Time Freezes in ‎Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day

(“Groundhog Day,” starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, was released a quarter-century ago today. On this Friday, the 2^nd of February, 2018, the only celebrity groundhog of the universe, Punxsutawney Phil, has seen his shadow, predicting another six weeks of winter. But what accounts for the timeless appeal of the movie, for its enduring charm? I think the reason is clear: Time. The movie explores the mystery of time subtly yet forcefully, mixing humor with depth that forces the viewer – through the experience of the arrogant and narcissistic weatherman Phil Connors who is trapped in a time warp and finds himself living in the same Groundhog Day over and over again - to confront mortality, life, love, loss, priority, memory, leading ultimately to redemption and enlightenment. The sign of a timeless movie is not just that newer viewers also become fans but that repeat viewers find something new every time they see it again.)

What if there isn’t a tomorrow? There wasn’t one today!

Think of the myriad ways by which we describe time: time flies, time crawls, time stands still, time loops, time is finite, time is infinite, time is money, time dilates, the arrow of time, cyclical time, circular time, linear time, non-linear time, geological time, atomic time, fullness of time, texture of time, fleeting time, recursive time, in the nick of time, the gift of time, the labyrinth of time, and particularly in Silicon Valley, billable time.

Probably no metaphor is used more extensively to describe an entity in literature and science than time. Listen to the echo of time in “To Be Or Not To Be.” Proust spent decades “In Search of Lost Time.” For Muhammad Ali, “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” To Thoreau, “Time is but the stream I go
a-fishing in.” From Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney:  So the little moments,/Humble though they be,/Make the mighty ages/Of Eternity. Rabindranath Tagore: "Floating on the sea of time, yet cannot grasp a drop of it!"

Physicist Richard Feynman: “A positron is an electron going backwards in time.” How about ‘forever and ever’ time? Physicists who won the 2017 physics Nobel Prize (Thorne, Weiss, Barish) were cited for “detecting gravity waves, predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago, that came from a collision between two black holes. It took 1.3 billion years for the waves to arrive at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory detector in the United States. The LIGO registered the wave as a tone nicknamed the ‘cosmic chirp.’”

And if entanglement in space from quantum mechanics is not strange enough, how about entanglement in time?

So what do you want out of life?

The best way to honor the gift of life is to honor the gift of time …

The night sky is dense with stars. A new one seems to bloom every few minutes, making the dark domed garden even more inviting. But it is not the stars that hold me in their spell.

It is the trees.

I am in Chittagong, in the city of my birth by the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, almost eight thousand miles away from my ‘naturalized’ home in San Jose, California.

The mango and the betel nut saplings that my father had planted a half-century ago are now taller than the three-story building of my adolescent years. Rustling and dreamlike, they speak to me in a voice so real and with such urgency that I have to grip the railing from trembling.

“What have you done with your time?” they ask. “You saw us in our infancy Now the stars are within our reach. What have you done with the years gone by?”

I scan my life for an answer, memory guiding me down a path of light and shadow. Experienced life’s inevitable ebb and flow. Father passed away a decade ago after fighting diabetes for years. Children grow up, move out. Mother confined to a wheelchair as time takes its relentless toll on this irrepressible woman.

Wife and I continue working, retirement not in sight for economic reasons, even though we are advanced in years.

But ‘summing up’ isn’t what these animated trees are interested in. They want to know if I have used my time well. They are not interested in fame or wealth, neither of which I have, but whether I have honored time, given it the respect it deserved. They want to know if I was able to coax from it the ability to connect the dots that lay scattered about me, each a milestone of sorts in search of an elusive meaning.

So I really don’t know if I have used my time well in six decades. The truth and the tragedy are that I probably never will!

Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?
I don’t think so, but I could check with the kitchen.

Do you know what today is?
No, what?
Today is tomorrow. It happened.

What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same,
 and nothing that you did mattered?

That about sums it up for me.

Do you ever have déjà vu?

Didn't you just ask me that?

