Why I Don’t Look Back in Anger

YPU. A TERM THAT starts with one of the lesser-used letters in the English language, and three let­ters that are seldom used in this configuration. But strung together, they had the power to nearly de­stroy a life, and deeply damage a career built by two decades of hard work. Why do I write this now? Do I not know that I will be abused and trolled relentlessly once this book is published? Have my family and I not had enough? More than half-a-million abusive tweets in the week between February 20 and February 26, 2022. Weren’t those enough? Why do I want to put my loved ones, and myself, through that again?

Also, why now? Why did I not speak up earlier? When scores of journalists asked me to talk about the ban, I stayed silent. In fact, I didn’t utter a word on the issue in the last two years. I waited for the ban to be lifted, endured in silence for 730 days. Why? If there was a story to be told, why wait?

I have written many books. Words are my friends. But never have I felt as apprehensive before writing something as now. Why would I revisit the nightmare? Why do I want to confront that time in my life again? The wrongs heaped on me. Especially now that things are going well for me, and for RevSportz, a company that is no less to me than a child.

As human beings, we are guided by certain principles. Each of us have our own set of values. To be told that you are a bully, that you have threatened a cricketer and intimidated him merely for an interview, when you have not, compels one to set the record straight. My mother, now 74, became severely anxious and depressed, and my wife was harassed and abused on social media. Even if one person reads it, it’s important that I put my story out there. I write this for my family and for myself, knowing that it might well invite another avalanche of vitriol.

Wait. Is this just for Sharmistha, my wife, and Roopa, my mother? What about my 10-year-old daughter, who was eight then, who couldn’t quite comprehend yet possibly knew something was very wrong at home? She wasn’t old enough to comprehend the gravity of the situation—and thank God for that—but could she not sense that her father, a strong and positive person by nature, was all but broken? Could she sense her mother putting on her bravest face, and her grandmother on the verge of a breakdown? Can you imagine the impact on the mind of an eight-year-old?

Mental health, anyone?

In the past, Indian cricket legends faced uncomfortable questions from journalists. But the journalists who did those stories were not labelled bastards or much worse.

What has changed now? Have we become more intolerant as a society? What does it say when we don’t even wish to listen to the other side? Millions saw only the victim card, without having a clue that the same individual had sent me multiple messages in the past, requesting me to put out his side of the story in the media in different situations. Asking me to not reveal his name as the source of my information, so that he wouldn’t be in the Apex Body’s bad books. I have quoted from some of those WhatsApp messages in this book, for the record. It is time to tell the full story.

In the two days after The Cricketer put out his tweet, social media vilification reached a peak. The instant justice brigade wrote and rewrote the abuse. The more extreme posts wanted me lynched or even jailed. Each such tweet got hundreds of likes, and seemed to increase the mob’s bloodlust. It was public shaming of a kind I had not seen before—the equivalent of burning someone’s effigy for days. Those that wanted the most attention tended to post their comments on The Cricketer’s timeline, as a response to his original tweet. There seemed to be a competition on, to see who could frame the most abusive message. Having my name dragged through the online sewer wasn’t enough. I needed to be crushed and broken, and memes won the day as the weapon of choice.

Two examples illustrated this best. One tweet, posted as a response to The Cricketer’s original one, had the picture of a dog on a leash. The dog looked scared and had turned its face away, as though it had done something seriously wrong and had been reprimanded for it. That was supposed to be me. The leash was in­structive to say the least. I needed to be tamed and taught a lesson.

First things first. I’m not irked in the slightest by being com­pared to a dog. They are the most amazing companions, and far more loyal than many human beings. Also, dogs don’t indulge in lies and deceit. I have loved dogs since I was a young boy, and was heartbroken to lose two of them in the same year as this incident. The gentleman in question—a self-styled social-media influenc­er—perhaps lacked the sensitivity to understand just how much a dog can mean to many of us. Maybe the said abuser thought he would look like a big man when he put out that tweet.

A second tweet had a picture of a different dog. Only in this case, it was clearly labelled—“He”. In that image, the dog was looking at the camera with its eyes and ears down. It had its two front paws in a folded position, as if asking forgiveness for a crime committed.

