The Marylebone Cricket Club, owners of Lord’s, initiated a new tradition in the ongoing first Test between India and England Before the start of play, every day, and an eminent cricketing personality will ring the bell in the pavilion, which will signify proceedings will commence in five minutes. On the occasion of India’s 75th anniversary of Test cricket, the MCC invited former Indian greats Sunil Gavaskar and Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi to ring the bell during the Test along with Sir Alec Bedser, who played his first Test for England at Lord’s in 1946, former England all-rounder Ian Botham and Patrick Eager, an acclaimed cricket photographer, who is ‘clicking’ his 300th Test in the ongoing match.
Most traditions are inherited and maintained, it is good to see new ones being started too. Of course , England is a country rooted in tradition – even its constitution is not a written one which can be amended any time one wishes as we have done countless times over the last fifty and more years since it was adopted ; rather the Westminster Constitution is a maze of convention, protocol and tradition accumulated over the centuries.
Tradition can be a great liberator or a great burden the most celebrated tribute to both perhaps is in the Musical Fiddler on the Roof, the story of Tevye, the father of five daughters in Tsarist Russia, and his attempts to maintain his family and religious traditions while the world and civilization around him change rapidly. The Fiddler is a metaphor of survival, through tradition and joyfulness, in a life of uncertainty and imbalance.
Some times, I think that tradition is the element that has kept Bharat, one of the pieces of the entity that makes up India united….. The culture, the epics, the customs and every thing else that the country has inherited from old days keeps one piece of the country united. 326. but have we evolved enough traditions to preseerve and evolve our polity , ur identity as a nation and a political entity ?
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