Although it is winter, the night is mild and redolent of Bay of Bengal a few miles away. A preternatural silence has enveloped the bustling port city and the occasional tinkle of a rickshaw at the edge of my consciousness only deepens this silence. I find myself caught in a time warp that seems to extend beyond the Milky Way. My wife is asleep in the room where she slept as a bride over three decades ago, unaware of the ghosts of yesteryears crowding me. A breeze rustles the mango leaves and sways the betel nut trees and I hear their insistent question: “What have you done with the gift of time?”

At last I give up. “I don’t know,” I whisper.

Sometimes, people just die.

Not today.

How about you? What do you want?

What I really want is someone like you.

I think you're the kindest, sweetest, prettiest person I've ever met in my life. I've never seen anyone that's nicer to people than you are. The first time I saw you... something happened to me. I never told you but... I knew that I wanted to hold you as hard as I could. I don't deserve someone like you. But if I ever could, I swear I would love you for the rest of my life.

It's beautiful. I don't know what to say.

I do. Whatever happens tomorrow, or for the rest of my life, I'm happy now... because I love you.

It's so beautiful!... Let's live here.

We'll rent, to start.

Phil Connors gets caught in a time warp and finds himself slowly turning mad. He embraces death but the warp keeps delivering him to life’s shore. Slowly the scales of solipsism and arrogance fall from his eyes and by the time he comes free of the “same old, same old,” he has found the meaning and purpose of his life.

If only the rest of us are as lucky!

Playful Pugilist with a Purpose

(You can also read the article here.)

In May of 1989, Muhammad Ali made a surprise appearance at a community dinner of the South Bay Islamic Association of San Jose, California. It took us about three seconds to change the program and make him the keynote speaker for the evening. Ali spoke slowly, between a rasp and a whisper, and although time has dimmed my memory of the details, I can still recall the essence of his message: Take it easy. Enjoy life. Don’t take yourself too seriously but don’t forget you have a purpose in life as well.

Ali holding Ayesha Rahim, 4-year-old daughter of the author,
during his May, 1989, visit.

Those who knew Ali only through his hyperbolic self-promotion would have found his mix of play and purpose strange but that was Ali. Beneath the bluster was a serious soul who thought deeply about race, responsibility and justice and how they shaped him into who he was.

Aware that he was blessed in the sweet science, Cassius Clay (later to give up his “slave name” to become Muhammad Ali) was determined to make it his ticket to success but on his own terms, a daring dream in the Jim Crow South of the ‘60s. When he beat Sonny Liston against all odds in February of 1964 (eighteen days after the Beatles first landed in America) to become the heavyweight champion of the world, white America was stunned but a wide-eyed world embraced the genius of a fast-talking, fleet-footed heavyweight with lightning-fast hands.

For the following two decades, Ali would take us on an emotional roller-coaster ride. When he won, we won; when he lost, we lost. Fight fans will forever debate who the “greatest of all time” is but can anyone dispute that Ali at his best will remain peerless? Even past his prime, Ali could summon that rare intestinal fortitude to beat the fearsome Foreman and Frazier, although at a terrible physical cost.

The confluence of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War convulsed America but transformed Ali into an icon. He spoke truth to power long before politicians turned the phrase into a platitude. From “I have seen the light and I am crowing” to “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” Ali opened raw wounds in the psyche of America, provoking hate and anger that in the end proved cathartic for our nation.

Ali’s unique brand of humor eased his acceptance. His punchy poems made us laugh at a time when laughter was scarce. After he had won the light heavyweight gold medal in the Rome Olympics in 1960 and received a hero’s welcome in Louisville, Kentucky, Ali and a friend walked up to a restaurant in his hometown one rainy day.

Waitress: “We don’t serve Negroes.”

Ali: “Well, we don’t eat them either.”

Drawn by the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, Ali had become a Muslim in 1964. Following a falling out with Malcolm X that he was to regret later, Ali gradually gave up on the supremacist ideology of the Nation and settled on mainstream Islam.

