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CRANK'S CORNER

        Golfers are said to go through it regularly. Left-arm spinners in cricket are strangely prone to it. They call it an attack of yips. Sounds decent and acceptable. Actually it is not. In layman terms, it simply translates to losing grip, suddenly, of the thing one has been doing for long. In a general sense, yips can be considered as a mental meltdown, that renders you totally incapable of performing some function that you otherwise would have no problem doing. It is akin to losing the password to your mental ATM. If you are a, say, soldier, you simply cease to know how to press the trigger. The feeling will be so bad that you will feel like shooting yourself dead. And obviously you can't do that as it is that specific skill that has taken leave of you.

        As I said, many a golfer has gone through this and emerged looking like a lumberjack with a disproportionately silly equipment in hand. (As an aside, just figure this out: What happens to an yips-attacked golfer? Well, he becomes the 'putt' of all jokes). A left-arm bowler ended his career, after a particular strong attack of yips, resembling a desperate traffic cop, flailing his arms without any real purpose.

        This particular bowler was a terminal case until some psychologist advised him to carry a smooth pebble in his pocket and give it a nerve-soothing rub before every ball. One day, however, the yips returned with a vengeance, and as delivery after delivery squirted straight up into the air, a teammate piped up: 'Buddy, try putting the ball in your pocket and bowling the pebble instead.' It was all a bit sad really, similar to watching a playful shooter at the beach missing the plot so completely that the small bullets start bouncing off the heart balloon of the stall owner and not of the real ones on the board.

        Anyway, a golfer or a cricket player confronting the demons of the mind and losing his talent for his game is mere bagatelle when compared to some others facing thesamemortification.

        Just imagine the scenario with Sonia Gandhi losing her ability to 'renounce' (as that is apparently the only skill that you can connect to her). What will happen to her then? More disturbingly, what of the country, as she may end up as the nation's Prime Minister? So she, and we, are better off she not being struck by this terminal slip of mind.

        Or come to think of it, what will we do if the Left parties suddenly lose their ability to strike work? Now this is staggering. The nation has survived so far simply because the Communists do not like to show up for work.

        They strike, therefore they are. But if they actually turn up at offices to work, rather than shout slogans or plaster the place near the canteen with posters, demanding among other things, pay arrears from Robert Clive's period, or reinstate those soldiers who were thrown out for participating in the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, then we will be in a huge quandary. Leftists as enemies are easier to handle than as friends.

        I am sure that the flyover on Peters Road was certainly the handiwork of an Unionist who mistakenly wandered into a group that had gathered to build a speed breaker. Work was obviously alien to him and so he naturally overdid it. So we now have a flyover which stands beautifully without anyone understanding why it is there. The only people who go up on it are those who missed out on the giantwheel at the theme park.

        Suppose the doctor, who is working on you in a bid to remove the truculent tonsillitis, is struck by a virulent case of yips. What then? Well, you may end up as an unintended victim of the kidney racket as doctors usually remove something even when they are out of touch.

        Or just picture this: What will the film world come to if Rajnikanth suddenly forgets the art of puffing a cigarette? Now that will be like watching Sai Baba with Yul Bryner looks absolutely incongruous.

        Talking of Sai Baba, his meeting with M Karunanidhi can actually be a strong case of yips for the latter, that is. The yellow-towelled leader suddenly had lost his life-long ability to badmouth gods and godmen and was actually singing paeans for them.

        But no matter what, one person will never have to confront yips. Despite the surging tide of modesty, I have to confess that it is me. Yips presupposes the fact that you have to have a talent for something in the first place to lose it later. I have none and hence don't fear that I will misplace it.

        But after reading me, you may get the dreadful yips losing your ability to read anything else at all. Talk of infections!