I have just described two of over 200,000 tweets. Neither was an aberration. They were very much the norm. The Cricketer, the morally upright soul who did not wish to hurt my family or I, offered not a single response or rebuke. The most vicious tweets were almost all on his timeline, as responses to his first message. Through the time during the last two years that I have battled disrepute, my wife and I ensured that our only daughter, while she must have sensed our helplessness and despondency at times, was largely allowed to grow carefree and with a sense of security. We consider it an achievement that we were able to safeguard her against the hate that we ourselves encountered. Can The Cricketer even fathom that my own family came close to the point of a breakdown on account of the hatred that we encountered? I hope that any parent that reads this account appreciates how much it took for me to keep up a brave front for the sake of my child. It is my child that might easily have been trau­matised in those circumstances, like my sister, a cancer survivor, and my mother had effectively become—anxious, perturbed and traumatised. I am also thankful that my daughter was only eight then and not thirteen or fourteen, and not on social media herself to witness her father’s humiliation and utter degradation.

Between February 20 and April 23, 2022, when the Apex Body met to impose a two-year sanction on me, not a single day passed without someone calling me to hint at dire consequences. Some suggested that the Apex Body would take cognisance of my contribution over the past 20 years and merely issue a caution. Others thought I could be banned for life. Another group thought I should go back to academia, and leave behind the rather politicised sports-media domain. None of this made any sense.

As a journalist, I had only done my job in fol­lowing up about an interview that had already been arranged. Yes, I had sent The Cricketer a message in my frustration but it had been an emotional outburst. Haven’t each one of us done that, sometime or other. How did telling some­body I wouldn’t interview him again because he had held me up, or that I felt insulted on account of his behaviour, amount to threatening him? But the steady stream of words and innuendo acted like slow poison. I was desperate to tell my side of the story, but no one was prepared to give it any credence.

At one level, I prayed that whatever the outcome, it should happen fast. At least clarity would allow me to recalibrate and move on. My lawyers, and I had consulted a slew of senior ones at the time, had all told me that if I moved court, there was a good chance I would get a stay order. The date on my messages had been blurred before being posted on social media, and couldn’t be used as admissible evidence. It was also a breach of my privacy for somebody to put out personal WhatsApp chats without my consent, that’s how the law defines it. I had a pretty strong case. Some advised me to pursue a defamation case against The Cricketer. I considered that seriously, and even paid the fees at the Calcutta High Court.

My fight was never against the Apex Body. The Apex Body was hearing out a centrally contracted cricketer who claimed to have been mistreated by a journalist. To start off, they had no mechanisms in place to verify who was speaking the truth. At the time though, I was more concerned about the fallout from the ban on RevSportz. There was a team in place, which couldn’t be impacted by an issue that only I was part of. Protecting them was my priority. There was euphoria on Twitter soon after the ban was announced. It had taken the kangaroo court just two months to get the verdict they wanted. I was also well aware that fellow journalists had lobbied relentlessly to have me pushed out of the grid. The ban meant that I could not work or generate stories in the field of cricket, and it was a jubilation for those that saw me as their worst competition. The Cricketer’s agenda, whatever that was, had prevailed. But with my family and friends by my side, I wasn’t about to go quietly. For the past two years I have seen messages, almost all abusive, which say that I haven’t apologised and I feel no remorse for my actions. They’re right. And this book explains why.

I remember going to bed that night thinking I should consult my lawyers again regarding the legal option. But once the initial dismay and sadness had subsided, I decided to move forward. Unlike John Osborne’s character from the famous play, I couldn’t afford to look back in anger. After being submitted to every sort of indignity for two months, I needed closure—for that moment. The bullets had been fired, and I was still standing.

The next morning, I woke up feeling almost at peace. The uncertainty was behind me. For the trolls, the ban was a full stop. For me, it was the first chapter in a new story, one I had to tell to clear my name.

THE NAYSAYERS STILL won’t care for my side of the story. But the one thing they can’t say is that I used my connections to escape the consequences of my alleged actions. I served my ban and suffered for 730 days. Lived with the ignominy of being labelled a bully. During these months, which I treated like a test, I did work that I am now immensely proud of and learned things that I did not know were possible. RevSportz has grown exponentially, and our sponsors have stuck with us to make the platform stronger than ever. To them my gratitude is immense.

While I had always covered multiple sports, cricket was the prime focus. Having studied the sport for a doctoral degree, that was but natural. But now, I had been pushed out of my comfort zone, and I had to find other avenues. Even RevSportz needed a new path, and those are always challenging. Would the ban impact my relationship with other sports federations as well? With international sporting bodies? With players who were close friends and had been for years? Could I continue to work with the same passion, or would this entire bitter and traumat­ic experience make me cynical?

