Saturday, August 13, 2011

Reminiscence


I had a bad sleep last night and woke up early in the morning to drive my dad to railway station. Whenever this happens, I suffer from severe headache. I tried my best to recover, which included listening to soothing numbers, sipping cup of hot tea and at last some medication. Three hours passed, but nothing seemed to work out for me. More importantly my headache was getting worse. Meanwhile I heard few noises outside my house. I felt irritated and ran out of the front door in anger. When you have a bad headache, even a small noise will naturally spice the headache up.

When I gazed from the porch I saw few young children playing cricket. So, there is this young kid taking guard. Another guy took a long run up and bowled the first ball. The batsman was bowled.

The kid then said “Dude, this is trial ball. I am not out.”

The bowler looked even more furious and agitated than what Shoab Akhtar would look like when the umpire gives a decision in favor of the batsman. But then he had to go back to bowl the next delivery.

Suddenly, I remembered the days when I played cricket along with my best buddies in the park constructed by revenue department of Visakhapatnam in our colony.

It was hot summer and the heat was scorching back then. Round about 12 noon, one can witness eagles roaming in the sky.I was wearing red T-Shirt that day and my friend Harsha was bowling to me. And I was caught and bowled the first ball.

So this was my statement immediately after I got out -- “Dude, I am not ready. And I really thought that this was the trial ball.” [I really don’t remember in what sense I made such a statement, but I was really embarrassed to give up my batting after the first ball. I was so desperate to bat all day.]

Harsha was furious. He had to do something to pull my leg. He said, dude Murthy, you see the eagles up in the sky? They don’t like red colour. They will fly down and put a hole in your head with their sharp noses.
I was scared. Although what he said makes no sense at all, I was scared to death. We were 11-13 year old kids with eyes filled with innocence. And then, I cried badly. Harsha and another friend of mine were laughing so hard. I dint have a damn clue about what was going through their minds. But then I had to continue my batting with lots of fear in my heart about the eagles.

Whenever I stepped on to the front foot, I used to stop abruptly seeing some guy gazing at the sky in astonishment. Whenever an eagle was flying down, I ran back to the shade under a tree nearby. This went on for the next 30 minutes. Eventually when I was told by my friend that Harsha was playing a prank, I was on angry him. And then I and my partner put up a partnership of 64 runs. I was so angry at that point of time and I had hit each and every ball hard to vent my anger. That took me to my best score 42 * on that ground [:P].

Later we stopped the match abruptly as we were reprimanded by our parents for playing in the sun till 2 PM without coming home for lunch. [Matched abandoned due to parents intervention: P]

All of a sudden I witnessed myself standing on the porch with an unusual grin on my face. To my surprise I am no longer suffering from any headache. May be the sweet memories that filled up my mind for the past few minutes took the headache away with them. And the next minute, I was down with the kids and had fun with them on road. I even clicked few pics while they were playing cricket. The kids were ecstatic when they saw their photos and I felt even more excited when I saw the happiness and excitement in their faces.

If someone reminded me about those incidents back then, I used to feel embarrassed and equally pissed off. But now, it feels really good when someone digs those incidents from the past. Thanks to those sweet memories, I felt far better than what I had felt about an hour earlier.