Ali found strength, serenity and purpose in his faith but he wasn’t immune to vice. He could be cruel inside the ring - Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrell - and unfaithful outside. Ali never sought to idealize his life, however, and publicly acknowledged his moral failings. He was as devoted to his two out-of-wedlock daughters as he was to his nine children from four marriages.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, as Ali watched the terrorist attacks unfold on TV at his home in Berrien Springs, Michigan, his confidant Howard Bingham asked him how he felt about different religions. Replied Ali: “Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams. They have different names, but all contain water. Religions have different names but all contain truth.” In my three decades of attending prayer services in mosques throughout America, I never heard an Imam summarize our common humanity in such compelling words. He would later affirm: “I wouldn't … represent Islam if it were the way the terrorists make it look.”

Today’s generation, weaned on social media and celebrity idiosyncrasies, may find Ali’s legacy hard to fathom. That’s a pity. Ali was the real McCoy. He transcended boxing by standing up for his belief even though it cost him the best years of his career. Racism scarred his soul, traumatized as he was at 14 by the fate of another fourteen-year-old named Emmett Till. But his intolerance was for the sin, not the sinner. Meeting with both triumph and disaster, he came as close as anyone to treat the two impostors just the same.

"The Trials of Muhammad Ali"

If you have the courage of your conviction and act on it, people will love and respect you, even if they hate and scorn you at first.

More than anyone else in recent memory, Muhammad Ali epitomizes this truth. Ali spoke truth to power long before politicians turned the phrase into a cliché. In the Jim Crow South of the ‘60s, when lynching of Blacks were daily occurrences, Ali stood out for justice and dignity for his people, unafraid of losing his life, challenging White America to look into its soul and acknowledge its bigotry and racism. From “I am free to be what I want to be” to “I have seen the light and I am crowing,” Ali opened raw wounds in the American psyche, provoking anger and fury that in the end proved cathartic.

That he was also a three-time world heavyweight boxing champion seems, in retrospect, almost incidental to the enormous religious, social and political role he played outside the ring.

“The Trials of Muhammad Ali,” a new documentary (Director: Bill Siegel, Running Time: 1 hour, 34 minutes), examines Ali’s life in the context of a turbulent America in which segregation was the norm and Blacks were convinced that “The White Man’s Heaven is a Black Man’s Hell.”

The combination of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War protests in the mid sixties shook America to its core. Drawn by the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, Ali had become a Muslim in 1964. Earlier, he had shocked the boxing world by defeating the “unbeatable” Sonny Liston.

Most Americans regarded Black Muslims as a cult, sinister and treacherous, bent on destroying their country. When Cassius Marcellus Clay publicly and proudly shed his “slave name” and became Muhammad Ali almost fifty years ago, Blacks had found their hero and racially-driven Whites, politicians and pundits their enemy. Even the TV talk-show host David Susskind, considered a liberal, labeled Ali in 1968 “a disgrace, a simplistic fool and a pawn.”

The documentary pulls no punches. Stokey Carmichael of the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam (who later split from Elijah Muhammad and was assassinated in 1965) gave Ali the framework he needed to articulate his bitterness against racist America. He defended Islam as the “slave-breaking” religion. When the draft board reclassified him as eligible for military service in 1967 and ordered him to join the Army, Ali declared himself a conscientious objector because of his Muslim beliefs. Overnight, he became a traitor for refusing any role in America’s war machine. He was convicted but Ali never wavered. His logic was as powerful as it was simple: Why should I travel thousands of miles to kill brown and black people who never harmed me or my people for a government that continues to oppress and kill my people, he demanded to know. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he famously declared. When an army brass kept calling him Cassius Clay during a hearing, he politely but firmly kept telling him, “It’s Muhammad Ali, sir,” until his interlocutor obliged.

In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction on technical grounds.

“I am no slave,” Ali is quoted in the documentary more than once. “Don’t call me by my slave name.” When boxers Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell insisted on calling him Clay, Ali punished them so viciously in the ring that the New York Times writer Robert Lipsyte called the Terrell fight “a truly terrible moment in boxing history.”

