Stanley Carvalho |
Jairaj Galagali was clearly distraught when his beloved family member was diagnosed with the dreaded cancer in 2017. Juggling a career, a home and a hospital was a pain.
An Indian technology professional living in California needed to do something to relieve his stress. A cricket bug that bit him years ago saved him and an inspiring idea was born.
“As a 12-year-old whose life revolved around cricket and movies, I needed a break to escape to another world,” Galagali said in his deep baritone.
“I decided to look for vintage footage of precious moments from India’s rich cricket history.” Sitting in his apartment in Bangalore during a busman’s holiday, he says:
Currently, his non-profit YouTube channel ‘Jai Galagali’ contains a few old videos from the 1940s from the Indian film sector as well as his own videos related to cricket.
His channel has over 30,000 subscribers and millions of viewers across cricket-playing countries. Moreover, Galagali became known as an archivist and history buff of Indian cricket, a fact acknowledged by prominent cricketers and media outlets as well.
However, his journey has not been smooth since 2017. Sitting in his study in California, he had to make numerous calls at night to the film department in Mumbai, often without a response. Galagali pursued his goal relentlessly, knocking on many doors and finally reaping the spoils after paying the price. Two hundred DVDs (each DVD a newsreel of cricket stories) arrived on his doorstep.
“I literally had tears in my eyes when I picked up that box containing the history of Indian cricket and took it back to my room,” he said with a half-smile.
Newsreels included all cricket matches filmed in India since 1948, one year after India’s independence in 1947. Some of them had soundtracks, but most did not, he added.
Galagali quickly got to work and, after some editing, posted the video to his YouTube channel. Gradually, he added some context, background, and interesting information to add depth to the video through simple narration. The libraries of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, were useful repositories for his research.
Galagali said the first video was a three-minute video of the India-England match in Kolkata in 1973 and the latest was an interview with former India wicket-keeper Syed Kirmani, who recently released his autobiography in Bangalore.
Some of the popular videos include India’s first cricket Test match victory at Madras in 1952; Indian players are seen wearing black wrist bands as a mark of respect to the late King George VI. In that memorable video, Galagali also interviewed CDGopinath, now a senior, who won that match.
Another is the first India-Pakistan Test series in 1952, where the bowling action of the legendary Subhash Gupte was seen live for the first time.
There are other memorable snippets of cricket matches played between India and England, India and the West Indies in the 50s and 60s, Pakistan tours of India and the debut matches of India’s greatest cricketers.
Cricket matches have always featured dramatic scenes, one memorable video being of a passionate sari-clad woman beating security guards onto the field and kissing Brijesh Patel to score a fifty during the 1975 India-West Indies Test match in Mumbai. This is the appearance of a woman.
Unexpectedly, Galagali’s labor of love hit a snag in 2020 when she received an email from YouTube citing a copyright violation by the Indian government. Realizing it wasn’t his fault, especially paying for the DVD, he made several pleas to the film department, but they were ignored.
Galagali contacted cricket-loving politician Shashi Tharoor, who wrote a scathing letter to the Ministry highlighting the importance of such channels. Some cricketers also expressed their opinions in favor of the channel. The channel was soon reopened.
During the coronavirus lockdown, Galagali has been posting videos regularly to provide viewers, especially cricket lovers, with an option when live matches are not being broadcast.
The response to Galagali’s YouTube channel has been encouraging. “This video brings the warmth, nostalgia and joy of so many cricket stories to so many viewers,” he hummed, citing some of the reactions.
A teenager from Delhi called Galagali to thank his grandfather, who suffers from dementia, after watching the video and opening his heart by reminiscing about his past.
The daughter of India’s legendary captain Pataudi sent a message saying that the video brought back memories of her father.
An economist suffering from cancer wrote that he watched the video endlessly because he was one of the viewers.
Watching the reel of the first Test series between India and Sri Lanka was ‘yesterday all over again’ for the Sri Lankan cricketer who now lives in Australia. The cricketer played in that series.
Galagali has so far posted only about 50% of his precious treasures. Fortunately, with the family’s health recovering, viewers can look forward to more footage of Indian cricket.
https://jaigalagali.wordpress.com/
