Cricket and the talking Elephant.

Jugal was batting on 36.

That bookie's words echoed in his ears,

"you need to lose your wicket in the 19th over. and don't worry, its just a Ranji match. There is no media hype here; so obviously there are no chances of any investigation. plus, you do need that flat in Noida. don't you?. remember. 19th over."

The bookie was quite right.

A one bedroom flat in Ghitorni was certainly not what a Ranji level cricketer deserved after so many years of faithful cricket. He needed to pay his son's school expenses and there was a special summer camp in the coming week. He still remembers Rahul's dejected face when he couldn't afford an aquarium for his last birthday. No. this is not what his boy deserved. not this time.

"remember. 19th over"

The sun was glaring and his stomach churned with hunger as one sandwich was all he had since morning.

He made up his mind, took a fresh guard and prepared himself to face the 19th over.

As the clocks turned to five, the umpires finally called the day off. Jugal was standing unbeaten on 103. His team was in a commanding position now.

As he came back to his one bedroom flat in Ghitorni, he could hear his mother reciting an age old fable to her grandson Rahul, " and then the sailor turned and replied firmly to the monster, I am not selling my integrity for your talking elephant. you can't buy my soul".

Jugal was in tears.
. 

Infatuations and Encounters.

I looked up to google to get me this word- infatuation. not that I wasn't acquainted with it, but then our lives are a sum total of borrowed words...a few syllables here and there ..and lo! the ordinary human brain has conjured and derived the biggest secrets and lies of our existence. now coming back to infatuation.
In my 22 years of existence, I have time and again found myself to be in deep admiration/captivation/love? with certain people. these certain people, are pretty ordinary ones, people I am somehow related with and also with those I am not. the reason I have so many synonyms is because I find myself unable to vomit out my feelings. to say I love them all would be an understatement as the word love itself is pretty much overrated. tell me how else am I to describe my five seconds of obsession for a 50 years old malyali woman who has been teaching, feeding, nurturing generations of utterly clueless kids(and I was one of them)  in the same school for the past twenty years. or  the autorickshaw wallah I shared a bidi with, who has left his wife and a boy back in his village so that he could toil here in this cold city. in his words, "bhaiyya ji, hume apni lugai ki bahut yaad aati hai. dilli me kuch nahi rakha hai". he was hopelessly in love. and so was I. with him, his wife, son and his small world . I can't just proclaim my 'love' for that cab driver. no! that is not what the movies and literature has taught me. Loving him would be an act of rebellion against the very sponsored dreams I have been fed via popular means. The same impulse I've also had for various other people in my life. be it my mother who still hasn't lost her warmth and smile in these trying and tiring times or my sisters who would be the last humans to judge me(ever) or my friends with whom I have shared countless memories or that woman who helped me tie my laces in the metro or those random yet fascinating faces behind the window panes in dtc buses. I've had my share of infatuation with all of them.
 I also wish to narrate a small incident here which occurred a few weeks  ago. I was travelling back to my rented room in north Delhi at 9'o clock on a december night in a rickshaw when suddenly I heard a loud screeching noise. Seconds after, a bike rider was seen lying in a pool of blood.  we rushed to his rescue and what followed after that was complete chaos. people were shouting and cussing at each other, asking others to dial ambulance while a few of us picked him up and were examining his wounds. he had lost two teeth, had a deep slash on his forehead, was unconscious and bleeding profusely. regardless of his present condition, it was pretty certain that his life was in grave danger without an immediate medical help. I started to dial the emergency number for ambulance when all of a sudden a young woman came up to me and asked  to put the bleeding guy in her car. there were at least a dozen people with access to an automobile but none of them had the basic will to offer their's. we quickly carried him to her car. soon,  a police patrolling jeep came up to the scenario and took him to the nearby hospital. Now I fail to recollect the bodily texture of this young woman as all I remember of her was this  certain and commanding voice. she gave me five seconds of immense infatuation. for five seconds, I felt as if I could love her in a thousand different ways and  in a thousand different worlds. I don't even remember that voice, it has faded in my subconscious. but I do remember those five moments of pure joy. What she did was only basic human courtesy and  I did not fell for her one kind act.It was her voice. A soft dictation in the midst of a complete mayhem. the kind of voice you can trust with your eyes blindfolded. I did not fell for her, at all. it was her voice. I was smitten by it. I don't even wish to go back in time or for her to meet me again. that would finish and destroy the immense charm of those moments. wouldn't it?
maybe that is what being alive in this world is. loving bits and parts of people and asking none in return. I see them rising in love every single day. and it makes me fall for them. again and again.