In this young 21st-century, history seems to be repeating itself. America now finds itself as polarized as it was during the ‘60s. The sacrifices that African-Americans made has no doubt led to much racial progress, but the toxic social forces that Ali and others fought against seem to have reappeared, although in subtler forms. Wealth inequality is the new Jim Crow, the rise of Tea Party ideologues the new racial reality. We need brash and bold “loudmouths” like Ali, be they white, black, brown or any shade in between, to demand just and legitimate distribution of wealth and opportunities, in the absence of which American society is bound to fatally fracture.

Ali has been silenced and immobilized by Parkinson’s disease. People who see him now cannot bear to look at him a second time. Yet his legacy endures and inspires. There have been several excellent documentaries on his life and boxing career, including (1996) “When We Were King” and “Muhammad Ali: The Whole Story.” But in “The Trials of Muhammad Ali,” Bill Siegel has woven a complex and fascinating story that is at once bracing and disturbing, a story that is worthy of the subject whose elusive essence it tries to capture and largely succeeds.

  

Hana Ali, the third-youngest of Ali’s nine children and by all accounts closest to him of her siblings, calls her father in the documentary “the eighth wonder of the world.”

How true, how so very true!

Muhammad Ali Turns 70

Muhammad Ali turns 70 today. Happy Birthday, Greatest of All Time!

Time and Parkinson's may have slowed the champ down but his story continues to inspire millions around the world. Some of Ali's feats came from inside the ring but the reason why his story resonates is because of what he did outside. He spoke out against the Vietnam War and became a catalyst for young Americans to take a firm stand against that distant and futile adventure. He rejected the Jim Crow mentality of his country in the '60s with an audacity that was breathtaking and moving. He gave underdogs, particularly African-Americans, the courage to take charge of their destiny. He spoke truth to power long before politicians turned the phrase into a platitude. The boldness to go from Cassisus Clay to Muhammad Ali alone would have moved mountains.

Ali did all this and more but he faltered several times as well. He was sometimes cruel and mean toward his opponents (Floyd Patterson, Joe Frazier). He was callous toward his wife Belinda. He had extra-marital affairs.

Ali acknowledges his failings and that's what allows him to move forward. He was not one to hold grudge against anyone, including himself. He looked in the mirror and saw not only how pretty he was, as he was fond of reminding us, but also how flawed. He touched us with his humanity.

"These are the cards I was dealt, so don't be sad," he often tells his wife and children as they struggle to reconcile with his condition. He has found a serenity in his faith - Islam - that steadies him and fills him with gratitude for having come this far.

Ali never turned down a request for an autograph. He visited the sick whenever he could, persuaded a man about to commit suicide to choose life, and raised millions of dollars for charitable causes. His sense of humor and raw intelligence and, of course, his unparalleled ability to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee made him one of the most beloved icons of our time.

"I'd rather suffer now than in the hereafter," Ali says when people tell him how sorry they are about his Parkinson's. A champion all the way.

Joe Frazier (1944-2011)

I remember the "Fight of the Century" vividly not because it was the most anticipated bout in boxing history until then but because I (along with another 70 million people) was in existential danger. The date was March 9, 1971 (March 8 in New York). The Pakistani army had put a stranglehold on East Pakistan, later to become Bangladesh. There were aerial bombardments day and night and the Pakistani army would soon launch a genocide against unarmed Bangladeshis. I had taken shelter in a friend's house on that day but in spite of the danger around me, I was listening intently to the BBC's running commentary on an epic battle taking place in distant New York.

My hero, Muhammad Ali, was fighting the pretender to the throne, a ferocious fighter named Joe Frazier. I had no doubt that Ali would win. How could this fearless pugilist, who had galvanized the world's downtrodden and the oppressed and who spoke truth to power so boldly, lose?

