Kapil Dev once compared Laxman Sivaramakrishnan’s extraordinary speed and nimble movements in the field with the suddenness of a snake bursting out of a sack (his words in Punjabi: “Jiddan bori wichon sap nikalda hai”). I carry this vivid smile with me whenever I think of the time when a young precocious Sivaramakrishnan was creating waves with his astonishing bowing skills in the first half of the Eighties.Today, while reading his dismaying battles with a world that is in love with the colour white and abhors its darker shades, the young, graceful, electrifying Siva resurfaces in my mind. This slim, wiry, 19-year-old had the world dancing, for a brief period, to his whizzing, whooshing spinning deliveries that held the cricketing fraternity in a trance.Most of us saw him as a winsome, ebony-hued young man destined for the stars, not a meteoric flame fated to consume itself in a fleeting burst.The dark clouds that were to engulf his cricketing career were as sudden as his stunning emergence. The purveyor of a bagful of tricks — from a googly to top spin, mixed with sharp leg-spin and an enticing loop — lost it all within no time. Nothing unusual in a sporting world where fame, glamour, riches are a double-edged sword. It can as easily smother you as it can make you live in a fantasy world that mere mortals can’t even dream of.Siva, we all believed, was one of the many prodigies lost to the world, unable to handle the extravagant, luxurious goodies on offer for those who make it to the top.Siva, we all believed, was one of the many prodigies lost to the world, unable to handle the extravagant, luxurious goodies on offer for those who make it to the top. It has happened before, it is still happening and, dare one say, will continue to victimise the future “prodigies” of the sporting world.Maninder Singh, Siva’s contemporary, is another such story of found and lost, who by his own admission couldn’t handle success. In a world that rewards success with treasure troves, uneasy lie the heads that chase the crown. Crushing was the burden of his own expectations and that of his peers. Fear of failure and anxiety to do well strangled Maninder’s professional need to lead a disciplined life. Alcohol became his refuge and a sense of victimhood his excuse for living life on the edge.Far from becoming a successor to the great Bishen Singh Bedi, Maninder became a mental wreck. In one of the most candid and brave confessions ever made by an Indian cricketer in an interview given to Cricket Monthly in 2019, Maninder admitted drowning himself in a world of self-destruction that alienated him from sanity. Maninder was courageous enough to confront his loneliness and the debilitating effect of self-pity. With the help of a few friends and faith in the divine, he was able to swim out of a delusional world that had left him hopeless and wasted.Siva’s world, as it emerges from his recent interview given to The Indian Express, is a more distressing expose of our deep-rooted prejudices where the colour of skin and racism can destroy people’s lives. He was taunted for his dark colour right from the day he entered the cricket field. From age 14 to his present age of 60, Siva says he was lampooned for his dark skin, made to feel lowly and untouchable that developed a deep sense of victimhood in him. He accuses not only the colleagues of his playing days, but the BCCI as well for injustices done to him.I have heard screams of “Kalia, Kalia” (dark, dark) and “Bhoot” (ghost) from crowds in India for the West Indies team, a chant Siva was often targeted with by the spectators inside the stadium. No wonder the West Indian players of his time empathised with him and he became best friends with them. The pain of Siva’s traumatic, discriminatory experiences are laced with a reality that transcends caste prejudices and narrows it down to colour preferences.Siva is often assumed to be a Brahmin though this has never been publicly confirmed. Yet his dark skin, as he keeps emphasising in his revelations, was used against him all the time, by those in power and by those watching him play. In his more than two decades of life as a commentator, he has explicitly shown his sycophantic allegiance to BCCI and yet even that didn’t help him get a broadcasting spot during the toss of any international match.It grieved him so much that he finally decided to retire from broadcasting and open up his festering wounds for the world to see.Siva’s and Maninder’s stories are case studies of prejudices and internal battles with fear and anxiety creating insecurities that can impede the growth of an individual to achieve its full potential. Siva’s is a clear case of racism that made him feel inadequate and instilled a sense of victimhood that led to depression, and made him even suicidal at times. Maninder’s is a story of a scared mind pushed to the extreme by its own desire to succeed but fearing failure all the time.In many ways, their revelations are a damning reflection on us — a society whose flawed, conditioned, and complex worldview often proves to be self-defeating, sometimes with devastating human consequences.— The writer is the author of ‘Not Quite Cricket’ and ‘Not Just Cricket’