Running between the Wickets: Defining Self by Sports in Sachin Tendulkar’s Playing It My Way
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Department of English
Abstract
Autobiography usually incorporates the inner self of the individual, and presents the
mirror image of the self rarely known to others besides all the public exposure one
has earned. But in contrast,Tendulkar’s autobiography,Playing it My Way,isno
more than a reiterationof all his accolades and glory he has earned as a cricketer.
Grounded with all the textual evidence, the photos he has included, the accolades he
has mentioned, and all those not-so-beautiful behind the scenes missed out;this
research paperclaims that this autobiography is nothing more than the appraisal of
Tendulkar’s self, an aggrandizement of the self.For this purpose, this research
paper mainly brings the ideas of Linda Anderson, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson
and Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler to analyze the text. Linda Anderson in her
Autobiography raises the issues of credibility, authorship, selfhood, representation,
identity, language, etc in an autobiography. She questions in the pervasiveness and
slipperiness of autobiography. Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler in "The Glorified
Self: The Aggrandizement and the Constriction of Self" write how a person changes
his/her self or glorifies it when he/she becomes a celebrity. And Sidonie Smith and
Julia Watson in Reading Autobiography:A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives
introduce autobiography comprehensively and critically.
Key Words: Self, Aggrandizement,Confession,Narrating 'I', Identity