MASLOW AND THE NEED FOR BACKSTORIES

24 April 2020 marked the 47th birthday of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, deified by his and India’s cricket fans as ‘The God of Cricket’. While there were a lot of discussions — positive, negative, critical, analytical — on that day, something that stood out to me was how we celebrate certain people for the kind of narrative backstories that are woven around them, consciously or unconsciously.

Let us take the case of Sachin himself (Fans might come all guns blazing at me for using the lower case ‘h’). Where does the discussion on Sachin lead us to? The perfection of his shots, the timing, the way in which he saved the team (debatable) countless times, and so on. But all these converge mostly at one point — the kind of efforts he put in during his childhood. Things like his epic partnership with Vinod Kambli, the efforts his coach Ramakant Achrekar undertook for his becoming a stalwart, how his whole family sacrificed a thing or two for his success, and so on have become part of the legend Sachin is being remembered as today. There are other factors — which we are NOT going to discuss in this article, for that is not the aim — that played a key role, two of which are very crucial, especially in the context of Indian cricket. First is the caste demographic of the team in general, and how Sachin fit in perfectly. Second is the location factor; one need not guess twice to understand how much of an advantage Maharashtra was, if a player has to be selected to the national team (Vengsarkar, Gavaskar, Tendulkar, etc.)

One cannot disagree the kind of persistence, perseverance, commitment, dedication and passion (and multiple other tenets of a successful human being, in general) Sachin showed towards the game was unparalleled, but what — apart from being the record holder in almost all the different numbers associated with batting — explains the fact that a Rahul Dravid or a Sourav Ganguly are not remembered enough?

Dravid, his stroke-play, his being a gentleman, AND Ganguly and his aggression are all traits that can be admired for, but do not hold water for either of them to be remembered as the most ‘relatable’ sportsmen. One can argue at least with a reasonable degree of conviction that the kind of narratives about Sachin that have been etched in a common man’s memory play a primary role in him being relatable, apart from the achievements and milestones.

The reason has to be traced back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the highly regarded and critiqued theory in psychology. It includes five different stages of human needs, namely Physiological (essentials such as food, water, shelter), Safety (education, employment, healthcare), Love/Belonging (relationships, friendships), Esteem (awards, achievement, prestige), and Self-Actualization (reaching fullest potential). While Maslow seems to have initially argued that one cannot go to a higher level of needs until and unless those at the immediate lower level are met, he appears to have changed his stance later.

Anyway, coming back to Sachin, why does his story create so much impact? It is because Sachin, as per the narrative (we are not venturing into the authenticity of the oft-repeated folklore), skipped the initial stages of the Maslow pyramid, or at least had only minimal exposure to them, while reaching Stages 4 (Esteem) and 5 (Self-Actualization).

Breaking it further down, let us consider the life trajectory of Sachin in the form of a movie, split into the traditional pre-interval and post-interval (or first-half and second-half) blocks. The first half goes roughly like this. Sachin as a young boy rushes between school and coaching, sometimes skipping food, snack or relaxing at home (some degree of sacrifice of physiological needs), struggles hard and even gives up formal education to an extent (some degree of sacrifice in security needs). Let us stop at this point and try to make an argument. A new perspective can be made, citing that he attained ‘employment’ much earlier in his life, which translates to financial security, but the security needs, in Maslow’s hierarchy, also imply a degree of order and predictability in one’s life (16 year-olds are more likely to associate themselves with a need for education; that is the natural order. Part-time work, yes. Full-time work at the cost of education? Not in an ecosystem that is ‘aware’ of the outcomes of education). Hence, this provides an interesting twist to the way in which Sachin is perceived. The high point — the ‘interval block’ — comes when Sachin meets Anjali (Love/Belonging needs), and the relationship blossoms. Technically, there is nothing weird here, except for the fact that the woman is elder, which makes it a ‘special’ case (I am not being judgmental here, and am just briefing what and how we have been told about Sachin). This high point is the intermission, after which Sachin goes on to reach Esteem. Spicing up the second-half are hardships like the Tennis Elbow issue, which creates ‘conflict’ as to if and how the protagonist (Sachin) would overcome the adversity. The climax is the Self-Actualization stage (the 2011 World Cup victory and the much-publicized, highly emotional and truly stirring retirement speech).