But the unthinkable happened. Ali lost. With his relentless attack, Frazier had apparently worn Ali down. I carried the hurt with me for several days until the genocide by the Pakistani army made everything else insignificant.

Bangaldesh had become an independent nation in December of 1971. In August of 1974, I found myself in Philadelphia as a graduate student at Temple University. By then, I had seen the "fight of the century" dozens of times on TV. One day, on a lark, I called up Frazier's gym in North Philly. Frazier was preparing for a fight (I think it was with Joe Bugner) and the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that his sparring sessions were open to the public. I wanted to see him in action. An assistant answered and gave me the time of the session.

I took the subway and suddenly there was the man himself, throwing punches at his sparring partners. In person, he looked rather small but there was no mistaking his intent, which was to tear off his opponent's head. The ring looked too small to contain his ferocity.

After the sessions, Frazier was all smiles and mingled with the onlookers. I remember the scene after all these years.

Ali and Frazier fought two more times, including the classic "Thrilla in Manila", and Ali avenged himself by winning both times.

Boxing fans knew that if Frazier ran into a bigger version of himself, he would be defeated. That's what happened with George Foreman who punished him mercilessly in their two bouts, although Frazier gave a better account of himself in the second bout than in the first.

Frazier nursed the psychological hurt that Ali inflicted on him and apparently took the hurt to his grave. That's unfortunate. On learning of his nemesis's death, Ali said, “The world has lost a great champion. I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration.”

It would have been wonderful if Ali and Frazier had reconciled in public. Both brought out the best boxing skills in each other and both helped each other reach the summit of pugilistic excellence. But a correction is in order in the wake of all the glorification of Frazier now that he has moved on. Contrary to what some sports writers are saying or have said, Ali was the better boxer but even more importantly, the better human being. If we are defined by the challenges we take on in life, there just is no comparison. That in no way diminishes the fundamental goodness of Frazier.

Rest in peace, Joe.

Crossing the Race Rubicon

The improbable candidate achieved the unimaginable and overnight, the world became a better place.

Four years ago, the president-elect said at the Democratic National Convention, “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.”

Last night, it all came together for Barack ("blessing" in Swahili) Hussein Obama in a way that even he could not have dreamed in 2004.

Obama stirred hope in the hearts of people, not just in America but around the globe, but let us not forget that he matched his hope with hard work, undaunted by setbacks and by those who said, “No you can’t.”

“Yes we can” is now a part of the American vocabulary.

By electing an African-American as the 44th president of the United States, America has finally crossed the race Rubicon.

Martin Luther King’s dream that we should be judged not by the color of our skins but by the content of our character is now a reality, even if tempered by memories of hidden wounds too painful for some to forget.

African-Americans voted overwhelmingly for Obama but he could not have been elected president if whites did not vote for him in such unprecedented numbers also, from idealistic students and blue collar workers to liberal intellectuals and Hollywood moguls. Consider this stark fact: North Dakota, Utah, Montana, Vermont, Nebraska and New Mexico went for Obama although there isn't much of an African-American presence in those six states. The biggest shocker of all: Obama won North Carolina and Indiana, two of the reddest states in America. Until now.

America has become colorblind.

While this holds profound lessons for all, it is particularly meaningful for European nations where immigrants are often treated as second-class citizens even after decades of invaluable contributions to their respective societies. Perhaps Obama’s victory will convince France, England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Spain and other countries to also become colorblind and inclusive. There really is no other way.

Until now, when the world looked up to America, it was because of its science and technology and medicine. But now the world will also look at America with awe and wonder because of its socially enlightened citizenry. Who could have ever imagined that?

Reversing the “either you are with us or against us” threat that defined George Bush’s belligerent foreign policy is a priority for Barack Obama. He has promised to meet unconditionally with any world leader to discuss and negotiate peace. The international temperature seems to have already cooled by a few degrees, and even though securing agreements with nations alienated by American arrogance may take time, the prospects are promising, given the spontanaeous outpouring of global goodwill for the president-elect.

