Wonderkid in flames

More a tale of life than football, by Darshan Joshi

Idiots, some might say, believe everything they’re told, mostly out of complete ignorance. Idiots learn, though. With some education, even a dunce with the propensity to behave only in a way befitting a Shakespearean jester will have in himself instilled the wit to argue a personal theory. The problem, and this, quite ironically, is a personal theory – idiots are so consumed with this release from intellectual śūnyatā, that they go on to apply their newly acquired knowledge in every situation possible. It is simply an uncontrollable libidinous necessity to overcompensate for their years of dim-wittedness, like an ex-Nickelback devotee forcing upon others his infantile love for proper music. Graphically, the IQ of an idiot on the quest for knowledge is represented by a negatively charged quadratic function. The initial results are astonishing, but the peak is no steady state and eventually, innate nature takes over again, and they start to disbelieve facts.

Contrary to the behaviour of the aforementioned idiot, facts cannot be argued. These are universal beliefs, proven some way or another to be bereft of terminological inexactitude, to be taken as they are. But ah, what about the idea of a fact? Facts, should they qualify as such, are relative. What separates genius from lunatic? What distinguishes Stephen Hawking from Snooki? Inoperative legs and an overly operative mouth, respectively, aside, it’s the comparative nature of the latter’s obvious encephalopathy, in comparison to the severe case of highbrow wit that emanates from the former’s wheels. There is no ‘clever’, in real terms. There is only always comparison.

There is a disparity between mentor and protégé: will he turn out the way I want him to, the manner in which his potential allows, or will I have to crane my head sideways and admire the substantially maladroit field of sycophants who would put their wretched egos aside, willingly, and perform to the book? This idea we can apply to our lives at various junctures, because humans will always allow a disparity between eventual actuality and current potentiality. This disparity exists because there is only always comparison.

The scenario is imaginable. You perform a rabona at twelve, the grocer with a Nokia returns home, and heads straight to YouTube. A year later, a man from the Iberian Peninsula with Levi slacks far too classy for your favela appears at the local park as you pornographically tease your friends with a Cruyff turn, a Roulette, an Elastico, and you inevitably return home with the comparison steaming from your sweat. You return home as the next Pelé. The stage is set, complete with props, when you sign a contract with that club from the Big City, your squad status stamped with the word Wonderkid, and a release clause borne of figures you didn’t know existed. By seventeen, you are a galactic phenomenon with barely a strand of facial hair to show for it. It is a shame that the same potential for absurd brilliance is the same potential for marvellous destruction. For every Neymar there is many a Lulinha, and for every Ronaldo there are Quaresmas aplenty. It is a sad, eventual actuality that there is a factual disparity hatched from what was a potential that will forever live in the past.

The curtains of the future remain shut, but a terrible dramatic irony persists. We linger in the knowledge of what may almost certainly happen; a capitulation from the heavenly reaches of the Everest to the deepest chasms of worldly despair, because the odds are always too cosmic. But optimism provides a promise. It is a promise that these futures may yet fulfil their promise, their potential.

Circumstances will ultimately dictate the capricious nature of our lives. The ride provides us with electrifying euphoria, and cadaverous collapses. The Wonderkid is always in flames; but it is how far he sashays along his career, no matter how bruised, how battered, how utterly soulless he ends up, that man should be the one we judge.