The cricket league was going on at the time, and whatever I tweeted was met with torrents of abuse. I needed a break to get my bearings back. So I did what was almost second nature by then, and what I did every year, anyway—left for Oxford. I had learned a lot in that city and, in a sense, identified with it. While no one knew me there, I knew every bit of it. I could wake up and not have to read the sports pages in the Bengali newspapers. I needed to put a distance between that episode and myself. In Oxford, the cricket league had no presence, it wouldn’t be on every evening on television, and my phone wouldn’t ring every few minutes. I could sit in the University Parks and think of what I now needed to do. Having my family with me meant that each time I felt low and crushed by what had happened, I could just be myself without the fear of being misunderstood. I could take my daughter to the bookshops we both loved and just watch her grow. Somehow, I wanted her to grow up fast at that time, to only be able to tell her everything I had gone through.

It was a good time to leave too because there was no ambigu­ity about the ban. The announcement had been carried by the media, and there were several follow-up articles. Between April 23, 2022 and April 22, 2024, I wouldn’t be allowed to go to grounds in India, or be able to speak to contracted cricketers. In­terviews were out of the question. The Cricketer’s allegations and his actions on social media took away my calling card. But sport was my life. Neither he, nor anyone else, could take that away from me. His doings had already inflicted untold damage on my family, and I knew that things could not get any worse. Possibly it was the lowest low for me, and things could now only look up.

I have been asked my reasons for writing this book by those in the know, and remember discussing it with my publishers. In fact, a close friend who is also a very well-known journal­ist, said to me: “Your company is now recognised across the country. For a brand that is two years old, that is a very special achievement. You did some fantastic cricket interviews during the last World Cup on Indian soil without breaking a single sanction. Olympic sports is your forte. I can’t count the number of interviews you have done across Olympic sports in two years. Most importantly, 2024 is an Olympic year and you will surely excel at the Olympics and Paralympics. Why do you want to attract negativity to the platform when things are going so well for you? The ban is over in April 2024. Why don’t you just move on? Everyone knows you are good, and you will get your network back in cricket as well.”

The gentleman in question is a well-wisher, and it was not a snide comment. What he said made a lot of sense. This book is a risk, and a big risk that I decided to take. The question was simple—was it worth taking? Could it harm RevSportz, and was I prepared to deal with another period of turmoil?

For me, the answer is very clear. Yes, I am prepared for the risks. Unlike that night of the first tweets by The Cricketer which left me flummoxed, this time I have an understanding of what was done to me and why. I have never had more clarity about anything in my life. This has nothing to do with business or RevSportz or material gain. Rather, it is about who I am. My identity. My family. And our humiliation of the last two years. So, yes, it is a risk worth taking, to put my word out there.

While growing up, I was taught that the truth eventually comes out, no matter how long it takes. No matter how entitled somebody may be, and no matter how loud the noise around them, life has strange ways of catching up, with everybody. Time could turn a narrative on its head. Humanity has always found its voice when confronted with injustice, freedom in the arms of duress. For that freedom risk is a small price to pay. If speaking out harms me, so be it.

As I said earlier, a social media trial can break you. It forces you to draw on every last bit of inner strength, and yet leaves a permanent scar. I wanted closure in the form of this book. But no one knows better that there will never be closure. I will not get back the two years of opportunities that I lost, or the days and evenings when I was almost a stranger to my daughter. For two years, Sharmistha and I never had a quiet dinner where we could just relax. There was not one evening when we didn’t discuss the issue and the book. Which outsider can quantify the impact on the mental health of my family? On my wife? I became cynical about a number of things, and it will be tough to change that.

Writing this book drained and exhausted me. The truth is that the incident changed me, my life and my family. There is no going back to what we were. This was our long Covid. And it was all because of a desperate act of sensationalism on social media. This act unleashed social media’s vermin on my family and me. He is an accomplished cricketer. You don’t play over three dozen Test matches for India if you’re not. I have had a good career, but will never enjoy the kind of public profile he did by virtue of playing for India. But what has defined me is my resilience in the face of the deepest crisis that I have faced over the last two years of my life. And I can still look my daugh­ter in the eye and tell her that I am speaking the truth. n

(This is an edited excerpt from Banned: A Social Media Trial by Boria Majumdar)

Banned: A Social Media TrialbookBoria Majumdarmemoirsensationalism