Kiran the master of the understatement too is an understatement...and since we’re talking about under expression, the less said the better, lest it changes the tone of the sketch as much as a character.

Some people collect coins, some books, some wealth, name, fame, girlfriends, centuries, wickets, acres, curses, likes and unlikes. Let’s face it, Kiran collects, no, not his growing pile of degrees, that’s so obvious, so he wouldn’t do that. He’s hungry for the experience...and that’s what he collects.

 

Time being the strongest currency. Experience is the most precious estate he has been busy amassing all his life. His academic degrees are merely, for him, the milestones and photo albums that tell him wherein his own map of life he has traveled. Sometimes we wonder if he even has a roadmap, but then we realise, those who have set out to search for the best within them need nothing more than an internal compass that tells them the directions – not right or left but right or wrong.

 

Now before this starts sounding like government-commissioned prose of praise and propaganda here we have the Kiran Quiz –

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1. Who reads more books than Kiran? Ans. Anybody.

2. Who other than Kiran contradicts anything you say or do? Ans. Nobody.

3. Who can puncture your joke with logic, or your logic with a joke?

Don’t answer that. It’s so obvious. And stating the obvious is so unKiran.

4. Who has an inbuilt thermostat that not only maintains personal temperature, but also cools down the emotional heat on the table?
5. Who doesn’t take decisions when taking them would be a wrong decision?
6. Who doesn’t play the game anymore when he knows that soon the game will play itself?

7. Who can sense the 65 th drop sweat of his opponent on a shasakeeya chessboard as he enjoys the 90 th drop of spiritual high with artistic flavor?

The first time someone meets him, he would wonder if all he has heard about this simple looking amicable man is true, because it peeps out of his behavior, neither from his effort to show his achievements, nor the ego that normally branches out of others to become larger than the tree.

Sometimes we suspect that there may be no underplay at play at all. Maybe, he doesn’t really consider these as big achievements at all. Maybe they’re just average sized acquisitions on his way to more challenging goals.

 

Tendulkar must have enjoyed every ball he played, must have counted every run he made, must have relished every bowling attack he smashed, or every century he reached, but he didn’t go hopping around somersaulting naked whenever he did it. The only times he must have shown human emotions when we got World Cup II and when he scored the superhuman multiplication of 100x100.

No comparison from here on because Tendulkar’s field is really a field and his skill is confined to a game. Kiran’s field is a little larger, the smallest starting from talukas, and then on to districts, states, country...and then stretching the boundary further away to include the world in it. The tough part is that here the scope and rules of the game keep changing even while playing; with no fixed umpires or a reliable rulebook except the Constitution of India. I’m sure even he doesn’t know when his 100x100 moment would arrive...or that whether such a tangible moment could be identified. If you ask us, we have a simple target – a Nobel, Booker, CommonWealth prize – any or all of the above. It may sound crazy, but it is tangible. If you see us, we are always on the edge, counting how much further away or closer we have gotten to our ridiculous goal. You’ll never see that in Kiran’s eyes. Yet, we are sure he has one eye fixed on his inner game while the other roves onto matters legal and political.

 

Kiran’s indefinable nature doesn’t begin and end with his career sketch. In fact it originates from the person that he is. We have seen him in a few stages of his struggle...and even when he was in the middle of it, he looked like a well-composed poem about to recite itself. And at every stage of my life, we found him as a lighthouse – personal, to steer us away when dealing with our penchant with songs and singers or draw us into a professional playground.

 

In all these years, he has never been on the receiving end but on the giving one.

What’s it to be Kiran we wonder. It can’t be the same as us who, at one point felt finding love was the raison d’être. He did, but he never flaunted it or grieved its loss like us. Love happened. He respected and protected it. He never challenged whoever mocked it, but answered them through consolidated, concrete achievements...mere milestones that put out the Brett Lees and the Shoib Akhtars in their place, in a manner of saying.

Now there is a catch. A person who does well personally, academically and professionally, chances are...and in a strong way, he may not manage well enough on the domestic front...bad news for the Brett-Shoib duo – the same wife, we may not know her contributions or her sacrifices in turning this person into a personality, but we can see...and we are sure it’s much deeper than make-up or even a makeover. For instance, he began dressing better; seems more organised; even better composed. It must have started with a subtle aversion to his erstwhile mustache.

 

His idea of propagating a thought to the next team to replicate a working model doesn’t stop at the government level. In fact, it begins at home. His daughter with humongous potential and (if corruption be pardoned) could have been studying (by her choice) at NASA, but no, she sees the universe through her OWN telescope – the universe which is the same really, from anywhere else in the world, but the big difference is in her vision, is how Kiran sees his little girl...and how she sees her Aai and Baba. That makes a world of a difference. And this is what will one day bring an instance where she will say – “Arey Baba, look at this!” and he will peer into the telescope and see the world that he wants to create.

                                                                                                    _____

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