The flurry of yellow in the room actually made me see “red”. No, this “yellow” was not that delectable yellow fruit that I loved to consume. This was the colour of a favourite IPL cricket team, the teenagers — the son and his friends had dressed up to support, the shade of the team was “yellow” and the day gained a renewed hue of vigour, zest and appetite! It brought back flashes of that crucial meeting.
The meeting, with Eden Gardens as the backdrop where my husband was supposed to meet my father for the first time. The latter being a hard-core cricket fan hated cricket-ignorant “morons”. I had given the husband-to-be valuable tips on how to prepare for the “interview”, face the toe-crushers, googlies and the bouncers. The Wisden was to be the end all and be all of his life for a month before the meet …
My father, a doctor, has regaled many a patient with stories of master batsmen and expert bowlers as the agonised being would get distracted from his ailment for a while and would feel energised instantly. The radio commentary still rings in my ears, as children we would just know that we were supposed to be quiet and would silently listen to an entertaining crackle of voice, speaking in Hindi, punctuated with varied degrees of emotions, as he used comical similes and metaphors to describe the scene going on at the pitch!
The voice that sometimes barked out of the entrapment would see a nervous man, shouting at us for no particular reason, or was it because that foolish batsman ran like a blind bat and got run out? And the day the national team tasted victory we would also taste the special mutton curry, biryani and that favourite sweetmeat from the neighbourhood (sometimes Mishti Kaka the sweet shop owner, would give us a few extra pieces out of sheer joy)! At times when I had to fill up a form, the blank space where I had to state my religion, often made me wonder, should I write “cricket” here?
So when I met a man who knew nothing about cricket and played hockey, I thought I would take solace in this fact and spend the rest of my life away from the gruelling tension that gripped us with every match … no matter who played who!
The meeting began, the first question seemed so easy but it was a googlie of sorts, “Do you know who Kapil Dev is?” And the interviewee seemed relieved. He had just met the veteran cricketer in the golf meet arranged by his company recently. Excitedly, he began, “Yes, Kapil Dev plays golf …” The sentence never saw completion. The interviewer knit his brows and quipped, “No, he plays cricket for India!” Then a question came from a very unexpected quarter, my mother a professor of English serenely asked, “Do you know any English authors who played cricket really well?”
My face flushed with anxiety as I looked on at the scene unfolding in a not so pleasant manner. When she was met with silence, my mother informed us that not many may know “the chap who benevolently beams at you from so many old black and white pictures — P.G. Wodehouse was a top cricketer in the days of his sprightly youth.
“He named a favourite character Jeeves after Percy Jeeves who played for Warwickshire. Wodehouse had been thinking of naming his character Jevons before the match, but Jeeves appeared two years after the match in short story Extricating Young Gussie.
“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, when he was not manufacturing new ways for Holmes to simultaneously vanquish the villain and humiliate Watson’s intelligence, could be a merciless hitter and a crafty bowler.”
The meeting was an informative one if not a smooth one. It ended well, as the snacks came along and the cricket channel showed an old match and we all sat around ingesting the food and the superb shots by the little master — Sunil Gavaskar!
However, things fell in place and were peaceful until the grandson came along. He carried the cricket DNA! The cricket ground is a permanent fixture in our lives now. We have suddenly begun speaking “willows” and the pattern of grains on a bat. The sound of knocking of the bat often wakes me up, the other day I almost slipped on spilt linseed oil. The anxiety of childhood seems benign now, as I eat up all my nails watching the son bat on the crease!
The cricket formats have changed, as the grandson tries out the faddish “pallu scoop” the grandfather looks disgruntled! He advises him to stick to the classic shots! The young cricketer smiles at the grandfather and fills him up with all his antics on the cricket ground. As the older man looks at him wonderstruck, the proud twinkle in the eyes says it all — he blesses him, “One day I will see you play at Lords!”
Life flows on. like the Olympic torch, as the cricket fire burns on..
Navanita Varadpande is a writer based in Dubai.
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