Not everybody loves Sachin Tendulkar.

Reading The Hindu’s and The Telegraph’s online reports of his 50th Test Century this morning, I thought of the neighbours Sachin will soon have when The Tendulkars move into their new home. It is now under construction off Carter Road, close to Otters Club – which, in June 2002, turned down Sachin’s request for membership − and Jogger’s Park, in Bandra West. Right now, the builder’s crew is making so much of a din and a nuisance of themselves that the folks staying around are just about ready to throw up in a manner of speaking. This – despite the fact that Sachin had sent them a letter in advance begging for their indulgence for the inconvenience that was going to be let loose on them! Well, almost nobody can get universal adoration, I guess. Didn’t a psychotic fan shoot John Lennon in New York in 1980 just because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Lie to me.

Don’t know about you but I can still remember the time when there were no senior citizens about, no differently abled folks. There used to be old people and disabled people. Movies were movies then, not franchises. Governments used to be as vicious and ruthless in dealing with citizens acting against their diktats, i.e., not toeing the official line, as they happen to be today, though. Had Julian Assange or Arundhati Roy or Dr Binayak Sen been around then, they would have been hounded as relentlessly and mercilessly as they are being hounded right now, no quarters granted. Little white lies were the better part of valour, then as now. Demonizing or criminalizing the enemy of the State used to be the favourite gambit. It continues to be likewise. This brings to mind what George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949): “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Also, for people who love to rewrite History to suit their own ends, here’s another Orwellian gem: "He who controls the past, controls the future."