In fact, this line of popularization is not just restricted to Sachin. We can see similarities in some of the other popular personalities we know. When one says Rajinikanth struggled being a conductor and vying for a chance at Kollywood (some sacrifice in the physiological and safety needs) or when Kamal Hassan started acting at a very young age (when he should have been associated with education; hence some degree of sacrifice in the security needs), the story, by default, becomes interesting because it has to do with the rags-to-riches narrative, which in Maslowian lexicon, should mean deficiency in lower levels in pursuit of higher levels (in fact, the first four stages are together grouped as Deficiency needs, while the final stage of Self-Actualization is identified as ‘Being needs’).

The same can be extrapolated to the world of music. Let us consider A R Rahman’s case. His father passed away at a very young age (a very bad dent to Safety needs at such a young age, since emotional security is compromised), failed in academics and had to change schools, started working on jingles and then moved on to Stage 4 and 5. The narrative is obviously a factor in ARR being the ARR he is. One cannot deny the emotional impact of the demise of a father, but he still had the privilege of studying at Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan, an ‘elite’ school (‘elite’ = dominated by upper-caste, upper-class), which is not a privilege most people from Chennai can easily attain (he switched to another school later, though). Making this narrative more interesting is the fact that he was introduced in place of Ilayaraaja in a Mani Ratnam movie (both stalwarts in their own right; again, we are not stepping into the career graph of Mani Ratnam in the recent times). This should be the intermission, after which the National Awards and everything else follows in the second half.

For a very local connect in Tamil Nadu, let us take the example of Hip Hop Tamizha (again, we are not stepping into the musical prowess and the nuances of the band here). First of all, the band consists of more than one person, but the narrative always works better if one person basks in the limelight. Case in point: politics in India, and all over the world, when personalities, not ideologies, matter more. For a more business-y reference, Steve Jobs — Steve Wozniak. In this case, Aadhi claims to have come from Coimbatore to Chennai with no financial and professional backup, and there is a breakup (which is how the ‘biopic’ — Meesaya Murukku — was narrated), clearly reinstating the deficiency in Security and Love/Belonging needs (Stages 2 and 3). After struggling, when albums start becoming breakout successes, he slowly moves on to Stage 4 (Esteem). This itself is the clear rags-to-riches narrative; a deficient need that paves way for sympathy (and in most cases, empathy) and a ‘breaking barriers’ or ‘beating all odds’ follow-up is a clear-cut formula for a success story. However, Aadhi spruces it up with an additional layer — that of going back to Stages 2 and 3 again and again. His songs and lyrics are laden with subtle and blatant takes on relationships (Stage 3); he often takes pride in announcing in whichever stage he is invited as Chief Guest about the fact that he is a PhD candidate, who did not shine well enough academically during his Engineering undergrad days (Stage 2).

There are enough and more examples in the world of fiction, alluding to this same hypothesis, from the Disney and Pixar movies, to the character sketch of Harry Potter. The vicarious pleasure of relating to somebody scaling the various stages of the Hierarchy of Needs is what attracts common people towards personalities. The flow of the ‘life story narrative’ of the personalities plays an important role in enthusing the viewers/readers, and increasing the degree of connection a common man forms with a sportsperson, cinema star or a writer; this eventually results in a personality being remembered as a mere mortal, or in Sachin’s case at least, a God.

This selective celebration of ideas and personalities is not inherently good or bad, and I am nobody to judge the same. Human psyche seems to form highly glorified images of certain people based on the kind of narratives around the personalities, and Abraham Maslow’s theory seems to be playing a crucial role in it.

Footnote: The idea to write this came when my reading in detail about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs converged with Karthikeyan Malaisamy sharing a Facebook post.

First published in Pens Turf on April 28, 2020