The danger posed by global warming is another priority. Throughout his campaign, Obama spoke passionately about the earth’s dwindling resources, its relentless exploitation by all but Western countries in particular, the urgency of clean energy sources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint, and legislating sane policies based on scientific evidences to protect us and our children from rising seas and diminishing landmass.

But the sheer wonder of an African-American making the White House his home for at least the next four years is so astonishing that it blocks out other thoughts.

It was on New Year’s Day in 1863 that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. A hundred years later, in 1963, Martin Luther King informed Americans and the world that he had a dream. A year later, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, outlawing racial segregation in schools, public places, and employment. Johnson followed it up with the National Voting Rights Act in 1965 to empower African-Americans to cast ballots without fear.

But the laws were only theories and it took many more years before they became reality for those they were meant to protect. A movie currently playing in theatres –The Secret Life of Bees – based on the best-selling novel of the same title by Sue Monk Kidd – gives viewers an idea of how many lives were lost and shattered before African-Americans could actually vote.

While many commentators have reflected on these historic milestones in the wake of Obama’s victory, one name has gone unmentioned. It is that of Muhammad Ali. Obama inspired us with the audacity of hope but in the ‘60s, Ali lifted our spirits with his raw audacity alone. From “I have seen the light and I am crowing” to “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” Ali spoke truth to power, opening raw wounds in the psyche of America that provoked anger and revulsion but in the end proved cathartic for the nation. The change that he brought about through his audacity and moral courage surely played a role in the election that transfixed us on November 4th and transformed the world.

P.S. Toni Morrison, the last American to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993, gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal on 11/7/2008. The relevant excerpt follows:

Q. What do you think Mr. Obama's win says about American conception of race?

A. We're still a very active, volcanic country which is part of its excitement - the reinvention of ourselves and the constant search for what democracy means. I'm keenly aware of this peculiarity for this country. You couldn't imagine a win like this in Europe, because they're more static in how they run things. I can't imagine a Senegalese man in Paris running France - but now maybe.

Q. It's interesting that very little of the public discourse about Mr. Obama deals with his mixed-race status.

A. The other part of his race and his cultural experience was swept under the rug. That was deliberate so he could be the quintessential American even though the country was built on diversity. They had to tiptoe around that, but I think that nuanced discussion will happen. I kept saying that this is not an African-America but it's this specific man. This man. I can think of a lot of African-American that I would not vote for.

A Cheetah Unleashed

Usain Bolt reminds me of the young and brash Muhammad Ali who could electrify a crowd with his mere presence. Track & Field needed a shot in the arm; it got more, a lightning bolt. Three gold medals, three world records (100-meter, 9.69s, 200-meter, 19.30s, 4x100-meter relay, 37.10s). What an accomplishment! If anyone had suggested last week that Michael Phelps could be eclipsed in "mindshare" among Olympics viewers around the globe, he would have been laughed off. Yet that is what has happened. The Bolt phenomenon is real and here to stay. He is a cheetah unleashed. Against his grim and "purpose-driven" competitors, Bolt's breezy supremacy is a joy to behold.

Back in Jamaica, Bolt's father attributed his son's success to the nutritional (some say magical) value of the lowly yam, a staple in northwestern Jamaica where the speedster was born. Aspring sprinters here will probably ensure that in grocery stores throughout America there will be no more "silence of the yams."

The Olympic Spirit and Us

Olympics for me began with the summer games in Rome, 1960. I was in 7th grade then and I remember my dad excitedly telling me that Pakistan had beaten India in hockey 1-0 after six successive Olympic failures. We were in Bangladesh (East Pakistan then) and it seemed a big deal, particularly because I played in my school hockey team and knew the rules of the game. I wasn’t aware of Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) and Rafer Johnson at the time but I do recall seeing photographs of Wilma Rudolph, winner of god medals in 100 and 200 meters and the 400 meters relay, and telling myself: she has to be the most graceful female sprinter ever. My opinion hasn’t changed in 48 years. Another athlete who captured my imagination was the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila who ran barefoot in the streets of Rome to win the Marathon gold.

