Sporting Life: The complex, giddy and comforting world of heroes
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Argentina's Lionel Messi in action during the South American World Cup qualifiers against Ecuador, on March 29, 2022.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Old photographs lose their lustre in albums and watercolours get bleached in the sun. But awe fades slower. In the scrapbooks of the brain, heroes always glitter a little.
In my mind, Muhammad Ali is still hurling words and throwing punches. When my friends and I met him in a hotel room in Kolkata, he was retired, bullied by Parkinson's disease, a shuffling ghost of the boxer who said: "I'm so mean I make medicine sick."