I was keenly interested in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics because of the inevitable clash between India and Pakistan in the field hockey final. India regained its supremacy by defeating Pakistan. But I was also expanding my horizon and began to follow other sports with equal passion.

Pakistan beat Australia in the final in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics to win the field hockey gold but that was more or less the beginning of the end for both Pakistan and India. Other countries were rapidly catching up. Although the two nations enjoyed some success afterwards, they would now be lucky to win a bronze medal.

But my interest was already shifting and what I remember reading about the Mexico City Olympics was the long jump record set by America’s Bob Beamon. The guy almost jumped out of sight, setting an astonishing record of 29’2½”, one that stood for 23 years until another American, Mike Powell, broke it with a record of 29’4½” in the World Championship game in Tokyo in 1991. But the dominant story of that Olympics, the Black Power salute by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, passed me by.

On my way from the newly-independent nation of Bangladesh to Halifax, Canada, in 1972 for higher studies, I stopped by in Munich at the invitation of a friend from Dhaka University. The Munich Olympics was the first that I attended in person and I was awed by its sights and sounds. It felt unreal, to be at the center of the sports world where the fastest and the strongest were competing for glory. I had never seen such affluence and even the big moon that hung low at night seemed to be acknowledging the spectacle on the earth below. I was able to catch only one event, a soccer game between West Germany and United States on a warm night. U.S. lost the game 7-0 and my vocal rooting for the underdog brought curious glances from the Germans around me. But I was in sports heaven and was convinced the magic would last forever. I heard about the impossible performance of an American swimmer named Mark Spitz but could not register what it was all about

I left before the Munich massacre. When I landed in Canada, the closing ceremonies were taking place and the shock and horror signaled that Olympics and politics and tragedy would become inseparable in the years to follow.

By the time I came to the United States in 1974, I was a bona fide sports fanatic. I was studying at Temple University in Philadelphia. In August of 1976, I took a train from New York to Montreal – the Adirondack – passing through Hudson Valley and the lush countryside. I was at Montreal from beginning to end and saw several track and field events and, of course, field hockey. The world awoke to a Romanian wunderkind named Nadia Comaneci who scored seven unheard of perfect 10s in gymnastics on her way to three gold medals. I would get up at dawn and take the subway to the main Olympic stadium and start taking photographs right and left, trying to capture as many faces and events as I could. I saw decathlon champion Bruce Jenner in action. But after two weeks of nonstop Olympic excitement, I was happy to return to my apartment at Temple.

After moving to San Jose, California in 1979, my sports fever continued unabated but I was content to watch successive Olympics on TV. Sure, that feeling of being there was irreplaceable but it was also physically demanding, and I was happy to trade immediacy for comfort. Besides, I could see more, even if it meant late-night vigils.

And here we are now, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. The Web and the papers are full of pundits lamenting the commercialization of Olympics, the doping scandals, the mercenary attitude of some nations to win at the expense of dehumanizing their athletes, and so on. But they are missing the point. For two weeks, the Olympic spirit, however flawed and frayed, will reign supreme and the world will applaud the winners and lend the losers a shoulder to cry on. There is honor in trying to do one’s best, and a Bangladeshi athlete can rejoice equally in having taken part as an American athlete standing on the podium moist-eyed as the Star-Spangled Banner plays. China is expected to dominate the medal count and showcase its emergence as a superpower but that is nothing compared to the ties that will unite the athletes and the fans for a few days and make us believe in our common humanity.

I will be rooting for Michael Phelps to break Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals but it will be tough. He will have to be as perfect as Nadia Comaneci was in Montreal. Actually he will have to do her one better. If that’s not asking for the impossible, I don’t know what is. But it is in the Olympics that the impossible happens. And therein rests its magic. The Olympics reminds us that the impossible is only a limitation of the imagination, that we have it in us to overcome this limitation and discover the hidden gold within. Long live the Olympics spirit!